Nature is Strong. It is hopeless to fight against them. In 2018, 13 amazing boys from Thailand fought for themselves in survival situations during natural disasters.  The boys were trapped in a chamber of a flooding cave named Tham Luang, facing severe starvation, lack of oxygen, and stress; However, with great resilience, courage, and hope, the boys managed to stand still and never give up.  The award-winning literary non-fiction “All Thirteen” by Christina Soontornvat, which won the Kirkus Young Leader Award and was Honored in the Newbery and Sibert Medal depicts the inspiring rescue story of boys with great details. The book shows how important leadership, hope, and courage is by showing how boys managed to retain the will of survive and resilience in a situation that seemed almost impossible to survive.

During Unit 5 of the 8th-grade class,  Which is named Stranger than Fiction, I chose ” All Thirteen” to read for the class. Throughout the whole unit, we learned through the example of the novel “Hidden Figures” in class and applied the reading and analyzing skills to the books that we chose. My progress was written in a notebook and this is it (There are some spoilers, scroll if you do not want)

This is the note from day 1 of the unit. In day 1, I learned about Themes, central ideas and issues, which are the basics, yet the most important part of the books. According to What I learned during class, Central ideas, Themes, and main issues are related, but deferent. The Main issues are what happens in the book mainly, central ideas are recurring ideas, or motifs in the book, and the theme is the life message that the writer tries to convey to the readers. With some quotes in hidden figures, we learned how to identfy themes, central ideas, and issues. The bottom part of the notebook page is about the examples from All 13. With evidences from book, I identified the rising themes and central ideas from the “All  Thirteen”

In day 4, we learned different reading strategies, which are focusing on narratives or informations. In class, we practiced those reading strategy in pair work. Me and my partner Tairan shared some tips and the informations we got after applying different stretagy of reading on Hidden Figures. Then, I reviewed the book with the method I learned. This and day 1 note futher developed into my note in day 6, which was central idea assessment

Above is a note of central idea, which is day 6. Key for the note was organizing complex ideas of the book in one page. I wrote examples from books (Quotes) and made connections and analyzed them. Under the central idea of leadership, that is revealed through main issue ,which was the accident happened in Tham Luang cave, I made connections with many different ideas.

In day 7, we learned how to make connection between various central ideas. It was similar to day 6 note page, but it was more about making connections between many different ideas of book. In class, I learned that one event can show many different ideas and they are connected. I made more complicated connections.

Although the reading journey was not very smooth in this unit due to some difficulties on understanding some concepts, it was enjoyable. For me analyzing a literary non-fiction deeply with various aspects were a whole new experience, but It was a good experience, for I learned how to make more insightful thinking while reading not only the literary non-fictions, but also fictions.

I would like to recommend this book for people who are seeking a nice literary non fiction with not complicated vocabs, and interesting and immersive storyline. It would be a great fun if you also read this inspiring book and analyize as I did.