Quarter Two: Blog 6

This week, I read more of my book, Bee Season by Myla Goldberg. In this section of the book, Eliza realizes that she only has four weeks to study for the spelling bee finals. At first, when she gets home from school, Eliza just sits on the couch and watches TV until dinner. Then, after constant both verbal and visual reminders from her father, Eliza begins to study, although she prefers to use the word "practice" because she associates "study" with a chore and being extremely bored. So, after school, Eliza locks herself in her room and practices spelling words. Saul approves Eliza's constant practicing and even offers to help her, but she enjoys the solitude that comes with spelling, so she refuses his help.

Whenever Eliza spells in the book, she closes her eyes to see the words and what she sees is vividly described to the reader. I find her visual images of the words very interesting. Sometimes, she sees each word in a different place, locked in her body, but she can get it out. "She pictures words lining her stomach, expanding with each stretch of her lungs, nestling in the chambers of her heart" (44). Other times, each letter is in the ocean. "When Eliza closes her eyes to spell, the inside of her head becomes an ocean of consonants and vowels, swirling and crashing in huge waves of letters until the word she wants begins to rise to the surface" (45). I think that it is very interesting that whenever Eliza spells a word, it appears in her head and she is able to spell directly from it.