Our latest project in Donnelly Language Arts was a book called “The Westing Game”. I had already read the book and didn’t really enjoy it so I was not excited to read it again. Part of the reason I didn’t like it was that it was so confusing and hard to keep up with all the characters. There are over 25 characters and in order to understand the book you need to know well!

I was very shocked to find that I actually enjoyed the book on the second time around! The book is so complicated that even though you know what happens in the end you never stop finding all these little hints and clues. For instance, there are 16 heirs in the book and that’s how many pieces one side has in chess! This is something that is very neat because the main character who dies loves chess.

Another thing that really helps in understanding the whole book more was using an app called Trading Cards. Using the information given in the book we made drawings of the character and filled out details and facts about each character in the form of a trading card. It was hard work to make 26 of them but it payed off in the end! Also, we went over “mystery” vocabulary words that helped with this cozy mystery. So now I would recommend this book where as before I would not!!