Dawn

"Dawn"

Written by: Tim Wynne-Jones

•     The story was reprinted in three different anthologies which was Coming of age, Vol 1, Ed. Emra, National Textbook, Lincolnwood, Illinois,1999 All Sleek and Skimming, Ed. by Lisa Heggum, Ocra 2006 and Leaving Home, Selected by Rochman and Campbell, HarperCollins,1997. ("The Short Stories") .
•  " Dawn" was written in genre as a short story, it is 22 pages long from Leaving Home. 
•  It began with the main character Barnsey meeting Dawn in the bus to North Bay on a night bus which made it seem interesting and left me with different questions of who is Barnsey and Dawn? How did they meet on the bus? How did they act around each other? What was their first impression of each other? That was the few question that popped in my head when I read the first sentence of the story.
•  The first sentence was meant to be very interesting and simple to make the reader interested into learning more about the character.
• The story was about a boy name Barnsey  meeting Dawn on the night bus to North Bay. He was going on a trip to Barrymores in Ottawa to stay with his grandmother and cousins since his parents stressed out with Christmas season in their store. Barnsey was determined that he will be fine taking the bus by himself as long he is able to sit alone and not next to strangers and not sitting next to anyone weird the whole way to North Bay. 
• Once he enter the bus to North Bay, he had notice the bus was filled and didn't see any seats for him to sit alone so he found a seat next to Dawn who was different from everyone, as he described, " the nine earrings, the nose rings, and the Mohawk in particular--orange along the scalp and the purple along the crest as if her skull was a planet and the sun was coming up the horizon of her head. She was about twenty and dressed all in black, with clunky black Doc Martens " (96). They eventually started talking to each other on the way to North Bay and it started with sharing what music they hear and they eventually became friends and had fun on the ride. 
• The moral of the story is to " never judge a book by its cover". Barnsey was judging her at the beginning thinking she is weird but once he got to know her he liked her for how she is. This story used alot of description of what is going on throughout the story. 
•  The connection to "leaving home" is that the boy was leaving his home to his grandmother's house and was afraid to make friends since he was determined to sit by himself on the bus and ended up sitting with Dawn and ended up being friends with her. He was leaving home and was able to make friends which can lead him to be able to get out of his shell and get to know people. 
• I can relate to this story because once I entered Gallaudet, I was determined that I would not have any friends because I am very shy with meeting people but once I meet people, I get out of my shell. Once I enter Gallaudet, I made so many friends and ended up not being so shy like I used to be. I can relate to this story with my experience entering Gallaudet.

Site I used:

http://www.timwynne-jones.com/pages/shortstories.html