TWISTED





All About The Author
====Laurie Halse Anderson was born on October 23, 1961 in Potsdam, New York. She writes books for children and young adults and is now an American author. She takes her writing very seriously and is a very strong believer in connecting with teenagers and trying to speak about their real concerns, frustrations, and fears. Her themes are very sensitive to some people; she talks about rape, family dysfunctions, body issues and disorders, and high academic issues. She promises that she reads every letter, e-mail, and post sent by her teen fans. Anderson moved out of her parent’s house at age 16 and lived as an exchange student for thirteen months on a pig farm in Denmark. She attended Onondaga Community College. While attending Onondaga Community College, Laurie worked on dairy farm, milking cows. After graduating, two years late, she decided to go to Georgetown University in 1981 and graduated in 1984 with her Bachelor’s degree in Languages and Linguistics. She recently married her childhood sweetheart. ====

Character Analysis
====Tyler Miller- Main character of the story. At the beginning of the story we find out that he isn't the coolest kid in school and before the school year ends and he wants to make a name for himself. He makes the decision to graffiti the school. After his action he catches the eye of his long time love Bethany Milbury. ====

====Bethany Milbury- She is Tyler's love interest who is also the daughter of Tyler's father's boss. Bethany is very popular and starts to like Tyler after his rebel actions. ====

Mr. Milbury- Tyler and Hannah's father who just happens to work for Mr.Milbury, the father of Tyler's love interest.
Yoda- Tyler's friend who does community service with him. He also has a crush on Tyler's sister Hannah.

Summary of Book
====The main character and narrator of the book Tyler considers himself the unpopular kid going into his final year of high school. He had always been known as being the smaller kid that was always picked on chooses to do graffiti on the school to make a name for himself, and for his doing he is put on probation, and his community service makes his outer appearance very different, and gains attention of the most popular girl in school Bethany. ====

“I spent the last Friday of summer vacation spreading hot, sticky tar across the roof of George Washington High” (Anderson 1).
====I like this quote because since he spray painted the school and did a couple thousand dollars worth of damage to the school he had to work with the custodians of the school all summer long to pay for the damage. ====

====“A million shards of glass exploded onto the patio. Bethany screamed. As time sped up just before I hit the ground, I noticed one more thing. Bethany was barefoot” (Anderson 19). ==== ====This quote means a lot to the book because it is when Bethany’s Brother Chip pushes Tyler to a waiter, purposely, and the waiter drops all of the glasses and they shatter and Bethany is standing there barefooted. She is rushed to the hospital and because of this accident Tyler starts to talk to Bethany because he was sorry he hurt her and after that Bethany starts to get to like Tyler and that is the girl Tyler has had a crush on for a while. ====

“I had the gun in my mouth and my finger on the trigger” (Anderson 240).
====This is when Tyler became very depressed after he went to a party with Bethany and there were inappropriate pictures posted of her on the Internet the next day. Everyone thought he did it and all of the police that were investigating it thought it was him so he became very depressed and wanted to commit suicide because he did not do it. ====

===="Hamlet" by William Shakespeare is very similar to "Twisted" by Laurie Halse Anderson because Hamlet did not get along with Claudius, which was his stepfather, and Tyler had a lot of family problem because his father and him did not get along. Also, because Tyler is very depressed with his life and thinks about committing suicide and Hamlet also does. ====

====<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Tyler has changed in many ways in the book because in the beginning before the book even started he was a quiet kid who blended into the background. So, he went and spray-painted the school to get noticed and he was noticed after that and Bethany his crush for a long time started to like him. He was happy with his life at that point then someone took inappropriate pictures of Bethany and everyone started to think it was him. Then Tyler became very depressed and tried to commit suicide. ====

====<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">In the beginning of the book Tyler did not think it was best to blend into the background so he spray-painted the school and at the time in the beginning of the book he liked being noticed. Then later on when ever anything happened in the school everyone pointed there fingers at him because everyone thought he was a bad kid. So, towards the end he became very depressed and wished that no one noticed him. So, he learned that it is not so bad to blend into the background. ====

====<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The story Twisted takes place in present day Ohio. Some of the scenes that are mentioned throughout the story are at the main characters school George Washington High, the Milbury household and Tyler and Hannah's house. The Milbury's are very wealthy and they live in a big house. They're house is explained to have all the nice things like a swimming pool, a hot tub, waterfall, they had a nice patio. When you read you learn that Tyler and Hannah aren't as wealthy as the Milbury's. They're family would be considered middle class and they live in a typical middle class home. ====