Alice Hoffman

6 comments:

Rachel Cohen said...

After visiting Alice Hoffman's website and reading reviews on goodreads.com, I was excited to begin reading her novels. I had a very good experience with Hoffman's novels. Her style of writing (at least for the books I read) is very symbolic. The descriptive writing entices you to read more and really engage with the story. I read the novels Turtle Moon, The Drowning Season, and Second Nature, and would suggest all 3 to readers considering reading Hoffman's novels. For me, writing the body of my essay was not a hard task. I personally think that the difficulty of the writing process comes not from the author you read, but how thoroughly you write your essay outline. My outline was 8 pages long. Throughout it, I explicated my quotations making it very easy to write the essay, and more enjoyable than what some of my friends experienced who did a worse job on the outline. Overall I would definitely recommend choosing Alice Hoffman for your American Author thesis based on the experience I had in the reading and writing process.

Stephanie Luchene said...


I chose to read Alice Hoffman for my author thesis once I heard good reviews and clear themes from her books. I liked the idea that she writes about family,friends, and issues that kids can have. I thought this would interesting to read about because many of these topics are relatable to kids today. I thought that connecting all of my books at first was a little bit difficult but once I found a common theme it was relatively easy to write.
I recommend reading Alice Hoffman's books, they are overall very good books and they are not hard to get through. Enjoy author thesis!!

Filippa Davidsson said...

For my author thesis I chose Alice Hoffman. I read At Risk, Blackbird House, and Ice Queen. Before I chose Alice Hoffman, I went on on her website and researched the books. Her books are not very hard to understand and they were interesting to read because they were about real life problems. I thought it was a little difficult to come up with a specific thesis because there were so many different general ideas that were related. Once I did come up with a thesis, the paper was not very hard to write. Being organized really helped me not get overwhelmed. I would recommend Alice Hoffman for the American author thesis because I enjoyed reading her books and I was able to relate them to one another.

Anonymous said...

I read Alice Hoffman’s novels for my Author Thesis project. I read The Red Garden, The Dovekeepers, Property Of, Here on Earth, and White Horses. I originally chose Alice Hoffman due to the positive blogs I read, and I went to Alice Hoffman’s official website to choose her books. She builds her characters nicely and has nice symbolism. I found that finding a theme was not too difficult. Putting the theme to words and constructing a thesis was the hard part. I put detail into my notecards and my outline which was extremely helpful when I was making the paper itself. The books are easy to read, and she is a good author for author thesis. My only issue with Alice Hoffman was that I dislike the actual plot lines of her stories, and the endings of the books are too negative for my liking.

Anonymous said...

For the Author Thesis assignment I read three novels by Alice Hoffman. The three novels I read were The Drowning Season, Second Nature, and Turtle Moon. I found that these books connected excellently through themes surrounding dysfunctional families and the struggle to find one’s identity. Hoffman clearly writes about plausible issues that any family could go through, while still providing an intriguing and creative twist with the characters. I would not recommend choosing Hoffman as an author if you do not enjoy reading about everyday family conflicts. However, her novels do connect extremely well based off themes and character development, which made writing the final paper simpler to construct.

Paula Rodriguez (McCarthy) said...

For author thesis I chose Alice Hoffman, and I'm very happy with this decision. I read her novels "the drowning season" and "at risk". These books were relatively short and therefore very manageable. Additionally, they were very interesting and left me wanting to know what would happen next, making them really enjoyable to read. Hoffman's books show very clear themes of family problems and tension, which made it easy to find a way to compare these two novels. The interesting plots definitely helped make this assignment seem less mandatory at times, and more fun. I would recommend Alice Hoffman to anyone looking to read some interesting texts which will help with the writing process due to their straight forwardness and clear themes throughout.

American Author Thesis

Now that you have written your essay, we ask that you reflect on the reading portion of the experience and write 100-150 words about your author.

Think of what you write as advice for someone next year and beyond, someone who (like you were doing last fall) is thinking about choosing your author - and maybe even the same three books - to read for the assignment.