blog 1 outside reading memior

Riding The Bus With My Sister
Summery
Rachel Simon has a mentally retarded sister and the book starts out with Rachel joining Beth her sister on one of her ordinary days. Beth hasn’t been able to keep a job a job for a while so an ordinary day isn’t ordinary to most people. Beth does what makes her happy and that is riding the buses, she rides sunrise to sundown Monday-Saturday and knows all the routs, stops, drivers, and most of the people that ride them. Rachel has decided to join her sister because she is a writer for a newspaper and she has grown a part from her sister.
She starts off her day buying coffee for the first driver and makes 16 cents. This bus driver is her friend but some drivers don’t like her at all and if they see her at a bus stop they pass her buy because they think she is annoying. She is always the first person to buy her bus pass and each month has #000001. She also has a boyfriend; Jessie and he is also mentally retarded but doesn’t ride the buses he rides a bike and sometimes they see each other. Rachel also accompanies her sister later to a meeting about her health where they talk about her health and Beth is loosing her vision and currently receives only $527.40.
Rachel makes a decision with Beth to ride the buses with her for a whole year as often as she can. The second time she rides she has to wake up very early and the first driver is Tim but Beth calls him happy Timmy because he is so happy but some call him the professor because he teaches people things. He dropped out of collage to drive busses because he loves people he has 3 kids. Norma is an elderly rider and she recalls old times about movie theatres and today is her anniversary. Beth writes Rachel a thank you card and draws pictures
Part of this book is also her memories of her childhood with Beth. Her mother knew something was wrong with her after two months with her because of her blank look and she never cried of reacted to things so they took her to a doctor but they said nothing was wrong. And after another year they took her in again and she stayed in a hospital for a while so they could figure out what was wrong and after 2 months they knew she was mentally retarded but didn’t know why.
The second memory was about Halloween and Beth didn’t want to wear the costume and when she didn’t want to do something she didn’t and then her mom painted and when she left her paints for a moment Beth eat a whole tube and was rushed to the hospital and was ok but her mom didn’t paint anymore and you could see her sadness
Journal
So far I have a better understanding of how mentally retarded Beth is and how Rachel deals with it I also have seen a lot into the different personalities of drivers and riders. I think I'm going to like this book a lot and I think it has some very good life lesions though by a variety of characters.