Burned by Ella Hopkins

The book Burned by Ella Hopkins is extremely interesting. It is about a girl named Pattyn Von Stratten who is going through a rough time in her life. She is a teenager in high school who isn’t exactly the most popular, and if that isn’t hard enough she also has a pretty rough time at her house. She has 6 sisters which is pretty hard to look after especially since she is the oldest. Her mother is pretty worn out and her father is a lush who beats the mom, so overall Pattyn isn’t exactly having the best time right now. After a while she gets fed up and starts acting out and she gets sent to her aunt’s farm for the summer, to set her straight. 

The way this book is written makes the dad seem like the worst human that walked the earth. He is terribly mean and abusive. Especially since the book is in Pattyn’s perspective the father is really mean to her. But the author left out the dad’s perspective. He doesn’t get a say in the book and the author, Ella Hopkins did that on purpose. 

I think the author of Burned really was sending a message by leaving out the dad’s perspective. I mean us as the readers don’t really know the dad as well as we think, we were never in his shoes. I think there is more to him then what Pattyn shares with us. There is always more to a person then we think. Ella Hopkins might have left out the dads voice for many reasons. One being it makes you have more feelings for Pattyn.Without her dad being this awful person the story isn’t as powerful. Her life isn’t as awful, so you don’t feel as bad for her, and you don’t get really attached to her. 

The moral of this is that we don’t really know people until we talk to them, until we spend time with them. We can’t judge a book by its cover and you need the experience to talk to someone and not depend all on one persons opinion.