The Eye of Minds by James Dashner

Thank you Random House for the copy.
The Rule of Thoughts on sale August 26, 2014

Recently, I received a paperback copy of The Eye of Minds by James Dashner.  The second book in the series The Rule of Thoughts will be released on August 26.  As I lost my self in The Eye of Minds I began thinking of the importance of this book.  I am trying to organize my thoughts to blog about the book, but it hasn’t been easy.  After a brief summary of the book I will explain.

Michael is your average teen.  He is a total gamer.  Michael spends most of his free time in the VirtNet.  A place that seems very real.  At the beginning of the book he attempts to stop someone from killing herself.  Soon Michael finds himself helping the government stop the cyber-terrorist before he kills more.  To do this he enlists his friends to help.  They set off on a mission that is terrifying.

This is all you get about the plot.  However, I have a lot of thoughts about the book.  First off I loved it.  I am not a gamer, but after reading this I can see why so many are sucked into the gaming world.  Second, the characters are very interesting.  It was easy to relate to them and want to see what more will happen.  Finally, with all the focus on getting kids to learn computer coding this book is the perfect portal to have students want to learn coding.

Ok, so the reason I have trouble putting my head around how to do this entry has to do with wanting our readers to be come life long readers.  In other words we don’t want them to just read in our class or during the time they spend with me in guys read.  This summer I am reading Donalyn Miller’s new book Reading in the Wild.  (Very good, and I have some great ideas for the upcoming school year.)  Anyhow, she writes about the same thing.  What can we do to make them continue to love reading after they leave our classroom?

The last 12 months have been kind of tough, but one thing that has helped is one of my previous students consistently stopped by to visit, and even helped during Guys Read.  Ciaran is a wonderful young man.  At times he would stop by just to tell me something he thought was hilarious, or to talk about books.  However, something happened at the end of the school year.  He seemed to loose interest in books.  I am not around him all the time so it is hard to say why.  My gut feeling is that he is just taking a break while trying to figure out how to maneuver the big change of becoming a freshman.  So what can we do to make sure this doesn’t happen often?  I don’t really know, except that if any book is going to get him excited about reading again it will be The Eye of Minds.  I look forward to passing it on to him and hearing his thoughts. I know with sports, jazz band, and making new friends the book his old teacher is dropping off will not be high on his priority list, but when he does read it I hope the book love starts again.