Reading Assignment #1-The Wisdom of Toads

My first reading assignment is to read the story called "The Wisdom of Toads" from "Puerto del Sol." This story is about a teacher who fell in love with his 14-year-old student and had arrested and had to live in the prison. He had three daughter, Jessica, Kasondra and Melissa. His wife called Karen who took care all his children alone by herself.

During I read this story, I use some of the reading strategies to help me understand the reading better because I think that this story is very hard to me to understand. I did not have any background knowledge about the people who lick the toads or smoke the toads. Some of the strategies that I use are, I stop from time to time to think about what I am reading. I read one or two paragraph and then stop and think about what the writer want to say and what happen in the story to make me more clear about the story and after I finish reading a paragraph, I wrote the response about what I thought about the writer or what did the paragraph is talking about. When text become difficult, I pay closer attention to what I am reading. For example, When I found some part that I did not understand, I will re-read it again and slowly to increase my understanding. I also try to picture in my mind what I have just read to help me remember what I read. For example when the writer talked about when he and his children were playing with the toads and catching them, I had the picture in my head that a man and tree little girls was playing and jumping on the garden with many toads. I think it is funny.

In paragraph 3, I had learn from the writer that he is a father and he is digging a hole get the toad in the hole for his daughter. He was in prison and his daughter might come and visit him in the prison. I wonder why his was in the prison. What did he do that made him get caught and went to the prison? Why he had to dig the hole and get the toad for his daughter? Does his daughter like to play with toads? Why he was so nervous about digging the hole?

In paragraph 6 and 7, The writer showed me that the man in prison had smoke toad to get the poison inside the toad that could make them the intoxicating effects. The narrator said that some of them were licking the toad but that it not help because you could only got sick by doing that. You actually need to get the poison out of the toads' bodies by smoking it or squeeze it out of the toads' glands. The reason why they smoke the toad's poison is because it could help them feel free and relief.

In paragraph 10, I learn that he has three very young daughter named "Jessica, Kasondra and Melissa." They all liked their mother which is blond, lithe and intelligent girl. He wanted his children to had some of his characteristic because they were already liked their mother too much, so he wanted to teach his children about the toad.

In paragraph 11, it made me think that he was a strange father, who did not play the same thing that other father would play with his kids. The game that they was playing was to caught the different toads as many as you could.

In paragraph 14, it showed me that he had married with his fourteen-year-old student, Karen. They thought that if they run away they would be fine. But after two weeks that they had left Arizona, he was arrest because his wife was only fourteen years old. I think he feel sorry for his wife that he could not be with her after they got married and also he felt sorry that he had to let her, who was still very young , take care of their kids for a long period. I wonder what was he really do wrong. I think that he was not love to love his student, you could not control the feeling of love.

In paragraph 15, I think he had been punished enough already for the thing that he did. I think he should had been relief form the prison and lived with his family. In my opinion he was a good person. He did not do anything that most of the prisoners did, like smoking the toads. He did not even made a crime.