T4+Critical+Response

====In the short story ‘It used to be green once’ by Patricia Grace there is this mother that does all these embarrassing things that make her family ashamed of her. The kids were extremely ashamed of their mother for many reasons. Such as “putting red darns on our clothes” and “cutting up old swimming togs and making two”. The kids were also ashamed of her punishments. Especially the one “if they don’t get up when their told, Mum would drag them outside, pull down their pyjama pants and set their bottoms on the cold lino”. But the thing that shamed them the most would have to be the car. Uncle Raz gave it to them because he couldn’t fix it and he was fined because he lived in Auckland. Mum didn’t even have a warrant or a licence, and the kids were scared that the traffic warden would get her. Every Wednesday, she would drive the old car, which had no brakes, had blotches of red paint here and there and its horn sounded “like a flock of ducks coming for a feed”. And when she’ll begin honking again letting everyone in the district know she was on her way, and then they’ll stand out on the road and they’ll have their shopping thrown at them. The kids “always hid when they heard her coming”. ====

====The story says she was a extremely loud women. Especially when Peti sat down outside their gate yelling out she wasn’t going to school and and not going swimming because of the togs and Mum yelled “Get up off that road, my girl. There’s nothing wrong with those togs. I didn’t have any togs when I was a kid and I had to swim in my nothings. Get up off your backside and get to school.” Then the rest of the kids had push poor Peti into the school bus so Mum wouldn’t come yelling up the drive and they also had to drag her into school. ====

====The kids didn’t mind holey fruit at first. In the story, it said “Dad used to pick up the cases of over-ripe apples and pears from town that he got cheap”. It also said that “Mum would dig out the rotten bits, and then give the kids the fruit for lunch”. The kids didn’t notice much at first, until Reweti shouted at them “Hey you fullas. Who shot your pears?”. And one of the worst parts about their lunch is that they didn’t have anywhere to hide it. That was because they weren’t allowed school bags until they got to high school. In the story, “Mum said she wasn’t buying fourteen school bags”. That would have been very shaming. When they went to high school, like it said in the story, they could have shoes as well. Then all of them “gave Reweti a good hiding after school”. ====

====It also shamed them that one time it had to happen. The first time her car and the school bus met, which would be very shaming, was when they were both approaching a one-way bridge from opposite directions. Sorry for them, they “had to ask the driver to stop and give way to Mum because she had no brakes. After that, they were all ashamed. ====

====The children were often embarrassed by their mother. Going in the car with her was completely embarrassing because the family car looked terrible covered with blotches of red paint all over it and it sounded like “a flock of ducks coming in for a feed”. The children would try and walk home before their mother could pick them up in their family car. Their mother would embarrass the children by honking the horn. One day they were walking home from school when their mother came by she started smiling, waving and shouting “anyone wants a ride, you’ll have to run and jump in”, because she could not stop the car because it did not have any brakes. The kids hoped that Mr Hadley, a new teacher at their school, wouldn’t notice the car with their mother in it but instead Mr Hadley ran off after the car and leapt in over the back seat and landed right on top of the shopping. ====

====Despite all of her embarrassing, loud and daring ways she was a caring person. She goes to the shops and buys everyones shopping from the district. Even after they won the money and bought a new car, a big green Chevrolet, she still collected everyones shopping. The car was full of grocery bags, ropes holding everything in and the boot hanging open because it was too full to close. ====

I thought It Used to be Green Once was a great story because it had interesting characteristics. It was a fun story to read, I enjoyed it.

=== Hemi, this is an amazing piece of writing. You have clearly followed the instructions in class and have used evidence from the story to back up what you think about mum. I am so proud that you wrote this independently and put so much effort into it. Well done Hemi, keep up the great writing! ===