Description. Description is a type of writing that portrays a character, object, or scene. Descriptions make use of sensory details—words and phrases that describe how things look, sound, smell, taste, or feel. Effective descriptions contain precise—or concrete—nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. Descriptive writing can be found in short stories, poems, essays, and other works. Note places in “Eleven” where the author uses descriptive writing to give the reader a better sense of how things look, sound, smell, taste, or feel.
Simile. A simile is a comparison using like or as. Sandra Cisneros uses a variety of similes in “Eleven.” One example is “the way you grow old is kind of like an onion.” In this simile, the way you grow old is compared to an onion. Like is the word that links the two parts of the simile. As you read “Eleven,” look for more examples of similes.
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• Social Studies Connection. All over the world, people have songs and traditions honoring the stages of a person’s life. In the United States, a birthday is often a time of gift-giving and celebration.
• Birthdays in other cultures usually also involve celebrations, but the rituals may be different. For example, piñatas are a part of most birthday parties in Mexico. In England, cake batter contains symbolic objects. If your piece of cake has a coin, you will supposedly become rich. In China people usually eat noodles for a birthday lunch; in Japan the birthday girl or boy wears all new clothes. In Denmark flags fly in front of a house in which someone is celebrating a birthday, and in the Philippines blinking lights brighten a birthday home. In many different cultures, as young adults reach a certain age, they are called upon to prove that they are developing the strength, knowledge, or independence needed in adulthood.
• The preteen and teenage years can be the most challenging years of all in a person’s life. Like the narrator in “Eleven,” young people begin to realize that the world is not always as simple or fair as it might have seemed. A person might blow out the candles of a birthday cake and know that he or she is another year older but not feel more mature. With each year, and with each birthday, a person is expected to grow farther from childhood and closer to adulthood. Growing up is a long but exciting process.
When do you feel most grown up and able to handle anything? When do you feel young and unsure of yourself?
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