Lit Circle Letter

The novel "Touching Spirit Bear" by Ben Mikaelsen is about a fifteen year old teenager named Cole Matthews, who has gotten into a lot of trouble throughout his life. He has been accused of stealing and fighting many times but this time he took it too far. He injured another student at his school by smashing his head against the sidewalk which caused him to need surgery. Soon after he gets locked up and there he has to choose between prison or an organization called Circle Justice. He decides to take the Circle Justice offer thinking that it was a joke and that he would not get anything out of it. They had a meeting and decided to send Cole to a isolated island in the middle of the ocean. On the island, Cole gets into a lot of trouble confronting the spirit bear but soon learns why he is living on this planet.

I enjoyed reading many parts of this book that involved Cole being stuck on the island. One of may favorite parts is when the spirit bear attacks Cole after he threatened it with a spear. Cole was badly injured and was fighting for his life but I think he learned a lot about life and how it was just a cycle. After reading that section, I also saw him maturing in a sense that he didn't want others to get hurt like he hurt Peter. An example is when Cole saw the baby birds. At first, he found them to be very annoying and wanted to kill them because he thought they didn't deserve to live. But when he saw the birds dead after the storm and after being injured by the bear, he realized that it was wrong for the babies to die. In the novel Cole thought to himself "The sparrows were so frail, helpless, and innocent. They hadn't deserved to die." This showed that Cole understood that killing or hurting innocent animals that have no chance of defending themselves was wrong just like what he did to Peter was wrong. Peter had no chance of fighting back and was helpless when being harshly beaten by Cole. This was my favorite part of this book and so far I have enjoyed reading it.