Similarities Between 'Bad Boy And' I Was A Skinny Tomboy Kid

“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.- Tom Stoppard

Bridge:

This quote reminds me of the main characters in “Bad Boy” and “I Was A Skinny Tomboy Kid”.

Thesis:

In the texts Bad Boy by Walter Dean Myers and I Was A Skinny Tomboy Kid by Alma Luz Villanueva both authors develop the theme of Childhood Challenges through conflict, characters’ thoughts and feelings, and word choice. In the first text, Bad Boy the message is that you can do anything not just because of the gender.

In the second text, I Was A Skinny Tomboy Kid, the message is that you can be who you want to be.The authors develop the common theme childhood challenges through conflict in both texts. In the story “Bad Boy”, the main character’s conflict is

In the story “Bad Boy”, the main character Walter feels nervous about sharing what he likes to his friends or family. The way he feels connects to the theme childhood challenges because kids might feel uncomfortable or nervous of showing or telling their friends or family what they do because maybe they think their family or friends wouldn’t like them. In the poem “I Was a Skinny Tomboy Kid”, the main character doesn’t like being her own gender because she says she doesn’t want to be helpless. The way she feels about her identity connects to the theme childhood challenges because she doesn’t really want to be what she is and some kids think of that too. Both Walter and tomboy feel like they should be themselves no matter what other kids or adults

In the story “Bad Boy”, the author uses words or phrases such as “older kids who would tease me about my reading”, "I knew I couldn't play ball”, and “though by now I was fighting older boys”. These words/phrases connect to the theme because the older kids bully little kids about what they know because they want them to be miserable and peer pressures them to do something bad. He knows he can’t do a skill but people pressures him to do it and as a kid that is important to kids and he got a little older so kids fight for reputation or to protect themselves. In the poem “I Was a Skinny Tomboy Kid”, the author uses words or phrases such as “Freedom”, “every once in a while late at night in the deep darkness of my sleep I wake.”, and “I forget who I’m protecting.” . The words/phrases used in both texts are Childhood Challenges because kids don’t have freedom when they are places because their parents may stop them. and they always are at school and they can’t to certain things also some kids maybe have a hard time sleeping because of nightmares or because they can’t sleep because they have something on their mind or they are not tired.There is a common theme in the texts Childhood Challenges. The theme Childhood Challenges is developed through three elements: Conflict, Characters and Word Choice. The message in both texts is that you can do anything not just because of the gender, That