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For Matt this is life changing, he makes it his secret mission to find this man called Murdoch. It made my heart bleed for every child with an abusive guardian. You have no trouble loving the good characters and hating the bad characters.The unfortunate thing is, although this book is fiction, it's also true. Soon they are dating and the lives of the kids are pretty good. Matt and Callie are old for their age; the things they endure to protect their sister and care for her are amazing. Due to bad luck, Nikki their mother gets her hands on the address of Murdoch.
Read the book, you'll enjoy it, it's fast, and it'll stay with you. This is an excellent book about 3 siblings, Matt, Callie, and Emmy. Matt and Callie spend their entire childhoods taking care of Emmy and deflecting their mother's abuse to themselves instead of Emmy. I could not put it down.
As things progress and the abuse never gets better, it's actually getting worse, Nikki's sister and Murdoch allied with Ben (Matt and Callie's father) to get the kids away from Nikki.This is a fast page turning read. He's reluctant due to Emmy not being his child and Nikki's power. Aunt Bobbie will finally step up, it was disturbing to know she lived in the same house and knew what the children endured and did nothing.
The author does an excellent job of making the reader feel like they are part of this book. However, Nikki will soon tire of Murdoch; he's just not "fun". Same with Ben, he came across as not wanting to get involved. One day while they sneaked out to score a popsicle, Matt and Callie witness a father enraged at his son and a stranger who intervenes.
Murdoch has a secret that won't be revealed until the final pages, however, after reading the book I was pretty certain I knew what Murdoch's secret was and I was right. Matt is determined to get them away from Nikki, in desperation he goes to he and Callie's father and pleads for him to take them away. Instead of bad luck this turns to good luck. The siblings will soon endure Nikki's rages again, life is back to normal.
I found this to be a good technique because it gave Matthew's opinion and showed his attempts to protect her from all the pain. For example, when Matthew was younger and he ate one of Nikki's oreos, she went into his room and cut his arm with a knife so he would know never to do it again. Also, I would say that to read his book and enjoy in, you'd have to be interested in stories of kids in need, and you'd have to be willing to look into the mind of an abusive tyrant. During the course of this story, Emmie, Callie, and Matthew need to learn to trust 3 people, Ben, Aunt Bobbie, and Murdoch to help them out of the life-long abyss of pain they've been experiencing.
Child abuse is a serious subject that affects many children and destroys many families, and the book, The Rules Of Survival, by Nancy Werlin, gives an epic extreme of a tale; 2 strongly bonded siblings under the rash of a mentally insane mother working to keep their youngest sister safe. Another good aspect of this aspect of this book is that it took place in a real-life scene; this made the book more interesting to me because it captured my attention to the point that these things are happening around me, therefor it makes me thankful for what I do have. I would say this genre is realistic fiction because it's an extremely common scenerio, but it didn't say that it was real.If you saw the movie, The Secret Life of Bees, you would enjoy the book The Rules of Survival because in my opinion the story lines both relate to children learning to move forward through their past and overcome the present obsticals thrown at them by their abusive parent.When reading this book I noticed that it was written in the form of a note from Matthew to his younger sister Emmie about their childhood. Their life is a whirlwind of conflicts thrown their way, with a light leading them to normal.
With heart wrenching, and cliff hanging twists along the way, this book keeps you wanting more; from the unlikely friends Matthew and Callie make in the beginning, 'til the mysterious companionship all 3 of the kids make in the end.For the audience of The Rules Of Survival I wouldn't necessarily put an age, although I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone under the age of 13 because it includes information made for more mature audiences. My last compliment for this story is that gave great conflicts to be solved, like a way for Matthew, Callie, and Emmie to escape the strong grip of the insane Nikki, but on the other hand, the only weakness was that the resolution to those problems were predictable to me, but they may not be to you.All in all I found this story, The Rules of Survival, to be a tear-jerker and extremely entertaining, as well as a book you just can't put down, so if you read this review and seem interested, then I recommend this book to you. The Rules Of Survival touched my heart and tugged on my emotional strings in a way that I didn't know was possible.The Rules Of Survival is based on a small family of 4, including a young, 5 year old girl named Emmie, her 12 year old sister Callie, her neglected, yet protective 14 year old brother Matthew, and their abusive mother Nikki. In your life they say your mother is your support against your problems, and if it's not your mom, then it's your dad; for these 3 children, their mother is what they need protection against.
I wanted so much to help them myself. Matt's description of her being a mosquito is so fitting. One I would easily recommend to young readers as well as those like myself, who are older but love reading YA novels.
I'd have to put Nikki as one of my most disliked characters. There are many elements to this book: Suspense, empathy, anger, heartbreak, happiness. Her abusive behavior to everyone around her was scary and dangerous.
What a wonderful book. Although he didn't know it at the time, he'd found his kindred spirit. I look forward to checking out more books by Nancy Werlin.
The story of Matt, Callie & Emmy is a sad story. The moment Matt saw Murdoch for the first time, he knew he'd found his savior, his hero.
Many children live like this, oppressed by the condition and the unstable state of their parents with nowhere to go and no one understands.A good thought-provoking read. I bought this on a friend's recommendation and the book did deliver. The sense of oppression felt by the children was so vivid that I just had to keep on turning the pages.I think this is closer to real life than being just a YA fiction.
It's slowly making the rounds with my biggest realistic fiction fans and is opening their eyes to a world they didn't know existed. So begins a downward spiral for Nikki and her kids. Protect the little ones.4. If you coped before, you can cope now.5. Despite the heavy themes, the vocabulary is simple and not over the heads of my sixth-graders. The Rules of Survival is told as a retrospective, a letter from Matt to his youngest sister, Emmy.
Matthew has five rules of survival:"1. His father is afraid of Nikki and hasn' t been around in years (though he sends his child support checks faithfully). They spend nights watching tv at his house, they have picnics on the beach, and he is a better parent than they ever had before. He doesn't know if he will ever have the courage to give it to her, but he knows he needs to write it down. Matthew is writing the story as a letter to Emmy, in case she ever has questions about their life with Nikki. The children's aunt lives downstairs and is also a frequent victim of Nikki's verbal and emotional abuse. Sometimes, the people who mean you harm are the ones who say they love you.2. Fear is your friend.
I booktalked this to my students and they were very receptive. This is a haunting depiction of child abuse as experienced by a young boy. Nikki soon becomes jealous of the attention Murdoch showers on the children and breaks up with him. There were points in the story when I had to put the book down- Nikki is manic and abusive. But when she begins dating Murdoch, life seems normal.
Nancy Werlin's writing manages to make you feel like you are right their with Matthew, seeing what is happening to him and his sisters. But this is a story that needs to be read and shared, as there are too many children out there today who live the life that Matthew describes. The way she treats her kids is absolutely terrifying. When you feel it, act.3. Only seventeen years old, he is far older inside thanks to what he has experienced.
The dad they never had, all three kids immediately fall in love with him. Always remember, in the end, the survivor gets to tell the story." Matthew has spent the last seventeen years standing between his abusive mother and his two younger sisters. Clearly manic, their mother latches onto Emmy as her primary victim.
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