Steven Became More Mature... My Holiday Blog Post

The book, Girls, Drums, and Dangerous Pie tells a story about a thirteen year-old boy named Steven Alper, and his five year-old brother named Jeffrey, who has leukemia. Leukemia is a type of blood cancer, which happens in a person’s bone marrow. In the story, Jeffrey’s cancer is detected after an incident which included him falling off a chair. But before cancer, Steven despised his brother. Now, after cancer, Steven becomes more mature.

            At first, when the news about his brother gets to him, Steven gives up on everything. He was bitter, he was depressed, and he kept everything bottled up inside of him. But after seeing himself fail, his big-time crush, Renee Albert, has to tutor him for his exam. While Steven waits, his parents tell him to keep anyone or anything with disease away from Jeffrey, or else it will affect his cancer. When Renee shows up during a bad weather, with a flu, Steven kicks her out. This a big self sacrifice, which makes him more mature.

            Another act Steven does is he shaves his head off clean. He does this because Jeffrey became bald from the extremeness of radiation, caused by chemotherapy. Everyone realizes that Jeffrey is bald, but he thinks that no one else can see it but him. So one night, Steven finds Jeffrey crying in bed. Jeffrey was crying because some kid in his class told him he was bald. So after Steven settles Jeffrey, he goes to the bathroom, and takes a razor, then shaves his own head. On the spot. Clean. I think that this sacrifice took him a lot of love and courage. Therefore, he became more mature.

            But I think the most selfless sacrifice was when Steven passed up on his opportunity to shine in the spotlight. You see, at the start of the book, Steven’s music teacher, Mr. Watras, tells him that he can play a big role in the school concert. Steven is so excited, when his moment comes. But at the middle of his performance, Jeffrey gets sick and throws up. So Steven is left to decide on whether he should stay at concert, or go with his parents to take Jeffrey to the hospital. Steven was confused. But a friend of his, Samantha, another leukemia patient, tells Steven to go. Steven is still confused, but then he makes up his mind. He takes Jeffrey to the hospital. Steven has officially become mature.

            The next day, Steven is at Jeffrey’s hospital. He had stayed with his brother all night. The doctors notified Steven and his parents that Jeffrey just had an ear infection. Now, Steven was heading over to Samantha’s room, but he found it vacant. He gets scared, and asks a doctor about what happened to Samantha. Unfortunately, she died, with her mother by her side. Steven gets scared once more and asks if her sister was by her side as well. The answer was no. Steven realizes how much he loves his brother, and how sad it would be if anything horrid happened to him, if Steven wasn’t by his side. Steven becomes more mature than the self absorbed Steven we saw at the beginning of the story.