Happy Reruns starts out with a very definite point if view. A girl, whose age is at first unknown, sits in her sunday school class, bored and suffering the screeching voice of her teacher. (the author attacks this story for third-person limited POV.) Her thoughts are firstly, how much she wants to yell at the Sunday School teacher, Miss Violet, to shut up. (as you can see, by using third-person-limited, Katherine Paterson skillfully shows you the world from the view point of a girl and is also able to make you feel like you know the character by her very inmost thoughts.) We can't tell, however, what Miss Violet is thinking. maybe it is about how she wished her cold would stop dogging her, or about how she should make her voice sound clear, so that the children can hear her. We just don't know. This is a disadvantage of this POV.
There is a mood established through the dialog. It is "we are now in Sunday School."
Miss Violet: "And who remembers why Jesus was born?!"
Class recites (in unison): "To save us from our sins."
The whole class, that is, except for Elizabeth. Though she is boiling with bore and annoyance inside, Elizabeth is not one who shows her feelings to others. She thinks the words "shut up" When the teacher asks her if she wants Jesus to save her from sin, she says, not a pile of the mean words that she has been thinking for the whole class, but "Yes'm." Here the author takes advantage of the POV that she has chosen and tells the reader what the protagonist is thinking even thought the rest of the characters do not know that information.
Katherine Paterson skillfully uses hints in the dialog to slowly show the age of our protagonist: by using improper grammar in the thoughts of Elizabeth, she gives clues that this is a young heroine.
Another character in this story is the aunt of Liz, named Aunt Gladys, who is staying at the house while Liz's baby brother is born. Through the dialogue, it is hinted to us that this woman does not like kids, is that disapproving, meddlesome relative that everyone is hindered by and someone who is hiding something:
"Elizabeth, you should bow your head and close you eyes during the prayer! Don't you know that God wands us to worship him reverently?" well, Elizabeth, being the extremely smart preschooler that she was, thought that, well, how could Aunt Gladys know I was not closing my eyes unless her eyes were not closed?! Another example of the reader knowing something about a character that the other characters don't know.
There are many styles of dialogue used in the story. One of them is in a scene where Elizabeth's father is calling on the phone to tell that the baby has been born. Aunt Gladys beats Elizabeth to the phone and will absolutely refuse to let her have it. Elizabeth decides that this is a desperate time and this calls for desperated measures, so decides to start screaming at Gladys,
"GIVE IT TO ME! GIVE IT TO ME! I GOTTA TALK TO DADDY!!!!" her thoughts finally come out in words. The story Happy Reruns is seen completely through the eyes of a very young girl.
Another style that us used throughout this book is using indirect quoting. Elizabeth remembers in her mind what other people have said in the book that the reader does not yet know were said. An example of this is when Elizabeth's father comes home and Aunt Gladys is telling him all of the bad thing that Elizabeth. Elizabeth wonders what the word maliciously means because ..."she had heard Aunt Gladys say 'she maliciously ripped up her stuffed dog.' "
though there is a ton more dialogue and POV techniques in this story, I am not going to say all of them..you should try reading the story yourself! I highly recommend it!
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