For my final MIRR, I decided to do the book Step Brother, by Kenneth Oppel. This book is from the point of view of a boy named Ben Tomlin. He was dragged to live in British Columbia because of an experiment his father is carrying out on teaching sign language to chimpanzees. His family receives a new chimpanzee named Zan to use for "Project Zan", where they must teach him sign language to see whether or not chimpanzees can learn ASL (American Sign Language), as well as raise him as they would a human being. as best they can. At first, Ben is not at all enthusiastic about the project, but eventually he becomes more involved and begins to love and care for Zan, accepting him into the family. At the same time, Ben falls in love with and develops an obsession with his father's boss's friend, Jennifer. The story follows Ben's progress with Project Zan and his so-called "Project Jennifer", his progress with Jennifer, as he becomes more and more involved in both.RETELLWhat is the message the author is trying to convey? How do you convey this to the reader? I think one of the main ideas of this story is that you can accept anyone as part of the family, regardless of biological relationship or species. The part of the story that shows this the most is when Ben starts to develop feelings with Zan, to the point that his father had to remove Ben from the experiment because his feelings were starting to get in the way and the scientists are supposed to have "no bias ” in an experiment. For example, in one part of the book, Ben is stuck at home with illness. It's school time for Zan, and Ben's father has this new rule that the students have to tie Zan to the "teaching chair." if he doesn't stay in the chair after 3 warnings. Due... half paper... from him. “We're friends, right? You wouldn't tell your father about me.” I shook my head. “Yes, I trust you. You're a good guy.” (page 160) In addition to having a strong bond with Zan, Peter seems to have an interest in animal rights he threatened to quit because of this. On top of that, he talks to Ben a lot about bad things happening to some chimpanzees (pages 160-162) and takes Ben with him to listen to an animal rights activist. (pages 166-169) After listening to the animal rights activist, Peter raises a very interesting question, which made me and Ben think a lot. I feel that this question increases Peter's concern about animal rights. “That's not the main thing that worries me,” he said. “Do you know what I worry about? What will happen to Zan when this experiment is over?” (page 169)