Flashcard 3 - High School English I: Reading Flashcard Set for the STAAR test

the lesson or “take away” an author wants his or her readers to have

Don’t get author’s message confused with theme. Theme is the controlling idea of a text (love, hate, jealousy, etc.), but message is what the author wants the reader to learn or feel or realize about that theme. The theme is used by the author to give the reader a message to take away after reading the text. The message continues to “speak” to the reader even after the reader has finished the text.