This week, I continued to read Jacob Have I Loved. I've read kind of a lot because I'm trying to finish it so I can get some AR points. I'm almost done actually. Anyway, the story has progressed a lot since my last post. First of all, the reader is introduced to Wheeze's friend, Call. To earn money, they go crabbing together. Wheeze keeps all the money she earns in a jar. However, she is forced to hand it over to help fund Caroline's voice lessons. As to be expected, she is not very happy about this. Later, Wheeze and Call meet the Captain. He was suspected to have died, but Caroline forms a little crush on him. The captain gets married which doesn't please Caroline, but that isn't too much of an important part in the plot. I'm excited to keep reading.
One of the characters that I really like is Caroline, Wheeze's sister. She is considered the more well-liked twin. She made up the nickname "Wheeze," which Sara despises if I forgot to mention it earlier. She is thought of as more feminine, smarter, a great artist and pianist. She is basically the opposite of Wheeze. However, I feel like Wheeze is starting to get a little more attention, whether she realizes it or.

Well, there's not much to blog about. I abandoned Peeled because I just couldn't take the torture. I really tried to just grin and bear up, but there's only so much of a boring book a person can read. I don't recommend ANYONE read that book. It follows every stereotype out there so there's nothing that makes it unique...at all. I have no idea why everyone liked it so much. I heard so many good things about it that I almost can't believe I was reading the book so many people raved about. STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK.

Anyhoo, there's not much to blog about this week. I've been searching for a book to read and have been pretty focused on reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. It seems that the only book I've read much of is that, but I don't think I can blog about that, so I'm going to talk about the book I plan on reading next. It is called Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson. I read a little today, and can tell that it is set in the 1940's or 50's and the main character is named Sara Louise. She lives with her sensitive mom, fisherman dad, and pretty senile grandmother. I can't tell if her sister, Caroline, is older than Sara and lives on her own or if she still lives with the family, but I can tell that Sara is extremely jealous of her sister. However, she is jealous with good reason. Her sister gets practically all the attention in the family, and even when the girls' parents describe the two as babies they make Caroline sound amazing and make Sara sound just, ordinary. I hope that this book will take a different route than Peeled and will be unique with an interesting plot that actually makes me WANT to read it.

Peeled

I finally abandoned Peeled. I tried, for one last week, to find something somewhat interesting about the book. I read more, but it was practically just a little girl complaining of seeing a ghost--not really my kind of book. I honestly have no idea, whatsoever, why every raves and raves about this book. To me, it's just like any other mystery book. However, it seems to be much more slow-moving.
I couldn't push myself to leave the book, but in advisory I got one of those slips that said my book was late. I realized it was late because it was so boring I couldn't push myself to read it, thus the reason I hadn't finished and returned the book. Anyway, my verdict is only pick this book up if you need something to put under the leg of your dinner table to keep it even. Avoid this book AT ALL COSTS. But then again, you might like it.

Peeled

This week I continued reading Peeled by Joan Bauer. I read a bunch, but not much happened :[. That seems to happen a lot in this book, but I'll get to that later... Anyway, though there has been little development in the plot, I guess there's enough to talk about. The only major advancement was that a little girl that Hildy used to babysit claimed she saw a ghost in the window of the Ludlow house and was so startled she fell off her bike. After the incident, she claimed that, because she fell, the house has some magical agenda to hurt children. The rest of the many, many, MANY pages I read were just Hildy going through her daily business. She'd work at the market, give tours of her farm, nothing special.
Time to get down to business. I honestly don't know why everyone recommends this book so much. If you ask me, it's EXTREMELY slow moving and the plot is just like any other murder mystery. Practically everyone I know says this book is amazing, but it's really not that special. I'm seriously considering abandoning it. However, every time I go to pick up a new book I think what if Peeled has a really great ending and I'm missing it?! Decisions, decisions.

P.S.
I commented on Becca's blog.

This week, I continued reading "Peeled" by Joan Bauer. I finally got far enough into the book (about 130 pages in) to get to the real plot. If your planning on reading this novel, make sure you stick with it until at least page 100 because thats when it starts to get interesting. Personally, I was thinking of abandoning the book when not much had happened, but I'd heard so many great reviews, so I figured it MUST get better. It did. :]
Anyway, this week I'm going to talk about my favorite quote I've read so far:
"Murder is a big word for a small town." To me, this quote says that murder almost never happens in their tiny town. It means that it was a huge shock, surprise, stunned, and left the whole little community completely in awe. Basically, even saying the word murder is a mouthful for the residents of such a town. Though the meaning of the quote seems pretty obvious, I think it was extremely cleverly written. A lot of books I've read have tried to say similar things, but just say it in one of the following ways:
1. Murder was a shock to the residents of the small town.
2. His murder was unexpected, seeing as it almost never happens here.
If a person compares Bauer's quote to the other two examples, you can tell that all of them got the message across, but Bauer used creativity to keep the reader interested.


P.S. I commented on Erik's blog.

October 7th, 2009

This week, I started reading the novel "Peeled" by Joan Bauer. I've been interested in reading it ever since the author visited Brooks last year. I've read a few chapters, and so far it seems like this novel is setting itself up to be a mystery. In what I've read, the main character, Hildy, is an editor for her school newspaper. She's almost obsessed with asking questions to get to the center of everything in her tiny town. Her town is basically a town of apple farmers.
At the beginning of the book, Hildy's town is having their annual festival, complete with an Apple Blossom queen and all. The girl who was supposed to win the crown suddenly got ill after eating a school lunch and was unable to attend the fair, leaving the runner-up with the crown. I predict that this is where the mystery will come into the book. I don't think it was the runner-up who poisoned the queen-to-be; she seems like a perfectly nice kid who was shocked to be given the award.
Hildy seems to be the in-your-face type who doesn't quite know when to quit. I've only read a few chapters, but three other characters have already told her to either be quiet or go away. She's always trying to make a story for her newspaper where there really is no story to be told. So far, I like this book but haven't read enough to either recommend it someone.

P.S. I commented on Jack's blog

Due September 30th, 2009

Today, I was home sick, so I read, and almost finished, A WRINKLE IN TIME. In this post, I'm going to talk about some excerpts from the novel that I found most interesting.

Excerpt one: Without warning, coming as a complete and unexpected shock, she felt a pressure she had never imagined, as though she were being completely flattened out by an enormous steam roller. This was far worse than the nothingness had been; while she was nothing there was no need to breathe, but now her lungs were squeezed together so that although she was dying for want of air there was no way for her lungs to expand and contract, to take in the air that she must have to stay alive. This was completely different from the thinning of atmosphere when they flew up the mountain and she had had to put the flowers to her face tobreathe. She tried to gasp, but a paper doll can't gasp. She thought she was trying to think, but her flattened-out mind was as unable to function as her lungs; her thoughts were squashed along with the rest of her. Her heart tried to beat; it gave a knifelike, sidewise movement, but it could not expand.

It is interesting to me to think about a human, three-dimensional body being transported into a two-dimensional world. A person's lungs wouldn't be able to expand and contract. In other words, they wouldn't be able to breath. The person's blood vessels would be flattened like a pancake, and I doubt blood could flow like that. Average movement, muscle control, and thinking in general would be out of the question, unless the brain still works flat? When I think of 2-D, I think of cartoons or video games, and though I think it'd be fun to be a cartoon character, I think it'd be even better to be able to breath.

Excerpt 2: "Now, don't be frightened, loves," Mrs. Whatsit said. Her plump little body began to shimmer, to quiver, to shift. The wild colors of her clothes became muted, whitened. The pudding-bag shape stretched, lengthened, merged. And suddenly before the children was a creature more beautiful than any Meg had even imagined, and the beauty lay in far more than the outward description

I think that most of the concepts in A WRINKLE IN TIME are hard to explain visually. In my opinion, this excerpt is the one in the book that is the easiest to picture. Some parts of the novel are kind of overly descriptive, and some parts aren't descriptive enough. I think this part is the perfect mix, simply because it is a mixture of description of the scene visually along with what is happening in general.

September 22nd, 2009

This week, I read, yet again, A Wrinkle in Time. I just finished Unwind, so I'm planning on reading more of my personal reading book so I can finish it up. In what I read, Meg is finally beginning to understand the purpose of their journey. Their father is trapped in a black hole of sorts and it is their job to retrieve him. Mrs. Whatsit explains to the children the concept of tessering, which involves taking shortcuts through time and space. However, Meg accidentally gets caught in the wrong dimension and finds her lungs flattening, making it impossible to breath. She was caught in the second dimension . As she begins to lose consciousnes, she is finally rescued.
In this post, I'm going to analyze a quote from the novel. At one point in the book, Meg's mother says, "But you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist." To me, this is a very powerful quote. I think it gives the reader an idea of what both characters are like. For example, if I read this quote without reading the rest of the book, I would infer that Meg's mom is a very curious person about the unknown, while Meg is a little more of a skeptical figure. To test this theory, I read the quote to my brother who has never read the novel and asked his opinion. He said that he thought whoever said that would be an open-minded person who likes to explore new possibilities. Our answers, though not exactly the same, are pretty close.
At one point in the novel, Meg goes through a phase in which she cannot stop questioning things and just go with the flow. This quote helps her realize that she can't control everything. In general, I think this quote means that there are things out there beyond human beings and the earth, and just because we don't know about them doesn't mean they don't exist.

P.S. I commented on Eddie's blog.

Entry 2-- September 15th, 2009

This week I continued reading A WRINKLE IN TIME. I haven't had a chance to read much of it since we started reading "Unwind," so it was nice to get back to it. For this entry, I'm going to dive deeper into the depths of the themes that I've noticed throughout my reading.
In my opinion, the main themes of the novel are personal responsibility, individuality, and good versus evil. Based on what I've read thus far, Meg has matured immensely. She's starting to realize that she has to stop blaming the world for her own problems. At the beginning of the novel, she hated her appearance and wanted nothing more than to fit in at school. Now, however, she is starting to understand that being different isn't as bad as she thought. She seems to be growing more comfortable in her own skin.
This book also tackles the theme of good versus evil, as most novels seem to do. However, this book does it a little differently. While most stories have an antagonist, a protagonist, and an obvious plot, in this book it's not quite definite who is good and who is bad. The evil in this story is represented by an intangible force called "the dark thing," a black hole that is trapping Meg's father. Good is associated with undying love and personal morals while evil is associated with conformity and hatred.
I'm excited to continue reading and find out whether good or evil prevails in the end.

A Wrinkle in Time

Today, I started reading A Wrinkle in Time. Honestly, the only reason I picked it up was because I've been home sick since Wednesday and I needed to catch up on the reading I knew I'd missed on Thursday and Friday. I dug through my library until I was tired of searching. I was tired and sick, so I told myself I'd grin and bear whatever book I finally selected. After I got into it, though, I realized that it has the potential to be my favorite book ever. For this entry, I'm just going to discuss the characters and what I've read so far.

The main characters are named Meg, Charles Wallace, Calvin, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. I've read up to page 97, and so far the characters are really interesting me. My favorites, however, are clearly Meg and Charles Wallace. At school, Meg is that weird, unattractive, friendless girl with the weird family that one often finds in fiction. She is very similar to Meg Griffin from the television show Family Guy. Charles Wallace--and no, Wallace isn't his last name-- is known as the weird girl's equally strange brother who never learned to talk. However, Charles Wallace won't start school until the following year so no one knows the truth: this kid is brilliant. He can read and write things even his mom doesn't understand, and his mom is a successful scientist.

The basis of the plot is that the children's father is gone; no one really knows where. The family expects his return, but his absence without plausible explanation causes a stir of rumors around town. One day, Charles Wallace wanders off the family's secluded ranch to a house a few miles away. No one knows about this until a few days later, when a woman is found hiding in their basement in the middle of the night. The woman is an old, shriveled-up thing wrapped in coats and scarves. When Charles Wallace, Meg, and their mother find her while having a midnight snack, the boy says, "Mrs. Whatsit! What are you doing here?" The story continues with Charles Wallace, Meg, and another boy being twirled through time and space to the "5th dimension" led by Mrs. Whatsit and two of her friends. They are told that their father is exploring the dimension but is trapped in a mysterious void. The story is tackling many themes such as the relationship between space and time, and the eternal quality of love and loyalty.

To conclude, so far this is a spectacular book that never loses the reader's interest. I'm excited to continue reading.

My First Blog

Hey,
So this is my fist blog for Literacy Skills :]. I really like to read so this will be fun! I'm actually not reading a book at the moment...but I'm gonna start one today or tomorrow. I think I'm gonna read Unwind cause a lot of my friends have recommended it to me. Well...that's all I have to say right now.

lovee,