Dead Beautiful

I just started the book Dead Beautiful by Yvonne Woon. So far it is about a girl named Renee whose parents mysteriously die. The death is mysterious because she found many things that are unusual in the death and there was no shown reason for why they had died. She is put in custody of her grandpa who before then she had never seen. Her grandfather takes her and he makes her move east and move to a boarding school. Once she gets there she realizes how weird the school is she starts making connections with the death of her parents.

Renee is an interesting character. She is trying to be okay with her parents death but she is afraid of the mystery of the death. She keeps trying to figure out why all of this happened. I think she may be curious or she may be afraid. She obviously has trouble with dealing with the fact that her parents died like many people would. She isn't getting that upset about everything as I expected she would she got angrier about getting pulled from her home. To have to try to fit in and survive in addition to wanting to know what happened to her parents is stressful and I admire her for having all that courage.

Although this story isn't really about a deeper emotional meaning and its probably some kind of mystery novel, but I think she is covering up her feelings about her parents dying with the mystery. I think she's getting a little bit over obsessed with the mystery. I understand that she is curious but normally somebody whose parents die is bad enough but she was rerouted and forced to a boarding school. She rerouted her life because she was forced by somebody she barely knew this is something that should be emotionally hurting her but she's not upset.

Cycling

I just finished the book It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini. In this book Craig a depressed teenager. Craig often refers to the cycling which is when he realizes all the things he has to do and how stressed he is. And in everything that is going on he realizes he just doesn't want to do anything. Craig can relate most of his depression to the stress and the cycling.

I understand what Craig is talking about with the cycling but not in the depressed way. Sometimes when I'm stressed out I think of all the things I have to do and I get even more stressed out and try to push everything away and just not do it. Sometimes just in my mind I think of something and than that leads to another and then my brain will take a pause and I'll just thing "How did my thoughts get there?" I never really know whats going on in my brain. This is defiantly different than what Craig is going through because I'm not getting so stressed out and confused that I just stare into space.

Whenever Craig talked about the cycling I felt bad for him. Going through that all the time must be tough. Going through that once a month is tough. But never getting anything done just adds to the stress. Every time he goes through the cycling and doesn't do anything it just adds more stress. Even when I go through my version of the cycling I never don't do something I just do it later. If I never did anything then I would maybe be in Craig's position which sounds kind of scary it would be hard to think of that. I don't want the cycling to happen all the time so this book motivated me to try a little harder and not do the cycling anymore.

Beginning and Middle: How Big is the Change

At the beginning of Its Kind of A funny Story by Ned Vizzini you learn about the background of Craig and why he's depressed. The beginning goes back and forth between current and before he was depressed. It was a little confusing but it made sense. I thought this was a great way to start the story because you know what is happening and you also know everything that has happened in his life that is relevant to the story. I thought that even though this part of the story dragged on I thought it was necessary.

In the middle of the story the story gets faster. Its not more interesting though. In the middle of the story Craig goes through some changes. I'm still reading the middle of the story so I don't know exactly how it goes but it written very well. It has good writing so I don't lose interest or get confused while reading it.

They are similar because they are both very well written. sometimes I hate books that are referencing something that is a very important part if the book but never saying what it is. Ned Vizzini never left anything out unlike other authors and I really enjoyed that about both parts of the story. These parts of the story were different because one was just saying what used to happen and one you get to see his thoughts in the present and not just in the past.

What would you do if you had powers?

*SPOILER ALERT*


I just read Vanished: Part one When lightning Strikes by Meg Cabot is a book about a girl who gets struck by lightning and gets psychic powers where she can now see where missing children are. She is tracked down by the cops and they begin thinking she has kidnapped these kids. It forces her to expose her powers. This of course causes the military to want her. She agrees because of her brother who has mental issues and was having a lot of trouble with the news cameras. After she finds out one of the children "she found" didn't want to be found she gets scared. She escapes the military base finds the kid and saves everybody and pretends her psychic powers went away.

How far would you go to make up for something you never thought would happen? Have you ever tried to do something you thought was right and accidentally ended up affected somebody's life in a horrible way. Jess did in When Lightning strikes by Meg Cabot and now all she wanted to do was to help. If i were in Jess' shoes i would not go as far as she would but i would try. I think Jess went a little to far trying to make up for it but on the other hand i would never really ruin somebodies life like that but if I was close to ruining somebody's life it would be hard to do what Jess did. She turned her life around to help him.

Jess changes a lot through out the story. For example at the beginning she was very selfish and wouldn't do anything for anyone. She was struck by lightning and boom everything changes. She is nicer and all she wants to do is help people because she can. If people are in trouble all she wants to do change so that she can help people. This differs from before in a very good obvious change.

Can you hold on?

Keep Holding on is a book about a girl in high school who has one friend, a single mother and some boy issues. I thought the most interesting part of the book is the rising action. After the introduction when you realize that not only is she having social issues that every single high school kid has, her mother is the main problem. Her mother blames her whole life on the girl. The girl even calls her mom mother because she feels uncomfortable with her. Her mother had a baby at eighteen and says the reason her whole life was screwed up because of her. In the rising action she struggles with her mom and she struggles with her boyfriend and her crush.

I think the most interesting part of the rising action was the part with her mother. This was also the part with her friend not knowing about it and her not wanting to because she is worried about how she would react. Her mom never has food for her she's getting too skinny. It isn't that her mom never gets her food its that she never gets her good food, for example, she gets her mcdonalds. She doesn't get her food for lunch she makes mustard and mayonnaise sandwiches. She doesn't want anyone to know her food issues with her mother. Another thing is that her mom doesn't get her any clothes. She is stuck with the same clothes the worn out baggy clothes also she doesn't do the laundry. She is stuck doing her own laundry. Her mother has a certain schedule for when she can shower and its never when she wants to. Her issues with her mother to me is what made this book different from other books with a girl with social issues.

On the other hand the thing that made it just like a book with a girl with social issues was her boy issues and popularity issues. She had one friend a secret boyfriend who wouldn't let her tell anybody about them and never went out in public with her and a crush on a boy who she was certain didn't like her at all. As the book goes on and she gets stood up by her boyfriend forgives him and continues being with him in secret you realize how desperate she is for some friends any kind of boyfriend even if it's not the boy she wants to be with. She gets stood up by him and then she figures out he has a girlfriend when his girlfriend catches them together. It is interesting to me that she didn't scream at him either it wasn't that he was cheating on her he was cheating with her and she acted like she knew all along. This of course lead to more bullying at school. But worse than other bullying they shot her with paintballs and her mother barely did anything about it. I loved this book and it was different and similar to other books i've read but in a perfect way. It had the perfect balance between the good and the bad and even if it had a perfect ending you know it wasn't actually perfect.

Am I blue?

Am I blue by Bruce Coville is about figuring out who you are in a society that says it is not okay. This story is about a boy named Vincent who is trying to figure out if he is gay. He goes through stages of caring and not caring about whether or not he is gat and the steps to how that happens are illustrated in the story. The story starts out with him being beat up by a boy named Butch because he is a “fruit” or “faggot”. As he is still on the ground somebody comes up to him. He says his name is Melvin and he is his fairy godfather but Vincent is afraid he is making fun of him. Vincent thinks of the most negative things in the first stage. He can't let anybody in and let them help him because he is afraid they will just hurt him or make fun of him. One of the lines in the exposition that gave this away for me was “’Go away and let me suffer in peace,’ I growled, splashing muddy water at him.” Melvin tried to make it clear that he was there to help, but, Vincent was not convinced. One part of the story gave away that he was mostly nervous because he didn’t want to be beat up for being gay was “The first question I thought if was ‘How much trouble is it going to give me to be seen with this guy?’ With Butch and his crowd already calling me ‘faggot’ and ‘fruit,’ walking around with a guy who moved the way Melvin did wasn’t going to do anything to improve the situation.” This is what most of his thoughts are in the first stage. He doesn't care if he could be free to be who he is, he is just afraid. In life one is afraid all the time. We are afraid of being hurt and letting people in. I think Vincent is more afraid of getting physically hurt than emotionaly hurt. One could connect to vincent in a very real way in the same way,am I gay, or in his cas am I blue? Is it bad what will I do? This is a problem illistrated in the story and in the world and it is made very clear through out the stages of being okay with it how to solve the issue.

He isn’t really ready to be gay he doesn’t want to be because if he is will it mean he will keep getting beat up? Does it mean he will get beat up in the real world too not just in high school. After Melvin explains why he is there and how he is the first fairy godfather and how Vincent is the first case Vincent gets nervous as shown in this quote, “’Does that have any signifigance?’ I asked nervously. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Me being the first case. Does that mean I’m gay?’ I didn’t mention that I had been trying to figure out the same thing myself for about a year now.” He doesn’t want to be gay because he doesn’t want to be beat up other than that he doesn’t seem to have an issue with being gay. He doesn't think there are many gay people. Melvin explains gaydar to Vincent and he begins to get interested. Melvin talks about how if all gay people were blue for a day then people could stop pretending they don't know any gay people. Melvin offers to let him see the world blue. I think its interesting that he accepted because before he had been so negative about it. He hadn’t really wanted to know that there were gay people in the world. He is begging to have a character change because before he would've said 'No I'm not gay so therefore i have no interest in seeing who is gay!'

Once he sees it he is so surprised that there are so many gay people. I think this is the turning point of the story when he notices that so many people you never thought were gay and other people weren’t, or as he said “it was like seeing the world through new eyes.” He learns about himself in the climax too. He learns kind of what he already knew but wasn’t sure, he learned that he didn’t know if he was gay or not. He was mixed he was not sure if he was gay yet. He wasn't being very negative anymore he wasn't being very positive he was in between. He was in the stage where your not against something but not for something you are neutral.

In the falling action he sees on the news a congressman who is a homophobe is blue. He is angry and than he decides that he will do something for the world not just for him self it wasn’t about him anymore it was about the country. This is the real turning point in the story. This is when he realizes he is not the only person in the world that matters and all the blue people in hiding becasue they are scared deserve to be free. He decides to wish for blue day. Melvin grants his wish. This is what shows that his emotions has changed completely he stopped caring about the fact that he could get beat up for having a tint of blue but he doesn’t care anymore. He was done caring about being gay caring about anything the world in his eyes was about to change.

“If I caused you any trouble with Blueday, I’m sorry. But not much. Because things are never going to be the same now that it happened. Never.” And in the end he says “When I meet the girl of my dreams. Or Prince Charming. Whichever.” This is one of the most important lines of the story because it shows that he really did turn around and stopped caring so much because that was not what was important anymore. He doesn't care that there is a possibility of getting beat up and he doesn't care that the world is different for good. He is ready for the world to change to take on the world from a different angle a positive angle. And he believes everybody should take on the world from a positive angle.

The Drummer Boy of Shiloh edited

"The Drummer Boy of Shiloh" by Ray Bradbury is about a boy named Joby who was the drummer boy of Shiloh. He is scared of the war. The general comes to him and talks to him and says that he was the heart of the army because his drum helped people push forward as they walked into battle. The general talks about how the soldiers are ready for a fun kind of war and he can't tell them that they might die. By saying that the army doesn't nesicarily know how to go into wat, Joby is made to realize that he needs to help the army and so, in the end, seems more prepared than ever.

A theme of this story is courage. Joby has to be courageous and stand up so that he can "be the heart of the army". At the beginning of the story, Joby was crying in his bed because he was terrified of the battle in which they were about to fight. Joby learns the lesson that true courage is about doing the things one fears even though one is afraid. In life you have to be courageous, not afraid to be shot down. For example, if a person witnesses someone being bullied, she should speak up to help the victim and not just give into the fear of being bullied herself. Joby had to be brave and courageous in the story. He had to lead the army. The soldiers needed him to lead them into battle so that they didn’t give up hope and the war itself.

This theme could relate to a lot of people because in life you have to be courageous. You have to take a risk because if you don't you could end up stuck at something you hate and want ti get out but can't because your too scared to take the risk. The lion in the wizard of oz lacked courage but all he wanted was to not be scared any more because life can't be led in fear it has to be led by being courageous and taking bold steps and doing things you've never done before.