The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is the classic tale of four kids who were sent off to an old professor's house in during World War Two. They discover a magical wardrobe that takes them to a land called Narnia. The land is being ruled by the evil queen and it is up to Lucy, Peter, Susan and Edmund to stop her. So they set off to find Aslan. The Lion King. They need him to guide them. It turns out the queen was planning on killing Edmund and Aslan sacrifices his life for Edmund's. 

Aslan is the wise king. He is represents all of the goodness of Narnia. Lucy is sweet and innocent, Peter is strong and sometimes acts like a father to all of the kids. Susan watches out for Lucy and Edmund but she is a lot tougher than she looks. Edmund rebels a lot, you can tell that losing his father made a huge impact on him, The Evil Queen makes it so it is winter everyday, but never Christmas. 

This was such a great book. It was detailed, yet easy to fallow. The story line was great and over all the book was very well written. It was one of those books that you want to keep reading. 

I made lots of connections between this book and the movie. There were a few differences. Just description wise, for example, in the book the witch just gives him enchanted Turkish delight in order to make him  want more. But the witch said in order to get it, he would have to bring him and his siblings to her. In the movie Edmund asks for it, instead of it just being given. I only saw a few tiny details.

The author C.S. Lewis' full name is Clive Staples Lewis November 29, 1898. He went to Oxford University and he enlisted in the British Army during World War 1. His books were based on the theme good will always triumph over evil. He died 5:30  p.m. a November 22. A week before his 65th birthday.

The Fortune Teller

The Fortune Teller is about a young carpenter with many questions about his future. So he goes to a fortune teller. He asks the fortune teller 3 questions. The questions ask if he will be rich, famous or find true love. The Fortune Teller tells him he will be rich... if he works hard and finds a good job, he will be happy... if he avoids being miserable, and he will find true love... if he finds her and she says yes. But then when the carpenter leaves the room he realizes he has so many more questions. So, he goes back only to find the Fortune Teller is not there. He puts on the hat and holds the crystal ball the teller had. All of a sudden the a woman comes to evict the teller, but she sees the carpenter thinking that he is the Fortune Teller and he made himself young. Then the real Fortune Teller vanishes and the carpenter got everything he wanted. Fame, riches, a good life and true love.  

The characters are the Fortune Teller, the Carpenter, the landlord. The fortune Teller tricks people into thinking he can tell their fortune and then after the Carpenter sees him he vanishes. The Carpenter is just looking for a better life, which he ends up getting. Everything the fortune teller told him came true. The landlord sets out to evict the real fortune teller but ends up getting her fortune told by the carpenter. 

This book was...OK. It wasn't one of my favorites. I think it is because it was far from my reading level. So, that made it a little boring to listen to. It was very basic. I was never a really big fan of picture books.

Because we read this book out loud, I took notes on the book and when we discussed the book, I would write down all my predictions and then I would write what actually happened. 

 

Lloyd Alexander was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on January 30, 1924. At age 15 he decided he wanted to be an author. He dropped out of teachers college to join the Army and was stationed in Paris.

Inside Girl

Inside Girl: The Sweetest Thing is about a girl named Flan who has two very popular, very wild older siblings. Her parents are always in a different country and all Flan wants is to be normal. 

The problem in this book is that Flan and all of her friends fall for the same guy, Adam. He is practically perfect. But Flan has a boyfriend and who becomes good friends with Adam. Flan's world is torn apart. Her friends all hate each other, her older brother and sister decide they need to be more parent like and Flan has no clue what to do. 

The characters are Flan, Sara Beth, Adam, Meradith, Judith, Bennet, Patch and Feb. Flan is a very down to earth kind of a person. She has a closet full of designer clothes and lives in Greenwich Village right next door to her best friend and famous actress Sara Beth. Meradith and Judith are two of her friends, they are nice but they can be very caddy. Bennet is her boyfriend. He is one of the nicest guys Flan knows, but there is just something about Adam. Adam is the best football player on the school team. He is smart, caring, very cute and Flan adores him. Feb and Patch are Flan's wild, crazy, party all night older brother and sister. Sara Beth is a drama queen to the highest level. She is always redecorating her house because it always has to fit her mood which changes everyday.

This book was just OK. It was kind of boring and slow. I didn't like it very much and I wouldn't read the rest of the books in the series. 

I just used post it notes and I visualized. Because I want to live in SoHo (which is where a lot of the book takes place) I had a good understanding of where everything was.

J. Minter grew up in NYC and went to Columbia University. 

Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

This is the sequel to I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You. It is Cammie's second semester at Gallagher Academy and she has a lot os questions. Question number 1, does Josh remember her? Question 2, what is the Blackthorne? Question number 3, why is her mom acting so weird and question number 4, what really happened to her dad. 

Well, for starters Josh does remember her, only he is going out with DeeDee. And through the book Cammie realizes she moved on, too, and didn't even notice.

Blackthorne turns out to be a spy school for boys. While the boys are there, the girls realize weird things happen. Like having a Code Black, which is when the whole school doesn't let anything in or out. It goes into a complete and total lockdown. 

The girls decide to figure out what is going on. But that is almost impossible with one of the Blackthorne boys fallowing Cammie. He has a huge crush on her... but is really good at not showing. While Cammie hates him... or at least thinks she does. 

It turns out that because of what happened to Cammie the previous semester, the school realized the girls really don't know what goes on in the "real world" or in other words trust people who don't go to the academy.

 

Cammie Morgan is a very simple girl... if you consider simple to know 14 different languages, be able to kill you in 7 different ways only using her bare hands and has a mom who is one of the world's top spies. She loves the Gallagher Academy and will do anything to keep it a secret. Macey, is new to the school so she isn't at the standards of the other students, but she is working hard to get there. Liz is a genius, but she is scared of doing any wrk outside of a computer lab. Bex is quiet the opposite. She is british and one of the toughest girls at the academy. Zach is a new character to the series. Him and Cammie are to of the best spies at their schools. Zach is from Blackthorne. He always seems to find Cammie when she is trying to runaway from something... which really gets her annoyed. In this book Mr. Soloman and Cammie's mom start acting a little weird and Cammie thinks it;s because they know something about her dad...

This was a great book, it wasn't like a really good movie where the sequel stunk. It was more like a really great movie where the sequel is great if not better than the first. The ends to most of the chapters were cliffhangers and the author really did a great job letting the characters personality be shone through the dialogue.

For this book I visualized, wrote post-its and linked parts of this book to the last. It was cool being able to see the effect of something in the first book effect something in the second.

Ally Carter lives in the midwest where she is hard at work on GG3.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is about Professor Aronnax as he sets off to find a giant sea monster. But he is captured by the insane captain Nemo, who's submarine is the "sea monster".  They travel on the submarine on called the Nautilus that was invented by Nemo.

Once Aronnax realizes how insane Nemo is he has to escape. During their adventure they face giant squid, ice caps, find the lost city of Atlantis and face huge sharks to name a few of their dangerous in counters. At the end of the book they realize they are heading towards a whirlpool that no ship has ever escaped. But all of a sudden the characters wake up to find themselves in a fisherman's boat. he had no idea how they got there but they were free and Captain Nemo was no where to be found.

Professor Aronnax was French like  all of the characters in the book. He was strong, brave, capable of many different tasks, and smart. He was the Professor of Natural History at the Paris Museum. Nemo was an insane sea captain with this strong hate for the world. He treated Professor Aronnex and the rest of the crew poorly. Nemo also had lost his family. Ned Land was a strong fast and very skillful harpooner. Conseil was the professors right hand man. They were good friends.

This book was very adventurous, and had me on the edge of my feet a lot. I always wanted to know what would happen next. It would be really hard for me to put it down.

I mostly used post its for this. I didn't visualize r anything like that because there were some pictures in the book. But I did take a lot of notes and summarize. 

Jules Verne was born on 1828 in the seaport town of Nantes, France. He wrote over 100 stories. He died 1950 and is said by some to have "invented the future". 

The Wizard of Oz

 There are part of this book that are very similar to the movie and others that are not. The book that I read was the original way the book was. 

Dorothy was sucked up into a cyclone and landed in The Land of the Munshkins, where her house fell on the Wicked Witch of the East. She meets all of the munshkins and the Good Witch of the North. The God Witch tells her to fallow the yellow brick road to get to the Emerald City. The Good Witch also gives her the silver slippers and a kiss on her forehead. The kiss will protect her from evil. On the way she meets the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion. All of them also want to go to the Emerald City so they can have their wishes granted. Once they get to the Emerald City so the Wizard of Oz can grant their wishes he says he will only see one of them everyday. The first day the Wizard saw Dorothy. He appeared in the form of a giant head. He said he would not grant her wish unless she killed the Wicked Witch of the West. The second day the Wizard met with Scarecrow. The Wizard appeared as a beautiful fairy. The Wizard said she would not grant his wish until the Wicked Witch of the West was dead. The third day the Wizard saw the Tin Man. He appeared as a terrible beast. It had 5 arms and legs, the head of a rhino and was the size of an elephant. Once again the Wizard would not grant his wish until the Wicked Witch of the West was dead. Finally, the Wizard meets with the Lion. This time as a big ball of fire. The Wizard would not grant his wish until the Witch was dead. So the friends set out to kill the witch. The witch uses her gold cap, which would give her the power to control the flying monkeys 3 times, to kill the Tin Man, The Scarecrow and Dorothy. She would use Lion as a slave. Because of the kiss on Dorothy's forehead they couldn't harm her. They tore apart the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. They carried Lion and Dorothy to the Witch. The Witch uses them as slaves, but dodrthy gets so mad at her she throws a bucket of water on her, which makes the Witch melt. All of the witches slaves were s happy they helped Dorothy and Lion put Tin Man and Scarecrow back together. They go back to the Wizard. He grants all of the wishes, but in order to grant Dorothy's wish he needed a hot air balloon. But as they were leaving Dorothy lost ToTo and couldn't go. So the castle guard tells her to go see Glinda. She was the most powerful out of all of the witches. So they go to see Glinda with the Golden Cap. When they get there Glinda uses the Golden Cap to call on the monkeys so they could carry the Scarecrow, Tin  Man and Lion back to where they wanted to go. Then Glinda explains to Dorothy that if she clicks her heals together 3 times, she would get back to Kansas. 

Dorothy is a very sweet, caring and kind little girl. All she wants to do is get back home to Aunt Em in Kansas. Scarecrow is very witty and wants a brain. The Tin Man is very kind and thoughtful and wants a heart. The Lion is a lot braver then he thinks and wants courage. The Wicked Witch of West is a cruel, mean creature who is horrified of water.  The Wizard is a normal person who is from Omaha. He wants to be greater then he is. 

This is a good book. It's classic, well thought out and well written. I read the whole book in two hours. It is one of my favorite books.

I compared this book a lot to the movie. Judy Garland is one of my favorite singers and actresses so The WIzard of Oz is one of my favorite movies. 

Frank Baum was born in New York. His father was an oil merchant and he wrote 13 books based on the Land of Oz.  

Pink and Say

Pink and Say is about to boys who became good friends during the Civil War. Pink and Say were nicknames for Pinkus Alyee and Sheldon Curtis. They were both just teenage boys at the time. Sheldon was shot in the leg and had been lying on the ground for two days, dying. But then Pink finds him and brings him to his house for Pink's mother, Mo Mo Bay to nurse him back to health. Everyday Say would get a little better, until he was finally healed. That's when Pink decided that him and Say needed to go back to the war. 

When they decided to leave and were already the door they heard marauders coming. They rushed back inside the house and Mo Mo Bay hid them. They came in and took all of the food then killed Mo Mo Bay. After that they buried her body. Once they were done they realized they were being followed. Eventually they were taken to a Confederate camp, were Say survived, but they killed Pink. Say went on to live many more years and pass this story down.

Pink, Say and Mo Mo By were all really good people. Pink was a little tougher and was determined to fight for what he believed in. He knew how to read which Say didn't know how to do. Say fled during a battle, that is how he got shot. Say was affraid of the war and didn't want to go back, the opposite of Pink. Say touched the hand of Abraham Lincoln so he let Pink touch his hand, so Pin would be able to say he touched the hand that shook the hand of Abraham Lincoln. Mo Mo Bay loved the boys very much. She didn't want them to go back to the war because they were just boys. She also taught Say the meaning of bravery. 

This was a really sad book, but it was also a great story. She used some words that I didn't get because the book was written the way people talked back then. I did like how the different personalities were described. It really let you see what the characters were like. I also thought the illustrations were cool.

I did some visualizing during the story. I visualized the part when Say was on the ground with the bullet in his leg and the part when the marauders found them.

Patricia Polacco was related to Say. She has written many children's books. She went to ohio State University. She has a masters in the Fine Arts and a Ph.D in Art History.  Throughout her life she has lived in Michigan, Florida and Oakland, California. Oakland was a place where the   people were all different. Most of the people from this area contributed to her characters.   

I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

This book is about Cammie Morgan. She is a student at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Woman. But it isn't what it appears to be. It is actually an all girls school for spies. Cammie's teachers range from polite and sweet to teachers who get plastic surgery every year in order to look very different because they are wanted all over the world. At the academy you would study martial arts in P.E., the latest chemical warfare, fluently speak in 14 different languages, learn who to kill someone in 7 different ways with your bare hands and get extra credit for breaking CIA codes.  But the story is mainly about Cammie using all of her training to keep a HUGE secret from her mom, who is the headmistress, and all of her teachers. That secret is that Cammie has a boyfriend. He thinks she is an ordinary girl who is very religious, home schooled, has a cat and is not allowed to date. She creates this whole other person. Things are working out fine, until Josh's friend, Dillon, figures out that she is a "Gallagher Girl", as the kids in the town call them. The whole neighborhood of Roseville thinks they are just a bunch of stuck up, rich kids. But some of the girls are far from rich, and don't have it easy at all. Dillon does eventually expose Cammie for what she was, but it turns out that all the teachers, including her mom, knew what was going on. So they tell Josh what the school really was after he fallowed Cammie to a CovOps final. CovOps (Covert Operations) is like a class where they learn all of the defense and tricks to being a spy. So, the final was of course a fake mission. They gave Josh some memory washing tea, so he forgot everything that had happened in those past 3 hours.

Cammie, Bex, Liz, Macey, Headmistress Morgan, Josh, Joe Solomon, Dillon and DeeDee, are all of the characters in the book. Cammie is the main character. She is smart, funny, pretty and somewhat clueless when it comes to real life. The story is about her in her sophomore year getting  glimpse of what the world was like outside of the school walls. She met this boy Josh at a fair. She was at a CovOps test and they had to spy on someone to put it simply. Anyway, she met Josh at the fair. Her dad died on a mission when she was little. Bex and Liz are her best friends. Bex is tough, very strong, pretty and she is from England. Liz is very, very, very, very, very smart. She is one of the smartest girls if not the smartest at a school for geniuses. But she tends to worry and overreact. Cammie's mom is the headmistress. She is one of the governments best spies. She is also apparently known for how pretty she is. She is nice and didn't want Cammie to be a spy. But after Cammie's father died, Cammie felt it was the only way she could connect with him. Josh is an ordinary guy who thinks he fell in the with an ordinary girl, but he was very, very wrong. Joe Solomon is one of the teachers at the academy. He is one of the academies best teachers. He is also very close with Cammie's mom because Cammie's dad and Joe were close friends. Dillon is a really bad kid. He is snooty and judges people by their cover. DeeDee is a close friend of Josh. She is sweet and very nice. She also has a HUGE crush on Josh.

I really liked this book. But I feel like the sequel that just came out will make it even better. The main reason I decided to read this book was because Walt Disney Pictures is going to make it a movie. So I decided for once I am going to read the book before I watched the movie. It was a lot better than I thought it would be, however it was a little cheesy.  

As I read the book I visualized and tried to picture what the movie would be like. I wrote a lot of post-its and wrote out a summery 5 times. 

The author, Ally Carter, lives in the midwest. She loves school and has degrees from Oklahoma State University and Cornell.

TTFN

TTFN is the sequel to the popular book TTLY. TTFN is Maddie, Angela and Zoe's junior year. With more problems to face. In this book Angela moves to California because her dad lost his job and her dad's, boss's daughter stalks her. Eventually she moves in with her Aunt Sadie back in Atlanta. Maddie is exposed to extreme amounts of peer pressure and starts to do drugs, simply because the guy giving her the drugs she is secretly in love with. Even though she hates it and he has a girlfriend. Of course she ends up getting caught and sent to jail for the night. Zoe struggles to keep Angela from knowing she is going out with, Doug. In their sophomore year, Doug, had a huge crush on Angela. Angela pretended to hate it but secretly loved having him around her to adore her. 

The characters really haven't changed since the first book. Maddie is still a tough, not so lady like trouble maker. Zoe is still sweet and innocent. But she tries harder to lose not be so innocent. Angela over-reacts more in this book than the first. She makes a HUGE deal over the tiniest things. It gets annoying after a while, but she gets better towards the end.

I also LOVED this book. It was great. I read this book in a day, too. Which is not normal for me cause I am the slowest reader on the planet. The book was of course, written in IM's which made it really easy to understand and fun to read. I would recommend this book to all my friends.

I tried something a little different this time as far as reading habits go. I tried to write note on things I noticed. But because I read the book A LOT faster than I thought I would, that strategy didn't work to well. But I did visualize. 

I couldn't find any new facts about the author except for that this book was written because she wanted to write a book that reminded her of the close relationship she had with her best friends in high school.

TTYL

TTYL is about three sophomore girls. It takes the reader through all of the girls ups and downs. Maddie, Angela, and Zoe have been best friends since the 7th grade. The book is written in their IM's, which gives a really clear picture of what they really think about each other. Yes, they all love each other like sisters, but you see them talking about each other in a kind of snotty way, and how the person they are talking to reacts to that. It also really makes their personalities stand out. You realize they are all really different, but by being so different they teach each other important life lessons based on their personal mistakes.  Zoe trusts Angela, but every time she talks to Maddie about something she needs help with Maddie finds a way to make fun of her. In the middle of the book you see Zoe caring about Maddie because the "mean girl" at their school, Jana, humiliates Maddie in front of the whole school after pretending to be her friend. But Zoe stops trusting Maddie with secrets for a little while. Most of her secrets are about a flirtatious teacher.  Even though their problems tear them apart they always find their back to being friends.

Like I said, all of the girls are different. Maddie is tough, stubborn, a little too honest and is always trying to be someone she isn't. It can get her into bad situations a lot. People realize how fake she is being. But Angela and Zoe are always going to be there for her. You start to wonder if the reason she always feels like she needs to be different is because her dad is an alcoholic and that makes her feel insecure. Meanwhile Zoe is the complete opposite. She is an A+ student and she is very innocent, but she wants to act tougher and not be known as innocent, good girl Zoe. Angela is always there for everyone. She hates when Maddie starts hanging out with Jana because she almost acts like she doesn't want her to get as close to Jana as she is to her and Zoe. She also exaggerates and overreacts a lot. 

I LOVED this book. I read it in a day because I could not put it down. It was so real. All the situations in the book have happened to people and the way that all of the characters in the book act are really the way people in that age group act. It doesn't feel like you are reading a book, It feels like you are reading the instant messages of 3 best friends in high school.

I have been using the same reading techniques I have been using the whole school year. They just give me a really clear idea of what is going on. I write post-its, visualize, and predict. 

Lauren Myracle has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College. She lives with her husband, Jack, and her sons Al and Jamie in Colorado.

The Market

The Market is about Kate Winthrop. She is a senior at Millbank High School and a complete and total nobody, until the MSSM (Millbank Social Stock Market) comes along. The MSSM is a game that the boys in her grade put together. Only the stocks are all of the girls in the grade. The person who makes the most money by graduation wins. Kate was ranked at number 71 out of 140 girls. Her and her friends came up with a plan. They decided to turn Kate into the most popular girl in school and invest a lot of money into her stock. Their plan is going fine, but her relationships with other people are not. One of her friends becomes so into the game that she tells Kate that one of her relatives died in front of everyone to have people give her sympathy, even though Kate told her friend not to do that. People she thought were her friends betrayed her. They would talk behind her back and it turns out that they invented the game. They also did almost the exact same thing her friends did. They were the popular kids and the also put a lot of money into Kate's stock then let her hang out with them, so she could become popular and her ranking would move up. Kate always knew the whole idea of her doing what she did could only end badly, but she tried it anyway. by the end of the book she learns that she was right and that your true friends will stay by your side no matter what.

Katie was a very smart girl, and she tried her hardest to never let the MSSM get to her head. She also always had a lot of trouble living up to the expectations that her mom had for her. Her mom expected her to be like her perfect older sister. Kate's sister was pretty, popular and smart, but she was also nice and not full of herself. Although Kate fit that definition almost exactly, she thought her mom liked her older sister more. When the truth is the only difference was that her older sister was popular. Kate's two best friends are Callie and Dev. Dev gets sucked into the MSSM and she doesn't even realize it. Calle was more level headed and because she was always a little wiser and had street smarts. Gretchen was the most popular girl in school. I have never read a book where the popular girl was so full of herself.  Will B. and Jack C. were best friends and the most popular guys in school. They both fell for Katie and Katie fell for both of them, only Will only liked Katie after the makeover and then he realized that she was a great person and that he would like her without the makeover. But it turns out Jack had liked her since he first really looked at her, which was before the makeover.

I liked this book. I really like books where people get major makeovers, I really don't know why. The only thing I didn't like was the ending. I felt like it was rushed, but I don't know if I think that because it really was rushed  or because I really liked the book and I didn't want it to end. 

I wrote post-it notes throughout the book, and I visualized. The post-its really help me remember what happened on that page, I write down some thoughts and predictions. I like to write a really  long post-it at the end of each chapter to summarize what happened in that chapter.

J.M. Steele is not the real name of the author. There is actually two authors. They are sisters. One lives in New Jersey and the other lives in New York. They have written The Taker and The Market.

A Day That Changed America: D-Day, by Shelley Tanaka and paintings by David Craig

This book is about the experiences of different people on D-Day. Don Jakeway and his experience as a paratrooper. A paratrooper is a person who jumps from planes into war zones. Quentin Aanenson as a fighter pilot and Bob Giguere who was one of 125,000 troops who invaded the coast, and moved inland. D-Day was when US troops invaded the beaches in Normandy, France in World War 2. It was supposed to be a surprise attack on the Germans. In one day the Allies would take out German defenses in the Normandy area, securing a base in Europe, so they could get Hitler out of France and take back Europe.

Don Jakeway, Quentin Aanenson and Bob Giguere were all very brave. I could never have done what they did. Don did not even know what a paratrooper was when he sent in his application for the Army. Paratroopers jump out of planes and are the first people to go behind enemy lines. They have to be calm in any situation. Out of every 2,500 men who signed up to be airborne, only 120 became paratroopers. He described them as hitting the ground like sacks of potatoes and that all the muscles in his body would hurt. On D-Day Don landed in a tree and he was in full view of the Germans. He pulled out his pocket knife and cut his way out. He said it felt like he was stuck in that tree for hours. 

 

D-Day was Quentin's first time in combat. He had dreamed of being a fighter pilot his whole life. "It felt like it was all over in minutes" he said. Bob however probably felt much differently about timing when it came to his experience. He was 17 years old when he joined. He walked up the beaches of Normandy through  steel rails, mines and barbed wire fences. He had to walk through all that and avoid being hit. The Germans had guns set up along 4 miles, manned by about 800 soldiers. All the guns were aiming at the Americans invading the beaches. Bob said he could feel the bleeding as he walked through the water.

I learned a lot about D-Day from this book. It wasn't hard to understand, like other books I have read about wars. I really liked how it was told by he people who were there. I knew that it was the turning point in the war but I wasn't aware of what exactly happened until now. It was very informative but didn't make me bored. 

I determined the importance when I was reading this book, which was not hard to do at all. It was a major turning point in the war. If it didn't happen the world would not be like it is today and winning the war would have been much harder. A lot of people were lost, and a lot of things were gained. I learned that when we came out of the war we became richer than we were, because factories set up to make war supplies, such as planes and guns, started to produce kitchen supplies, TV's and cars. But at the cost of losing 400,000 people out of 13 million who served in the war.

 Shelley Tanaka writes non-fiction books for children and teens. She has written books on the Titanic, Alamo, the attack on Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Gettysburg. She is the author f the "I Was There" series and "The Day That Changed America" series.

Aquamarine, by Alice Hoffman

Aquamarine is the story of 2 girls who find a mermaid in the pool at the Capri Beach Club. Hailey and Claire, have to get the mermaid, Aquamarine, back to her home. There are 3 problems the girls run into. The first is that they can't just take her out of the pool with everyone watching them, the club is closing so they have to get her out fast because construction workers are coming to rip down the place and Aquamarine is rude and selfish. She also refuses to leave the club without going on a date with Raymond. A boy who worked at the club.  But the not being i salt water is killing Aquamarine, she only has a week. If she doesn't get back to the ocean soon, she will turn to green dust. Hailey and Claire have to deal with all of this, and make the most of their last summer together because Claire was moving to Florida with her grandparents. 

 

The characters are Hailey, Claire, Aquamarine and Raymond. Hailey is a very daring character. The only thing she is affraid of is the future because can't control it. She hates the fact that Claire is moving and that her parents are divorced. Claire, is very shy, and hates the water. Both her parents died in a car accident. She is also a very good problem solver. Aquamarine, is a mermaid and has 6 older sisters. She is very rude and thinks only of herself. She also refuses to leave the Capri until she could go on a date with Raymond. That causes a lot of problems for Hailey and Claire. Raymond ran the snack shack at the Capri and all the girls loved him. Raymond was very nice to the girls and was almost like their older brother in a way. He looked out for them, and was their when Hailey and Claire needed help and not because his job required him to.

 This is one of my favorite books. I have read it 4 times. The movie and the book are very different. I think the book is better than the movie. Aquamarine herself acts very different than she did in the book. I liked all of the detail in the book and the characters. It was interesting to see how they changed from the beginning of the book to the end. Claire starts to become tougher and Aquamarine learns what it is like to be a friend. 

I compared this book to the movie. I was always pointing out things that didn't happen in the movie or the way the characters acted. The first thing I picked out when I was watching the movie after reading the book for a 3rd time was that in the book Claire is moving away, while in the movie Hailey is moving. Another thing was that Aquamarine was nicer in the movie and she could go on land. In the book, Aquamarine couldn't do that. When she got on land to go to that date with Raymond she started to become very sick. The date wasn't even 30 minutes. Thats how fast she reacted to being out of the water. 

Alice Hoffman was born in New York on March 16th, 1952. She has written sixteen novels, two short fiction stories and eight books for children and teens. Her first book was "Property Of". She wrote it when she was 21. She is living in New York and Boston. Four of her books have been turned into movies. They are "Aquamarine", "Practical Magic", "Independence Day" and "River King".

Anastasia: The Girl King, by Carolyn Meyer

Anastasia was a Grand Duchess in Russia. This book is a false diary, but follows similar events as to what her life was really like. All of the events are almost set to sound like what was going on at the last years of her life. The people of Russia revolted against her father, and took them out of their home. They were all killed. Her mother, father, brother and sisters. The only one who might of escaped was Anastasia. It is believed either her, or her sister, Marie, survived. The book is what the author thinks her thoughts were during the last 4 years of her life. From the years 1914-1918.  

The characters are Anastasia, her sisters ( Marie, Tatiana and Olga.), her brother Alexei, and her mother and father. Anastasia is a bright young girl. She couldn't stand when her older sisters bossed her around. All of Anastasia's sisters were a little bossy. Her brother was very sick and had been for his whole life. He had hemophilia. Hemophilia is when, if he was injured he would not be able to stop bleeding. Anastasia's family kept Alexei's illness a secret. They didn't want people to be alarmed due to the fact he was the tsarevitch. which mean he was Russia's next tsar. Anastasia's parents were like most Royals in those years. They were very polite, attended all of the important parties and threw their own. They made sure the girls and Alexei were just as polite and well spoken as them. They also prepared them for what was supposed to be their future.

I liked this book. I couldn't put it down! I don't know what I liked about it exactly, but I thought it was interesting, but not boring. Fun, but not funny. I really like reading books in the form of diaries. They give the book more "personality". It gives you a really great description of the main character and the other people in their lives. I also like that since it's a diary, all of the entries have the date they were written at the top. It makes it clearer as to when certain events took place.

When I had to stop reading I summarized what had happened and wrote it down on a post-it. It helped me keep track of what was going on, because I had a skating competition coming up and so I had to practice twice as much than I normally practice. So if I couldn't read one day and forgot what was going on, I read the post-it to jog my memory.

Carolyn Meyer was an only child. She was born November 8th, 1935. I started reading this book even before I knew she wrote "Marie Dancing", one of my favorite books. She is currently living in New Mexico. Other books she have written include, "Loving Will Shakespeare", "Kristina the Girl King", which is another book in the same series that this one about Anastasia is in.

Trial by Journal, by Kate Klise

"Trial by Journal" is about Lily Watson. She is on jury duty to help find out if, Bob White is guilty of killing one of her classmates, Perry Keet. Since she was going to be out of school for 6 weeks, she had to write in a journal. The journal was going to be counted as a grade. In the journal she kept massive amounts of evidence she found lying around, drawings, the first pages from an autobiography from one of the other jurors and old newspaper clippings about the trial. Lily ends up solving the case with all the evidence she had collected. 

 

The characters are Lily Watson, Rhett Tyle, Anna Conda, Fawn Papillon, Pricilla the Gorilla and Bob White. Lily is the main character. She is smart and her teachers describe her as a very interesting young girl. She is twelve years old and is forced to be on jury duty, due to a new law saying a juvenile juror needs to be on any case involving a child victim. Rhett Tyle is the owner of Tyle-O-Tropolis, an amusement park owner who is the proud owner of Pricilla the Gorilla. Pricilla is a gorilla and a very talented artist, who gives the park even more fame and fortune. Rhett also is supposed to have this amazing information that will prove Bob White guilty. Bob White is a strange character. He shows different personalities throughout the book. In the beginning he came off as mean, but by the end he doesn't seem that way. He seems nice. But it also sounded like he had always been nice, just accused of wrong doing, giving him that reputation. He also never got a firm education. Fawn Papillon is another juror and becomes friends with Lily. Anna, is a fashion designer, a snob and close friends with Rhett Tyle. She cares way to much about herself.

I really liked this book. It was fun to read. The book has a bunch of different newspaper articles, the pieces of evidence that Lily had, some of her journal entries and notes she took. It made the book really interesting and entertaining. There wasn't anything I didn't like about the book. My favorite part was when I was able to read all of the evidence that she collected, which was mainly notes being passed between Anna and Rhett. I also really liked reading Lily's journal entries. They were funny and serious at the same time.

I didn't visualize that much this time. I made a lot of connections to a bunch of other books I have read. I compared the way Lily wrote in her journal the way Anne Frank wrote in hers. Lily's weren't so serious, and she emphasised a lot of words, to show more emotion. I also compared it to other mystery books I have read. 

Kate Klise has also written the books"Regarding the Fountain" and "Letters from Camp". Her sister, Sarah, is illustrator for all of the books she writes. Kate is correspondent for "People" magazine. She lives in Norwood, Missouri. Sarah illustrates children's books and is an art teacher. She lives in Berkeley, California.

Rip Van Winkle, by Washington Irving

"Rip Van Winkle"is about a man who sleeps for twenty years. He does not like his wife and his only excuse for leaving his house is to go hunt in the forest. Rip liked to help people with chores. One day, when he was out hunting, Rip heard someone call his name. He saw a strange looking man, holding a big barrel. He offered to help the man. The man gave him the barrel and started to walk on.  When they get to where they needed to be, Rip starts to drink what ever was in the barrel. He becomes very tired and ends up sleeping for 20 years. But to Rip, it only felt like a day. He wakes up not knowing what is going on in the world, but soon figures it out.

Rip Van Winkle, Dame Van Winkle, Rip Van Winkle Jr., Judith Van Winkle and Wolf are the characters in the book. Rip is the main character. He does not like his wife, likes to hunt and hang out with his friends and his dog. Dame Van Winkle is Rip's wife. She complains a lot and the book describes her as, "sour, not sweet." Rip Jr. is Rip Van Winkle's son and Judith Van Winkle is his daughter, by the end of the book she is Judith Gardenier. Wolf is Rip's dog. Wolf is afraid of Dame and is Rip's best friend.

It was a good book, some parts were a little slow. One of the parts I found a little boring was when the book starts to talk about Rip and his friends sitting around talking about politics. It wasn't the best part. My favorite part was when Rip went back to the town after being asleep for 20 years. It was cool because you find out how much Rip had missed and the reactions he and the people living in the town had toward what was going on.

I visualized while I was reading. It has always been a good strategy for me because I love TV, so visualizing gives reading the effect of watching TV. While I was reading I thought of Rip walking or hunting in the Catskills where the book takes place. I also saw him holding the barrel for that man. After he woke up I saw an old man, walking through the town and the look on everyones faces once they heard after he had told them.

Washington Irving is one of may favorite authors. His stories are fun and exciting. My favorite is "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". He also wrote the story "Golden Dreams". His books have some humor, but aren't laugh out loud funny. "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" are his two most popular stories. Both take place in New York. "Rip Van Winkle" takes place by the Catskills, and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" takes place right by the Hudson river.

 

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is about a teacher named Ichabod Crane. Ichabod loves listening to storys about the "Headless Horseman", a Hessian cavalryman who is said to have lost his head and now haunts Sleepy Hollow. He was buried in the churchyard and every night he rides to the battlefield on his horse searching for his head. Ichabod falls in love with Miss Katrina Van Tassel. She was the daughter of a wealthy Dutch farmer. Brom Bones also liked Katrina. Brom was very jealous of Ichabod. He was willing to do anything to ruin any chance Ichabod had with Katrina.

 

The characters in the book are Ichabod Crane, Katrina Van Tassel, Brom Bones and his gang, the Headless Horseman and the people lving in Sleepy Hollow. Ichabod is the main character. He was very tall and thin with a pointed nose and huge ears. He is the town school master. Katrina Van Tassel is a wealthy Dutch farmers daughter and is the prettiest girl in Sleepy Hollow. Brom Bones is very tough and has brown curly hair. But he is not mean. He likes to go to parties and tell stories and jokes. His gang is just the same way. The Headless Horseman is a Hessian cavalryman whose head was knocked off in the Revolutionary War. The people living in Sleepy Hollow are very superstitious and sometimes scare Ichabod with their ghost stories.

 It was a really good book. It was a mix of fantasy and reality. The book was very clearly written and easy to understand. The book was very detailed, but not to the point where it is boring to read. I really liked the story line and the personalities of the characters. It was interesting how all of the characters believed so strongly in this tale and others they had heard. The whole town loved hearing ghost stories and believed every one of them was true.

I used visualizing a lot because all the details in the book gave me a really good idea of what places looked like and the way people acted toward certain events in the book. I also made connections to his book and the other versions of the story I heard. This version was a little bit like a cliff hanger. Other versions I have heard tell you exactly what happened at the end of the book. But I have heard the story end different ways in almost every version.

Washington Irving wrote many short stories and biographies. He was born April 3rd, 1783. He was one of eleven children. He was also a historian and named after George Washington. He also wrote "Rip Van Winkle" and "Tales of a Traveller". Even though he had poor health, he kept writing. Sometimes he couldn't even walk. He died in November of 1859

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night takes place in the kingdom of Illyria.  The book is mainly about a girl, Viola and the duke of Illyria, Orsino.  In the book, Orsino believes he loves Olivia, the countess. Olivia has just lost her brother and refuses to see the duke. Viola comes into the picture when she is shipwrecked and becomes Orsino's servant. She runs messages to Olivia asking her to see Orsino. But Olivia ends up falling in love with Viola who is disguised as Cesario, so she can work for the duke without anyone knowing she is a girl and Viola ends up falling in love with Orsino.  

Orsino is a very kind-hearted character, he is crazy in love with Olivia almost throughout the whole book. Viola tries very hard to act like a man. She is also a little stubborn. Viola is also a very smart character and is always a few steps ahead of the game. Olivia is very poised. She is described as beautiful throughout the book. You realize as you read that she is aware of it and it begins have an impact on the way she acts. By the end of the book she has a major change in attitude and is a more caring person. Sir Toby is Olivia's Uncle and wants her to marry his friend Sir Andrew, who is far from smart and considerate. Maria is Olivia's maid, and she enjoys pulling pranks on Malvolio. Malvolio is Olivia's steward and is in love with Olivia. He will do anything to impress Olivia. But ha fails every time. Feste is simply a fool. Sebastian is Viola's brother, who she thought had drowned in the shipwreck. He gets into a bit of legal trouble in the book, but he finds ways around it. Antonio is a sea captain and Sebastian's friend. Fabian is another fool and is also a servant.

 

The book was good. It was a little slow and a little confusing, but it was a great story line. The movie "She's the Man" is actually based on the book. That is why some of the names sound familiar if you have seen the movie. I wish I had gotten the book in a modern text version, it would have made the book a little bit easier to understand. 

The reading strategies I used were visualizing and comparing.Visualizing was like seeing the play in my head. I compared the book to the movie "She's the Man", there were a lot of similarities. Some of the characters had the same names and had the same personalities. The movie really captured the outline of the book. The movie took the story Shakespeare wrote and turned it into what would happen if it took place in this time period. 

Shakespeare was and still is a famous play writer. He wrote "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "Midsummer's Night's Dream", "The Tempest", "Two Gentlemen of Verona", "Julius Caesar" and many others. He started school at the most likely at the age of 6. He went to Stratford grammer school. It was built 200 years before he was born and is still standing today. There are two periods of time where we have no knowledge of Shakespeare. It as if he had disappeared from the world. The two time periods we have no information on him are 1578-82 and 1585-92. They believe he married in November of 1582. To a girl named Anne. Historians are unclear of the exact date. Records show the dates November 27th and 28th of 1582. Shakespeare died April 23rd, 1616.

Marie, Dancing by Carolyn Meyer

The book Marie, Dancing takes place in Paris, France starting in the year 1876 to the year 1872. It is about a girl named Marie van Gothem, and she loves to dance. The problem is she is very poor and on top of that her mother drinks and her aunt is trying to take her in and make Marie work for her. She has two sisters as well. One is no walk in the park and the other has to be taken care of by Marie because her mother just doesn't care.

One day an artist named, Edgar Degas comes to Marie's dance studio to try and find girls to pose for a statue he is working on called "Little Dancer Aged 14" and sure enough Marie was picked to pose. She went once a week to his studio after her dance class.

Even with the extra money her family did not have enough to support themselves. Meanwhile her older sister is using money given to her by her boyfriend to buy herself whatever she wants. Marie's father even admitted while he was dying that she was very selfish.

Marie runs into even more trouble when her best friend moves to the United States because his father is sick and needs to be taken care of. All of a sudden Marie is in a very big world all alone.

There is really isn't detailed description of Marie in the book, but it did mention she was very skinny and had strong legs. She seemed like a good person but she had a lot of anger bottled up inside because of her family issues. She yelled at her mom a lot because her mother really did not try to get them out of this pit they were all in for her mistakes.

The whole book is mainly of her dream to become a star. Edger Degas told her she would become a star after the statue was presented. But it is now, about 125 years later she is a star. They produce a ballet about Marie and the statue in the opera where she danced. I personally thinnk it is funny how she didn't become popular for dancing (I would tell you why but I don't want to spoil the end of the book).

Charolette played an important role in the book. Charolette, was Marie's younger sister. She was the girl Marie would talk to about her struggles for two reasons. The first is because she was the only one who listened and actually cared. The second is she understood what she was going through.

Charolette moved on to become a wonderful dancer. She is the only one of the three sisters who has clearly written, 100 percent acurate records. She became a teacher for the opera after she had stopped dancing in 1907. Her rank of dance was a sujet. retired in 1933. Charolette is also the only one out of the sisters who kept dancing.

I really liked this book. It was very descriptive, so it gave a clear picture as to what was going on. It was written in the form of The Diary of Anne Frank. The only differance is it is not the actual words of Marie van Gothem herself. It was written in the form where the author described events in her life the way the author thinks they may hev happened. But at the same time the book is written in first person, so Marie is almost telling you what happened.

I also really liked this book really because it was a great story line because if a new piece of art came out all you would hear about is the atrist. You would only find books on the artist but never on the person "inside" the statue. In this case Edger Degas made the statue Little Dancer Aged 14, so the statue is all about Marie and how she loved to dance, but that is not something you ever hear about. I think that is what made this book really good. Just the fact not many books are like it.

While reading this book the two habits I used were making connections, and mental images. I made connections to life and how I dance. In the book it describes Marie and Charolette getting nervous about their dance tests. It says how they are shaking and how they try so hard not to fall or trip. It was so hard on them because everyone is watching you and if you messed up you were taken out of school permanently. So while reading my book I compared my self to when I am dancing in front of people.

I also connected my sister to Charolette because my sister is really understanding, is always happy, and is a great listener just like Charolette. She is also the youngest out of all of us. My sister is also very stubborn and when she is set on something she intends on getting it done. I could just go on an on about how they are like but the last connection is that they are very genorous.

During the book I visualized the dancers legs shaking and Marie on the models stand in this one pose. It helped me understand the book because if I read what is supposed to be going on it becomes harder for me to understand than seeing what is going on.