- Identify title, author, genre, and theme.
- Share your personal reactions , including what it made you feel and think.
- Summarize what happened and what it meant (but don’t spoil the ending for the rest of us!).
- Note characters or points that you loved or hated and why.
- Describe the writer’s style (descriptions that pulled your senses into the story, the moral, character or argument development, dialogue, etc.).
- Reflect on the time, culture, or perspective in which it was written or set.
- Conclude why it is or is not worth reading.
- Refer to the rubric for more information.
Friday, August 1, 2014
Independent Reading
Blog Post Assignment---please post your blog post as a comment to this assignment!
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ReplyDeleteIn The New Girl by Tracie Pucket a girl has to cope with always being on the move her whole life. When her mom was in high school she got pregnant and moved in with an older man. When the baby was born she left him and named the baby Abcdef ghijk, so they would be hard to find. After moving from Tennessee and Kentucky they move to North Carolina. The girl goes by Steph to be able to fit in. Her mom promises this is their last move, so she starts a new school. She meets a teacher on her first day of school named Mr. Rivera. She thinks he is very attractive.She meets two new friends, Nate and Bridget, who convince her to work on the set of Romeo and Juliet. On her first night home, her mom has dinner with her new boyfriend. By the end of the night her mom is engaged, and Steph isn't sure if her mom is serious. Mr. Rivera and Steph form a bond and he starts to help her with her problems. Steph was really interested in design and Mr.Rivera helps her find a program that will help her succeed. Mr.Rivera's brother Calvin is going to marry Steph's mom, so Steph is freaking out because she is falling in love with Mr.Rivera. The kids all say Mr.Rivera will marry Ms. Holt, who teaches at the school. This makes Steph so angry and she tries her hardest to make them have no contact with each other.Ms.Holt ditches her mom to go on a date with Mr.Rivera. This makes Steph so angry. Calvin,Steph's mom, Mr. Rivera, and Steph all hangout at Steph's house which makes her fall in love with him more.Bridget and Steph went to homecoming. It was Steph's first school dance,and she got all dressed up.Mr. Rivera was a chaperone, and all Steph wanted was to ask him to dance. He said he couldn't dance but they started flirting. Bridget got in a fight with the mean girl of the grade. Bridget gets suspended and the show got cancelled. Thankfully Mr.Rivera was able to get an outside group practice for the play, and the show still went on. At the end of the book Mr.Rivera brings in his mom who is a famous designer, and this really inspires Steph.This book was an easy read, but it did not include any major events or very much detail. The book was unclear at some parts, and after reading it the idea of the book was kind of gross.The theme was pursue what you love, no matter what obstacles are in the way. In this Steph was falling in love with her teacher, but her mom was about to marry his brother. Again it is kind of weird, but that is basically the whole book.I would not recommend this to a friend because the idea is kind of sick. This book is part of a series, so maybe it could get better. The author jumped around with the storyline, and the book included no details. I wish this was more detailed because it could have been a very good and dramatic book.
ReplyDeleteHere are some extra things to help describe the book:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16091528-the-new-girl
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16091530-under-the-mistletoe
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16091533-secrets-to-keep
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16091538-all-good-things
These are the books in the rest of the series.
Cole Richardson
ReplyDeleteMrs. Arnold
Hon English 9
25 February 2015
Little Brother- Cory Doctorow
Marcus Yallow, a teenaged "hacker" in modern-day America, is going about his life as a high-school student. Complaining about trivial matters like the school wifi system, and using fairly updated internet jargon, like "teh suck". Cory Doctorow lets us get to know Marcus and his friends by elaborating on a typical day at school. The principal calls on Marcus, because he believes Marcus hacked into the school. (Doctorow, according to the laws of Young Adult Literature, was sure to make the adults throughout the novel seem oppressive, and lacking of intelligence. The teens were, of course, witty, quick, and up-to-date.) Later that day, after Marcus is freed from the clutches of the technologically illiterate principle, and he and his friend Darryl ditch school to play a MMORPG, which is an acronym for: Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. This MMORPG is interesting in the sense that it correlates reality with the game, enticing members to complete real life quests along with in-game adventures. Marcus and Darryl meet up with two other gamers named Jolu and Vanessa. During their trek through the city to search for a part that the game required, several explosions shake the area. Doctorow stays up-to-date with sayings involving 9/11 and other terrorist attacks. Initially, the dynamic quartet tries to hide in a shelter, but eventually leave and join the masses in the streets. While acting like salmon trying to spawn against the current, Darryl managed to get stabbed. The teens rush to his attention and flag down a vehicle. Darryl needs emergency medical care. A few men jump out of the vehicle and immediately throw bags over their heads and cram them back into the car. Later, Marcus and his posse arrive at a secret facility where they are interrogated illegally by the Department of Homeland Security. The Department ignores Marcus' civil rights blatantly. After six days, Marcus and Company are released, except for Darryl, who has mysteriously disappeared. Motivated by hatred for the Department of Homeland Security, Marcus sets up a series of cyber attacks on the DHS, thus continuing and heightening the plot.
In my opinion, it was a great book. Doctorow took the (all too cliche) Young Adult genre of literature, and spiced it up. He added heavy themes like fear, torture, electronic security, and political authority. He didn't completely revolutionize young adult literature, but he made it more enjoyable to read, without having to wade through an unbearable amount of stereotypes and cliches. Of course, the adults were oppressive, and Marcus and his squad were thrown into somewhat ridiculous survival situations (think The Maze Runner, The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Matched.) I did enjoy the darker atmosphere that Doctorow created, along with the optimistic rebellions that followed. The bottom line is that I would suggest this book to a friend, if he/she is wanting to occupy his time in a fun and interesting way. It was well written and inspires progressive changes in the YA community.
Posted below are some interesting links pertaining to Little Brother.
Podcast talking about Little Brother- http://www.sfbrp.com/archives/71
Doctorow's free download (yes, it's legal, Doctorow created it himself)
http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/
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ReplyDeleteJennifer Xu
ReplyDeleteMrs.Arnold
English 10
Feb 26, 2015
I read the book We Were Liars by E.Lockhar. The genre is mystery and narration. The theme is talking about the main character’s big family’s true features. I really like this book although the ending shocks me a lot.
The main character’s name is Cadence Sinclair. She has a big and rich family. Every summer, the Sinclair family will go to her grandfather’s private island for their vacation. She has five cousins named Johnny, Will, Mirren, Liberty, Bonnie and Taft. The summer when Johnny, Mirren, and Cadence were 15 years as well as Gat, her aunt's husband's nephew, with whom she has become romantically involved. They formed a close bond and spend all of their time together. They named their group “Liars”. Then something happened, Something that affects not only her but her entire family. She was hit by a rocket and cannot remember anything. Two years later, she back to the island and want to find the truth. Everyone in this family is a liar. Cadence said she has a happy family, this is a lie. The seven children love each other, this is a lie. They all alive, even this is also a lie! What she found is she, Gat, and her cousins set fire to the big house to end the rivalry within the family. But she inadvertently trapped Johnny, Mirren, and Gat in the house, the three of them burning to death. The other three liars are ghosts who have been waiting for her to accept the reality of the tragedy......
The ending is really unexpected and shocks me a lot. I cannot say which character that I loved or hated because they all have their personality. I like to make myself as the main character when I read the book, then I will find the story is so attractive and I even can not put it down. The author E.Lockhart is a really talent storyteller with her charming words. The book is not a long story but after I read that I feel I have read so much longer than I thought. The author is good at leading the reader into the atmosphere that the story happened. The reader will have a lot of surprises and muddled till the end, so I think this is a good mystery novel. At first I was attracted the title of the book, it is really alluring for me. Later I find that you cannot believe each one of the characters or depend on them because you will find they are all liars. I even can’t figure out what is the truth what is the lie. I think that’s why it is so wonderful for me to read it. All in all, this novel is talking about a pretty family’s dark side and the people in this family try their best to cover it till everything has been exposed. I enjoy reading this book and after that I can think about it for a while. At the beginning of the book, it has a map and a family introduction image so it can help the reader understand the family members better.It is a attractive mystery novel so I recommend it.
Some helpful links about the book:
1. http://www.emilylockhart.com/
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/books/review/we-were-liars-by-e-lockhart.html?_r=0
3. http://illustratedmaps.info/portfolio/we-were-liars/
4. http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-young-adult-fiction-books-2014