The Book Thief Continued

 After much thievery and learning to read and write Narrator stops following Liesel for a while and starts following Max. Who's Max? Well, Hans, Liesel's adoptive father, has been going to "work" to meet this Jewish man named Max who is the son of a friend he had during World War One who saved his life in a way. At the time Max was a child and when he grew up he was hidden in a dark room away from the Nazis. Hans went to visit Max everyday claiming he was going to work, but really he was going to give Max food and water so he could survive while Hans thought of a plan to let him be free for a while. He soon did. He did this by buying two copies of Mein Kempf (My Struggle) by Adolf Hitler, one for Liesel to read and one for Max to walk around with. Anyone who sees a man carrying around a book not allowed for Jews will immediately assume he is not Jewish. So he bought him the copy and Max walked out bravely to meet Hans at his home for the first time. While all this is happening there are things going on Liesel's life. The book is called The Book Thief so we of course get to know what is going on in said book thief's life. Liesel and her friend Rudy (Or should I say boyfriend heh heh. I'm kidding they're not dating, they're 11) didn't really have much to connect with besides soccer that they play sometimes. Until Liesel and Rudy stole something together and they immediately had something to talk about, something to do that wasn't soccer. They joined a group of kids who stole food from others to eat which benefited Rudy because he was a poor child and was always starving. Plus who doesn't enjoy a good thievery? Anyway, they joined these kids and did remarkably well on their first day, they stole a bag full of apples from a farm and ate most of them of their way home. Wonder what it'd be like to steal without feeling guilt. Closest I've come was stealing two lollipops on Halloween when the bowl told to me to only take one.

 

 I think the genre of this book is more Realistic Fiction than Historical Fiction. When I first thought about it I immediately thought it was Historical Fiction because it was during the Holocaust and has some troubles regarding the rules of Hitler, but then I thought that since they didn't get into too much about the Holocaust and were just mainly focusing on Liesel's life it didn't really make sense. I mean, if I wrote a book about a boy who knows someone else who is an illegal immigrant and that someone else faced troubles when I'm 70. It wouldn't be a Historical Fiction because, yes, he did face troubles of something that may or may not be in history books, (or whatever we use besides books in the future) but that was just something many people had to deal with because of the way the laws were. In conclusion it is a Realistic Fiction even though I first thought of it as a Historical Fiction.

The Boy Who Dared

The Boy Who Dared is about a boy named Helmuth Hübener and memories he’s having about his past life. The story starts on a Tuesday in his cell where he’s being held to be executed. While he’s in there he remembers times of his childhood like when he was questioning heaven and felt like he could float. He then starts remembering events that led up to him being trapped in a cell waiting to die. He remembers how when he was younger he longed to joining the Hitler Youth, but as he got older he realized that everything the Nazis were doing was wrong and he despised that. He remembers his adoptive father, Hugo, who was an SS officer and talked a lot about the Fuhrer. He remembers how he didn’t accept the ways of the Nazis so he started to go against them making pamphlet with his friends Karl-Heinz, Schnibbe, Rudolf Wobbe, and Gerhard Düwer. He ended up getting arrested for such actions and after being told that they could drop the execution Helmuth wanted to take responsibility for his actions and went to the execution. At this point the memories and the present time line up and that is when he is to be executed and...he's beheaded.

In the beginning of the book when Helmuth was a little cutie, he used to look up to the Fuhrer, Hitler, and he used to dream about becoming a brave soldier to fight for his country. He loved to play with little toy soldiers who were fighting the british, and he was quite the intelligent boy so what he did in the game were real strategies. As he grew up he became even smarter and started to realize that what was being done was wrong. He got in trouble at school for speaking his mind. He got in trouble with the police for speaking his mind, he got in trouble to the point where Nazis put an end to him. He didn't agree with the way of Hitler by the end of it even though he lived with people who did. He listened to BBC and, with his friends, tried to spread the word. If you ask me, I think 9 year old Helmuth wouldn't like 16 year old Helmuth.

NightJohn

 NightJohn is a story about a slave named Sarny who meets a man named NightJohn. The story starts out getting to know Sarny and the woman who takes care of her. When NightJohn is first introduced he is being taken into the plantation by their master with many scars on his back. They don't actually talk to each other until the next night when he asks for tobacco for trade. Sarny has a piece of a tobacco leaf and offers it to NightJohn because she really wanted what he was offering. He was offering reading lessons. Well, he was only offering to teach the letters A B and C but as time went on he ended up teaching her more letters. The first word that she learned was "bad" but was soon caught writing the word on the floor and had to be punished. She gave an excuse that she was drawing so instead of her being punished the master decided to punish his "mother" because he thought that she had something to do with it. Hm, wonder what happened next.

 The genre of NightJohn is Historical Fiction. I can tell it's Historical Fiction because it isn't a real story and it is based on a historical event when slavery was legal. The book doesn't really go into the historical slavery details but it does mention a few things like how they were punished and what they would do if a slave ran away. It's kind of a short book but it isn't a book you'd give to a child at that reading level. 

The Book Thief

 The Book Thief is quite a book. It starts out with the narrator talking to us. They don't have a gender but they do have a job. Narrator takes people's souls when they die so it's like Narrator is a character in it's self. Narrator follows a little girl named Liesel who is referred to by Narrator as The Book Thief. The story is set during the Holocaust in Germany mainly through Liesel's life and not really focusing on the  major events that occurred during the Holocaust. Liesel is born to a single mother and later gets a brother. Her mother cannot take care of them so she puts them up for adoption and is sold to a better family. On the way to this family her brother dies in a train by Narrator. Liesel never sees her mother again but learns to cope with her new family and ends up loving them. She doesn't know how to read at her age so instead of being in 4th grade she has to go to school at Kindergarden. She can't learn to read but she tries with her new father by reading a book she stole (I bet jew did nazi that coming). Slowly she learns to read and enjoys it which just motivates her to steal more books. By now she's stolen three. One place she stole a book was during an event where everyone was supposed to burn a belonging of theirs together with everyone else making a huge fire. Since Liesel was part of the Hitler Youth she was forced to attend. After the fire was out and everyone went home Liesel found a book that had survived and she took it home before the men cleaning up could get to it. The other one she stole was from her school but she didn't like stealing books from there so she returned it.

Holocaust

 People stood by and watched it happen because they didn’t want to interfere and get killed themselves. I think that the people who did stand up were probably straight up crazy or very determined. Those who did had a lot of people to help them but as we know it only caused more chaos. I think I wouldn’t have stood up and just watched as everything happened in fear. If people who stand up get killed and people who don’t get killed then I say don’t stand up because the only difference is how you would suffer.

Workers' Rights Article and Poem

 In the article, "Coca-Cola Accused of Using Death Squads to Target Union Leaders", Gary Leech argues that what Coca-Cola is doing to the union leaders is wrong. He never really states his opinion in any way, but all the facts he gives are on the union leaders' side. Coca-Cola is, or was, hiring people to kill, kidnap, threaten, or torture union leaders protesting against the working conditions in Colombia. Gary Leech states that, "Colombia has long been the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists with almost 4,000 murdered in the past 15 years. Last year saw 128 labor leaders assassinated." I think that this act of murdering, kidnapping, threatening, and/or torturing is a violation to our human rights, like the right to public assembly and workers' rights. What surprised me was that Coca-Cola would take this violent route and get away with it. They did what they did, benefited from it, and no government was able to stop them.

   The argument in "The Sweatshop" was that the worker felt that he/she was turning into a machine because of the way his/her life was playing out. They worked endlessly, not knowing for whom, they stopped working at the same time every day and continued at the same time every day. Using a machine for what seemed like forever. The writer claims that he/she forget who they are, they have no emotions, no feeling, they have become a machine. Reading the poem was more interesting than reading the article. It got my attention more because with the poem I had to take a deeper meaning into it while with the article everything was just there. Of course, understanding it was more challenging, but at the same time more interesting. Nothing's interesting without some sort of challenge.

TRASH (Part 2)

 TRASH is a fairly good book. Honestly if it wasn't for the way they told the story I would've stopped reading near the beginning. The way Andy Mulligan tells this story is by having the characters in the story write about what they were experiencing. One chapter Raphael is writing, the next Gardo is talking, and the next a character we barely met starts writing giving us their perspective on what has happened in the previous chapter. The book is fairly easy to read but lots of fun because of the plot mainly. At first I didn't think I would like the book because of the fact it was easy to read, but I gave it a shot. I wouldn't say it's my favorite book though. I recommend this book to anyone who likes mysteries or just a fun adventure. One of the things that really interested me about TRASH is that the story revolves around street kids who grew up only knowing their neighborhood, which is nothing but trash, and not caring about education because in the place they live in they don't need education, they just need to know how to dig and what is good to sell. Anyway this interested me because three kids who grew up in a smelly, low educated, low budget place go out of their way and solve a mystery they weren't even supposed to be a part of in the first place. If you ask me I think that they should've stayed out of that mess because Raphael got beaten pretty badly by the police thinking he had what they were looking for (which he did but he wouldn't confess).

 

 This book was mainly a man vs man conflict, but it had some internal conflict too. The man vs man was obviously between the street boys and the police. The internal conflict was with most characters, and the fact that each main character gets to tell the story in their view makes it so they tell us about their problems. Raphael is a determined guy who doesn't have much internal conflict, but Gardo cares for others. He feels like he needs to be the leader and watch out for everyone so everyone is on track. This can, of course, lead to problems if things don't work out the way they should. The police and the street boys had a lot of conflict at the beginning but that kind of went away over time after they interrogated Raphael and figured they were wasting their time.

Should Cursive "Die"?

 In this article "Is It Time for Cursive to Die?" it talks about how students used to learn how to write in cursive, how cursive used to be the preferred way of writing, how nowadays people don't use it as much as they used to because of technology, and the reasons it should stay or shouldn't. I think that cursive shouldn't be something we are required to learn anymore. Cursive is a great way of writing and helps a writer be more fluent, but even if we do teach it students will just end up forgetting it because they wouldn't write in cursive, they'd write in text, and if they do have to write they'd write in print. Teaching it will be a waste of time no matter what anyone says. Cursive could still be used, but do you really think anyone would stick with writing in cursive when technology is more convenient and continues to be a bigger part of our lives every day. Over time things that we used to use like cursive, packets, and maybe even paper worksheets are just going to be a thing of the past. Most of these things are already gone in most schools due to the fact that technology is just easier! Technology is more convenient. Not that that's a good thing but it isn't a bad thing either.  

TRASH

  Trash by Andy Mulligan so far is a good book. I haven't read much but from what I've read so far it has an interesting plot. Raphael Fernández, the main character, collects trash. He sells specific trash to make money because it's the only way he knows to make money. Things he sells are things like plastic, scraps of metal, or just anything that used to belong to someone "rich". One day he found a small bag with someone's wallet in it, a map, and a key. The wallet had 1,100 pesos inside which was enough to buy 6 chickens to eat. They live in villages surrounded by mountains of trash and they don't have much money so this wallet made Raphael pretty excited. He has a friend named Gardo and he split the money with him, Raphael got 600 and Gardo got 500, which was fair because Raphael found the wallet. What they do with the map and key I don't know yet. Raphael kept the bag and money hidden, in case it was important, and he soon realized that it was. A few days later police showed up at their little village which was strange for them because police don't usually show up at their place. They asked for the bag that Raphael had found but no one knew about it as far as the police knew.

  This book, Trash, is written in First Person Point of View. I know this because the person telling the story in Raphael Fernández. He talks about himself, how he finds things, talks about his friend, almost like he's writing in a diary. Yes, think of it like that, he's writing in a diary or journal or maybe even writing a letter to us, the reader. I enjoy reading this point of view but I feel it's very common. Of course it's easy to write in a first person perspective and and it gives you a feel of what the character is reading, but I am one to want to try new things (even though I usually don't end up doing it). Anyway, I feel this book would be best in first person with the plot so it's not that big a problem.  

Lemon Brown

        Lemon Brown is a pretty interesting story. When I read it I was mostly bored to be honest, but as I kept reading I became more and more interested. When the thugs came into Lemon Brown's "home" I really started to wonder what his treasure was. What was Lemon Brown hiding? Was it a lot of money? If so why was he homeless? So I kept on reading and found out that Lemon Brown's treasure was...something. Not money but...something. This story connects to what I've learned in Lit. Studies class because Lemon Brown used to have a job, money, a family, everything. He sang the blues and people used to call him "Sweet Lemon". From what we've learned I know that just because you have a job doesn't mean you can't be homeless. You could suffer from underemployment which is where you don't get payed enough to cover your bills or enough to buy food. This story really interested me because it was a constant change of a lecture to action, action to suspense, suspense to story time, and story time to realization. Realization was near the end. At the beginning Greg was kind of annoyed at his father because he gave him a lecture about how he needs to get his grades up in Math. After Greg met Lemon Brown he wasn't annoyed but happy because he knew that the reason his father wanted this was because he cared about him.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

        The Perks of Being a Wallflower starts out a few days before the main character's, Charlie, first day of High School and tells us a bit about Charlie's past life. How he had a friend in Middle School who passed away and how they used to be really close. Then we go to the first day of High School. Charlie's first day was kind of awkward. He did make some new friends though, Sam and Patrick. Sam and Patrick are step brother and sister and great friends for a boy like Charlie. They met at a football game and they invited Charlie to a party afterwards where he accidentally got stoned. Ever since then they were all really good friends. When the dance came Charlie was asked out by a girl named Mary Elizabeth, he was secretly hoping for Sam to ask him but being realistic that would've never happened. So he said yes and ever since then they started going out. One day Charlie decided he didn't really like her because all she did was talk, and suggest, and talk, and suggest, and talk talk talk. So at a party when Patrick dared him to kiss the prettiest person in the room, he kissed Sam thus ending things with Mary Elizabeth. Later Mary Elizabeth found a guy named Peter, Sam found a guy named Craig, Patrick found a guy named Brad and all was good. Sort of.

        Charlie is a nice kind of guy, although he's kind of depressed. After his aunt died he became very sensitive and on top of that his best friend died so you could see why he would be depressed. Sam is a pretty girl in Charlie's eyes. Charlie's sister claims that she suffers from low self-esteem but we never know for sure. She's a great friend for Charlie because she always helps him with his problems but causes some awkward moments with Charlie. Patrick is gay if you haven't already figured. This makes it easier for Charlie to talk to him and for Patrick to help Charlie out. Now, Sam and Patrick are three grades above Charlie so if you think there would be some hanky-panky going on between them then drop it because nothing like that happens. Right?

       

Lord of the Rings Summary (of what I read)

 Lord of the Rings is a very interesting book, it's just not my book. The story starts off with Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday. Bilbo was turning 111 and Frodo was turning 20 or 60 something. Near the end of the grand party Bilbo decided to "disappear". He really just put on the magic ring which makes him invisible and walked to his house. He wanted to go off on a vacation to finish his book, but he had to leave his "precious", the ring. This left Gandalf, a wizard, to explain the ring's powers to Frodo and how he had to destroy it because of the terrible power it has which he recently discovered about. Frodo left to an elvish kingdom with his friends Marry, Pippen, and Sam in secret. All people of Hobbiton, his home, thought he was going to where he was born because Frodo did not want to be stopped from going on an adventure. They do end up going to Frodo's birth place and meet up with a "black figure riding a black horse". It seemed to go after the ring, the ring that is supposed to be destroyed. They manage to get away...barely. That's all I read but it's a good book. I recommend it to anyone who has read The Hobbit or just likes crazy adventures/fantasy.