The Help

       

               This six weeks I read a historical fiction novel called The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. It was first published and copyrighted on Feb. 10, 2009, and this book is mainly about trying to overcome prejudice. The story is about three women's perspectives of their society, and how they try to change it for the better. The setting is in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s. The overall theme of the book is how literature can be used to challenge authority and to create a more fairer society.
               The story is told in the perspectives of three women, and all are told in 1st person, so you have a good understanding of mostly everything that's happening within the story. The plot is centered on three women's daily lives and how events affect them. Anyone who has a middle school reading level or above can read this, enjoy it, and understand the general theme. The general genre is historical fiction because the setting of the story is in the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi where prejudice against non-white races was especially rampant. The author did a very good job of keeping me hooked on the story; she made the story with such emotion and had such entertaining characters that the reader wants to continue reading to see how the characters evolve over time. Stockett's style is distinct; it makes story flow well, and she makes the characters well developed with all necessary details, such as dialect. This style is effective and makes the intended audience feel attached to the plot more.  
               The book gives me a view of how deep the prejudice ran in Mississippi back in that time period. This story did show how our society has changed since the 60s, and how fortunate we are that racism isn't as prevalent. This story was very unique; I couldn't find any other story plot that was similar to the one of The Help.
              Overall, The Help is an enjoyable and touching read. I praise the clever way Stockett incorporates slight humor in the story, yet criticize how she makes the main characters very stereotypical, such as overemphasizing Aibileen's southern dialect. I recommend this book to all young adult and adult readers in general. 

Cinder by Marissa Meyer

    Cinder was written by Marissa Meyer.  This science fiction book is part of a four book series called the Lunar Chronicles.  Cinder is a cyborg mechanic in a world that is soon to go to war with Luna, a settlement of "Luners" on the moon.  As she begins to have feelings for the Prince, soon to be Emperor Kai, she learns that she herself is Luner and at the very end that she is also the lost princess who is the only one who can stop the evil Queen Lavona.  Set in New Beijing in the Third Era the story line plays off of Cinderella.

    The story is told from Cinder's point of view.  Treated as a second class citizen, she plans to escape from the money she earns from plague research.  She also tries to stop Kai from forming a marrage alience with Queen Lavona.  She ends up throwing away her last attempt at freedom and risking her life via discovery to worn the prince near the end of the book.  This sci-fi novel is great for young adults.  Marissa Meyer keeps the book interesting throughout the story by adding constant twists of the plot line.  Just when you think you know what is going on, she throws something new at you.  The style is very emotional and goes pretty fast through the plot line.  This fits well with the intended audience as it keeps it interesting.

    I was very intregued as I read this book.  I couldn't put it down.  It did change my view of humanity in the future.  After years of world peace, there is still persecution and many of the problems that we face today.  Cyborgs are owned by their guardians and crime is still a problem.  This did have a few similar elements to Ender's Game as the view of aliens is different from normal views.

    This book is great for young readers who like romance and science fiction.  It has aliens from the moon, cyborgs, royal balls, plague, and a romantic prince.  The suspense and an ever twisting plot line will keep you on your toes throughout the book.

Mr. Lankford 2

11/11/13 (absent)

RATING: *****5/5

review by: Amber Carlson

Divergent by Veronica Roth

  Divergent by Veronica Roth is a fiction book published on April 25, 2011.

And takes place in innovative Chicago, where society has been divided into five groups or factions. Dauntless: the fearless and undaunted, Erudite: the intelligent, Abnegation: the selfless, Amity: the friendly and peaceful, and Candor:  the impartial and honest. In this new society, you belong in the same faction as your parents until you turn sixteen, when you will take an aptitude test and then decide which faction you would belong in based on the results of your test and  when the main character takes her test she learns that she is different and not like the others, because she is divergent, and she fits in to all five factions, therefore her choice becomes even harder especially when she is told that she cannot tell anyone, not even her parents. Throughout the book Tris goes through many things to find her identity and learns that feelings change and every choice makes a difference.

            The story is intended for a young-adult audience and is told from a first person point of view from the eyes of Beatrice Prior who will eventually be known as “tris” and born into Abnegation along with her brother Caleb. When Tris takes her test she learns that she is different and not like the others, because she is divergent, and she fits in to all five factions, therefore her choice becomes even harder especially when she is told that she cannot tell anyone, not even her parents. Early into the book we learn that Tris decides to be a Dauntless and learns that she and the other initiates have to train and compete to get to the top of their class, this is where Tris makes friends and enemies and also meets “four” who becomes a major character in the book. Later on in the book, Tris figures out that the Erudite faction wants to overthrow the Abnegation government by brainwashing the dauntless and creating their own army but Tris is immune to the mind-control because she is dauntless and so she learns that there are many people like her and realizes that it’s up to her and everyone else who hasn’t been brainwashed to take over the Erudite.      

            This book made me realize how important our freedom is and how segregation has started to show up a lot more these days. I thought of this because the factions always had their thoughts about each other and didn’t really get along and if we didn’t have freedom we would probably be living in a highly controlled world much like the one from divergent and that wouldn’t be very good. This book reminds me of “Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins because it is about a society that is being highly controlled by the government and society has been split up into different factions.

            I REALLY LIKE THIS BOOK. Not only because the style of writing is amazing but because it has a little bit of everything, sci-fi, romance, action… and I really like how the author captured the thoughts and actions and emotions and views of Tris. I recommend this book for anyone who likes futuristic, sci-fi/action books.

           

Destiny Schneider
11/8/13
Rating: **** 4.5/5

                                   

Blood Meridian

The book was copyrighted in 1985, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West is the title; Cormac McCarthy is the author. The events of this Western classic are based upon and derived from happenings of early America, the majority of these happenings concerning the Glanton gang, the Glanton gang being a scalp-hunting crew who wandered the American-Mexican border slaughtering Native Americans or “injins” from 1849 to 1850. Initially the Glanton gang killed for bounty, but they got a taste for blood, which caused cravings that could only be satisfied by extensive and brutal butchering.

These happenings create an important pretext for the story. Throughout the book, you follow the life of a Tennessean boy referred to as “the kid”, the protagonist so to speak. However, the messages and philosophies that are relayed in this book are conveyed mainly through the accounts of certain character called “the judge”. It is the judge’s sadistic, nihilistic, brutal accounts and what follows, that the rest of the story revolves around.

The story begins when the kid runs away from home; during his travels he becomes acquainted with the judge, who he will meet again later in the story. He continues to travel westward until he is recruited into an army to fight Mexicans. Most of the men in the company die and he goes off on his own again only to join another company (the Glanton gang) that included Glanton, the judge, Toadvine, the expriest, and others. The members of this gang raided villages, scalped men, women, and children, got drunk, whacked baby’s heads to the ground holding them by their feet, shot horses, decapitated, slaughtered villagers, Mexicans, and Native Americans, drowned puppies, severed limbs, brought kids along with them just to shoot them later, raped girls and women, robbed travelers, killed travelers, killed cats and goats to test their arms, and so on. The gang disperses after much traveling and murdering. The kid runs again, this time from the judge when he was under the impression that the judge killed his companions. The kid briefly visited jail. Then he rides off again and wanders for a while, when he returns to town, he meets up with the judge for the last time.

The story is narrated with occasional dialogue. In the narrations, almost the entirety of the description in the book is done; the most gruesome proceedings are recounted in the most gruesome detail. McCarthy’s style couldn’t match more perfectly with the genre, time period, and occurrences of the book. He writes simply, stocky sentences. Maybe the grammar isn’t quite right. But it adds to the affect of the story, makes it interesting, fits it. Fits the kind brutal happenins goin on, makes the story real cold. It’s how the Glanton gang would talk, no sympathy, all edge.

McCarthy depicts scenes with elaboration and metaphor, but it’s all in the same style. Some of the vocabulary he uses sounds strange, they aren’t the kind of words you would normally hear, and together they sound even more strange and twisted, but nevertheless, they fit one another and fit the style. Like this he paints very subjective, figurative pictures.

Those who are reading this book should be no one but sharp people who can tolerate gore and like to learn, although, you don’t have to be intelligent to get sucked into the story. Even if you don’t quite understand McCarthy’s writing, why, and how he writes it the way he does, it’s still immediately intriguing enough to keep you turning the pages.

This book…teaches you, it taught me. It was the judge that did most of this teaching. The judge is hairless, not just bald, but he had no hair anywhere on his body; he had no eyelashes, brows, or beard and appeared to be a naked pig. This nameless, strange appearance enhanced his role as a sort of messenger sent from hell or heaven to teach and guide on the matters of humanity, fate, and war. All the mutilation, abandoning, and ruthless wrongdoing proved that humanity revolved around war. That all men are selfish, would kill others, innocent or not, relevant or not, to protect their pride even if what they’re protecting isn’t even worth the body that it inhabits. It was made clear that all men will kill, strive to kill and even if one knew of this destiny and took some opposite path in attempt to escape it, he couldn’t for all opposites are included in that destiny.

At first, I thought this book was a kind of satire that sharply expressed how humanity is futile and that humans are pathologically inhuman. However, it’s not all death and gloom. Simply the recognition of humanity’s declining fate is humane. The fact that someone was able to relay this notion and that I was able to understand it, proves that we are compassionate; we’re able to reverse our transgressions and serves to redeem this seemingly destitute human fate. I learned and I agree. I now know that McCarthy is an artist just as the artists that I know now and have come to revere. They have something in common; they explore method and strive to vindicate humanity, to improve and enhance life and experience. McCarthy has done this; his writing teaches, unlike so many others.

            Those who aspire to gain knowledge, enjoy it and enjoy masterworks, I’m sure will enjoy this.

Cadence Gorman

11/6/13

RATING: ***** 5/5

(A quick specification – all the questions on the rubric are answered, but I sacrificed their placement in their respective paragraphs for the purpose of flow and also so the second paragraph wasn’t four times as long as the third.)

The Heroes of Olympus: The House of Hades

I read The Heroes of Olympus: The House of Hades for my outside of class book project. The author of this book is Rick Riordan and it has a copyright date of 2013.It is a fantasy book and the chapters are each demigods different perspective of what is happening. This book is about the seven demigods from the Great Prophecy that is trying to save the world from Gaea’s awakening and destroying the world. The demigods have to prevent that from happening while they are trying to find peace with Roman demigods that they had trouble with earlier in the last book. I would probably say that the overall theme is not to give up because the demigods have a very tough life but they never give up even though they are about to die a trillion billion times. In the last book Percy and Annabeth fell into Tartarus after battling Arcane, and now they go on their journey in Tartarus.

                 

The story is told in 3rd person and each chapter is one of the main characters perspective. The book is mainly about the seven demigods. Percy and Annabeth fell into Tartaus together. They are trying to find the doors of death and they are trying to close them with the help from a Titan that Percy fought in one of the earlier books. Percy made the titan loose his memory so now the Titan is good and named Bob. On the other side, they are trying to find the other side of the doors and they will have to close them at the same time as Percy and Annabeth, and if they don't, the Earth mother Gaea will destry the Earth and its people. They are also trying to make peace with the Roman demigods. Rick Riordan just keeps me interested because it is a very funny and suspenseful book that you really can't miss out on reading.

             

The book affected me in the way that Percy and Annabeth ended up living and loving each other even though they are about to die a million times. I thought it was really sad about the giant not being able to help because of his punishment. This book doesn't really make me change some of my ideas and it doesn't remind me of any other books or authors either. Rick Riordan is special and has ideas that nobody would be able to think of.

             

To be honest, I really don't have any negative comments about this book. I thought his ideas were amazing and he writes it really funny. I really recommend this book because it is very well and funny written and he has a very funny dialogue for a lot of the characters. This book is suspenseful and the action is well described. There is also some romance between the main seven characters.

Veronika Holm

11/07/13

Rating:***** 5/5          

The Dreamer- Pam Munoz Ryan and Peter Sis

 


                                            
 
          The Dreamer, composed by Pam Munoz Ryan and Peter Sis, is a categorized as a fictitious novel composed and published in 2010. The novel is based on combining elements of magical realism with biography,poetry,and literary fiction. Pam Munoz Ryan weaves sound poems and thought-provoking questions into her appealingly crafted prose to create a narrative drapery of color, rhythm, and a lot of emotion. On the other hand , Peter Sis's delicate,mesmerizing drawings transport readers to the lushness of the rain forest, the wilderness of the sea. and the whimsy of Neftali's imagination. Neftali is not like other children is age. Frail and severely shy,he spends most of his free time alone, finding the beauty in things that may seem useless. The natural world and his native Chile, make him realize the painful injustices there,move him equally. Though, his father has some plans of his own concerning his (Neftali) future, a doctor. Neftali  longs for something else though. After reading this tale, I believe the theme is to be yourself no matter what people say or do to you; to be unique and live your life to the fullest of your days.

          The novel is told in the third-person point of view. It first starts by explaining the hardship of Neftali's lifestyle, then it transitions to the explanations of the bizarre dreams he has almost every night. The resolution begins when Neftali changes his name to what today he is known as Pablo Neruda (the most famous Chilean poet) and is accepted by the people around him. Moving on, though written for children and ,it is a story readers of all ages will find much value in: a tale of perseverance and poetry,family,power,art and identity. This book expresses fictitious events that happened a long long time ago. So you could say this novel is a Historical Fiction. Now, the author kept me interested in the book by blasting out so many poems and especially the explanations of the dreams really caught my attention because each dream was different. The authors style is expressing the main characters ideas and emotions,likes and dislikes. To make the characters have a voice. Also, she doesn't make her stories have many "difficult" wordings. So it makes it pretty easy to understand the book. This way of writing is a positive way to catch her intended audiences attention quickly.

        The book caught my attention in many portions of the book because of the authors writing style and interpretation of Neftali's dreams. This book was pretty impressive. This book did make me reflect on some things. For example: I sometimes give up too easily when I see that I can't do something or don't completely grasp a certain concept. I now realize that there are many hardships in life and some are bigger than others and that people who have worse situations going on in their life, still don't give up easily. So why should I give up for such simple things? Exactly, there's not a reason to give up. Last but not least, this book did bring up memories of when I read Dr. Seuss books because this book had so many poems in it.

     Overall I really enjoyed the book. There was one slight detail I didn't like about the book, the very beginning because honestly it was really confusing for me. The author through so many details all at once. Finally, I do recommend this book to be read by others, just pay very close attention to the bizarre translation of the each dream.


Chelsea Cruz
11/7/2013
RATING: 4/5

Heart Of A Champion-Carl Deuker

This six weeks I decided to read Heart of a Champion by Carl Deuker. This book was first published in 1993 by Carl Deuker. This book is a Fiction book about a 6th grader named Seth Barham that grows up with his friend Jimmy Winter playing baseball together as they get to Varsity baseball in high school. Seth didn't know how to play baseball until Jimmy met him and taught him how to play during 6th grade. Seth and Jimmy went to the same high school to play varsity baseball in junior year. During varsity baseball they win all their games and go to the championship until something happens that messes up the team. The theme of this book is partnership and ambition.

    The story is told by Seth in 1st person view because Seth is the one that is the main character talking in the story. Seth's dad died when he was 7 years and lived with his mom. Seth would've been a golfer like his dad was because his dad was a good but lousy golfer. But, when Seth went to Henry Ford School's playground he saw Jimmy for the first time and he was playing baseball while his dad was coaching him. Jimmy and his dad saw him and introduced themselves and offered Seth to play baseball with them. Seth was put at 2nd base to make double plays while Jimmy was at shortstop. So every Saturday Seth met Jimmy and his dad at the school in the mornings and ended at 4pm. Seth played with Jimmy forever until Jimmy's dad got divorced with his mom so Jimmy had to move with his mom away from their Jimmy's dad. So Seth played in baseball leagues until Jimmy and his mother decided to move back. So Jimmy and Seth went to the same high school and played as freshmen's at their high school. Jimmy made it to varsity while Seth went to junior varsity. So Seth was really wanting to play with Jimmy in varsity baseball but he couldn't during freshman year. Then Junior year came by and Seth and Jimmy made it to varsity baseball. But Jimmy was looking tired every practice and Seth found out that Jimmy drank beer all day. So Seth made him stop so that he could play like a baseball player that didn't drink. Varsity went all the way to the state championship until during the night Seth got a call that Jimmy was in the hospital. So Seth rushed to the hospital and saw that their coach Rick Sharront and Jimmy's mom crying. Then Seth found out that Jimmy was in an accident and died. So they had to forfeit there semi-final game so that the team could go to his funeral. After the funeral they wanted to win the championship for Jimmy and they won. The team knew that the championship was Jimmy's because Jimmy had the heart of a champion. I think the intended audience is for baseball players and people in middle school and up. The genre was a realistic fiction and this book fit into me a little because I played baseball. The author kept me interested because Seth and Jimmy was best friends and wanted to know what would happen to them as they played baseball together.

    The book affected me because this book made me think that being a leader will change the team and how they will play and that choosing bad stuff like drinking beer would lead to bad stuff like dying. This kind of changed my idea because I already knew that doing bad stuff will lead you to worse stuff. I didn't have another book that was related to this book.

    I loved this book because this book had a little bit of surprises at the end and had some fun parts of the book because of the baseball game in the book. I would recommend this book to baseball players and sport players because this book tells us how being a leader would change your teams perspective and that choosing bad stuff will lead you to worse stuff.

David Oh
11/7/13
Rating: 4.9 *****<---- 9/10 of the star