Chinese born American (Martine)

American born Chinese 

By Gene Luen Yang

    This story is three stories into one. A monkey King, a Chinese boy, and a high school boy. They wanted to be something different in someway to impress something or someone. But in the end the best solution was to be yourself. 

      The connection in this story is that some point in your life you may not like the way you look like and want to change the way you  looked. Or you wanted you change you in general to impress someone you liked. Just like in this story when Jin changed his hair because he thought that, the girl he liked, liked guys like that. I would recommend this book to    people who like folk tales, fiction and culture. This is a great book recommend to all ages.

         By Martine arranz

   

 

Spy School

I just finished reading a book called Spy School by Stuart Gibbs. This book would be a great read for teenagers both boys and girls. 
Ben Ripley is in the CIA's school and he finds out his recruitment is a setup to catch unknown bad guys.
He is not the best spy because once when he was being attacked he rolled up into a ball as his coat was padded.
The spy in the school is Erica, tells Ben that it's all a setup and once he realizes it's a setup they both start looking for the mole.
This book a spy book and it like a mixture  of James Bond and Harry Potter!

Super by William Cody (Griffin Bohan)

 

 

“Super” is a book about a kid named Daniel who does not have superpowers but his friends do. His friend Eric can fly and is very strong, his friend Mollie can fly and is very fast, and his friend Rohan has really good hearing. “Super” is the sequel to the book “Powerless” and in that book the bad guy’s name is the Shroud and his job was to take away all of the Superkids powers. Daniel who is not a Super still found it his job to stop the Shroud and save all of his friends. At the end of that book Daniel defeats the Shroud and buries him under a mountain of limestone.

In “Super” there is a new kid in town and his name is Theo. Theo turns out to be the Shroud’s great nephew and Daniel and his friends start to take suspicion that Theo is trying to take over the work of his great uncle. They did find proof of that, they saw many construction workers and bulldozers go to where the Shroud was buried. What they saw was Theo digging up the old limestone mountain to find his great uncle. Daniel and his friends have to stop Theo before it’s too late.

I thought “Super” was an okay book, it was definitely not the best book I read this summer, but it was pretty entertaining and you could kind of connect with the characters. Daniel is the hero, and he doesn’t have superpowers. So maybe you don’t have to to have powers to be a hero is the message. My favorite character was Eric, because he was pretty funny. I often find I like the friend characters of the main character because they usually have a better spirit and personality. I would probably give the book a 3 out of 5 stars. I would recommend this book to people who like to read mystery because they would find this very entertaining and funny.

 

Sold - Jo

Patricia McCormicks book Sold, is about thirteen year old Lakshmi. Lakshmi grows up is mountain village in Nepal, where she lives lives with her loving mother, step father and baby brother. One day her father told her that she is to be sent to the city to work as a maid. Without knowing Lakshmi is sold into sex trafficking. She is sold to a place India called, The Happiness House. Lakshmi is then forced become a prostitute to pay off the debt that she owes to Mumtaz, who cheats Lakshmi out of her earnings. Through the book Lakshmi befriends another girl named Shahanna. Together they form a friendship filled with trust and the hope of escaping Happiness House. Later in the book, their was a police raid, they captured Shahanna. Lakshmi lost the friend she depended on and her hope to get out. A month after Shahanna was taken, a American came to The Happiness House. He offered to help Lakshmi escape, she as worried that is Mumtaz would find out and wip her so hard, that she would be on the break of death. She accepts his card and has faith that see him again. Lakshmi survives and makes it out of The Happiness House.

The main connection I would make is that sex trafficking in a huge production in which young girls from Nepal are going to India to be forced into prostitution. They are tricked into leaving there homes, and are tricked into thinking that they are sending money to their families, the majority of them are pour. Just like Lakshmi's family, she thought that the money she earned would go to her family, so she could pay off the debt. I would recommend this book to someone who like reading about intense, and difficult subjects totals about. Also to someone who is interested in human rights.

Allegiant- Ruby

Summary

Allegiant is the third book in the Divergent series. DIvergents are people with the special ability of displaying more than one attributes valued in the world of Divergent. The main character, Tris is a divergent. Caleb is her brother, Tobias is her boyfriend, and Christina and Cara are her friends.  Throughout the series their government gets more and more unstable and when Allegiant starts Tobias’s mother, Evelyn is in charge and is trying to solidify her power.

Allegiant starts off a few days after the last book in the series, Insurgent, ends. Tris, Cara, and Christina are in a holding cell after having exposed a video instructing the divergents to leave their civilization and go beyond the walls that surround it. Several days later Tobias, Tris, Cara, Christina, Caleb, and a few other divergents decide to do just that. They are eventually picked up by employees of a place called The Bureau, where they are taken. At The Bureau they discover that the city they once lived in was called the “Chicago project”, a place that they sent people with genetically damaged genes to heal over generations. Divergents, were just people whose genes had healed, so it was safe for them to leave the project. While The Bureau initially seems innocent, they soon discover that not everything is good and true. Outside The Bureau genetically damaged people (GDs) are highly impoverished and discriminated against, while in The Bureau GDs are treated unfairly with unequal rights and job opportunities. 

Meanwhile, violence is about to erupt in the Chicago project. Leading the opposing sides are Tobias’s parents. Evelyn and her army, against Tobias’s father Marcus, and his army. Bureau officials plan to reset the memories of everyone in the project. Tris, Tobias, and the others who made it to The Bureau hatch a plan to stop this from happening. Tobias and a few others go to the project to stop the war, and get some close family members out. Tris and Caleb stay at The Bureau to release the memory serum (the same one that was to be used on the Chicago project) into The Bureau to wipe the memories of Bureau officials. Tobias goes to see his mom, but instead of slipping her the memory serum like they planned, he gives her a choice. Come be a part of his life again, or keep fighting in the war. She chooses to be with him and they avoid bloodshed.  Tris takes Caleb to the room where he will release the serum, but at the last moment decides to go into the room herself and release the serum for him because she is afraid he’ll die if he goes. She succeeds but is shot several times in the back by David, The Bureau leader. Tris dies and the book ends with a short epilogue from the perspective of Tobias.

Connection

The problems between GDs and GPs (genetically pure people) remind me a lot of segregation and racism in the real world. In the world of Allegiant the justice system is very biased towards GPs. For example, a GP can harm a GD and get away with it but if a GD harms a GP then they are either sent to jail or have their memories wiped. GDs are also considered to be almost less human then GPs. They are thought of to be more expendable and not able to do the same jobs that a GP could do.
Recommendations

Fans of other mainstream dystopian future books such as The Hunger Games, The Giver, The Maze Runner, etc. will love the Divergent series. People who would like to expand their vocabulary, or are looking for a challenge will also appreciate this book because Veronica Roth writes with a very advanced vocabulary. It is a good idea to keep a dictionary nearby when reading Allegiant. People who read this book should be able to handle violence in literature as the characters are placed in many dangerous situations throughout the series. If you can handle that I highly recommend this series to you.

 

Embroideries - Jo

Embroideries is a funny and opinionated graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. It is about a conversation throughout the afternoon about these women's vibrant and outrageous stories about their secrets and regrets. Throughout the book it shows the lives of women and their marriages. How some of them has escaped arranged marriage, and has reconstructed their lives after these marriages. It has the experiences of eight ladies who connect with each other through their love lives and the growing up in Iran. 

This book has a huge connection to the book Persepolis. They are both about living in Iran. These books are about how these people are experiencing customs that they are always aright with. The women in Embroideries leave the people they're married to, to go after the people that they love. In Persepolis, Marjane becomes divorced because she doesn't love her husband any more. Also they both has a connection to the fact that during this time period they have very few rights, as women. They were forced to wear veils and be married to the man they were arranged to, while her husband could have a mistress. Many of the older women in Embroideries, tried to leave their husband, to go against the lack of their rights. I would recommend this book to people who enjoyed the book Persepolis, because it goes over some of the same materiel. I would also recommend it to someone who likes to read graphic novels.

Rooftoppers, by Katherine Rundell - Lucy

           I just finished Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell, and it is an amazing book. Rooftoppers is about a girl who was a year old when she was on a ship named the Queen Mary with her mother. This ship had sunk and she had lost her mother, and there were no female survivors. Before the ship sank, the mother had put her in a cello case and sent it out onto the sea water for the rescue boat to find her. One of the men in the boat named Charles lifted her out of the sea and decided to keep her. He named her Sophie. Over the years Sophie had grown into a polite yet unusual girl. Unlike most young girls, she wore trousers instead of skirts, climbed trees and liked to get dirty, and never brushed her hair. When a Orphanage inspector (named Ms. Elliot) came to see if Sophie was a well-kept and perfect girl, Ms.Elliot saw the complete opposite. Ms. Elliot wrote to Charles and Sophie in a letter that Sophie must be taken to an orphanage to learn how to be a proper young lady. Sophie suddenly has the idea that they should run off to Paris and find her mother, who she believes is still alive. Leaving everything behind, they disappear from England to find Paris. But when they try hard not to get caught, Sophie finds more than she had expected.
          I would recommend this book to people who love adventure stories. I love this book because it was a mystery to be solved, and I kept wanting to read more. Sophie was an interesting character because she was different than all the other girls her age. I loved how she continued to have hope that her mother was still alive and in Paris. The line that was repeated in the story was "that you should never ignore a possible." It was a good book to show that you should always have hope and be strong.

Moose to Moccasins

The book Moose to Moccasins, The story of Ka Kita Wa Pa No Kwe by Madeline Katt Theriault is her autobiography about growing up as a First Nations person, and living a white man's way of life as a woman from Canada. This book focuses mainly on her experiences growing up on Bear Island, Lake Temigami as a First Nations person and how she went through life day by day. The most important part of the story is during one winter her grandparents, brother, and she almost starved. One day she was walking around the old storehouse and saw a forgotten animal leg hanging out from the roof from their hunting. She took a pole to get it down, cooked it, and her family was saved from starvation. Another important part is later in the book they went fishing and caught 200 fish in one day!


I can't really connect to this book myself but I can connect to it with other sources. In the book there was a lot of mention of white people disrespecting them because they were First Nation people. I have read in other books about this happening a lot too. For example, in a book I read about First Nations people much longer ago the white people took their land from them, which is also similar to the events in the book because it shows the white people didn't really have respect for the First Nations people. One thing I did notice was the First Nations people were self sufficient; they didn't go to the store, buy clothes, buy houses. They did it all themselves by using wildlife and the resources around them.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys learning something about what survival was like for people before you could get access to necessities easily. Also I would recommend this to anyone who likes learning of other ways of life.

Vocabulary

• First Nation People: the various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis

ADHD and Me

The book ADHD and Me is a memoir by Blake E.S. Taylor. It is about what it's like to grow up with ADHD, and the experiences he went through at school and home. The main character is Blake, a boy who lives in Weston, Connecticut, with ADHD who struggles growing up with it. The most important part of the book is when Blake realizes ADHD is not an all negative thing. It has huge advantages, and some disadvantages like many other things.

I can connect to this book on many levels because I also am growing up with ADHD as Blake did, and I agree with him that it's hard, too. Also I have heard that as Blake said, people with ADHD struggle with getting distracted easily because I have heard the same from doctors and psychologists that I know of. I also connect with Blake because in his book nobody except his family and some of his teachers understood his ADHD and I feel the same way too. A quote I also really connected with was: "A person with ADHD does not think about cause and effect, does not connect the dots between thought, action, and consequence. You shoot pebbles because you want to see them fly, and you don't think about the objects in their path."

I would highly recommend this book to anyone with ADHD and people who don't understand what ADHD is and how it affects you. I say this because the book explains all these things, and delves into how these explanations make perfect sense.

Escape - Jo

Escape is a memoir of the horrific stories of children in the holocaust. It has seven stories about brave, outgoing, and hopeful children, David Wollowitz, Alicia Jurman, Judi Beker, Halina Litman, Eddie Weinstein, Grace Frieder, and Hanci Hollander. Each of them has a unique experience during the holocaust. One of the most unique is Judi's. Her story starts in Lithunia, where she and her family are then shipped off to a ghetto. After 18 mounths of living in a ghetto, Judi and her mom are sent to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a annihilate for Jewish people. Judi and her mother lived with 1500 other women, until on day her mother is ordered to line up and taken to a gas chamber. Without her mother hope for her to survive Judi began losing faith in becoming free from the nazis. Judi later escaped from the Nazis just like the others.
The main connection it his book is to the history of World War 1 and the Holocaust. All of the children are a group of many who go through the pain and have to witness the death of others. It has details and facts of the main points of history during the Holocaust. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read historical fiction or about the Holocaust. Also I would recommend it to people who like short descriptive stories.

American Born Chinese

The book American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang is a graphic novel made up of three different stories. The characters in each story all have the same struggles: fitting in and facing racial struggles and stereotypes. The first story is the "Monkey King" which resembles a Chinese folk tale about a monkey who is not accepted into the immortal ranks of heaven just because he is a monkey. The second story is about a Chinese American boy named Jin Wang, who has moved from San Francisco's Chinatown to a mostly white suburb and school. Jin Wang's main struggles are that people stereotype him because he's Chinese, and he has trouble fitting in. The third story is about an all American boy named Danny, who has a Chinese cousin named Chin-Kee who visits him every year. Danny is so embarrassed by Chin-Kee because he fits all the unpopular stereotypes of Chinese people. At the end of the book each character's story overlaps and they meet each other. During this part they help each other to start resolving their struggles with accepting who they are.


A connection I can make to this book is I have seen kids react in racist ways to an another kids appearance, and their accent. In this book this happens to Jin Wang at school. I have seen people confused about their identity because of racial comments said to them.


I would not recommend this book to someone who likes a more straight-forward storyline, because this book can get confusing at times. However, I would recommend it to someone who likes a complex and rich graphic novel.

A Work In Progress - Isabel Flores

                      Connor Franta is a youtuber who is close to 5 million subscribers. He recently wrote a book called a Work in Progress, and after waiting in like a 2 hour line me and Faye got to meet him. In his book he described his child hood. Connor grew up La Crosse, Wisconsin with 3 other siblings. He talks about his connection with his siblings. He also talked about things he did in his childhood like how the YMCA was his second home and his experience with being a competitive swimmer for quite a while. Yes, you could find this info online it was better to hear the man who lived that childhood talk about his childhood. In his book he also talks about the many struggles he faced in the recent years. For example, he came out as gay on his you tube channel in January and his struggles with body image and finding himself and accepting himself for who he is. Connor inculdes a bunch of photos that he has taken in his book which were all very pretty to look at. And a bunch of tumblr quotes that he probably came up with.

                    This book connects with the real life of everyone. We all face struggles in our life. And I know for me and probably other people you could see a celebrity as perfect but we forget sometimes that their real people too and they have faced challenges too. This book also connects to all the people who feel like they aren't accepted into society. People who feel like they don't know who they are or that their afraid to show their true self. Personally I didn't connect with this book. Connor Franta is my favorite youtuber and I wanted to read his book Overall it was a very good book. If you want to watch his videos his youtube link is https://www.youtube.com/user/ConnorFranta

                   

The Selection- Ruby

Summary

The Selection is a dystopian future book about a girl named America Singer, a young, independent, and strong-willed teen who lives a relatively normal life in her society. Her country, Illéa, is divided into castes from one to eight. The lower your caste, the worse your job, and the poorer you are. America is a five, the caste made up of artists and musicians. America’s life changes when she is chosen to participate in the selection: a competition between 35 girls to win prince Maxon's hand in marriage and the crown. She arrives at the palace greeted by luxury a five rarely sees. While the prince is not the cold, rigid snob she expected him to be, she can’t bring herself to seriously compete for him because she wants to be with Aspen Leger, a six she had a secret love affair with back home. As the book goes on she begins to have feelings for Maxon, and considers the possibility of staying with him. Just as things are getting started between them a new draft of soldiers arrives at the palace and one of these soldiers is none other than Aspen Leger himself. To make this situation even more completed the castle is attacked twice by a mysterious group of rebels. The book ends with America in the middle of  this confusing situation.

Connection

I made a connection between The Selection and The Hunger Games because both competitions are broadcasted for people’s entertainment. Both contests are used by the government to ensure their hold on power. Another connection I made is between The Selection and the real world. In The Selection, while prince Maxon can only marry one of the thirty five girls it is totally okay for him to simultaneously have affairs with several of them at once. However if one of the girls is discovered to be in multiple relationships, prince Maxon is expected to put them to death. This reminds me of polygamy (the practice or custom of having more than one spouse, especially wife, at one time). This is a tradition practiced in many African countries and is also a part of early Mormon beliefs. This is an issue that the characters struggle with in The Selection and an ongoing topic today with international human rights and women's rights organizations. 

Recommendations

I would recommend this book to people who like the dystopian future genre. While I could have done with a little more resistance from the characters against the selection (in my opinion one of the most corrupt and twisted ideas in the book), this is a dystopian future book with all the violence and twists a book of that nature entails. I would also recommend this book to people who like romance novels. It is a big part of the book while it wasn't my favorite aspect.  People who read this book should be okay with books that move at a slow pace, especially between main events. Readers who want lots of action should look elsewhere. To anyone else I’d say this book is a worthwhile read.

Yankees vs. Red Sox: The Great Rivalry book report

           The rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees has lasted over 100 years, and still continues today. If you don't know, the Red Sox and the Yankees are baseball teams that play professionally in the MLB, which stands for Major League Baseball. But the rivalry is not all about the teams, it is also about the two different cities, the media, baseball fields, and the fans. This book covers every important moment in the history of the rivalry between these two teams and milestones in each of the teams long history.
           I really enjoyed this book because of my love of baseball and especially my love of the Yankees. Even if you don't know much about baseball or the rivalry, you can still understand this book because the authors, Harvey and Frederic Frommer both explain the rivalry well. Also, the way each chapter was formed really kept me interested in the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who thinks it sounds interesting. Even if you are a Red Sox fan you should read it because it isn't biased towards any team.

Looking for Alaska- Ruby Trujillo

Summary

The book Looking for Alaska by John Green is split into two sections, Before and After. It’s structured like a mountain: the Before section is the slope up, the main event at the end of the Before section is the peak, and the After section is the slope down. In the Before section a boy named Miles leaves his “minor” life in Florida to attend Culver Creek Preparatory School, a boarding school in Birmingham, Alabama. At the Creek he meets Alaska, Takumi, and Chip. They become close friends, and teach Miles the culture of the school, which revolves around smoking, drinking, and pranking. On one particular occasion they pull a prank on a group of students known as the Weekday Warriors. While they are hiding out after the prank Miles and his friends discover that Alaska’s mom died right in front of her from an aneurysm, and she didn’t call an ambulance.  This explains why Alaska is so impulsive and can’t keep still; when her mother was dying she did nothing, so now she feels like she has to do everything. At the climax of the book, right before the After section, Alaska and Chip are drinking while Miles watches. Alaska runs out to take a call from her boyfriend. She comes back crying and screaming that she needs to go, and although she is heavily intoxicated, Miles and Chip agree to distract the school dean while she drives away from campus. The next day they find out that she died in a car crash.

The After section explores the consequences of Alaska’s death. Miles and Chip commiserate over their guilt for letting her go. They begin to fail classes due to their grief, and they trying to figure out what happened that night. Was it a suicide? If not, where was she going and what made her leave?  Finally, Chip, Miles, and Takumi pull off a final prank in honor of Alaska.  At the end of the book they all come to terms with their loss and the role they played in it, and move forward in their lives. 

Connection

In looking for Alaska Miles does things like smoke and drink because his friends do them. Miles says to the reader that he buys cigarettes for him and Chip because it keeps Chip from making fun of him for being a “rich kid”. This reminds me a lot of instances when peer pressure affects people. A connection I made to my life was when my sister was hit by a friend of hers because another kid (who he wanted to be friends with) was also mean to her. The book does address that a little bit but, but it is mostly left for the reader to think about.

Recommendations

I would suggest that people read this along with another John Green book because it is his first novel, and in my opinion his later books are better and more accurately represent him as an author. Having said this, I would highly recommend this book to people who enjoy complex, changing, and intriguing characters. I would also recommend this book to people who like suspenseful books.  In the Before section, Green titles his chapters “186 days before,”  or “83 days before,” or “2 days before,” and so on. I was constantly wondering “What is this big event that the entire book revolves around?” I highly recommend this book as a great young adult read.

Drama- Nina Weinstock

Drama by Raina Telgemeier

   Drama is about a girl in middle school named Callie who has a passion for acting and musicals. Although she doesn't have the skills for it she decides to work behind the scenes as stage crew's set design. She starts off with her friends Greg and his brother Matt. Liz his basically her BFF. Callie has a crush on Greg but Matt likes Callie. After Greg kisses Callie Matt gets mad at them both and the group of friends starts to drift apart. After Callie gets her roll as set design in her school play she meets two twins names Jessie and Justin. Justin is gay and Jessie is the only person that knows except for Callie. They both want to try out as characters in the musical but Jessie is too afraid and ends up working on behind the scenes with Callie. Callie soon develops a crush on both of the twins but none of them really think of her in a romantic way.
   This book really connects to the struggles of middle school and everyone trying to figure out who they are inside as apposed to who they are on the out side.This book captures the pro's and the con's of middle school. For example it captures the reality of what a crush feels like and the wonder that lays behind it like wondering if they like you back or not and the mood swings and friendships and break ups and the craziness that goes on back stage in the final days of rehearsing a production.
   I would recommend this book to teens, because like I said the book does capture a lot of middle school's pro's and con's. And looking at someone else's experience and knowing that their reality and ours is so similar.