The Seer and The Sword

Princess Torina's father King Kareed has conquered an extremely peaceful neighboring kingdom of Bellanda and gives her two gifts:a beautiful crystal and the kingdom's prince, Landen, as a slave. Gasing into the crystal, Torina can view the past, present, or future, except her own. Landen she frees and becomes friends with.When Kareed is threatened and then murdered, Landen is a prime suspect. Torina knows what happened , but her mother's life is at stake so she can't tell. Torina and Landen can only uncover the truth together, but neither knows the other lives.

SOL #6

It is July 29, 2012. I am in the DU sports camp (which I hate) and waiting for the day to be over. I also wait for Tuesday (it is Friday today). On Tuesday a pure-blooded Golden Retriever puppy named Lola will arrive at our house. Our family has agreed that it's time to get a dog. This year our cousin Jacob has come all the way from San Diego to act as our  manny. He picks us up and we head to the car.He tells us our parents have "news" for us concerning Lola. When we get home, we hear that Lola is staying in the state she was coming from (????????), but we could head over to Petco and some dogs were coming from Joplin, Missouri, courtesy of Golden Retriever Freedom Rescue, and we could pick between two. I still had tears in my eyes about Lola.
     An hour later, we stand in front of Petco, waiting. I see the van pull up and open. I look at a dog inside, named Bridget. We have to choose between her and another dog, named Brianna, who they think is her sister (and could actually be). We spend a long time with each, and at the end decide on Brianna. We buy things like a collar, a bed, and food for her. On the way home, we elect to change Brianna's name. I finally bring up the name Sunset, since that's the color of her coat. We agree on that.
     It is December 15, 2014. I type a story into a computer. Sunset is curled up like a ball by my ladder. She walks up and exits my room. My mom croons,"Sunset, good girl! Good giir-errl,"and gires her a kiss. I smile inside as I hear her collar jangle.

This below looks just like Sunset, but isn't actually her. I think.  The code book for the next sol is a=ab=bc=cd=de=ef=fg=gh=hi=ij=jk=kl=lm=mn=no=op=pq=qr=r s=st=tu=uv=vw=wx=xy=yz=z

I Am Malala

By Patricia McCormick and Malala Yousafzai
17 year old Malala Yousafzai won this year's Nobel Peace Prize.But she started out as an ordinary girl with kind and supportive parents, friendship issues, and fear of the Taliban, and is still a girl  with kind and supportive parents, friendship issues, and fear of the Taliban.  But she isn't ordinary at all. Malala was an advocate for shool for girls. And she was shot in the head and survived.
My favorite character was Malala because she wasn't afraid to stand up for what she believed in.

SOL #5

What was unfair last weekend:

1. Dad didn't make enough delicious muffins for breakfast.
2. Robin Hood: Men in Tights was really inappropriate for an 11 year old.
3. I couldn't find my math assignment sheet.
4. My call about the math assignment was greeted with a message.
5. My assignment was in my folder after all.
6. I got sick.
7. I got sick.
8. I got sick.
9. I worked really hard on a picture I was too sick to turn in.
10. My BFF was watching Fellowship of the Ring for the first time with me and we didn't finish the movie.
    

Sol #4

   My mother, my brother Griffin, and I were going on a walk. It originally would just be Mom and me, but Griffin tagged along. I was leading the expedition, and Mom joked to Griff, "Follow the leader, or you might trip into a sinkhole or wander into a bog!" .  I actually did lead us into a bog. We tried to follow the road to get home. We ended up in an area of trees: somme living, some newly dead, some long-dead and fallen to make bridges on some of the areas we saw.  We came to a grove clear-cut by the beavers. There was a bunch of beaver chips lying around. Mom took some as a souvenir. Later that day, the fire in our old log-cabin stove was dying. Mom tried some chips and the fire went crazy.

     The next day, Mom announced an expedition: Anyone who wanted would follow our path and collect more beaver chips. Things went wrong from the start. Everyone on the expedition seemed to think they were in charge. First, Grandpa suggested his own path into the huge swamp. Then Grandma made people halt for pictures often. We didn't find the grove. An hour and a half in, we turned back. Mom and her brother-in-law Uncle Tim kept going an finally returned with beaver chips.

Legend

     Daniel Altan "Day" Wing and June Iparis believe that they're adversaries. In the past , June admired Day's brave feats, but scorned them out loud, as he was the most wanted criminal in her country. Day wishes he'd been a rich military progity , instead of a poor boy who could only keep his family alive through illegal activity. But that changes when June's fatherly older brother Metias is found murdered. Day was near the crime scene a minute earlier, and owned a knife that had pierced his heart. June is sent on a mission to find Day and avenge her brother's death. Neither of them know just what they're involved in. It certainly isn't another murder mystery for June or another crime to hide from for Day.

    My favorite character is June.

SOL #3

     We had just landed in Maui. We drove to our room that we were renting in a  house that was comprised of  5 or 6 small houses (do you know a word for this????). Before we even settled in,  Griffin and I wanted to go to the beach. we walked around, and even got to the city of Lahaina, but no beach. We walked back, disappointed. Mom said there would be other times we could go.
     "But it says, 'Beach Access'!" I complained. We decided that if we couldn't get to the beach, the least we could do was get to the beautiful meadow with hibiscus flowers and a paved walkway behind our _____(place were we were staying). We found the entrance quickly and hurried inside.
      I ran to the back of the field. There, another surprise greeted us: the concrete path went on. We followed it past a rock-strewn area with DO NOT ENTER signs on either side of the pavement, into a parking lot, and onto what appeared  to be a long, downward-sloped grassy strip we later nicknamed The Long Lawn.  Guess what was at the bottom! We were so excited to FINALLY find it. We played in the surf as the sun came down.

Lord of the Flies

      A plane full of boys crashes on a desert island. A boy named Ralph blows a conch shell to bring the others together and is voted chief. A fierce adversarie of his is named Jack Merridew, and is the leader of the choir boys.   The boys light a fire on a mountain so that it's smoke will attract ships, but the choir, who was in charge of keeping it stocked, went hunting just as a ship appeared. Many other boys also land: moral "Piggy", quiet Simon, and twins Sam and Eric are a few of the boys that crash. But when the rumor of a "beast" gets out amng the younger boys, Ralph represents the voice of reason.

Slice of Life #2

I hear shouts of "They're putting it together! They're putting it together!" Curious, I walk towards the cafeteria. I immediately see Sophie in her navy coat, gazing out at the middle. I walk in that direction and see an amazing sight spread out before my eyes. A giant  Sierpinski triangle made completely out of candy corn. I reach Sophie and we walk to the nearby head point.
     "Look," I say and kneel down. I point at one piece. "This little candy corn is leading it all."
      I stand up and walk to a different place.
      "It's so- well- sweet; and not just figuratively."
      Joel  walks by. "Do you like it?"

      "It's ... big." I say. My jaw is so wide open it's hard to get any words out at all. I am amazed.

Mockingjay

 Katniss Everdeen has been through a lot: two hunger games, destroying an arena while being electrocuted, hearing the news of Peeta Mellark's capture... The list goes on and on. But when she ses a Capitol propo with Peeta, she feels like a game of  Crazy Cat, a game her family plays with the rest of District 13and their ugly cat, Buttercup.  She thinks seeing Peeta dead would be better than seeing him in the Capitol. So she decides to get him out. But when he's rescued, Peeta has been tortured so his memories of Katniss have been warped. Katniss remembers her first Hunger Games, distrusting Peeta's motives then pretending to be madly in love with him, then actually falling in love during her second games. Now the roles are reversed. Suddenly Katniss feels like more is at stake than the rebellion/revolution war and her own life.

Slice of Life #1

We walked into a model home called The Dorado. Joel talked a bit with the guy that was in charge there. He was mentioning the other houses and slipped into the furniture. I wasn't paying much attention.  I heard the other guy say," Oh yeah. The island's over there." I walked over to a room and sketched a  lamp. Then I met up with Selah and Joel in the basement. I said, "I think we should visit The Island next." I had really wanted to find a tropical model home. Selah agreed. I met up with the man as we were walking out and asked where The Island was. He started talking about the architecture of the house. It turned out he had meant the kitchen island! Strangely enough, the next house we visited, The Cimarron, was designed in tropical style.

The Nazi Hunters

       When you think "evil people in Holocaust," you think," Adolf Hitler". But Hitler wasn't the only war criminal in charge of killing 6 million Jews ( and about 5 million others, though the antagonist of the book just killed Jews), a man named Adolf Eichmann, who was in charge of German (and French, Italian, Soviet, ect) Jews, but disappeared after the war. Fifteen years later, the  daughter of a Argentine Holocaust survivor dates a boy named Nick Eichmann, who claims his father was a high-ranking SS official ( Adolf Eichmann's oldest son was named Nicholas). The hunt to bring Eichmann to trial in Jerusalem begins.

My book group is Lord of the Flies.



The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell

                                                                    By Chris Colfer
  Alex and Conner Bailey are twins, which is one of the only things alike about them. Alex is the best student in literature class, Conner sleeps through literature class. Alex wants to explore what might not even exist, Conner is convinced Earth is all there is. For their birthday, their grandmother gives Alex an old book that sometimes glows and hums. When it does that, it acts like a trapdoor for anything dropped in it. Conner and Alex manage to get sucked into the book and find themselves in another world, The Land Of Stories, where all original Brothers Grimm fairy tails are real. They look for a way out, and find an old journal belonging to a man who "found love on a distant word" and found a spell to return there. They then embark on the greatest scavenger hunt of their lives for components to a spell that, when united, will grant one wish to whoever unites them, but the spell can only be done twice and was successfully done once before.

House of Ivy and Sorrow

     Being a witch, Josephine Hemlock has seen her share of strange things in the seventeen years  she's been alive. But when a strange man appears outside her front door, asking for her dead mother, Jo realises that this situation is even out-of-the-ordinary for her. Soon, she ends up with her best friends in the know, her long-lost father found, and more clues on how her mother really met her end. But when she and her grandmother figure out who might be responsible, they are in greater danger than they feared.

The Mark of the Dragonfly

      Piper lives in Scrap Town 16-a place where broken objects from a parallel world land. Her father died when she was younger, poisoned by the smoke in a factory belonging to Aron, king of the Dragonfly Territories. Her best friend Micah has a crazy idea- hide under shelter, wait until the storm is over, then get the first pick. As she hustles to save Micah, she sees a caravan wrecked by a gigantic meteor. Inside it, she finds a small girl with a dragonfly tatoo that means she's protected by Aron. When she touches the girl, she realises she's breathing...

     Anna has no memory. The only clues to her past are flashbacks of pain and a tatoo on her arm. She and an older girl who she saw making stew when she woke up plan to stow away on the 401, a train bound for Noveen, the capitol of the Dragonfly Territories. The day of their departure, a strange man shows up, the sight of whom brings back many feelings of pain for Anna. The walk to the 401 turns out to be a run...

     Gee is a chamelin, a shapeshifter with two forms: a green-eyed boy of thirteen, and a huge monster with leathery wings and green eyes. He's been the head of security on the 401since he was seven or eight, and he's sure that the two girls he found mean trouble: the ten or eleven year old with the mark of the Dragonfly, and the scrapper his age who claims to be her protecter, although there might be something cute about her...

Eleanor and Park

           Many people spend years dating to find the right one person. But what if you meet them in high school?
    
           Eleanor just moved to Omaha. Within minutes of her arrival, she becomes the class fat girl. She has been gone for a year because her stepfather kicked her out. He calls her names and regularaly abuses her, her mother, and her four younger siblings. Her life is comepletely misreble. And then there's this weird Asian kid who sits next to her on the bus...

     Park has lived in Omaha all his life. His mother is Vietnamese. His father is often upset with himfor not being able to parellel park a "stick". He is fairly popular. He's average just about everything, actually. Then, on the first morning of high school, a weird chubby girl with red hair fills the seat next to him...

     Eleanor and Park know that first love rarely lasts, but that doesn't stop them from trying.
This book contains mature topics and language.

Uglies

       Tally Youngblood has always wanted to be pretty.  In her world, when you’re 16, you get “The operation” which turns you from a revolting “ugly” into a stunningly gorgeous “pretty”. But a few nights before her operation, her friend Shay decides she doesn’t want to be pretty and runs away. Right before her operation, the government tells Tally that she must find Shay or never turn pretty. They claim it’s for Shay’s own aid. Tally sets forth on a dangerous mission to find Shay, changing her world forever.

The Shadow Throne

The Shadow Throne by Jennifer A. Nielson Realistic Fiction
When fourteen-year-old King Jaron of Carthya learns of his friend Imogen's kidnapping, he is eager to set out on a dangerous rescue mission. But this time, he cannot. A war is brewing. Avenia, Carthya's longtime enemy, leads the attack, followed by Gelyn and Mendelwal. After a feigned argument with one of his best friends, Roden, also the captain of his guard, his armies are scattered. Armed with his wits and kleptomaniac tendency, his only hope is to stay one (or two or three or four) step ahead of the game. But when a horrible tragedy messes up his plan to spring Imogen from the camp where she is being held, he'll need more than that to get back on his feet and win the war.

The next books I want to read are:

• Uglies
• Eleanor & Park
• My Mother the Cheerleader

Flora And Ulysses

                                      

                                                           

By Kate DiCamillo
      When a squirrel is vaccumed up, he becomes a superhero. Ulysses is a squirrel who is always hungry. Flora is a cynic with divorced parents. Flora's mom thinks Ulysses is diseased and wants Flora's dad to kill him. This is news to Flora. To Ulysses, well--someone's always wanted him dead. They go on an adventure to stop Flora's dad from killing Ulysses, including fast-food restaurant workers, oversized donuts, and philosophers from Blundermeecan. But who knows what lengths Flora's mom might go to to have Ulysses dead...

The Hunger Games

     To save her younger sister's life, sixteen-year old Katniss Everdeen volunteers for the Hunger Games, a brutal fight to the death against 23 other twelve to eighteen year olds for the entertainment of the Capitol. She knows her sister Prim has too kind a heart and no fighting skills to talk about, but Katniss illegaly practices archery and might just have a fighting chance.She is whisked away to the Capitol, trained to fight against a boy who throws javelins, a girl precise with throwing knives, a tall boy who is strong enough to break a neck in a flash, a girl so sneaky she can lie undetected for weeks, a boy who lugs around rocks as a weapon, a small girl who fights with a homemade slingshot and can swing around trees without touching the ground, and, strangest of all, a boy  who saved her life four years before.