I Can't Read Boys!

Books, books, so many books, just floating around in my life, yet not a single one is good enough to push me to read it until the end, or make it to my “ Top 20 Best Books” list. All of these books are too slow and just not my “cup of tea”. I’m guessing you’re wondering what these “so, so” books I’m talking about are. Well, if you were, then they are Its Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini, about a boy named Craig who is depressed, Youth in Revolt by C.D Payne, about a teenage boy writing a diary about his average life  and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, about a young boy clockmaker who lives on his own. The Invention of Hugo Cabret was my most recent discovery, and it seems as though it’s going to turn out just like Its Kind of a Funny Story and Youth in Revolt: good in the beginning, but then just plain boring. I guess I’m not the type of person who is into teenage boy novels. In my opinion, it’s because I can’t relate to them, and if you can’t relate you can’t make any connections. Connection is important, because if you can’t connect to something, it becomes unimportant to you.

Connection, to me is, something that makes you jump when you encounter something that reminds you of an event of your past. If you can connect with a book, you understand the purpose of characters actions and thoughts because you’ve felt the same way before. However, when the character is dealing with something you have not dealt with before, it’s harder to understand the characters logic, and the book becomes boring to you, making your reading experience harder. All three of the books, Its Kind of a Funny Story, Youth in Revolt and The Invention of Hugo Cabret , are all books about teenage boys, which are to me, the most complicated thing in the world, so I guess that’s why all these books are not appealing to me. However, I did hear great comments about them, from girls! So is it just me being a picky reader, or is teenage boy novels just really not my genre? Do you need to connect to a book to like it? Or are you picky reader? What do you look for in a book?

Weeping Willow

Moving is a hard thing for most people and even though it takes a couple of months, you end up feeling somewhat attached to your house, and start calling it a home. In my lifetime, I have moved 6 times, so you would think I would have gotten used to the whole thing of letting go of your home. I thought so too, until we moved from my last house, 33 Willow Place. Out of the 6 times that I had moved, I had lived a Willow Place the longest.

            

I thought Willow Place was perfect place to live.  It had everything from nice big square rooms, to windows everywhere I turned and even a tree house in my back yard that I would scramble off of, onto the maple tree standing next to it. I guess it was an easy way out to say I climbed to the top of a tree. On top of it all, I lived in the best neighborhood you could imagine. There were trees that bloomed big, pink flowers while I ran to the ice cream parlor to get my vanilla ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. It was like being in a movie. Suddenly, my mom had this crazy idea that we had to “downsize” since my brother had moved out. Okay… I admit, a four-story house was a little big for three people, but I couldn’t tell my mom that, or it would be certain that we would start house hunting immediately. In the end, it wouldn’t have mattered what I thought about moving, my mom had made up her mind. We were moving to a duplex apartment, on Green Place. Green Place didn’t sound as friendly as Willow Place, it sounded more… business like, to me. I acted like a teenager and said that I couldn’t care less, but that was definitely not the case.

My mom never found out how I felt, until recently, so I dealt with my situation on my own. Even though I wanted to, I couldn’t pretend I didn’t care about moving out of Willow Place forever, so I began writing up a plan to conquer my fear of leaving my beloved home. As soon as I moved into my new apartment, I would pretend I was back at my old house, by doing things I used to do in my old house, like climbing trees in my back yard, or crawling into a corner with a flashlight to read Archie Comics, and slowly, but surely, my apartment started feeling like a home.

            

60 Green Place, will never, ever compare to 33 Willow Place, but with a little bit of imagination, it can come close, and imagination helped me get passed how upset I was over moving.

Past Poems, Present Thoughts

This is another poem that I found from last year in 7th grade. I thought that maybe posting a new poem every week would help make my blog stronger. I chose this poem this week, because it talks about one of my favorite places in the world, and once again incorporates my grandfather who died from Lung Cancer. However, I am in a lighter mood in this poem then in the poem I posted on my blog last week about my grandfathers death, Little Blue Boat, because whenever I think of Place de Vosges, I lighten up, and I know my grandpa does too, wherever he is.  Can you guys figure out what this special place of mine is? Can you find my deceased grandpa in the poem?

Place des Vosges

I think of you

In this place too

I think of him

And peace within

I think of her

When everything else

Is just a blur

I would want to fly

Very

Very

High

To reach this place

Where I can think

And not sink

Into the deaths

Of the robotic cycle

We

Call

Life

Got Some Info In 'Em Picture Books

Recently, my class and I kicked off into a new writing unit in ELA (English Language Arts), picture books! For the next few weeks, we were going to be drafting picture books that we would later on read to young kids at an elementary school. However, before we started drafting, we had to research on our topic. My topic was dolphins, and I did much research on them, so here is a little overview on how my research experience went. Enjoy!

After I had seen the movie The Cove by Ric O’Barry, I thought I knew everything there was to know about dolphins being slaughtered and treated unfairly. However, after reading two articles, and beginning to follow a blog about the topic, I found out there was so much more to dolphin treatment than what I already knew. Both articles were quite short, but buried with information and one was bias, the other just there to get the information out to the audience, so I got to see points of view, making me feel different things. Articles that load you with information and make you think and feel a certain way, are a success, making my research on the topic of dolphins, and the way they’re being treated, a breeze.

        

The first article that I found, was an overview of dolphins, on the website wikipedia. It was great that I found this article, because it gave me just one little paragraph on every topic about dolphins. Topics like, behavior of dolphins, popular culture, and human threats. Topics like these will help a lot when I write my picture book because I can incorporate what I learned in the article, in my story and characters. I loved this article because it taught me so much about dolphins and it wasn’t bias, it was just there for people like me who want to know everything there is to know about dolphins and dolphin treatment.

        

My second article, was even shorter and much more bias than the first one. It only talked about the evil of slaughtering dolphins, and most obviously wanted us to help them free dolphins. Even though I am completely for saving dolphins it would have been nice to see a different perspective on the topic, so I could incorporate that in my article. In my picture book, I want to show both sides of the story on dolphin treatment and help my audience decide for themselves what they want to do about the issue. It’s going to be hard if neither one of the articles that I found would give the other side of the story! The article was great, and gave me much information about people helping and what we can do to save dolphins today, but trying to make me feel a certain way kind of frustrated me.

My whole research process was fantastic. Even though sometimes, I got angered with the authors of the article, I still found out a lot and that is what counts. I can always do more research on the topic, but at least now my knowledge on what I will be writing about in my picture book has been expanded a tremendous amount.

Rock A Bye Boaty

I wrote this poem last year, in 7th grade, and I wanted to put it on my blog because this poem was about the struggles my grandpa faced when he was fighting Lung Cancer, and what it was like for me to loose him. However, just some back-round information about my grandpa's sickness: he had Lung Cancer from smoking and everyone thought his death was near, but on April Fool's we found out his Lung Cancer was gone, finite. Turns out god was playing on April Fool's joke on us because a few month's later it came back and he died, so our worries, and his sickness were always rocking back and forth and jumping up and down, scared for the next news.

Little Blue Boat

The Little Blue Boat

Chimes

Then sways

The Little Blue Boat

Swims

And swifts

The Little Blue Boat

Pulls

And Turns

The Little Blue Boat

Pushes

And

Struggles

That Little Blue Boat

Slips

And sinks

Deep

Beneath

Our souls

We Hit the Smooth and the Rough

Dear readers,

In the past 7 weeks, Amanda, Janee and I have gone through many difficult tasks to have our final independent writing piece finished, but in the end I am proud of the work we have accomplished. With both smooth spots and rough spots, all three of us were able to grow immensely in our knowledge of independent writing, and we’re happy with what we ended up with so I would call our first independent writing cycle a success!

Right away, Amanda, Janee and I all agreed that we wanted to write a mystery on something ridiculous, but with the crazy minds all three of us have, that wasn’t too hard. However, since we were focused on writing a mystery, we had to make sure that everything fit and that we gave the reader a little bit of a clue but not to much information and that was very difficult, but that was the best part, for me at least. The story that we ended up coming up with is so very exciting and I was always jumping up and down waiting to read it. I would some times imagine myself being sucked into the story, as though it was one of the world’s best mysteries (remember, my imagination) and that’s was I loved about working with two other people because we could cook up a great story that could almost make me want to pee my pants I wanted to read it so bad! I certainly hope our readers feel the same way!

That was my favorite part of the writing cycle but being in a group also had its rough spots. In the beginning we were all working very rapidly, and efficiently. Everything was going at a smooth pace. We would each write a chapter of the story on our ELA (English Language Art) blog every week.  Amanda, Janee and I all thought we were ahead in the writing process until we put all the chapters we had written together and nothing made sense! There were bits missing here and there and turns out Amanda and I had written our chapters on the same part of the story! We had all gotten what we were supposed to write in our chapters mixed up. With a ton of revision and editing to do, we started becoming lazy, goofing around and the work started piling up. Near the end, we had to rush to revise and edit our piece to hand it in time and it was definitely not as good as we would have wanted it to be, but we were excited to finally have it done and show it to you.

Working with my friends was certainly a blast, and I love the piece we have now, you definitely need to have the discipline to work in a group. In the next independent writing cycle, I think I’ll try it solo. How about about? Playing solitary like me with your writing?

Sincerely, Nina Attal

P.S Excerpts of our independent writing mystery is on my blog!

                 

Mistress Mary Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

Have you ever experienced a moment were you ask somebody what something is, and they are so completely and utterly shocked that you don't already know what it is? This seems to happen to me all the time. Then once I finally know all the details about this new, how should I say it? thing. I see it everywhere! One time my friend Sabrina mentioned the Kardashians, and my response was of course, "Who are the Kardashians?". Sabrina was immediately surprised and explained to me everything about the Kardashians. Now, I see the name Kardashian everywhere, and oh boy to I mean everywhere. The whole not knowing what something is then suddenly seeing is everywhere system, was how I found out about The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Ms. Robbins, my English Language Arts teacher, was showing us an example of an Appreciation (to later write an Appreciation our selves) and, this Appreciation was about the the book The Secret Garden. Naturally, I had never heard of such a book. Still, after reading the Appreciation of the book, I was not yet convinced, or even interested in Frances Hodgson Burnett's fiction. I had forgotten about the book until recently, when I saw the familiar title on Netflix Watch Instantly. I was intrigued by the cover, and thought it would be an interesting experiment to see the film. To my surprise, I loved the film The Secret Garden so much. It was full of beauty and brought up so many emotions in me. I immediately went to download the book on my iPad because I was way to much of a hurry to begin reading the book, instead of going out to buy it.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a fiction book about a sour, bratty girl named Mary Lennox. Mary Lennox was an unwanted child born in India, whose parents hid her away with her Ayah and got mostly always got what she wanted. People in her surroundings detested Mary and her behavior.  Mary mostly kept to herself because she had no one to play with and never showed any emotion, even after her parents died in a cholera, which was a disease, outbreak. With no one to take care of Mary in India, she was shipped off to live in Yorkshire with her Uncle Archibald Craven. Mary feels unloved and alone in her uncle's humongous house and she is forbidden in almost every room in the mansion. You know how kids are though, if you tell them not to do something, they'll do the exact opposite and go ahead and do it. That's exactly what Mary did.

The way Frances Hodgson Burnett writes fascinates me. She hooks you into the action of the story on page one, and I love that. I hate it when you have to wait 10 Chapters before the book actually gets interesting. She also tells the reader a load of information in just the first two chapters. I already know what most of the characters are like and why they are like that. I also know the events of the first 10 years of Mary Lennox's life. With this load, I should have a bunch of things to talk about, but the most interesting part to me so far in the first few chapters, was the song the kids in India used to sing about Mary to get her angry. The song went like this: Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, and marigolds all in a row. Why would the kids sing this song to her? I found it quite odd, and I keep asking myself if somewhere along the road of reading the book, we'll find out. After all, the book is called The Secret Garden and the song talks about mistress Mary, and how her garden grows. Oh boy, I'm eager to find out, I have to go and read!