5. Ella Minnow Pea

Ella Minnow Pea is about a girl, Ella, who lives on the Island of the maker of the famous pan-gram, The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. A pan-gram is a word with all the letters of the alphabet in it. One day, one of the letters falls off of a statue made in honor of the man, and instead of thinking that the statue needs a touch up, the government thinks that it is a message from the man, and bans the letter from the island. As more and more letters fall off, more letters get banned from being written, read, or spoken. Ella and her family try to find another pan-gram before everything gets banned, and they do. They make 'Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.' and save the island.
While this book is quite funny, especially near the end, the plot isn't very exciting. Also, the book is written as a series of letters to and from Ella and her cousin, and so the point of view gets confusing after a while. It would be a good book for people that like learning about the English language, but it isn't very exciting for people that like adventure books, i.e me.

May Book List Rankings

This month, I read:
Midnight City by J. Barton Mitchell
The Summer Pince by Alaya Dawn Johnson
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn
Struck By Lightning by Chris Colfer
Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris

I ranked them:
1. Struck by lightning
2. Unraveling
3. Midnight city
4. The summer prince
5. Ella Minnow Pea

I'll be posting why I ranked them as so later on.

#2 Scrawl

I like this book because it let's you into the mind of a bully. A lot of books that are written like this are from the perspective of the victim, so it gives the reader a different side of the story. In scrawl, a bully is forced to write in a journal about his life, and in doing so, he gradually let's his councillor into his mind. He comes from a poor house and has to survive high school somehow, so he bullies people. He slowly becomes a better person. I like this book because it's written like how a teenager would write it And it becomes more believable. It's like Perks of being a Wallflower But let's you into the mind of someone else. While talking about the characters own experiences, the author also talks about experiences most teens face, like peer pressure or being blamed for something you didn't do. It's relatable to teens. The reason it wasn't #1 is because there are many stories like it, books about a troubled teen. It doesn't have a lot of originality in it. But it's still a good book that I'd recommend to people.

#3 Blackwatch

This is the second book in the series, but you didn't have to read the first to understand this one. I haven't read the first book, but this one still made sense. Of course the beginning was confusing, but I understood it as I read. It was a very fast paced book, And I like that because I get bored when something drags on. It had a lot of  I didn't put this as #1 because it had a very dark theme. It is preference, But I don't really like reading creepy books all the time. I like reading creepy books around Halloween, but not near the summer. I liked it more than Between the Lines and Da Vinci Code because with them it didn't seem like the authors we're trying. Jenna Burtenshaw at least tried. She's Also good at describing what was happening. She didn't just say it, she made you feel like you we're there. That's why she got a higher ranking.

#4 Between the Lines

I put Between the Lines as 4 because even though it wasn't exactly the same as Jodi Picoult's usual books, it revolved around the same theme: love. I've read a few of her books, mostly cause I was bored, and they didn't entertain me, mostly because they all had the same plot: a girl is depressed or forced into something, and moves somewhere new, where she meets a guy who has his own problems, gets over her problems with his help, and eventually realizes she's in love with him. This book is a bit different in the tone, it's lighter, because Jodi Picoult wrote it with her daughter. Despite that, it's still kind of the same, the main character suffers from abandonment and uses the help of a guy  that she'll eventually fall in love with to get over her problems. I gets boring reading the same things over and over again. Another thing about this book is Jodi Picoult emphasizes too much on how much of a loser the girl is and how much the boy wants to escape. The story is kind of cute, But it's meant for people who like love stories and happy endings, not realists who don't. Also, something's don't add up in the story, like how Oliver doesn't know the simplest of things, yet knows a fire extinguisher. It's a story you could read to kids, if they had patience. I wouldn't recommend it to many people, because it's mainly fluff. It has some serious themes in it, But mostly it's fluff. I don't really like it cause I like books that revolve around things that make you think. This book is a good one for a bad day,  but it won't really captivate someone like me. So my rating was mainly on preference, but I can say that most people would agree with me that it isn't a serious piece of writing. Maybe people would like Jodi Picoult's books more if they weren't the same book with different names.

#5 Da Vinci Code

The reason I put Da Vinci Code as number five is because it is utter crap. Now normally I don't say that because of the effort put in by the author to make a book good, but Dan Brown obviously didn't put that in. He has no sources, the characters we're all lifeless, and he based most of it on religion, not actual facts. Most of the book was dumified cause apparently the topic is too complicated for us. He leads the reader through every single clue to an obvious conclusion that I guessed from the beginning . Maybe this book got famous because people felt like they know information about a top secret organization, or they felt like they solved something big, but I don't know why anybody would read a book that would have made a historian cry because of all the false facts. This book was probably meant to be a novel to read over the weekend and not really put thought into, but throughout the book, the feeling I got from it was repetitive and condescending. We shouldn't even call it a book, it's just a place where Dan Brown tells us about how much he knows about old art history. Well, he should do more research because most, if not all, of his facts are wrong. Him not adding a bibliography at the ending kind of hints at the fact that everything he wrote was BS. He's not good at writing either. Maybe if he had been I wouldn't be so rude to him, but he's not. Most of his chapters end in cliffhangers, to the point where you kind of expect them. And all the dumbifying made the book seem stupid and lifeless. I looked at some of his other books, well the discriptions, And they all have the same plot.  Not to mention the characters. They were so oblivious that it was funny. They shouldn't be experts at everything, and it's not coincidental if the main character is an expert at everything needed to solve the case. If I, a fifteen year old high school student, know more than all the adult characters in this book, who are all experts at apparently everything, that's not good. So, all in all Da Vinci Code is not a book I would recommend. It's lifeless, boring, and dumbed down. To the people who called it 'action packed' and 'a must read thriller', you need to read some actual books. Maybe they were the same people who reviewed Twilight.

April book rankings

These are the rankings for the books I read this month:

1. Insignia

2. Scrawl

3. Blackwatch

4. Between the lines

5. Da Vinci Code

I'll be writing why I had these rankings in the next few posts.

Ted Talk with Will Richardson: Response

In this Ted Talk, Will Richardson talks about how schools are stopping the independence of classes, and making them all uniform. This stops students from learning as well. Instead of being a place for students to grow learning what they want, school is being turned into a test prep. Because of this, school becomes not only uninteresting, but it also stops the individual growth of students.
I agree, classes should be used to let students learn what they actually want and will use in life, instead of being the same exact thing that everyone else learns. Lets say a student wants to be an English teacher, how will calculus help him/her? Or if a student wants to be a Doctor, how will learning French help him/her if he/she is going to stay in America all his/her life?
My point is that schools should try to make students want to learn the subject, they shouldn't all be boring and the same. Or else kids just memorize the information for the test, and then forget it. Classes that involve the student, and that are interesting, make kids learn better. Plus, not all kids learn the same. What good would giving kids the information via the same method be if they all learn differently?

April Book List

For April, The books I'll be reading are:

Scrawl by Mark Shulman
Blackwatch by Jenna Burtenshaw
Insignia by S.J. Kincaid
Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Between the lines by Jodi Picoult


I'll be reading these during the week and then I'll post my rankings and why.

#1: Ripper

by Stephan Petrucha

The Ripper takes place in the late 19th century, around the time of Jack the Ripper. Carver Young is an orphan who loves solving mysteries and wants to be a detective. He eventually is adopted by Detective Hawking and starts to look for his real dad. But while doing that, he gets caught in the search for Jack the Ripper, who has come to New York. Carver and  his friend from the orphanage start trying to solve the case too. But what if Jack is not who Carver expects? I liked this book because the author really took you back to the 1890s and it was easy to visualize everything because of the authors attention to detail. I also like the case of Jack the Ripper and how much research was done for this book. My favorite character was Carver because he was relatable in the sense that he was thrown into new experiences without much preparation and had to get through them just like we are, but our experiences are a lot different than Cravers.

#2: Ashes

by Ilsa Bick

Alex is a teenager with a brain tumor. Her parents are dead and she lives with here aunt in Chicago. Despite all the medical treatments administered on her, the tumor isn't going away and she's going to die. So she runs away. She runs to a forest where she and her dad used to camp. There she meets an old man , his dog, and his granddaughter, Ellie, who is an 8 year old brat. After she storms off because of a temper tantrum, a huge zap happens, at least that's how Alex described it. After everything settles down, Ellie returns back and they find out that the old man is dead. They have to stick together after that. Alex realizes the tumor is, for the moment, gone, and she has a super ability with smell. She can smell peoples emotions and such. While walking through the forest, they stumble upon zombies. They run away after that. Later, when they both almost die from wild dogs and a zombie, a boy named Tom saves them and takes them to his camp. After that, it's the three of them. They decide to go North to Minnesota but on the way they're robbed. The robbers also take their truck, Ellie, and her dog after shooting Tom on his thigh. After that, Tom is weaker and Alex has to take care of them both. But the wound gets infected and she has to go ahead to a town to find help. She eventually does, but when they return Tom is gone, kidnapped or murdered. Alex has to return to the town, and live there peacefully, but she doesn't like it. She gets closer to Chris, a boy there, but can't forget Tom. After a while, she runs away from the town, but she finds something worse. Which I shall not tell you or else I'll be spoiling too much. I liked this book because despite being in an apocalyptic world where zombies are taking over and the survivors are trying their hardest to survive, she still has some of the same problems as us, annoying kids(Ellie), confused feelings for boys(Tom and Chris), and rebelling against the leaders(the town of Rule). Connecting with a character helps understand the book better and connect with the character. It's also just a good book, the way it's written helps readers imagine everything that's happening. 

#3: Stick

by Andrew Smith

Stark is a boy who was born with one ear. His other ear is squashed up against his head. Not only that, but he's very lanky, earning him the nickname Stick. His parents abuse him and his brother, Bosten, but that's what they're used to. That's their normal. They're really close, and they have a bond between them that doesn't break. When Stick finds out Bosten is gay, he doesn't really mind, but a few weeks later when his dad finds out, it becomes a big deal. Bosten runs away, and Stick leaves to find him. This book is a bit like The Perks of being a Wallflower in the fact that Stick and Charlie learn about what's considered normal. They start off as really shy kids, Charlie because that's his nature and Stick because he's self conscious about his ear. But slowly they start to grow up, physically and mentally. Stick gets a crush on his best friend, Emily, and Charlie starts liking Sam. They learn from their crushes. They both have problems in their lives; Stick is abused by his family and Charlie has PTSD from being molested as a child. Yet they still manage to overcome the obstacles in their path. Stick is a good book for people to realize that we're not all the same, and that people everyday get subjected to abuse and yet we still have to move on. I liked it because, like Rage, it faced problems in out world head on.

#4: Rage

by Jackie Kessler

If you're looking for a nice, funny book that takes your mind off your problems, this book isn't for you. It's about a girl, Missy, who is a cutter. She's not goth or emo, she just deals with her problems like that. One day death knocks on her door, gives her a package,and tells her she might cut too deep and die someday. So she tries to stop. But when she gets humiliated in front of everyone in her school by her ex, she goes home and cuts again, accidently going too deep, just like death warned her might happen. While she's dying, Death returns and gives her two options: either she could die, or she could open the package he gave her. She opens it to find a beautiful sword and becomes one of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, War. Throughout the book, she struggles with her cutting habit. The author doesn't sugarcoat anything, and tells the readers about cutting, not just that it's bad, but why people do it. This is her second book in her series, the first of which is Hunger, which deals with eating disorders. I think that not only does the author tell us about problems that teenagers face through this series, but she tells it in a creative way. She made up a whole world for the main characters of both books to grow and face their problems head on. Although it is a great book, not many people want to face problems in the world, so it doesn't get as many reads. But I'd reccomend it to people going through problems like cutting, so that they can see that they can stop cutting. 

#5: Immortal Lycanthropes

by Hal Johnson

This book is a great book if you really like fantasy books. It doesn't really have a plot, to tell you the truth, but it takes you through the journey of Myron, a boy who was disfigured in an accident that he doesn't remember at all. It starts off with a comment on human nature "A shameful fact about humanity is that some people can be so ugly that no one will be friends with them. It is shameful that humans can be so cruel, and it is shameful that humans can be so ugly." It connects with him because he's so ugly, no one likes him. He is a lycanthrope, and throughout the whole book he's trying to figure out what animal he is. He has absolutely no recollection of his past. The authors imagination is wonderful, and I love the cover design. It gets a bit confusing because of all the people and places Myron meets, so if you forget stuff very quickly, this book will become very confusing to you. The one thing I don't really like is that it's told in second person. Arthur, another lycanthrope, tells use about Myrons journey. While he tells it well, and with a bit of humor, I personally like reading books in first person because then I know what they're thinking, and I can connect with them faster. But overall it was a great book to read. 

#6: The Dead Girls Detective Agency

by Susan Cox

The dead girls detective agency is a very non-serious book. It's good if you just don't want to read anything boring. Charlotte is just a normal teenage girl at her school, until she's murdered that is. But everyone thinks that she just tripped, so nothing was done to find her murderer. When Charlotte realizes this, she has already been a ghost for a while. She needs to solve her murder case or else she can't pass to the other side, and she has Nancy, Lorna, Tess, and Edison to help her. Well, it's really only Nancy and Lorna, the other two prefer to do nothing all day. As she tries to find her murderer, she discovers not only clues to solve the case, but also how awesome it is to be a ghost. She can choose to appear in front of humans and can transport to anywhere in Manhattan. But some of the things she finds aren't as good as you'd think. Her boyfriend, excuse me, ex-boyfriend, is using her death as an excuse to get with a lot of the popular girls. But some are good, like the fact that her best friend who she accidently ignored for a while was sticking up for her, like a true friend. What I like about this book is that while the author is funny, she also puts a lot of positive messages in her writing. Like in the end, Charlotte decided not to take revenge on her ex-boyfriend. Not many people would pass up the opportunity to scare their ex with supernatural powers. I also like is how despite being dead, Charlotte still matures. In the end, she helps Tess, despite her hating Charlotte all throughout the book. So, I liked this book because it's funny, and gives out good advice on what to do if you're brutally murdered.

#7: The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group

by Catherine Jinks

This was an okay book, but the reason it came last was because it raises expectations with the cover. Not gonna lie, when I first saw the cover, I thought it'd be about teenage werewolf who ran away and fought tons of evil dudes while being destined for something great(okay so the whole destiny thing is a bit overboard, but it still could have happened). But at least it'd be exciting(Yes I know you shouldn't judge books by their covers, but it's human nature to want the most aesthetically pleasing object). What it's really about though, is a boy, Tobias, who is around 13, who wakes up under odd circumstances and is told he is a werewolf by some strangers. Then he is kidnapped by werewolf fighters. Now, that sounds like it could be exciting, but it's not. The whole first part of the story is slow paced, and while some people might like that, if you have a short attention span like me, you won't. Later on, Reuben and one of Reubens friends saves him and Sergio, a werewolf Tobias helped escape. They all fight with Tobias' capturers and eventually they win. Later on, he calls his mother, who has been a non-believer of this werewolf idea since the beginning, and she come to pick him up, which is when they find out about vampire. It ends with Tobias finally used to be a werewolf. The ending is very fast paced, so it's easy to get confused. Not only that, but the characters aren't the best. The main character, Tobias, is a total pushover. He agrees to all of his friends plans, even if he hates them. He also keeps whining. Sure you're a werewolf, but that's awesome. Why are you so sad about it? His mother won't listen to anyone when they say Tobias is a werewolf, even if that makes so much sense. She continues to deny anything werewolf related and hates Reuben.  And his friend, Fergus, is weird. In some instances, he's an idiot. He gets them all into trouble and can't keep his mouth shut. Yet, in others, he knows all of these ways to make homemade bombs and explosives(not the dangerous types, just the ones that get stuff everywhere and make a huge mess). I personally don't know any 13 year olds with that kind of knowledge. Amin is just quiet, he's not really an important chaacter. Reuben is my favorite character, because he wasn't being so annoying as the others. He actually knew what he was doing. Sergio, however, was my least favorite character. He was so annoying. He kept whining and crying and whining and then turning into a psychopath who wants to murder and then whining some more. If I was Tobias, the first thing I would look for was duct tape. And a lot of it. Basically, had the characters been better developed, this could have been a wonderful story. But they weren't, so it isn't. Another thing that annoys me is the pacing of the book is awkward. In the first part of the book, nothing happens. Then, when he gets kidnapped, all of a sudden so many things start to happen. It gets a bit confusing after a while, cause if you miss a paragraph one time, you won't understand the ending, but in others, it won't harm you in any way. So, those are my three biggest problems with this book; the cove, the characters, and the timing of things.

March Book List

Here are my rankings for this months books.
I was going to put the list on a gadget that makes lists appear on sidebars, but it kept on telling me I made an error even though I hadn't. So after a while I decided to just put the list in a post.
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1.Ripper

2.Ashes

3.Stick

4.Rage

5.Immortal Lycanthropes

6.The Dead Girl's Detective Agency

7.The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group

March Book List

For this month, I'm going to be reading:
Ashes by Ilsa J. Bick
Stick by Andrew Smith
Ripper by Stephan Petrucha
Immortal Lycanthropes by Hal Johnson
Rage by Jackie Morse Kesslar
The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group by Catherine Jinks
The Dead Girl's Detective Agency by Susan Cox
I'll be reading them during the next two weeks, and ranking the from 1-7. After reading them all, I'll post the list and start the posts about why they were ranked as such.

The Future

Starting this month, I'm going to do things a bit differently. In the first week and a half, I'll read seven books, and rank them 1-7 on a list, that will be on the right of the blog. Then, in  the following weeks, I'll write a post for each book about why I ranked it as I did. I'll have a new list every month, for your viewing pleasures.

Side note: Just because a book is ranked 7th(the worst), it doesn't mean that book is bad, it just means that there were better books that month. 

Across the Universe

Aboard the ship Godspeed things are a lot different than on Earth. Amy realizes this when she's awoken 50 years before she was meant to. She and around 300 other people, including military officers and scientists, had been frozen alive before being put on the ship. Waking up, she finds that she is way out of her league on the ship. Everyone's just so...different from what she's used to. Despite being on a spaceship, none of the people on the ship have seen real stars, just the metal walls encasing them, painted to resemble the sky. Nobody knows what it's like to live on Earth, and they blindly follow their leader, Eldest. She befriends Elder, the next in line to become Eldest, and together they discover all the lies that surround the ship. I love this book, because the p.o.v changes are really well written, and because I  love how the author, Beth Revis, makes everything come alive. You feel like you're a part of the book. My favorite character is defiantly Harley. He's like that friend that acts like he's on drugs half the time, and the other half of the time he's spouting out philosophical things that make you second guess everything you've ever known. Another thing I like is that there are so many good quotes that you can get out of this book. The author definitely makes you think about subjects you wouldn't normally think about, unless that's what you're into. I would definitely recommend this book to people, because while it's very sad in some parts, it makes you believe that everything's possible. Side note; Listen to Written in the Stars while reading this book. It should be the theme song for this book. Really. It sounds like it's made for this book.

Butter

You'd think a book called Butter would be about butter, but that's not the case with this book. In this book, Butter is a boy. Well, a teenager to be exact. Butter is a junior in high school, and is severely obese. He's 423 lbs. No one makes fun of him at his school though, they just ignore him, sneaking glances every so often. Butter loves playing saxophone, just not in front of people, except his mom and band teacher. Wanna know another thing Butter loves? Anna. He's in love with her, at least he thinks he is, and talks with her almost every single day-just not in person. In fact Anna doesn't even know who he is. One day, angered by a website created by a fellow classmate, Butter creates a website-butterslastmeal.com. On that, he makes a decision to eat himself to death on New Years Eve. Thinking that only a few people would notice and just shrug it off,  he posted it on the website he was angered by. But what happens is a lot different than what you'd expect. Instead of calling him an attention whore, everyone starts liking him. Sure it's just because he's going to kill himself by overeating, but suddenly Butter is popular. Everyone comments on what his last meal should include on his website. He gets to experience what it feels like to be appreciated. But as time goes by, Butter realizes that the decision of actually going through with this gruesome idea might be a lot harder than he thought. When he started it, he didn't have much to lose; his mother, his sax, his teacher, and his doctor. But after he becomes popular, he suddenly makes tons of friends, and is in the 'in crowd'. He eventually does go through with it, but what happens afterwards, you'll have to find out.....(he survives and wakes up in a hospital). I'm not sure if I like it or not, because while it makes you feel like an insecure 17 year old who is 423 pounds, the whole theme of the book is kind of morbid. None of Butters new 'friends' care that he's going to kill himself. They help him with his plan. The author writes it very realistically. Enough that I started losing faith in humanity whilst reading this book. I'd recommend to some people, just not anyone looking for a fun, cheerful book.  

Percy Jackson

The Percy Jackson series are about a boy, Percy, who discovers that he's a demigod and the son of Poseidon, when he goes to a camp specially for demigods. There he meets Annabeth, the daughter of Athena, and discovers that his best friend Grover was  satyr. In each book, Percy and his friends come closer to finally defeating the monsters, when they find out that Cronos rose with the help of their friend Luke, who betrayed the camp, and that Cronos is responsible for the monsters. You'd think that the books would be confusing because of all the gods and such, but the author, Rick Riordan, takes Mythology, and makes it modern and easy to understand for everyone. So not only do you get to have fun, but you also learn! While learning might not seem like an exciting prospect for many of you, it doesn't feel like you're sitting down and doing research. I like this book because not only is it written well, I also like Mythology. The series are 5 books long, and are continued in another series, The Heroes of Olympus, in which they introduce the Roman demigods. While they're very similar, there are small differences between the Greeks and the Romans. Mainly, the Romans are more viscous. Honestly, I like the Greek gods better, but that might be because I learned about them before I learned about the Romans.

Here you see the intense battle between Greeks and Romans to best each other.

Pendragon: My favorite series. Ever.

Imagine the Harry Potter series. Now make them around 40 times more unrealistic. Now you have the Pendragon series!

The Pendragon series all revolve around a boy with the name of Bobby Pendragon. Now, Bobby thinks he's a normal boy, but he's not. 

See, Bobby is a Traveler, a person who travels between 10 different universes that all have a planet with life on them. Each of the planets go through a 'turning point', a time when there's a challenge the citizens of the planet have to go through, whose result could change the future of the planet, for the better or the worst. The traveler has to go to each planet, through 'flumes', when it's in it's turning point, and try to lead the planet towards a better future. But that's not all. They also have to make sure Saint Dane, a very bad guy who wants to lead the planets to failure so he can control 'Halla'-everything that has, will, and is existing, doesn't succeed. It makes a lot more sense if you actually read the books.

When Bobby finds out that he's a traveler from his Uncle, who is also a traveler, and that his family never existed and that they're all gone, he freaks out. But as he works with Loor, his partner, and all the other travelers, he starts to realize that there are bigger things than basketball and having a normal life.

When his Uncle dies later, Bobby steps up as the leader, and eventually defeats Saint Dane.

The author switches the point of view very often from Bobby, to Mark and Courtney, Bobby's best friend and almost girlfriend.

Now, this probably sounds like the weirdest story ever, and you're probably wondering why I like it so much. I like it because the author, D.J. Machale, writes it so well, it feels like you're in the book as one of the characters. You get to escape reality for however long it takes you to read the series, and experience experiences you wouldn't anywhere else. And, it's so unrealistic, it's realistic...if that makes any sense.

Books

This blog is going to be about books. Obviously. Mainly fiction books. And then I will write about whether or not I like them and why. I'll get all of my books from the Palatine Public Library, in case anyone wants to check one out. Probably not, but still. For all of you book worms out there.