Book Report 4

            Susie Salmon was a fourteen year old girl who was murdered on December 6^th, 1973.  She was the main character in the book I read, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.  She was murdered by George Harvey on snowy day in a cornfield.  She was walking home from school and she started talking to George Harvey.  Susie was just like most of the other girls where she lived.  She had mousy brown hair and she almost never missed any school.  She had a younger brother named Buckley and a younger sister named Lindsey.              

Susie knew that George Harvey was a strange man, but she still didn’t think that he would hurt or murder her.  He took her body and hid it, making sure that nobody suspected that he was the one that killed her.  The only part of her body that was found was an elbow.  He also left behind the hat that she was wearing and a piece of her charm bracelet that they were able to find.

When Susie died she went to heaven and in this story she tells us about what it’s like in heaven.  She had a difficult time adjusting to heaven.  At first she was very lonely and she missed her friends and family on earth. She learned that heaven was different for everybody.  She was able to watch what happened on earth and she missed being human and being able to talk to people and tell them what she saw and what was happening or going to happen.  Susie saw how hard it was of her family now that she was gone.  Her parents couldn’t believe that she was dead and they kept saying that she will come back someday.  People started seeing her everywhere.  They saw here in mirrors and windows.  Those were the people she haunted.  They sometimes would talk to Susie and even though they didn’t hear anything back they knew that she was listening.

In heaven she met people that she knew on earth like her grandfather.  She
also met new people like Holly and people like her that George Harvey murdered.  She realized that she wasn’t the only one he had murdered and then she didn’t feel so alone after that.

 When she was watching her family and friends on earth, she started seeing
everyone growing up.  Her sister was even going to get married and she was going to miss it.  Her brother was growing up a lot too and he was almost thirteen years old.  Seeing all this made her very sad, she wanted to be there and be a part of their lives.

At the end of the book she gets to see how everything turns out.  Her mother
comes back from California after her dad has a heart attack.  Her sister gets married and has a child.  She also gets to see what all of her friends do after high school and for some of her friends in college.  At the end of the book everyone is happy and they started talking about Susie again and the good things that they remember about her.

 I liked this book a lot.  I would recommend this book to people who like to read books about mysteries or murders.  In this book Susie Salmon is murdered and the only one that knows for sure who killed her was Susie.  Susie watches from heaven as her family and friends try to figure out what happened to her and if they will ever see her again.  The police don’t find very many clues.  Susie’s father knows that George Harvey was the one who killed his daughter, but he doesn’t know how to prove it.  Susie has to watch her father and sister find ways to prove to the police that George Harvey is the person who killed Susie.

After reading this book, I would have to give the book a nine out of ten.  I thought that this book was a lot different from most books because usually the main character is in most of what’s going on in the book, but in this book you read the story in a different point of view.  Susie could see everything.  She knew secrets that some people would never know about.  Even though she wasn’t there on earth she didn’t miss anything.

This book is a mystery because even though they know that Susie is dead they can’t figure out who murdered her.  At first the police think it was Ray Singh.  Ray had a crush on Susie and he wrote her a note on the day that she was murdered.  The police decided later that he was no
longer a suspect and they had no other clues to who it might have been.  Her father and sister think its George Harvey, but the police don’t think so.  When they figure out that George Harvey had murdered other people they almost know for sure that it was him, but by then George Harvey was gone and nobody knew where he went.  They eventually gave up and he never was caught.

The book really makes you think about your life and what it would be like if you didn’t get to be grow up and see what your life could have been, or how your family and friends would feel
if you weren’t around.  It makes you think about how everyone you meet and the things you do can change the direction of not only your life but the others around you as well.

       I read the book a Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks.  The main character in this story is Landon Carter.  Landon lives in Beaufort, North Carolina and goes to Beaufort high school.  He was the type of person who would go to church and not really pay attention and only went because his parents made him go.  He was a typical teenage boy who would  sometimes be disrespectful to the
reverend and find himself getting into trouble.  He wasn't the biggest fan of school so he didn't have very good grades either.

       His father was not dead and his parents were not divorced, but he didn’t get to see his father a lot.  His father was congressman and instead of having his whole family move to Washington, D.C  he just moved and he didn’t come back very often to visit.  Landon and his dad didn’t get along very well either.  When his father was home he would talk about how Landon should go to Harvard, but Landon wanted to go the University of North Carolina.   He struggled to talk to his father and never really told his father how he really felt about things.  Because of his lack of ability to communicate with his father, he ended up running for student body president to please his dad.  His father believed that he would get into Harvard for sure if he was the student body president.  Landon would sometimes thinks about what it would have been  like if his father would have been around more as a child.  Would they understand each other better?

            Landon changed a lot in this book. When he didn’t have a date for the dance he had to ask Jamie.  He never really talked to Jamie a lot and her dad was the reverend at the church he went too.  She was almost the opposite of him.  Jamie was the type of person who carried a bible and she was loved by all of the adults because she was so nice and never got into trouble.  After the dance she asked Landon to be in the play.  She didn’t tell him why, she just told him that this year had to be special.  He started to hang out with her more and then he started to fall in love with her.  He began to grow and change the more time he spent with Jamie.  He would read the bible with her and he would help get money to buy the orphan’s presents for Christmas.  When Jamie told him that she had leukemia he felt angry and sad at the same time.  He felt that there was something he could do to help her and he tried really hard to help her, but there was nothing he could do.

           

            I think that the theme of this book is that you should try new things and talk to people that you've never talked to before.  Landon would have never have talked to Jamie if he wouldn't have needed a date for the dance, but he actually started to like Jamie after that.  That's when Landon started to talk to Jamie a little bit more.  Jamie asked Landon if he could be in the play that she was in because they needed more people.  Landon couldn’t say no because he knew it would make Jamie sad if he did.  He didn’t really want to be in the play.  He wanted to hang out with his friends after school, but he still decided to be in it.

            After the play Landon helped Jamie collect all of the money that people donated so she could buy gifts for the orphans.  There wasn’t a lot of money so without telling Jamie he added money and that was the best Christmas that the orphans and Jamie ever had.  That’s when Landon started falling in love with Jamie.  He changed a lot because of Jamie.  He didn’t even care when his friends were making fun of him.  When Jamie got sick he would read the bible to her and he never used to read the bible before. 

            Just because Landon got to know Jamie better he started being a lot nicer.  He would do things that he would never do before like reading the bible, listening in church, and he started praying for Jamie when she got sick.  Jamie also helped Landon and his family come closer together.  Landon also started getting along with his father a lot better. 

            Ever since Landon started talking to Jamie his life started to change and he is a lot different now.  He never used talk to Jamie at all and he just though that she was really weird.  He never really got to know her until now and he realized that he really likes Jamie.  That is why I think that the theme of this book is that you should talk to people that you have never talked to before and try new things.   

Choice Book Report 2

I read the book My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult.  The main character in this book is Kate Fitzgerald. She was 2 years old when she found out that she had leukemia.    She was beautiful and had long wavy hair and dreamed of becoming a ballerina. She was strong and confident and was excited about all the things she was going to get to do as she got older. Then Kate’s hopes and dreams came crashing down around her when she found out that she had been diagnosed with leukemia.  The leukemia and its treatment left Kate weak, small and fragile.  Her beautiful long wavy hair never grew back the same. When she went places she would wear a scarf to cover up her head when she lost all of her hair.   She was in the hospital all the time, but she did her very best to always stay positive even when she got really sick.   She was at the hospital so much that she didn’t have many friends her own age, so her friends where the nurses who took care of her and her sister Anna.  There were many times when Kate felt very alone and sad.

Kate’s mom desperately wanted her sister Anna to donate a kidney to save Kate, but Anna had undergone countless surgeries, transfusions and shots so that Kate could fight the leukemia and she was tired of being the person that her family relied on to save her sister.  She didn’t want to help Kate anymore.   Kate understood and wasn’t angry with her sister.  She understood the sacrifices that Anna had made for her all these years.  The illness had left their family tired and frustrated.   Every time she didn’t feel good or she had a bruise or she started bleeding she had to go to the hospital.  She would just wait for something bad to happen sometimes.  That’s why she wanted to be a ballerina.  Ballerinas are strong, beautiful and determined, and they had total control over their body and that’s what Kate wanted.

Anna’s decision not to give Kate one of her kidneys and sue her parents tears her family apart.  Then a fatal car crash takes Anna’s life, and they end up giving Kate Anna’s kidney after all. This leaves Kate feeling guilty and believing that it’s all her fault that Anna died.  If she didn’t need Anna’s kidney there wouldn’t have been a law suit and Anna wouldn’t have been on that road at that time.  She still thinks about Anna all the time because Anna was a part of her now that she had her kidney.

Kate is different from most characters because her life hasn’t been normal since she got leukemia.  Her best friend was her sister.  Even though they would fight, Anna was sometimes the only person Kate could talk to.  She really didn’t have any other friends.  In the end, she lost her best friend, her sister, but her sister gave her the biggest gift in the world, her kidney.

I think that there were a lot conflicts in this book. When Kate’s parents find out that she had leukemia, they decide try to have another baby in hopes that the baby would be a bone marrow match for Kate and it would help save her life.  This decision by Kate’s parents was out of love for her, but it left Anna wondering if she was only born to save Kate’s life and it made Anna question who she was and what she wanted out of life. She loved her sister, but it seemed that she was asked to give up so much to keep her sister alive and it seemed like it was never enough.

 Another conflict in the story was when Anna makes the difficult decision to sue her parents because she didn’t want to help Kate anymore and donate her kidney.  If she didn’t help Kate she would probably die, but she wants to have her own life and didn’t want it to be controlled by Kate’s illness anymore.   This decision makes Anna’s relationship with her mom very strained and she ends up going to live somewhere else.  Her mom couldn’t understand Anna’s decision not to help Kate even though Kate understood how Anna felt.  In the end a car crash leaves Anna brain dead and a decision needs to be made on whether or not her parents should take Anna off the life supports and let her go and taking her kidney to be given to Kate.  This leads to another conflict, Kate feeling guilty about Anna’s death.  She feels like it is her fault that Anna died in the car crash and that she gets to live.  Now with the kidney though Kate gets to live a lot longer than anyone expected.

When I think about the situation, it makes me feel really sad.  Both girls love’s each other, but they wanted to have their own lives away from each other.  However, they really needed each other.  They both were really young and had to make hard decisions about their futures.  I am sure that they were both scared and unsure what was best for not only themselves, but there sister as well.  I think that Kate was really brave.  She wanted to let her sister have her own life and not have it controlled by her illness, but at the same time, she wanted to live and have a life of her own without being sick and in the hospital all of the time.

The Last Song

  

            The book I chose for my choice book report is The Last Song.  The main character in this book is Ronnie Miller.  She is a17 year old teenage girl who just graduated from high school.  At the beginning of the book Ronnie liked to wear dark clothes and dark makeup. Ronnie has beautiful brown hair and had a streak of purple hair that she colored.  Some people thought she was kind of scary because of how she dressed.  At the beginning of the book she seemed to get into a lot of trouble because she would come home late at night from hanging out with her friends and she wouldn't listen to her mom and that would make her mom furious by the time Ronnie got home.  Ronnie was a little bit selfish too because if her parents wanted her to do something she didn't like she would cause more trouble and try to get out of it.  She tried to do that when her mom wanted her to visit her dad for the summer, but it didn't work this time.  Another time she didn't want to go to church so she locked herself in her room and her mom would yell at her until they had to go and then they left without her.  She started to change when she went to visit her dad for the summer.  She started being more forgiving because she finally forgave her dad for leaving after her mom and dad got a divorce.  She forgave him after he forgave her for not talking to him for three years.  She was more kind to her dad and her brother after that and she started being with them more often.  At the beginning of the book she wasn't confident at all.  Ronnie is a lot different than most characters because at the beginning of the book she was trying to be somebody she wasn't.  She really  wasn't someone that would get in trouble a lot, she was just really angry at her mom and dad.  She really didn't know what she wanted to do now that she graduated from high school.  When she went to visit her dad she started being herself again.  She even started playing the piano and talking to her dad all the time.  At the end of the book she found who she really was.  She was kind, forgiving, responsible, and unselfish and she decided that she would audition to go to Juilliard. 

           

            I think that the author picked Ronnie's point of view because she experienced the most in the story.  Her life changed dramatically with her parents' divorce and when her dad died.  There wouldn't be as much of a story with the other characters.  If the author would have picked Ronnie's dad as the point of view nobody would have known how someone felt after he died.  If the author pick Ronnie's brother there wouldn't be much to the story because he was so young he didn't really understand what was going on when his dad was dying and his parents were going through the divorce.  So the author picked Ronnie because she was at a time of her life when not only was there a lot of change because of the divorce and the death of her father, but she was growing from a teenager to an adult.  The author was able to get into Ronnie's mind and let us know how she felt when she got arrested and when her dad died or when she met Will.    I think that the saddest part of the book was when Ronnie heard that her dad had cancer and he was going to die in less than a year.  Ronnie and her dad started to cry and then her dad had to tell Ronnie's little brother and because he didn't think that he was actually going to die he started crying.  Ronnie thought about the three years that she lost with her dad because she had shut him out of her life.  She felt that she didn't know her dad that well and she knew she didn't have much time to spend with him and make up for the time that they lost together. So she decided not to go back to New York with mom and brother after the summer ended and to spend more time getting to know her father, even though she would miss the rest of her family and her friends.  She spent months helping him with everything like taking him places and making him food, but he could do very much because he was getting weaker every day.  The day her dad died Ronnie had fallen asleep on the floor next to him and she woke  up and saw that he was dead.  When her dad died Ronnie was extremely upset because she didn't talk to him for three years and she felt like she needed to get to know her dad better, but then it was too late and he was gone.   

Memoir 2

      

It was a freezing cold day outside and my team and I were up early for our first game.  It was my first year of being on a girls travel hockey team and we were going to be in our first tournament of the season.  For a lot of us it was our first tournament ever and we were nervous.  The tournament was in St. Paul.  We got to the rink early in the morning so we could watch some of the other teams.  The team we were playing wasn’t in our district and we didn't know how good they were.  Even though it was just a game like any game we played before I was afraid.  The game started and after a couple minutes we were fine and we played just like any other game. 

In the game I had checked one of the girls from the other team into the boards.  The ref didn't blow the whistle right away and I thought that he didn't see it, but I was wrong.  I had never gotten a penalty before and I was shocked that I had even done that.  The ref pointed his finger at me and said, "number 17."  I was afraid that I was going to get yelled at or kicked out of the game, but all I had to do was sit there for two minutes.  I thought, "this isn't so bad, maybe I'll get a penalty more often now."  In the second period we were tied 2-2 and we were so excited because we had to win every game to win the tournament and if we lost this we could only get 5th place.  In the last period we were losing 3-2 and we knew if we could at least tie it we could go into overtime.  The game was close, but we ended up losing 3-2.  We were upset because we knew we couldn't win the tournament, but we really wanted to win the next game.  We worked harder this time and won 6-0.  We knew if we won the next game we could still get 5th place. The last game we were really close.  Every time we scored they would score too.  We went into overtime.  We were a extremely tired and we didn't have much energy left, but we kept on playing.  We finally won 5-4.  The trophy was tall and had red and gold stripes and we got medals that said 5th place on it.  We were a little upset that we didn't win, we still got 5th place and had fun.

Memoir 1

            When I was five I was at the rink all the time.  My dad works there and I would always watch the figure skaters from my dad's office.  I asked my parents if I could try it and they thought about it and said that I could.  They signed me up for learn to skate at the MAC.          
           
            I went to the MAC two days a week for group lessons.  On my first day I started at level 1.  It was cold in the rink without all of my hockey gear on.  I had on a fleece jacket and gloves.  I forgot how cold I was when the lesson started.  I knew how to skate with hockey skates,but figure skates were a lot different and I had a lot to learn.  I learned how to glide on one foot and stop and by the end of the lesson I could skate across the rink without falling.  I was doing so well that I got to take a test to see if I could move on to the next level.  I passed level 1 and I knew that I would love this sport.

            I kept practicing and passing levels until I got all the way to level 8.  Level 8 is the last level in the Learn to Skate.  My mom told me that if I pass level 8 she would make me a new figure skating dress. I really wanted to get a new dress so I worked really hard.  I took the test and passed on my first try.  I remembered when I started and thought about how hard I worked to get to level 8.  It took me less than a year to pass all of the levels, but I finally passed them all and I got the new dress.

Introduction

Hi, my name is Remi.  I'm in figure skating, hockey, track, and softball.  I have a little brother that's 10 and he plays hockey.  I love dogs and I really want one but my dad doesn't want to get one.  My favorite subjects are math and science.  I like to read, watch tv, and play on the wii in my free time.  That is a little about me. Bye! :)