Secrets in the Shadows by: Anne Schraff #2

           The book I am currently reading is Secrets in the Shadows by: Anne Schraff. It is about a boy named Roylin Bailey who loves this new student Korie Archer who just came into his history class. She was the most beautiful girl he has ever seen and she liked Roylin. He tried to impress her by getting something she really wanted but he made a big mistake.

            Roylin loved this girl name Korie to get her a $300. Now when he gave her the gift she just said thank you in a really happy way and forgot about it in 2 minutes! I don't really think she realize what he had to g through to get her this necklace. To get this necklace for her, he had to steal money from his good friend and cause his death. Now he lied to her and said he was rich and he got that necklace so easy and deep down that's not the truth is technically murdered someone for that necklace for her and all she really said was thank you and that was the end of it. I think its hurting Roylin because its like you lie but don't want to get caught, and now you realize the consequences and you don't want to face them. 

             I think Roylin needs to face his punishment because what he did was not nice at all. Now, he has to deal with his only friend death because he tried to please a girl that he didn't really know which is kind of sad. I hope as I read on that maybe he has positive news, but he faces what he deserves because what he did was serious. 

Secrets in the Shadows by: Anne Schraff

Secrets in the Shadows by: Anne Schraff

The book I am currently reading is Secrets in the Shadows by: Anne Schraff. It is about a boy named Roylin Bailey who loves this new student Korie Archer who just came into his history class. She was the most beautiful girl he has ever seen and she liked Roylin. He tried to impress her by getting something she really wanted but he made a big mistake.

In my book, Roylin likes this girl Korie and all she wished for was to get a $299 necklace but she knew that he didn’t have that type of money.  Roylin has a good friend name Mr. Miller; Roylin stole $250 dollars from him just to get the necklace for Korie. I think this was not the right thing to do because why would you steal money from the only person that understood you and you could barely even him back?  I consider Roylin almost desperate because if you just met a girl and all of a sudden you are just in love and go buy her a three hundred dollar for a girl you just met and go and steal money from a good friend, this makes no sense. I find this pointless to go all out for a girl you just met, it just doesn't add up in my head!

I think as I read on, Roylin will get the consequences he deserves because this is something that you don’t do and if you are crazy about a girl like that, you would make the money on your own time and then get the necklace, but you don’t just steal money from your good friend that you trust and has always been there for you. I really hope Roylin realized what he did. 

TTFN by Lauren Myracle

I just finished reading ttfn by Lauren Myracle. This book has a really unique style to its writing. This book has a great plot to it, a great story line. The Winsome Threesome including three girls, Angela, Maddie and Zoe, who communicate by IM’ing each other (instant messaging each other). They are really close friends they are in high school and they all speak out their problems.

Lauren Myracle used a chat room (instant messaging) to show how these three friends talked to each other. They speak in slang for example the word ‘you’ they use the letter ‘u’. They all have their own little nickname. Angela is Snow Angel. Maddie is mad maddie and Zoe is zoe girl. Having it in a chat room actually showed me who speaks more to each other and has more problems. Snow Angel is more depressed at times because she has moved to California away from her friends, zoe girl is the strict and perfectionist one. She is the good girl she doesn’t break the rules she doesn’t party as much and she is very different from the rest of the girls. Mad maddie is the wild one she goes out a lot, she does smoke pot and she doesn't usually care about what others think of her or do which I think is good but she should be careful at times.

An emotional line was when zoegirl said “you don’t have to get drunk or smoke pot in order to live life to the fullest, maddie, its wrong because it bad for you and you know that?” This just showed that zoegirl cares for her, and how it is not good to smoke pot and get drunk because that affects you emotional and mentally. You can always be yourself and get attention by being yourself. “I take her by the wing and we dance into flight” This is a quote of what zoe said. I thought this was powerful. I think it means that wing from a bird-a bird flies-need a flight to fly from an airplane, so you take the wing and we dance in to flight, I think the dancing is not literally dancing it’s just the joy they are having together.

Mad maddie has made some decisions that are disappointing to me and I disagreed with them. Maddie has agreed to smoking pot and drinking to make her look ‘cool’. This is something I hate because it just shows your confidence and your self-esteem in yourself. If you have to make someone jealous and one of those things is changing yourself, that’s not acceptable. Mad maddie has a ‘boyfriend’ named Chive. He is basically a ‘player’ (he has two girlfriends) he talks to mad maddie and talks to this other girl Whitney. He always has attention on Whitney but it’s like mad maddie does whatever it takes to get his attention and that for her is smoking pot and getting drunk.  This just shows to me Maddie strength about herself and how desperate she is to find and have a boyfriend.

This book is a really good book, and it shows agreement and disagreements in friendships. It shows what people would do to get what they want. And this is a story people can relate in their personal life.

Non-Fiction Blogpost

Non-Fiction Text: On Staten Island, Relentless Bullying Is blamed for a Teenage Girl’s Suicide

By: Vivian Yee

The main idea of this article is to show how bullying has an impact on peoples life. When people tease one another they have to understand the harm that they are doing. Felicia was teased because she had piercings and lived in foster care. Many thought nothing would happen because she never expressed her emotion at all. Some details in the story were, “She looked happy. She was laughing. It didn't look like anything was upsetting her at all”. This show how she was a ‘closed person’ and never told people how she felt. Also in the article it states “if you tried to bully her, she’d laugh at you” this shows how she would hide her emotions and later on she would express them when no one was there to stop her. Lastly, in the article it says something like how “Somebody must’ve said something pretty bad about her for this to happen” this shows how she is a strong person so in order to break her, you have to say something that will actually hurt her in more than one way. This detail support to main idea because it shows how you shouldn't bully people because you never know what will happen.

Author wants us to feel sad and bad for this girl. No one wants to see a girl get bullied by other people. This is what makes us resistance the text a little, because you kind of don’t want to read it because it’s just depressing. “I can’t, I’m done, I give up.” This quote was from the article and it shows when I resistance the text because she gives up so it means this ‘bully’ done something really bad to make her almost want to die.

            I will take away that bullying is not a joke, it serious. You shouldn’t bully someone because you don’t know the harm that you are doing to that person. My thoughts have been shaped because I know this issue is bad, teenagers commit suicide, start cutting them and it’s not funny. This article shows that you can only take so much pain, till you just want to kill yourselves. I want to know, why do people do this to others? Do they take this as a jok

Social Action Question #4: When do you find yourself resisting the text? What does your resistance say about you or the text?

         The story I am reading is “a long way gone” by Ishmael beah. It’s about a 12 year old boy named Ishmael beah going into war. He is a child solider that is forced to fight with the rebels and wanders land rendered by violence.

            I found myself resisting this story way too many times, that I wanted to stop. I found myself resisting when he had to fight. He said it was like a bloodbath. When the rebels first came to attack his country, he saw a family in a van, died. The girls were shot in the head, and the parents were killed by a gun going through the windshield. This is just so intense, because this is when I started to shake, and made me think that he would die since the rebels seemed so close. Also, according to the story, he saw a guy walking that had been shot in the arm, throwing up blood, and looked like he had no hope left. This is when I really resisted because it made me gag and say to myself ‘oh my god’ this is so much! How can a 12 year old boy handle this danger and disturbing sight!

            The resistance says that I can’t handle the text. I think this goes out to everyone though, because I mean if you see people throwing up blood, or people getting shot in the head, and you know rebels are in your country, what are you to do? What can you do? This is an intense situation because it makes you nervous that you can be ‘next’. I should have expected some resistance, since I did research about child soldiers.

            This book is really good so far. I think the resistance shows how bad and brutal being a child solider was, and the bad memoires and images that they had to go through. I hope as I read along good things start to happen and maybe even a change. 

What is some difficult or complex thing happening in your book?

I am currently reading “a long way gone” by Ishmael beah. It’s depressing. Although I just started, I already know so much. It’s about 12 year old Ishmael beah going into war. He is a child solider that is forced to fight with the rebels and wanders land rendered by violence. There are so many difficult things happening in this story so far. He lives in Sierra Leone, which is where the war started. He is getting separated from his friends and family which is devastating, but even smaller then that is his parents are divorced.

This might not sound big, but it does have an impact on Ishmael which makes this a difficult situation. Since the divorce, he has had so many step moms  and he has liked none. He can’t show his feeling around them. According to the story, it says how one day he dad stood their smiling at him, until the step mom came out, and he looked away. I think it almost like the dad is afraid to show that he cares about his son. Why is he like this? I think he is like this because, maybe he has had a hard life with all the step moms and he can’t even shows his feelings anymore. They probably do not care really about how he feels or what he is doing. This has an impact on Ishmael because he wants to have his family back, but doesn't know how to start, but what makes this problem worse is his town is ruined.

Rebels have taken over. Another complex thing in the book is, rebels are over-powering his country. Their killing people, people are throwing up blood, bullets everywhere, it’s a messy bloodbath! This leaves Ishmael in a scare, because he know eventually he is going to separate from his parents and has to live on his own. This is a real-world issue. Example: what if you are in a grocery store and lose your parents you get sacred and worried. Well yeah, being separated from your parents in a war is even worst. This is not an easy obstacle to conquer; having to fight in a war at 12 years old is insane!

In conclusion, some difficult things in the book that I am reading are him going off to fight war without his parents and his parents being divorce. I hope as I get to the middle of the book, he gets over his fears or conquers his obstacles. 

It Happened to Nancy

              The book I am reading is “It happened to Nancy” Edited by Beatrice Sparks. This book is living  a bitter taste in my mouth.  Nancy is a fourteen year old girl who is dealing with a lot of scary events in her life. She was raped by her boyfriend Collin who was five years older than her. She later was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Nancy is a strong young woman. She kept this terrible news to herself for some time.   

Nancy has been going through a lot at her young age. Her mother is not a good support in her life. Her mom worked long hours, and always come home really late.  By reading this book, I learned not to trust anyone period. I also believe that young girls should not be dating older guys. I have no intentions of doing that, but it helps me to have that note in my head. I was curious to know why Nancy would even cross that line. But I do understand how she is feeling. She does not have the support of her parents. She doesn't mention her father at all. I think Nancy is looking for ‘love’ which she thought she found in Collin. Although she is going through a difficult time, I think she should be a leader and not a follower. Collin took advantage of her in a bad way.  This is a terrible thing for anyone to go through. It wasn't nice what Collin did to Nancy, but it happened, what can I say?

I am not sure but I think the editor named this book “It Happened to Nancy” because she wanted teenagers to know what can happen if they don’t listen. It seems that Ms. Sparks the editor also wanted young girls like Nancy to know about HIV/AIDS. She knows how teenagers think. They do not always like to listen like Nancy did. Here this young girl Nancy is sick at heart. She has gotten raped and unfortunately diagnosed with AIDS. I don’t think Nancy would ever be herself again or around other people especially guys. She would probably feel uncomfortable. Nancy has taught me to always speak your mind and never follow others. She followed Collin and look where that got her. Nancy always wrote in her diary about her deepest feelings and her deepest thoughts. She was very open in expressing her feelings in her diary.

It seems that Nancy got closer to her mom after the incident.  She started telling her mom every single thing that happened between her and Collin. She told her what he did to her, how he acted, to me I would have done that from the start. As a mom, I would be supportive but really mad at the same time. I would say to myself why my daughter is dating a college student. Maybe as a mom I might blame myself for not being at home often. Nancy now notices that she doesn’t have only her diary, but she also has a mom to talk to. I think she has to learn to ‘love’ herself.