Stargirl
by Jerry Spinelli
***
Stargirl is about what happens when a person is truly being who they are on the inside, without influences from the school, peers, or television. It is about figuring out who you are, or what you aren’t because of the influences around you. Jerry Spinelli’s book will make you think about why you act the way you do and why some people have different acts for different friends. I personally do behave differently around a friend that I have had basically for my entire life than I do around friends that I met this year or the year before. I am sure that almost everyone does this, unconsciously at least, and that is why a girl like Stargirl is so controversial even in a high school. No one can believe that a girl like her could exist, like Hillari said in chapter two, “She isn’t real, she is an actress. It’s a scam to make us have school spirit.” No one behaves this way because no one either has the courage or everyone wants so badly to be accepted that they cannot allow themselves to.
This is a book about how things can go wrong, and right, when you let all of yourself be seen, all day, every day.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Johanna Kelly's Book Review
Shock Point
By April Henry
****
Medicine is not always about helping people. Sometimes psychiatrists aren’t even trying to keep their patients alive. When extreme sums of money are going into the pockets of some doctors, they don’t care who they hurt. Cassie Johnson’s stepfather, Rick, is a psychiatrist making money off of clinical trials of a new drug, Socom. Socom is a wonder drug, promised to keep teens from making bad decisions. Socom has not yet been approved by the FDA, but the only one keeping it away from being approved is Cassie, who knows that Socom can kill. Rick needs to get rid of Cassie.
Shock Point is very suspenseful. At some points, I got frustrated with many of the characters. Henry writes in third person, so there is a narrator; this way, we can see many characters' point of view. Please check out Shock Point, you won’t be able to put it down until you turn the last page.
By April Henry
****
Medicine is not always about helping people. Sometimes psychiatrists aren’t even trying to keep their patients alive. When extreme sums of money are going into the pockets of some doctors, they don’t care who they hurt. Cassie Johnson’s stepfather, Rick, is a psychiatrist making money off of clinical trials of a new drug, Socom. Socom is a wonder drug, promised to keep teens from making bad decisions. Socom has not yet been approved by the FDA, but the only one keeping it away from being approved is Cassie, who knows that Socom can kill. Rick needs to get rid of Cassie.
Shock Point is very suspenseful. At some points, I got frustrated with many of the characters. Henry writes in third person, so there is a narrator; this way, we can see many characters' point of view. Please check out Shock Point, you won’t be able to put it down until you turn the last page.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Johanna Kelly's Book Review
The Lovely Bones
By Alice Sebold
5 stars *****
The Lovely Bones is an amazing story. I felt as if I knew the characters personally. I could feel the main character, Susie’s, strong love for the ones she knew on earth. Susie is talking to us in heaven. She was raped and murdered, and she watches the lives of those on earth.
The author, Alice Sebold, writes so well. The Lovely Bones to me was not a page-turner, but rather a book that I had to digest in sections. The words are overwhelming. I had to often tell myself that this is just a story, it didn’t really happen. I loved reading a book where the main character was deceased, rather than reading about a person who was alive and able interact freely with people. Susie really wanted to help her family; her death seemed to tear them apart.
If you haven’t read The Lovely Bones, I highly recommend checking it out. Also, a movie is being made and will be released later this year.
By Alice Sebold
5 stars *****
The Lovely Bones is an amazing story. I felt as if I knew the characters personally. I could feel the main character, Susie’s, strong love for the ones she knew on earth. Susie is talking to us in heaven. She was raped and murdered, and she watches the lives of those on earth.
The author, Alice Sebold, writes so well. The Lovely Bones to me was not a page-turner, but rather a book that I had to digest in sections. The words are overwhelming. I had to often tell myself that this is just a story, it didn’t really happen. I loved reading a book where the main character was deceased, rather than reading about a person who was alive and able interact freely with people. Susie really wanted to help her family; her death seemed to tear them apart.
If you haven’t read The Lovely Bones, I highly recommend checking it out. Also, a movie is being made and will be released later this year.
Meaghan Kimbrell's Book Review
The Boyfriend List
By E. Lockhart
***1/2 stars
The novel The Boyfriend List is a good novel. It is written well and kept me entertained through out the entire book. I would suggest this book to my friends and everyone else. I really did enjoy reading it. I give this novel three and a half stars.
This novel is about a high school girl who has had trouble with friendships, boyfriends, boys of her past, and her parents. In a week she lost her boyfriend and her best friends and has also began having panic attacks. Her parents think that something is really wrong with her and decide to send her to a shrink so she can talk about her problems. She soon finds out that her parents aren’t completely wrong and that everything that has happened isn’t entirely her fault.
By E. Lockhart
***1/2 stars
The novel The Boyfriend List is a good novel. It is written well and kept me entertained through out the entire book. I would suggest this book to my friends and everyone else. I really did enjoy reading it. I give this novel three and a half stars.
This novel is about a high school girl who has had trouble with friendships, boyfriends, boys of her past, and her parents. In a week she lost her boyfriend and her best friends and has also began having panic attacks. Her parents think that something is really wrong with her and decide to send her to a shrink so she can talk about her problems. She soon finds out that her parents aren’t completely wrong and that everything that has happened isn’t entirely her fault.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian
4 1/2 stars for a very satisfying novel...
I know I have really liked a book when, after I have turned the last page and put it down, I can't stop thinking about it. Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian is one of those novels that I will have to urge others to read. The book has 3 separate points of view that describe the horrific happenings in Germany during the winter and spring of 1945.
Haunting and achingly beautiful, this is the story of Prussian aristocrats and a Scottish POW trekking west ahead of the Russian army that was coming up from behind them and the Nazis on the front line...hoping for timely deliverance by the British or American liberators. It is also the story of a Jewish man on the run after he jumped from a train likely bound for one of the Nazi death camps or extermination. And thirdly, it is the heartbreaking saga of a group of Jewish women prisoners of all nationalities who were conscripted and held in forced labor camps throughout the country.
The descriptions of the horrors of the Holocaust are well known to most of us, and yes, some are again detailed in this novel. But the book is also about hope and the resilience of human spirit. These characters from all walks of life are forced to confront the horrible truths about the Third Reich, about their own countrymen and allies, and about humanity in general. How culpable are all nations for what happened to the Jews during the time before and during World War II? Were the Germans who were ignorant of the Nazi party plans for the Jews responsible for what was done to them? Were the Russians justified in the horrors they perpetrated on the German civilians because of what had happened to them on their own soil? The cruelties both large and small visited on each other demonstrate that there was complete breakdown in the moral fabric of society in Europe at that time. Religious beliefs aside, what makes a just war? The novel raises questions about how personal and national responsibility can be obscured by events and fear.
All in all, a very thought provoking novel that will leave questions lingering long after the final page has been read.
Recommendation: Buy and share -- talk about it with your friends and your book groups. An excellent way to discuss again how something like that did happen once, and hopefully a reiteration that it won't ever occur again.
Denise Crawford
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Johanna Kelly's Book Review
What I Saw and How I Lied
By Judy Blundell
*** 1/2 Stars
This book takes place in the late 1940’s, about a year after WWII ended. The main character, Evie, is a young teenager. She doesn’t think of herself as beautiful, like her mother. Her mother is young and immature. Her stepfather just came back from the war, and wants to take the family to Florida. They travel to Florida, where they stay for a while.
In Florida, a web of lies is unraveled. Evie is left to make all kinds of decisions; she needs to find out if the ones she loves are truly the ones she knows. Overall, this book is worth reading. As a reader, I felt as if I wanted what Evie wanted, I identified with her. I can see why she made the decisions she made.
However, it is rather slow-moving. It took me a week to finish; it's not a page-turner. Others may find What I Saw and How I Lied to be more suspenseful than I did.
By Judy Blundell
*** 1/2 Stars
This book takes place in the late 1940’s, about a year after WWII ended. The main character, Evie, is a young teenager. She doesn’t think of herself as beautiful, like her mother. Her mother is young and immature. Her stepfather just came back from the war, and wants to take the family to Florida. They travel to Florida, where they stay for a while.
In Florida, a web of lies is unraveled. Evie is left to make all kinds of decisions; she needs to find out if the ones she loves are truly the ones she knows. Overall, this book is worth reading. As a reader, I felt as if I wanted what Evie wanted, I identified with her. I can see why she made the decisions she made.
However, it is rather slow-moving. It took me a week to finish; it's not a page-turner. Others may find What I Saw and How I Lied to be more suspenseful than I did.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Meaghan Kimbrell's Book Review
Joy In the Morning
** stars
by Betty Smith
This book was not good. I did not like it that much at all. The beginning was slow and I thought that it would get better so I kept reading it but I did not get that much better at all. I believe that the book had good parts but over all I did not enjoy it.
The novel was of this young couple, Carl and Annie, that are in love and Carl is in his third year of college while Annie is only eighteen and stopped attending school at the age of fourteen. Annie follows Carl to college before his third year begins and they get married even though Annie’s mother tells her not to. After Carl tells his mother that they are married she stops sending him money. Annie and Carl have to figure out a way to have Carl make it through college so he can be a lawyer and be a newly married couple all at the same time.
** stars
by Betty Smith
This book was not good. I did not like it that much at all. The beginning was slow and I thought that it would get better so I kept reading it but I did not get that much better at all. I believe that the book had good parts but over all I did not enjoy it.
The novel was of this young couple, Carl and Annie, that are in love and Carl is in his third year of college while Annie is only eighteen and stopped attending school at the age of fourteen. Annie follows Carl to college before his third year begins and they get married even though Annie’s mother tells her not to. After Carl tells his mother that they are married she stops sending him money. Annie and Carl have to figure out a way to have Carl make it through college so he can be a lawyer and be a newly married couple all at the same time.
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