the girl who fell from the sky

          I finished the girl who fell from the sky a few weeks ago. I thought that it was a really good book. At times it did get boring though. It was about a girl who is half black and half white. She went through life not fitting in because she had no true group to fit into. It was around a time when people were really racist. And she only had one white friend.

She was a straight A student who was acting like a slut in order to get guys to like her and it did work but others didn't like it. She was ridiculed a lot because she was half black and half white with blue eyes but dark skin. in some ways I can relate to her because I am also half white and half black and people don't believe when I say that I am half black because I look white. The same thing is with my mom who is from Jamaica. Whenever she tells anybody where she from they never believe her because she has white skin.

          Sometimes I wonder what her life would have been like if she wasn't half white how girls would treat her because to some being mixed is a bad thing you’re either black or you are white.

        I felt bad for the girl sometimes because she had a hard childhood no matter how good her grades were. This was a coming of age novel because it really showed how this girl went through a really hard life and how she grew up learning the true meaning of life.

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

        

          This book is about a girl who mom has died and her dad is back in Denmark so she lives with her grandma and her aunt Loretta. As she is growing up she is experiencing new things about life and school. She dated and has been bullied a bit too, just like any other teenager. Ash she meets new people she is learning about life in new ways.

         I have noticed a lot of racism in this book. The girl is a mix of black and white so she is dark and has blue eyes. People aren’t sure if she is black or white. There are a lot of racist remarks about white people and Negros (clean version). How they are mean or hang out with only those people and just hate each other in general. There is a lot of enmity between characters. It reminds me of a show called everybody hates Chris. It was about a black boy living in Bed Stuy and went to school across the borough. He was the only black kid in the school so all of the white kids made mean jokes about him all the time. They relate because they both show how kids can be racist no matter how old or young.  

           I also noticed that the main character changed a lot. She gets straight A’s in school but wears tight clothing so that guys would notice her. Even though she is a smart person she didn’t have to dress like a slut in order to get a guy to like her.

          As I continue the book I hope to read for more issues about life and growing up.

Willow #2

        I just finished reading Willow and I thought the ending was really good. Willow found out that her brother cries at night from her parent’s death. She also found out that her brother doesn’t trust her anymore that he hates her for what happened in a way. Willow and Guy has fallen in love with each other and willow regrets every moment she cuts herself. Guy has helped her more that she is almost completely clean.

        

          I thought that this book was really good because I taught me the life of some people who lives are so bad that they hurt themselves just to feel better. I think that if that had happened to me I would feel the same way but I wouldn’t cut myself, if I am upset and want to feel better I have people around me who will comfort me. If I were in her shoes I would realize that it wasn’t my fault my parents decided to each get drunk with a 16 year old girl who only has her permit and has to drive on a stormy night. It just spells disaster. To me this book tells me that I should be happy with my life because there are others who go through pain and torture all the time every day.

Willow

        I am reading a book called willow. It is about a girl named Willow who is an orphan because both of her parents died in a car crash as she was driving. That night they were drunk. After they died she was so depressed her grades started dropping and most importantly she started cutting herself. She cut her arms her legs and even her stomach once. She says that when she feels hatred for herself and anger she dug a blade wherever there was a clean spot.

       

       She met this guy named Guy, he hated what she was doing to herself but he can’t just leave her alone with this. He started to help her through everything but it didn’t work for a while. Willow also has a brother that doesn’t know she cuts herself. As I keep reading I hope to figure out more about her and Guy and her brother too.

Much ado about nothin

I thought that the play much ado about nothing was really great. I love how they modernized it to appeal to teenagers more, because they wanted us to understand the story better. I did understand the story better, I understood about the pain and love that people went through.

The story to me was about trust and love. When the man didn’t believe his lover when she said that she didn’t cheat on him when she didn’t, he didn’t believe her. I thought that was really wrong for him to do that because he loved her so much and she loved him back, she was set up for this to happen. In the end when he found out that everything was a lie his fiancé was already “dead”. He felt so guilty and so upset he agreed to marry another woman whom in the end ended up to be her.

To me this play was phenomenal, I really understood the story better than I would but it came out really good anyway.

romeo and juliet

As we are reading Romeo and Juliet I notice that Romeo seems to be really confused about how he feels. He says that he is in love with Rosaline but she doesn’t love him back. He says that she is the most beautiful girl in the world but she hath Dianes wit. She never wants to get married nor have children. To him this is torture, he wants her as a lover but she doesn’t.

I think that Romeo is over reacting, I already know about the story I know that when he meets Juliet he instantly falls in love with her. Romeo is being over dramatic; he thinks that his life is over as Rosaline does not love him. I think he should just get over her because he knows that it’s not going to happen. Romeo is just being a over dramatic person not realizing that he still has his whole life ahead of him and that he is going to meet someone new.

Water for Elephants

I have just finished the book Water for elephants. It was about a man in his 90s who is remembering back to the time when he carried water for elephants at the circus. When he was 19 his parents died in an accident. He was so upset he ran away and found a traveling circus the Benzini brothers’ most spectacular show on earth. It was in the 1930s when this all took place. He met a girl that he fell in love with instantly. But she was married to another man. He was a very violent man. as time went by they got closer and closer. And when her husband beat her one day she left him and went to the man that was in love with her. In the end they ended up together until she died 50 years later.

       I thought that this book was really addicting I couldn’t take my eyes off of the screen (was read on kindle) it was a very heartfelt and loving book. As this man is dying of old age he is remembering the days when his life ended and began again. I felt like I was in the story the entire time as I kept reading it. This book was so good I recommend it to everyone.

Sonnet #1

The way his smile can light up the night

The way his rough beard feels against my skin

The way his eyes can twinkle in the light

The way that his style is always in

The divorce that changed my life forever

Between my parents I could never see

He was so strong and never said never

As strong as a mountain and as a tree

I wish he had never left me alone

He left me to live with somebody else

I really miss the smell of his cologne

Everyday I sit and think to myself

Being a daughter without her father

Is just like a river without water

What happens to poem

What happens to life when we die?

        Are we buried six feet under?

        Are our ashes spread over the sea?

        Do we end up with god in heaven?

        Or the fire hole we call hell?

        Are we even as missed as we should be?

Are we really dead?

Or living again?

poetry is

Poetry is...

your life

you can do anything you want 

with 

poetry

poetry is emotions

you have for another

or anything else

poetry is life

you can create it

or even kill it

poetry is your safety zone

the one place where you can be

you

Paul Cezanne

The murder of a woman                                                                         

the shame that it brought                                                                  

there at night                                                                                       

so they wouldn’t get caught                                                                                         

He must have been angry                                                                                   

to paint like this                                                                                                  

or is he keeping a secret          

What is the secret                                                                                            

that we need to find                                                                                             

to bad he’s dead                                                                                                  

to bad that he died

Paul Cezanne was born in Aix-en Provence in 1839. He came from a wealthy family. He always loved poetry and art; he also loved nature and based a lot of his paintings on nature. He used lots of colors and used most of his free time to paint. His best friend Emily Zola also loved poetry. His father didn’t encourage him to paint but wanted him to be a lawyer of work at his bank. Paul studied being a lawyer and worked in his father’s bank to make him happy but it didn’t make Paul happy at all. His mom eventually convinced his father to let him go to France to paint with real painter. When Paul went he was an outcast. People didn’t like his paintings but he didn’t listen. His father knew that he was going to fail in France. Eventually Paul’s paintings went from nature to dark and angry. Later Paul Cézanne died in 1906.

One of my favorite paintings from him is The Murder. It shows his true anger. I think that this painting was based on how angry he was at someone in his life or at himself. This painting has lots of dark and sorrowful colors in it. When I look at it, it reminds me of all the times I was mad at someone in my life, no matter who it was. I also think this painting shows that anger he has on his father for not encouraging him.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

9-11 Poems

One month following the attack of 9-11, eleven year old Aaron Walsh wrote the following poem in his school notebook, trying to make sense of this horrible thing that had happened:

I Hold in My Hands

~ Aaron Walsh, 2001

I hold in my hands ...
The dust.
The dust and wreckage of the towers.
Even though I wasn't there,
I can still feel it.
It has damaged my hands with dirt.
It has damaged my heart with sorrow.
It has damaged my body with fear,
and it has damaged my life with war.

I hold in my hands ...
My life.
My life could soon be filled with war,
cruelty at its worst.
Miles away, I can hear the planes' roaring engines, gliding through the air.

I hold in my hands ...
My future.
My life ahead.
Whether it will be filled with war or peace, we will not know.
My future keeps me going from dawn to dusk.

I hold in my hands ...
Hope.
Hope for the future.
Hope for peace.
Hope for my country's freedom.
And hope for America to win this war on terrorism.

(This poem was not written by me but by Aaron Walsh. Poem was found on http://www.celebrate-american-holidays.com/9-11-Poems.html)

                                                                               

This poem is true for millions they could not be there to experience it but they can still feel the pain it left emotionally and the toll it had on their life in the future. I am using this poem for what I am going to write about a book next.    

This book is about a boys dad who dies in the 9/11 attack on the twin towers, after that he finds a key that he is inspired to find out what it opens, his name is Oskar and he wants to find what that key opens no matter how long it takes. This book is also a very new movie. I do want to see the movie but I can’t. This book has inspired me in so many ways.

First of all when the 9/11 attack happened I was too young to remember. I have seen videos, heard things and have seen the construction place of the memorial. I understand how this hurt the families of the innocent people who died.

This story of what I have read so far which is very little has showed me to never give up on hope. Oskar is so determined to find that lock to that key that he has pretended to be sick from school so that while his mother is at work he went searching the city for that lock. He has done research, asked people, and has done every other possible thing to find what he is looking for.

He has also taught me that to do the impossible you must thing of the impossible. There are millions of locks in New York City and not yet has he found his lock but he knows it’s not impossible.

When I finish reading this book I hope to find out something new that will hopefully change my life forever.

City of Glass

Valentine, valentine why are                                                                                              

you so EVIL!!!                                                                                                         

Destroying everything in your path                                                                              

they have to suffer from all of your rage                                                                        

they don’t even get to age                                                                                                                 

you kill them for no reason                                                                                            

doesn’t even matter what season                                                                                   

winter summer spring fall                                                                                                         

why do you have to hurt them all                                                                                    

for they have done nothing wrong                                                                                             

bet you all they want to do is sing                                                                                            

a song of hope

           

          I wrote this based on the evil guy in the city of ashes, Valentine. He is the father of Jace and Clary and he is the most evil person in any world. All he wants to do is kill and take over, not realizing he might kill himself in the line. The people he hurts literally have done nothing wrong; they are in pain they are suffering, why? Because he just want to the best, the most powerful.

            This poem shows who valentine is in real life. He tried to kill his own children. I think that he is really dumb because he doesn’t realize that people are more powerful than him and that. In the book he has found out many ways to hurt people. I think that this book even though I m not done with it, it has taught me a lot about people and who they truly are.

The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore

         In the book the power of six by Pittacus Lore, the characters made the story. John Smith, Sam, six, marina, Ella, and the mogadorians. They made the story real.

        This book is about aliens from a different planet; only people just don’t know it yet. Nin e to be exact came to earth with a guide to help them on their journey. The mogadorians are the bad guys who want those nine dead and three are already. John smith A.K.A number four must find the other five and defeat the mogadorians for good. So far he has number six, and a human named Sam. As they journey trying to stay hidden and find the other four they have faced several threats. Later on they find seven, nine, and ten. Now all they have to do is find five and eight and win. There is also marina and Ella. Marina is number seven and she was living in an orphanage with her guide and 18 other girls younger than her. As her life went by she discovered new things and new abilities. When Ella came along her adventures became more real, changing her life around.

        When I say that the characters made the story is that the actions of the characters that make the story what it is. For example john smith had a girlfriend named Sarah and they were in love. One night he went to find Sarah and she ratted him out to the police. This made the story so much better because it was something you would have never expected to happen. This is something that showed how these characters made the story.

        Another example of how the characters make the story is when marina found out that Ella was number ten. Marina thought she was just a little girl and so did I. it turns out that Ella had the power to change between ages. When I read this I was shocked because it showed me how the little details can reveal a lot about a book.

        I thought that this book was amazing because of the twist that the characters went through and how much each character has changed.

Body Image Article

     I am going to write a picture book on body image. I figured that if I am going to do body image I have to read on people being too fat (or thinking it) and people on wanting to be skinny and forcing themselves to be. I read a story on being fat and forcing themselves to be skinny (anorexia). http://www.highschoolnotforever.com/stories/body.html.  In the story she says that she was always fat. In high school she had some problems in her house and her life and started to starve her eventually she had gotten seriously sick enough to have a chance of having a heart attack. Her mother was worried and she finally spilled. I thought that this story was really shocking because it showed me what could happen when you try to become thinner in all the wrong ways.

     I also read an article on a little girl who was 6 and how she thought she was too fat. (http://abcnews.go.com/US/body-image-issues-year-girl-worries-fat/story?id=13880833#.TtLnPWNFuso  in the story a 6 year old girl comes home from school to ask her mom why is she fat. She was shocked at what her daughter asked her. She one day took her daughter to the doctor and she checked her height and weight to calculate her BMI and she said that she was normal. Later the girl was called fat at a birthday party and she confronted the boy.  I think that this is sad because they are little kids and they shouldn’t be worrying about being fat because they can think about that when they get older.

     This social issue makes me mad because I think that people should be happy about who they are and what they look like no matter how old.

War in the Neighborhood

In my neighborhood of Crown Heights I feel like there is a lot of racism. There is a mix of West Indian, African American and orthodox Jewish people living here. I am part of the West Indian and African American group and I always feel like the orthodox are always staring me down like I did something to them. They might not like who we are but that doesn’t mean we like the things they do too. Fro example they tend to stand in biug groups in the middle of the street forcing us to have to maneuver through or around them. In my family we say “if they do something wrong to me, I will curse them out or punch them in the face.” especially my sister because she has a patience the size of an ant.

I think this is not right because I feel like we’re in a war that will never end. I think the cause of this is because before the neighborhood was filled with mostly West Indians, then when the Jews moved in it all went downhill from there. I think possible solutions would be if we both try to stop judging each other by the way we are and live as one.

City of Ashes

       I just finished reading the city of ashes by Cassandra clare and I thought that it was an amazing book. It was full of surprises suspense and some unusual changes that were perfect to fit the book.

        This book was about a girl who learns she is a demon hunter and she has a brother who she thought was dead all of her life. Her father is an evil person who was willing to hurt her and her family just to get what he wants. Over the time she knew she was a demon hunter she has killed demons, but she has almost died many times herself. She has gone through many changes over the course of a few months or so. Her best friend becomes her boyfriend, her boyfriend becomes a vampire, and her vampire boyfriend ends up just wanting to be friends again.

        This book has many different kinds of meanings to it. For example it shows you that even though someone you know might not be your family they will always be part of you and your real family. Also that you should never give up. This is because all the times that Clary tried to save someone and failed she never gave up and always went back to try again.

        This book can change the way you think about some things if you read between the lines, it can make you realize what the true meaning of family is and how important it is to some people.

Two Voice Poem

I am thirteen years old

I hate the way I am

I am too fat to see my feet

I am so skinny I can see my ribs

Why am I like this?

What am I doing wrong?

Where did I go wrong?

What can I do to change?

Can anyone help me?

How can I help myself?

How can I change how much I weigh?

I am 209 pounds

I am 87 pounds

If only someone can help me 

But who will because I can’t help myself

        I came up with this poem because I thought about how looks of kids are ashamed about their bodies because they are either they are overweight or really under weight, so I made the poem from the perspective of an overweight person and an anorexic person. I wrote about how they feel and how they wish that they can change.

When I think about this issue I think that the reason why you’re like this is mostly your fault and if you want to change you have to do it yourself. Also that you’re the only person who can change if you try. To me I feel like you’re the way you are because you did it to yourself. You never listened to what anyone else had to say and you’re just making yourself worse by not listening.

     The issue of body image bothers me because I think that everyone should be happy with the way they look and they shouldn’t think that they are overweight or underweight unless someone like your DOCTOR says so.

worlds on fire

Hearts are worn in these dark ages 
You're not alone in this story's pages 
Night has fallen amongst the living and the dying 
And I try to hold it in, yeah I try to hold it in 

[Chorus]
The world's on fire and
It's more than I can handle 
I'll tap into the water
(I try to pull my ship)
I try to bring more 
More than I can handle 
(Bring it to the table)
Bring what I am able

I watch the heavens and I find a calling 
Something I can do to change this moment 
Stay close to me while the sky is falling 
Don't wanna be left alone, don't wanna be alone 

[Chorus]

Hearts break, hearts mend
Love still hurts 
Visions clash, planes crash 
Still there's talk of 
Saving souls, still the cold
Is closing in on us 

We part the veil on our killer sun
Stray from the straight line on this short run 
The more we take, the less we become 
A fortune of one that means less for some 

[Chorus X2]

This song is about how people are hungry and less fortunate than us in the world and how other people are greedy only thinking about money and fame.

This songs message shows that instead of using money to do things that are meaningless donate to people that need it. The video that sarah made she showed all the things she donated the money that would have made her video. She helped millions of poor unhealthy people.

This songs makes me feel like I need to help out in the world more because it helps not just the people out it makes me know that I need to appreciate what  I have because people have a lot less than what we have.

This song is also about how people may be greedy and inconsiderate but there are still those people who care. That is why I like this song because it shows me that there are famous people out there who aren’t greedy for money.

Friends Are Family and Family are Friends.

           In the book City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare, one of the characters Jace has a real sister, Clary and fake sister and brother, Isabelle and Alec. Clary is a more of a friend then a sister to Jace, and Isabelle and Alec are more like siblings to him then friends. This is because Jace has lived with Alec and Isabelle all his life but was in love with Clary before they found out they were siblings. This reminds me of myself because the same thing happens to me.

        My friends are more like siblings to me because I’ve known them all my life, but some of my family members kids mostly are friends because I don’t see them often or I don’t treat them like family. For example my best friends at school are like my family because I see them all the time and I love to be around them, but some of my family members I never see so I just treat them like a friend like I don’t really talk to them much.

        This is a weird kind of thing because usually friends are just friends, but family is family only treating them like family. This shows that in my life and I his life everything is twisted around, everything is opposite of what you usually see.