Endangered

This week I read Endangered by Eliot Schrefer. This book is about a girl named Sophie, from the Congo, who every summer visits her mom's Bonobo (they're a type of gorilla) sanctuary in the Congo. She isn't very happy to be there, until she finds a Bonobo that she names Otto. With Otto, Sophie manages to survive living with her mom for a while, until the Congo splits into a civil-war -type-thing, and her sanctuary gets attacked and torn apart. Sophie has to learn how to survive in the Congo, and has to decide if she will risk her life and possibly give it up for Otto, as well as who to trust. First of all, I have to say that this book is amazing. Second, since it was good I'm able to be picky about some of it, basically. One thing that REALLY bothered me about the book was that the emotions of the characters were all screwed up. I felt like some of the most exciting/traumatic/sad scenes were the ones the characters cared about the least. You really get to know Sophie at the beginning, but I feel like in the most climatic scenes in the book, she kind of got shut down. It made by care about the plotline, the book, and the characters less. One great thing about this book (well, in perspective) is that you actually learned something while reading it, about the Congo, Bonobos, Whatever. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to a lot of people. It's about 350 pages, and not too hard to read. It might be a good book to bring on the overnight.

Jane Eyre

This week I read Jane Eyre. Honestly, I started reading this over break because it was the only book that I had in Washington DC. I then quit reading it because, as I had said before, I only had read the first three pages and was severely bored. Last week I kinda picked it up again and decided to give it a try. Now let me clarify; this is NOT the type of book that I normally read at all. But I thought that it was all classic or whatever and I might at least give it a try. And I did. And surprisingly... wait for it...It was actually kind of good. Jane Eyre is about a person named Jane Eyre, and it kind of follows her life and her time being a governess for these people. It does not have a lot of action in it, but the characters are pretty developed too. Overall, I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to try reading a so-called "classic" book. This book, as well as being a classic, is also pretty good so- there you go.

Carrie

This week I read Carrie  by Stephen King. This book is about a shy girl named Carrie in high school, who gets picked on by other people in high school, and abused by her very-messed-up-mother. She discovers that she has powers like telekinesis. After a couple of incidents of being picked on, in a gym bathroom and at the prom, she uses this to destroy or harm, or at least scare all her bullies. In my opinion, this book was messed up. I mean, I don't read a lot of horror books, if that's what you would classify this as, but I honestly didn't really like it. If you're going to have a horror story, I feel like there should be some suspense, and I didn't get any. I thought that the writing was great, but the plot line was just ok and the ending was kind of messed up. There was a lot of killing, really unneeded violence,  and a lot of weird stuff, (sheep's blood at a high school, for example. Really?). I think that this book was great, in terms of writing, and I would recommend it to anyone in our class who want to read a horror book with, in my opinion, not a lot of suspense, but the book was a little messed up in my opinion. There are some mature topics, if not a lot, and a lot violence and killing, so consider that before reading it. Overall, this book was fine, but not the right book for me.

Every Soul A Star

In the last couple weeks (and spring break!) I read Every Soul A Star,   by Wendy Mass. This book was awesome, actually. The book switched between the main viewpoint of three characters; Ally, Jack, and Bree, who each could not be more different from one another. Ally has spent her whole life being homeschooled on her family's camp/motel type thing, in the middle of nowhere, called The Moon Shadow, Bree is super-popular and pretty, wanting to be a model when she grows up, and Jack is kind of an outcast at school with no self-confidence at all. They all meet each other after surprising events force them to work together. This book was really good. I love Wendy Mass books, especially A Mango Shaped Space, so that set the bar pretty high for this book, and it pretty much lived up to my expectations, even if it was not quite as good as A Mango Shaped Space. One of the kind of good-kind of bad things about Wendy Mass books in my experience is that the situations that happen are not extraordinary or anything, they are stuff that could happen in real life, which is cool sometimes. I would recommend this book to people, especially sixth or maybe seventh graders, but also sometimes eigth graders who liked books like A Mango Shaped Space, See You at Harry's, or Racing in the Rain.