Anya's Ghost

Anya's Ghost

by Vera Brosgol

The Premise

Anya struggles with fitting in. As a Russian girl, she feels awkwardly out of place, and her one "friend" is constantly teasing her. She is self-conscious about her body and the boy she likes would never notice her if she wasn't the girl who tripped and fell in gym class. But all that changes when she falls down an abandoned well. She finds a skeleton down there, and the ghost of a girl who died down in the well centuries ago. Anya finds herself in a surprising friendship with the ghost, who's name is Emily. Anya gets rescued from the well and Emily comes out with her. Emily proves to be a big help to Anya, and a good friend, too. But can you ever really trust a ghost? Anya realizes that when you give a ghost with a secret too much power, things can turn dangerous...

                                                                      My Reaction

I saw Salina reading this book and I was interested so I asked if I could read it after her. I'm so glad I did! This was probably my favorite book I read all year. It was funny and spooky, and it has an element of mystery to it. There are plot twist that I had to reread because I was so surprised. I loved the main character Anya. She made me laugh a lot. Her sarcastic sense of humor makes this book more fun to read. I couldn't put this book down. It is really fast-paced (I finished it in three class periods!) and it's a page-turner, especially during the climax. I recommended this book to all my friends, and I reread it four times! I definitely enjoyed this book.

Insurgent

Insurgent

The Premise

Tris is on the run. After the factions collapse, and her city, is on the verge of war, in the eyes of the Erudite leader, Tris is to blame. Tris, her boyfriend Tobias, his abusive father who is also the leader of the former abnegation faction, her brother Caleb, and the disreputable initiate, Peter escape from the Erudite headquarters. There, they destroyed the mind-control program that allowed the cruel leader of the faction, Jeanine Matthews, to turn the  Dauntless into her personal army. (Sorry if this is confusing. See my previous post for more background info!) Now, Tris leaves the treacherous heart of the city to a place where the Erudite would never expect to find her. She heads to the Amity headquarters. Tris doesn't stay there long before she is forced to escape. She is taken captive and meets with a nation of people more powerful then she expected. She and Tobias stay briefly before moving to another neutral faction called Candor. In Candor Tris realizes there, that she must face past mistakes and, more importantly, think about the near future. She can't hide for ever, and she feels the enemy closing in. Tris has been told that there might be some secret information that the Erudite faction is hiding, and she needs to save and protect it; she knows it will change everything. Jeanine is desperate to study the mind of a Divergent, the special type of mind that Tris has that makes it so she can't be controlled by Jeanine's mind control. Jeanine wants to capture Tris and Tobias, another Divergent, so that she can figure out how their different minds work. Tris is worried when her friends are put at risk and she has to make a very hard decision. She makes her way back to safety, through all of the dangerous situations. But pressures rise, and Tris knows that she has to try and rescue the information, before everything is destroyed, so she sets a secret plan and her mission is clear: to recover the information at all costs.

!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!

Tris doesn't want Tobias to find out about her quest, because she needs the help of Marcus, his father whom he despises. She sneaks in with a few other people and realizes that she needs Jeanine alive to get the data off of her private computer.  She tries to stop her allies from killing Jeanine but it's too late. Jeanine dies. Tris is accused as a traitor for trying to stop the murder of Jeanine, and she has no chance to ever recover the top secret information she needs. But Tobias is very good with computers, and he's able to hack the computers and retrieve the information. On the disk, a woman tells of a world outside of the city, of people who don't belong to factions, and asks that when the disk is recovered, the people leave the city and take care of the outside world. Most shockingly of all, the woman on the disk has the last name Prior. Prior is Tris' last name as well.

Yeah the ending is kind of confusing, but I guess the only to figure out what this means is to read the next book. That's definately my plan, at least.

Divergent

Divergent

           Imagine living in a world where one choice can change everything. That's exactly what happens in Divergent by Veronica Roth. Beatrice Prior is an average girl living in Abnegation, a section of a future dystopian Chicago. Abnegation is a faction of the city, one of five. Each faction values one trait: Dauntless choose courage; Amity, peace; Erudite, intelligence; Candor, honesty; and Abnegation, selflessness. When Beatrice turns sixteen, she must choose the faction she wants to spend the rest of her life in. Can she leave her family and all she's ever known? Can she really stay in a faction that she never really felt she belonged in? Her choice will surprise you. Quiet and average Beatrice Prior is reborn as Tris in her new faction, where she must endure a grueling initiation or face a factionless life on the streets, belonging nowhere. There's one more challenge that Tris must face. She is Divergent. The government's main system, serums that control your mind and cause simulations, doesn't affect her brain the same way as most people's. She doesn't know much about it, but one thing is for sure--her secret is dangerous. As a shady government plan starts to take shape, Tris realizes that she can't trust anyone, and being Divergent just might make her the only one that can save her friends, family, and faction.
           I like the characters in this story. Tris is probably one of my favorites. She is telling the story, so the reader really gets to know her thoughts. I feel like she is relatable. I made a strong connection between her and Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. They are both strong and independent young women who are dealing with a corrupt government in a futuristic world. Tris has a brother named Caleb. He ends up surprising Tris with a well-kept secret. You don't get to know him very well in this book, but in the next two books he is a more prominent character. Tris's parents are also hiding something shocking that is revealed in the end. Tris makes friends in her new faction, too. Christina and Will are two people she trains with during initiation and gets close to. Four is Tris's instructor, whom she ends up having a budding romance with. I like Four, too, and even though he's kind of mysterious, he has a softer side with Tris.
          I really liked this book. I tried reading it about three weeks ago, but I didn't have much time to read so I didn't really get into it. When I realized that I had a book blog to do, I picked it up again because I thought it would be a fast read. That's when I got hooked! This book pulled me in and I was really excited about reading it. It's fast-paced and addicting. The plot is great and I love how it builds up to such an exciting, unexpected climax. I liked how it was written; it is very detailed and straightforward. I think that this book is a really good book for almost anyone. However, there are parts that are a little violent and sad, so if you don't like books that are slightly more graphic, you might want to stay away from this book. It's kind of long but if you really like it, it won't take long to finish. If you liked the Hunger Games, I'm sure you'll like this book as well because there are many similarities. Other than that, if you like dystopian stories with a little bit of romance, action books with fighting, or just a story with a little bit of everything, you would love this book as much as I did!



                                         {The movie trailer}

The Upstairs Room

                                                                The Upstairs Room
                                                              

     Premise~ Annie De Leeuw would never expect her life to change overnight. She lives a quiet life with her respected father, her soft spoken mother, and her two, caring sisters. Sure, there is trouble for the Jews in Germany, but eight-year-old Annie and her lives in Holland, so she must be safe, right? Little does Annie know, the power hungry Nazis will drive her family apart, and drive her and her older sister, Sini, into hiding. The Upstairs Room, by Johanna Reiss is the story of Annie's struggle as she lives through suffering and loneliness, and tries to make a stranger's attic into a home.
      
     What I just read~ Annie peered out her window feeling lonely, but felt her mood lighten as her eyes landed on Dini, the little girl whose family was hiding them, making a snowman in the fresh white blanket.if Annie can't play in the new fallen snow this winter, at least she can take pleasure in watching Dini enjoy it. This passage shows Annie's enthusiasm. ""Sini come and look. It's so much fun." But he should be wearing a hat. The ones I used to make always did. Where is Dini? Maybe she has gone inside to get one. Please.  Yes she has one. I laughed. Great." (Reiss, 52) this's passage also shows how she is remembering a time when she built snowmen, and longing for that time again.

      My reaction~ I think that this book is really interesting because it shows the reader that many children knew very little about what was actually going on in the war. Many adults barely even new the whole story. This book really shows what it was like to grow up in a time of confusion and devastation. Annie is separated from her family and thrust into a secretive new life and as she adjusts, it is easy for the reader to relate to her situation. I have to admit, I didn't have high hopes for this book. I mean, it's a story about two girls spending a couple years in an attic, and where is the excitement in that? But this book and the details that enrich it make it so much more interesting, and getting consumed into the fascinating setting and understanding each character gives this book dimension. This classic story of hope is the tale of a family whose love holds it together, even in the darkest times.

The Book Thief

The Book Thief

         Leisel Meminger looked down at the small rectangle in the snow, next to her brother's grave. She reached down and, on impulse, snatched it up. This was the first book, The Gravedigger's Handbook, that Leisel ever stole. The first book in a long line. 

        I have just started reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and I love it so far. To be honest, at first I wasn't sure how I felt about it. The perspective that its told in is very unusual. The narrator is Death, himself. The story never comes out and says it directly, so for the first few chapters I was pretty confused. The beginning confused me in general, because it seemed so random, but I have a feeling it ties into the book later. A few chapters in however, the characters were introduced and I got more into it. 

       We meet Leisel, a young girl who's brother was taken with her to live with foster parents, because there mother couldnt take care of them. Leisel's brother died on the train there. She is devastated and alone as she arrives in her new home and meets her new parents. Her foster Papa, is the softspoken, accordian-playing, Hans Hubbermann. His gentle and caring sentiment is a very comforting prescence in Leisel's life. Rosa Hubbermann is the opposite in personality. i dont think 

the words "gentle" and "caring"  describe Leisel's foster mom at all. She is a swearing, yelling woman. But despite her day-to-day crabbiness, she also loves Leisel. 

        This story takes place in the early 1940s, in a neighborhood called Molching, in Munich, Germany. Leisel moves in on Himmel Street. Himmel means heaven, which clearly, this place was not. It seems ironic, actually. The houses are crammed together; they are small and gray and have a gloomy feel. But the neighborhood kids play soccer in the street, and Leisel makes friends quickly. In this passage, death describes Leisel's experience settling in on Himmel Street.

   

"As with most small towns, Molching was filled with characters. A handful of them lived on Himmel Street. (....)On the whole it was filled with relatively poor people, despite the apparant rise of the economy under Hitler. Poor sides of town still existed. As mentioned already the house ext door to the Hubermanns was rented by a family called Steiner. The Steiners had six children. One of them, the infamous Rudy, would soon become Leisel's best friend and later, her partner and sometime catalyst in crime. She met him on the street."( Zusak, 46)

          The last chapter I read was what I think is perhaps a defining moment in the story (I guess Iwill find out later). Leisel has just had her usual, reoccuring  nightmare, which involves her brother dying. Her Papa is there as usual to comfort her, but this night is different. Because she has wet the bed. As Hans is calmly changing out Leisel's wet sheets, the Gravedigger's Handbook falls out. He asks Leisel where she found the book and she tells him the story of how she got it. Then he asks her if she knows how to read and she says no. So he says he will teach her. 

          I'm not very far into the book yet, but the budding plotline is very captivating. The events of the time are interesting and the characters are charming. I think anyone who is an ambitious reader and is interested in life during this time period would enjoy this book, just as much as I do. 

         

Book Blog #1

Speak

     Laurie Halse Anderson

 Premise

          Sometimes, one night is all it takes to go for someone to go from an ordinary girl to an outcast. Melinda learns this in this realistic fiction novel. In this story, Melinda begins high school friendless due to her calling the police at a party over the summer. Her classmates shun her, but there is something nobody knows. Rather than speak the truth about what happened that fateful night, Melinda keeps her lips locked. Expressing herself in art class is something she enjoys but she still has trouble with letting her feelings show. As regretful memories and troubles at home keep Melinda depressed, readers are left wondering if the real story will ever come out.

                                                                          My Reaction

          I enjoyed this book. It was a little slow in parts but I found it to be funny and different from what I normally read. Melinda's sarcastic take on the world around her is amusing and intriguing. The story features her problems with her parents as well. They have grown very distant over the years and are either arguing with her or with each other. Melinda's world is much like ours.  She is just starting ninth grade in the book. Before the incident she had many friends. It got me thinking how one twist of fate can leave someone feeling like they have no one to turn to.

                                                        SPOILER ALERT!!!

             What happened at the party was that Melinda got raped. No one else at the party saw it. Afterwards she felt scared and confused so she called the police, causing many peers to get in trouble for under age drinking. Thus she was despised by many classmates and former friends.  Melinda never told anyone about the rape.  Her situation seems to be in a downward spiral until she finally speaks the truth. Her friends understand what happened and speak to her again. The moment she gained the courage to speak the truth, she was able to move on and look ahead at what she hoped was a brighter future.