New Semester- New Start!

Welcome back to my blog for the 3rd quarter! We are still finishing A Midsummer's Night Dream, but we will be reading a true story called Into the Wild soon! I have learned about John Carroll that your grades matter here and that you can't slack off like in middle school. Your responsible for getting your homework and if you don't have it for class, than its your fault. I haven't really learned anything new about myself. I've stayed the exact same since middle school. Even though I try really hard, for the second quarter, I think I have to try a lot harder to get the grades I want. I haven't really changed since September, I don't think. I have definately made a lot of friends though.

Character Sketch Essay

Character Sketch: Haven

That Summer by Sarah Dessen

In the book That Summer by Sarah Dessen, Haven, an average teenage girl, has to deal with her dad’s infidelity resulting in the divorce of her parents. Haven is very serious with little humor. She cares about other people more than she does about herself and she likes to be in control. She doesn’t like changes but she tries to change what happens with her parents. Despite her efforts, Haven’s parents get divorced and then her dad gets re-married to a woman she and her sister don’t like.

 Haven and her sister, Ashley don’t like their dad’s girlfriend, Lorna. Haven’s father Mac works on a local news station. It is there that he meets Lorna. “Lorna Queen, of ‘Lorna Queen’s Weather Scene” on WTSB News Channel 5. She was what they called a meteorologist and what my mother called the weather pet, but only when she was feeling vindictive. Lorna was blonde and perky an wore cute little pastel suits that showed just enough leg as she stood smiling in front of colorful maps, sweeping her arm as if she controlled all the elements (Dessen12).” Haven and Ashley thought that her parent’s relationship would never end, especially Ashley who was always daddy’s little girl. “My mother had read all the books about divorce and tried hard to make it smooth for me and my sister, Ashley, who was Daddy’s pet and left the room at even the slightest remark about his hair. My mother kept her outbursts about that to a minimum, but I could tell by the way she winced when they showed my father and Lorna together at their subordinate news desk that it still hurt. Before the divorce my mother had been good at outbursts, and this quietness, this holding back, was more unnerving than I imagined any breakdown could be (Dessen12).”

Despite what anyone in the family says, Haven and Ashley’s dad plans to get married to Lorna. Haven begins to think that her dad doesn’t care about her, her sister or her mom anymore but yet she still goes to the wedding because she and her sister were asked to be bridesmaids. "Now the church was packed and the aisle seemed about a hundred miles long with the minister standing at the end of it like a tiny plastic figure you might slap onto a cake (Dessen21)." While they were standing in line getting ready to go down the aisle Lorna tells them that she loves them. She then realizes that everything’s final and there’s no going back. Things were changed forever. "My sister started crying and I knew it wasn't for the happiness of weddings but for the finality of all of this, knowing that things would never go back to the way they were (Dessen23).”

By the end of this book Haven and her sister Ashley mature a lot. Haven realizes that she can’t change what happened in the past. Only she can control what happens to her in the future and no one can change her. "I wondered if the summer had changed me, if with one look the world could see a difference (Dessen97).” She learns that you can’t always care what people say about you and you just have to learn to move on. “Everyone can reach back to one summer and lay a finger to it, finding the exact point when everything changed. That summer was mine (Dessen11).”

 This character's transformation is teaching the reader that you can't always control what happens and not everything is your fault. The author is trying to say just to hold on and everything will get better.  A lot can be learned from Haven. You can learn to persevere through everything and to trust other people because sometimes they know better than you do. Haven realizes that through her parents’ divorce and her sister’s marriage that everything happens for a reason. If everything stayed the same, you would never change and learn to grow up and adapt to new ideas and things.

Masque of the Red Death Essay, Color purple

In “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, there are rooms in a castle that are different colors. In the castle there is a blue room, a purple room, a green room, an orange room, a white room, a violet room, and lastly, at the end of the hall is a black room. This book involves a lot of symbolism. These are the colors for which the stages of life go in. For instance, the blue room is the birth stage of life and the black room is death. After the blue room is the purple room. In the story, the color purple symbolizes happiness and fun.

The color purple represents the stage in life in which you would be around 5-9 years old, a toddler. It symbolizes the stage in your life in which you would be the happiest and you would have the most fun. It symbolizes youth. When you are in your youth you would be having the most fun. Once you his adolescence you have to start getting serious and considering your future.  It is in between the colors blue, which is birth, and green, which is adolescence. You need this stage to get to progress to other stages.

The color purple is important to “The Masque of the Red Death” because it represents a stage of life, just like blue represents birth and black represents death. It’s an important stage, because you need to be a toddler before you can become an adolescent, just like you need all the other stages to advance in life. The color purple relates to my life because I have watched kids grow up around me. For example, I remember when my neighbor’s first child was born. I remember when she was toddler and how much fun she always had. She always seemed so happy. Over the years I’ve watched her grow up. Now she’s in 4^th grade! I’ve also watched her brother and sister grow up. Over the years, I’ve seen their looks change and their personality. They all started out so careless and would just go with stuff, now their starting to realize that they have a say. They never had to worry about school, but now all of them are in school and have to worry about everyday stuff such as homework, friends and grades.

Advertise Your Book-of-the-Month

In Keeping the Moon by Sarah Dessen, fifteen-year-old Colie is spending the summer with her odd Aunt Mira while her mother travels. 

http://www.kdl.org/image_attachments/0000/3639/51c62qxxfvl.jpg?1192649898

Colie's celeberity fitness mom motivated her daughter Colie to lose almost 50 lbs, but Colie feels just as insecure as she did when she was overweight. During the summer, her mom goes on a tour of Europe advertising her new fitness book, and Colie is sent to live with her Aunt Mira in Colby, North Carolina. I am reading this book because I like reading about situations that happen to teenagers my age. I think that any teenage girl can read this book and can relate to what's going on in Colie's life. I would rate this book 8 out of 10.

O'henry

This picture is from: http://www.jamesnava.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/O%E2%80%99Henry.jpg

• O'henry was born September 11th, 1862
• O'henry died June 5th, 1910
• He was born in Greensboro, North Carolina
• He was best know as an American short story writer
• He wrote colorful short stories with surprising and ironic twists
• He spent 3 years in Jail
• After jail, he moved to New York to work full time as a writer
• O'henrys work appeared in magazines and journals across the country
• O'henry died of alcohol and being plagued by ill health
• He died broke at the age of 47

My facts are from: http://www.infoplease.com/biography/var/ohenry.html

Edgar Allan Poe and his Spooky Life, Writings, and Death

When I was younger, my family and I stopped to see Edgar Allan Graves a couple days after his birthday. When we got there, there was a bottle and roses. I thought that that was pretty cool that after 60 some years people are still remembering him and his amazing work.

1. Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachussetts on January 19th, 1809. Poe died in Baltimore in 1849.

2. Poe was left as a orphan at the age of 3. I think that that definately infulenced his writing because he was left at such a young age. 

3. Poe's death is unknown but some people think that he died from delirium tremens, heart disease, syphilis, meningeal inflammation, cholera, even rabies. 

4. Edgar Allan Poe calls Virginia home.

5. The poe society doesnt like the claim that Virginia was his homeland because he lived in Baltimore for most of his life. 

6. The US Military Acadamey of West Point expelled Poe.

7. Poe married Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe who was 13 at the time of the marriage.

8. I think that for him to be marrying a girl that young is outrageous. Now a days thats illegal!

9. Murders in the Rue Morgue is the first detective story.

10. The 'Tell Tale-Tale Heart' and 'The Black Cat' were written in 1843.

11. 'The Raven' was written in 1845.

http://www.nndb.com/people/469/000022403/
http://www.poemuseum.org/index.php
http://www.nndb.com/people/469/000022403/

Welcome Back

Welcome back to my blog for the 2nd quarter! 2 weeks ago we had homecoming. It was really fun! I was so tired after from all the dancing. Also on Oct. 3rd i turned 15!