Coming of Age: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

          I just finished The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. The book was really interesting and I think the whole thing was mainly about Charlie growing up and kind of seeing the world.

          At the beginning of the book Charlie was talking about how his friend Michael died, and how he was a really good friend of his. He also said that his other friends turned into different people and he didn't hang out with them anymore. But then he met Sam and Patrick. And they turned out to be his best friends, and they accepted who he was and how he acted and he felt like he could be himself with them and they all felt comfortable with each other. That's when he started to grow up and see the world.

          Charlie realized that he was unique but normal, which is why his teacher, Billy, gave him special attention. Charlie himself notices how he thinks too much about things but his teacher doesn't think that's a bad thing and Charlie accepts himself. Charlie saw more of the world and did new things. He went to a party and got stoned, and did some pretty stupid stuff, but it's all a part of growing up. He fell in love with Sam, and he got his first girlfriend and I think he realized that life is much better when you go out and live it.

          Charlie grew up a lot throughout this book, and in the end, I think he was really happy with his life and I think he realized how much it changed and how much better it got.

My Feelings About the Trayvon Martin Case

          I just read the article "The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin" by Charles M. Blow. The article was about the Trayvon Martin case and how a lot of it was based on race. I think the whole case was very unfair because an innocent boy got shot for no reason, and the killer got off scot-free when all the evidence was against him.
          According to the article, Trayvon Martin was just walking to 7-Eleven to get Skittles and an iced-tea, when he caught George Zimmerman's eye. They got into a fight and Zimmerman shot Trayvon. Trayvon wasn't doing anything wrong and didn't deserve to get killed. The article states that "Zimmerman called the police because the boy looked 'real suspicious' (Blow)," but he was just walking home from 7-Eleven, causing no one harm. Zimmerman killed an innocent boy for no reason at all. This is really unfair because Trayvon didn't deserve to be killed.

           The killer, Zimmerman, didn't get punished for killing Trayvon. There was yelling, and three witnesses said they heard "the desperate wail of a child, a gunshot, and then silence  (Blow)." According to the article, "Zimmerman said he was the one yelling for help. He said that he acted in self-defense (Blow)," when other people said that Trayvon was the one yelling. Many people believe that Zimmerman is guilty, but he got off the hook with no punishment, which is very unfair. I think that even if Zimmerman was acting on self-defense, that gives you no reason to shoot the kid, because you could probably hold him down without killing him. Those are my reasons for why the case was unfair.

          Before I read this article, I knew about the Trayvon Martin case but didn't know all the details. After reading this article, I realized why everyone was talking about it and I realized how unfair it was, which is why I chose to write about that unfairness. Trayvon was innocent and the person who murdered him was not punished in any way,  which is not right.

Response to Ms. Galang's Post on Plagiarism

*What did the student do wrong? What could he/she have done to include the source correctly?

The student copied the text without paraphrasing or putting anything in quotations. He/she could have taken excerpts out of the text and put them in quotations or paraphrased it. The student also should have actually written most of it and should only use a few quotations instead of whole piece of text that someone else wrote.

*Write a sentence using the original source correctly; use a quotation or paraphrase. Also, make sure to cite correctly. Consult my post on citing sources.

The author of  "A Brief Understanding of the Starry night Paintings" stated about the painting: "There is the night sky filled with swirling clouds, stars ablaze with their own luminescence, and a bright crescent moon (Unknown Author)."

* What are at least 3 ways to avoid plagiarizing?

To make sure you don't accidentally plagiarize, if you're reading a text, instead of reading part of it and then paraphrasing that part and continuing to read, you can read the whole thing and then write what you remember to make sure you don't write almost the same thing. You can also remember to put things in quotes and to remember to paraphrase as best as you can.

Joyce's and Gabby's Reading Responses

          In Joyce's blog post "Gale vs. Peeta," Joyce compared Gale and Peeta in the Hunger Games. I really liked the structure of her post. The first paragraph was an introduction to the post, and after that were too paragraphs, the first one explaining Peeta and the second one explaining Gale. I thought this was a really good structure because the point was very clear this way. I also liked how she was very consice and stayed on topic throughout the whole post and explained the good things and bad things about each of them without getting off topic.

          In Gabby's post "The Glass Shatters" she writes about Kristina's drug addiction in Glass. I really liked how she had a lot of text evidence to support her main idea. Also, she put quotes in to support her point further. She elaborated a lot on her point and the text evidence. I also liked how she mentioned the message of the book in the conclusion. I thought that was really interesting.

          I will improve my blog posts by trying to stay on topic more. I noticed that sometimes I get off topic in my blog posts, but after reading Joyce's reading response, I will try to stay more on topic. Also, I almost never add quotes in my posts, but now I will try to add at least one quote in each of my entries. After reading Gabby's post, I realized how a quote can support the main idea of a post a lot.

Themes of Broken

          I just finished reading Broken by Kelley Armstrong, which is in the "Women of the Otherworld" series. while I was reading this book I noticed that a lot of lessons popped up throughout the book, and after finishing the book, I decided to think of a main theme/lesson. Instead, I came up with two main themes because I think that they're both really good examples in this book and are important. The themes I came up with are: Think before you act, and never give up no matter how hard something is. I know that both of these lessons are really common and kind of obvious and easy to tell in a book, but throughout the whole story line of the book, these were the two messages that kept popping up.

          The first message I came up with, to think before you act, was what I came up with because in the book, because of one careless thing that Elena did, she opened a portal that unleashed a pair of zombies and a killer, all because of one careless thing. Elena retrieved the From Hell letter and was curious about what it said because it's a legendary letter, so she took it out of its package to open it. Then a mosquito landed on her arm, and Elena's husband, Clay, swatted the mosquito but somehow got Elena's blood on the letter, opening a portal from the Victorian Era, unleashing two zombie thugs, fatal diseases, and a deadly killer. Because of this one mistake, they had to spend a long time (the whole book which is rally long) just trying to close the portal. If Elena hadn't wanted to read the letter or Clay hadn't killed the fly, they wouldn't have gotten into as much trouble as they did. A specific quote that shows how they didn't think before they acted is: " 'You know what I really feel like doing, though? Climbing to the top of the CN Tower, busting out a window and shouting 'I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I apologize unreservedly.' '... 'Wasn't your fault,' Clay said. 'I squashed the mosquito.' "
          The second theme, to never give up, was what I thought of when I thought of how Elena acted throughout the whole book in general. First, throughout the whole book Elena was pregnant, and she wanted to just quit so many times, but she never gave up in the end. Second, near the end of the book Jeremy wanted everyone to go back to Stonehaven where they live, but they still hadn't closed the portal, so Elena snuck out and finally closed the portal. She didn't give up on closing the portal, even though Clay was sick and she was in no condition to fight. But she still closed the portal successfully. A quote that showed that Elena wasn't leaving and was determined to close the portal is: " 'We're going home, where I can do that.'... My fingers dug into the mattress as my stomach flip-flopped. Home? We couldn't leave. Not now." This shows how Elena didn't want to leave yet and still had to close the portal.

Romeo and Juliet Favorite Quote

          For this post I decided to focus on a very specific quotation in the play. This quotation is in Act 1, Scene 2, Lines 99-100. The quote is: "One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun/Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun." This quote really caught my eye when I was reading the play specifically because of the message behind the quote. First he says, "One fairer than my love?" implying that there is no one prettier than her, which is really important, and it's sort of a hyperbole, because........ Well, he just said that there is no one prettier than her. That's pretty big.

          Then he says, "The all seeing sun/Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun." What he's saying is that even the sun, if it could see, never saw anyone more beautiful than her since the world started. This was the part of the quote that I really like, because first of all, it is a really strong quote, and it has personification and a hyperbole in it. The sentence is really strong because at first he said that there is no one prettier than her in the sentence before, and now he's saying that even the sun, that can see everything, has never seen anyone prettier. The sun is huge and is above the earth, and if it could see it could probably see everything, so saying that no one is prettier than her out of everyone that the sun has seen is super huge, because the sun would be able to see a lot of people, and she would have to be incredibly beautiful to beat everyone else.

          This last sentence has two literary devices, personification and hyperbole. The personification is when he says: "The all seeing sun/Ne'er saw....." he's saying that the sun can see and can see everything, which is personification, because the sun is a thing and can't really see, much less everything, so it's given human traits. The hyperbole is in the whole line, in fact, the whole quote, because he's first saying that no one's prettier than her, and then he's saying that the sun has never seen anyone prettier than her since the world begun. This is supported by how strong the quote is, which I explained in the previous paragraph. It's a hyperbole because it's exaggerated a lot.

          The basis of this quote is saying how beautiful she is, and it's so exaggerated and is such a powerful quote that it really caught my attention. I thought this quote was really important, because of how strong it is, and the massive amount of literary devices in just two sentences.

"If I should have a daughter" response

I broke the poem up into sections and labeled them to make it easier to read:

I. If I should have a daughter, instead of "Mom," she's gonna call me "Point B," because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I'm going to paint solar systems on the backs of her hands so she has to learn the entire universe before she can say, "Oh, I know that like the back of my hand."

II. And she's going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by Band-Aids or poetry. So the first time she realizes that Wonder Woman isn't coming, I'll make sure she knows she doesn't have to wear the cape all by herself because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal.

III. Believe me, I've tried. "And, baby," I'll tell her, don't keep your nose up in the air like that. I know that trick; I've done it a million times. You're just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house, so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else find the boy who lit the fire in the first place, to see if you can change him."

IV. But I know she will anyway, so instead I'll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can't fix. Okay, there's a few heartbreaks that chocolate can't fix. But that's what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything, if you let it. I want her to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind, because that's the way my mom taught me.

V. That there'll be days like this. ♫ There'll be days like this, my mama said. ♫ When you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises; when you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you want to save are the ones standing on your cape; when your boots will fill with rain, and you'll be up to your knees in disappointment. And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you. Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away.

VI. You will put the wind in winsome, lose some. You will put the star in starting over, and over. And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life. And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting, I am pretty damn naive. But I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily, but don't be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.

VII. "Baby," I'll tell her, "remember, your mama is a worrier, and your papa is a warrior, and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more." Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things. And always apologize when you've done something wrong, but don't you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small, but don't ever stop singing. And when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street-corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.

          This poem is about what Sarah Kay thinks her daughter is going to be like and what she's going to teach her. I think it's also about life in general, and about how it's unfair but Sarah is going to help her daughter live through it. This poem has a lot of figurative language in it, especially metaphors and personification. I really like this poem because it's written more like a story and not a poem. She talks a lot about how life is unfair but she knows that her daughter would get through it. I really like how she writes some of her lines, specifically the ones with figurative language in them.
          One of my favorite parts of the poem is the whole second section. When she writes, "And she's going to learn that this life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air," she's saying how unfair life is, but facing obstacles just reminds you how good life really is. I really like how in those sentences she doesn't just say it straight out, she makes you have to think about what she's saying by using figurative language.
           I also like when she says, "....because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal." She uses a metaphor to say that no matter what you can't heal all the pain in the world. I think this line is really strong, because she's also saying that no matter how big you are, or how tall, or how smart, it's never going to be enough to heal all the pain, so you just have to try to help all the people around you because that's the most you can do.
           In the third section, Sarah Kay is saying that instead of doing nothing about something, see if you can help someone by comforting the lonely, sad person, or find the mean person who makes people lonely and sad and try to make him a better person. She's basically saying what she said in the second section, to try to help everyone around you. In the fifth section, I really like how she says, "And those are the very days you have all the more reason to say thank you. Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away," because it has personification to say that when you're disappointed, still say thanks because you have to be persistent like the ocean and never give up on something, no matter how many times you fail.
           My favorite lines are: "You will put the wind in winsome, lose some. You will put the star in starting over, and over. And no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute, be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life." I like how she takes words and takes little parts of them out to create sentences, like how she says "You will put the star in starting over," where she's saying that it's okay to start over and you will make it happen. In the the third sentence in the quote about the land mines, she changes around landmines to say to make your "mind land" on life, despite all the obstacles out there. I think the main theme of the poem is never to give up at life no matter how many obstacles come at you.

A Sonnet for Alexa

A Sonnet for Alexa

She is energetic and full of life.

Her brown hair shines and her glasses glimmer.

She can always get into a big strife.

She’s so fun she sometimes seems to shimmer.

She’s annoying sometimes—it’s frustrating.

But she will always help me with problems.

Though she’s not usually very aiding,

Her voice is like a bunch of shining gems

Most people enjoy hanging out with her.

She can make any person, even sad,

Filled with joy. Moments are never a blur.

Though she has done lots of things that are bad,

She will forever make me feel at home.

With her I cannot ever be alone.

My 3 Poems

1) What is ________?

Poetry is emotion
and feelings.
Poetry is the way
you see something--
like your perspective.

Poetry is all
of your thoughts.
It's what you think of
while you're writing--
any feeling: love or hate.

Poetry is what
pops into your head
at the moment.
It can be anything
you want.

Poetry is symbols
mixed together
to make writing.
It's what you visualize
when you think of something.


2) What happens to ________?

What happens to thoughts that are forgotten?

Do they disappear like clouds?
Do they come back and
go away like the sun?
Do they have their own
lives, like angels?
Do they ever come
back to visit you?

Maybe they have wings
and fly to the afterlife.
Or do they die and
lay somewhere lifelessly?


3) Artwork Poem

She almost smiles
in a nonexistent world
full of mountains
and mist
where no one lives.
It's just her.

She's mysterious.
As she looks at the painter
her clothes fade into the
darkness where she's sitting.
The mountains go on forever,
disappearing into mist.

She's calm.
Her hands rest in her lap,
in an unknown world.
She doesn't know
anywhere else
than this mysterious place.

Leonardo Da Vinci: "The Mona Lisa"

          The artist I chose to write about is Leonardo Da Vinci. My source was Famous Artists: Leonardo Da Vinci by Antony Mason. Leonardo Da Vinci was a very famous artist in his time. He was born in April 1452 and died in 1519 (Mason 5). His mother was named Caterina, and his father was Ser Piero, a wealthy lawyer and landowner (Mason 6). He was born in Italy during the Rennaissance (Mason 6). Da Vinci studied nature, the anatomy of the human body, and mechanics (Mason 5). He loved animals and was a vegetarian (Mason 8). He had long hair and blue eyes and never married (Mason 8). When he was 15, he went to train as a painter and a sculptor in a studio of a famous artist--Andrea del Verrochio in Florence, Italy (Mason 6). Once Da Vinci got out of Verrochio's studio, he was a proffessional artist (Mason 8).  In 1472 he joined the Guild of St. Luke (Mason 8). Da Vinci spent 17 years in Milan drawing and painting (Mason 10, 14).

           The painting I chose to write about is "The Mona Lisa." It's also known as "La Gioconda" (Mason 21). It was painted in about 1503, during the Renaissance and was one of Da Vinci's favorite paintings (Mason 21). The painting shows a woman with her hands folded in her lap and a mountainous background behind her. She has a calm expression--she's barely smiling, and looks very mysterious. Her smile is the most celebrated smile in the history of painting (Mason 21). The background is known as a background sfumato landscape--near and far effect (Mason 21). The mountains seem to fade into mist in the background. Da Vinci studied the shape of hands before he made the painting, which is why her hands look so realistic (Mason 21). Her clothes fade into darkness at the bottom of the painting, making the painting more mysterious.

            I think the painting is meant to be really mysterious. You can't really tell what the person is feeling, and everything sort of seems to fade away, like it might not actually be there. I feel like the hands are a really big part of the painting. Without showing her hands it's even harder to read her expression. If you cover up the hands, you can see that she could be doing anything, but you don't know. It's like you only see part of her and  don't know what's going on. The hands represent her calmness. Plus, her clothes fade into the dark background at the bottom of the painting, which makes her hands stand out even more, because you can't see anything else.  Also, the way the mountains fade into mist in the background makes it look like she's in the middle of nowhere and looks mysterious. This is an overall very mysterious painting, and I think it can be interpreted differently by different people.

Percy and Hera's Problems are Intertwined in The Lost Hero

           I'm currently reading The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan. It's the first book in The Heroes of Olympus series. I'm not a big fan of Rick Riordan's books, but I decided to read it because I did like the Percy Jackson series, and this book is sort of like a spin-off series of that. Basically, the book is about three people--Jason, Piper, and Leo, who get sent to Camp Half-Blood because they're children of gods. Jason doesn't remember anything before he woke up at a wilderness school for troublemakers. Piper is positive that Jason is her boyfriend, but doesn't know why he can't remember anything, and Leo is a boy with ADHD who is positive that Jason is his best friend and Leo can control fire. All three of them have to go on a mission to rescue Hera, the goddess of gods. Also, Percy Jackson, a well known half-blood has been missing from camp for a long time and people are out looking for him. I think Percy Jackson disappearing has something to do with Hera being captured.

          The reason I think that it's connected is for a bunch of reasons. The first is that one of the 3 main characters thought they were connected, and whatever the main character says in the book is always right in Rick Riordan's books (He's so lame like that). I can't find the exact quote, but either Jason or Piper said that Percy being missing and Hera being captured are somehow connected. Rick Riordan always makes the main characters really special in some way, with some special power that no one has, and they are generally right about things. The way Rick Riordan writes makes things very predictable, so it's kind of clear that this is true.

          Also, the fact that Hera was captured and Percy disappeared seems like a big coincidence, so they have to be connected somehow. I think Percy is either also captured by the same person who captured Hera, which could be very possible because Percy is very powerful, and whoever captured Hera might have done it for her power, he might be fighting whoever captured Hera, because Percy Jackson is really powerful and goes on dangerous missions a lot, or he might have been the one who captured Hera. The last option is highly unlikely, but it would make the story a lot more exciting, and it's possible if Hera was trying to do something bad (because she has kind of a bad personality), Percy is a do-gooder, so he might be trying to stop her. These were all possible reasons I thought of that might be a reason that Percy being missing is connected to Hera being captured.

          This is why I think that Percy being missing is connected to Hera being captured. This is really important in the book, because Percy going missing and Hera getting captured are two problems that need to be solved, and if they are connected, then that would be a big part of the storyline.

Sophie Accepts Her Inner Demon in Demonglass

          I'm currently reading Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins, which is the second book in the Hex Hall series. The main character, Sophie, is a demon. Her father is the head of the Council, and Sophie will become the next head when she's older. Until recently in the book, Sophie wanted to go through the Removal to get rid of her demon powers in case she accidentally goes all demon on someone and kills them, which is what happened to two of her ancestors. That was the reason she stayed at the Council Headquarters for the summer: because she wanted to go through the Removal. I think Sophie is finally learning to accept her demon powers and not look at herself as an evil monster just waiting to kill everyone she knows.

          When Sophie's dad explained to her why she shouldn't go through the Removal, at first Sophie didn't care about what her dad said and just didn't want to accidentally hurt someone. Her dad told her that if she went through the Removal, there was an extremely high chance she could die, and it's not just ripping her powers away, it's like ripping part of her out of her body. Sophie's dad said to her:

"It's not just that you won't be able to do magic anymore. You will be destroying a vital part of yourself. The Removal gets into your blood. It rips out something that's as much a part of you as the color of your eyes. You were meant to be a demon, Sophie, and your body and soul will fight to keep you that way (75)."

Sophie was convinced that there was a possibility she could kill someone, even if it was infinitesimally small. She didn't consider until later that her demon is part of her, and she shouldn't just rip it out of herself.

          Later, Sophie's dad realized how much power she had. He asked her to break one mirror in a room full of mirrors with her powers, and she accidentally broke every mirror in the room! Her dad taught her how to focus her power after that and said it would decrease the risk of Sophie going crazy and killing someone. I think Sophie realized after that that she wasn't ready to risk dying to lose her demon hood and she could control her powers so she wasn't likely to hurt anyone. Sophie doesn't consider herself a monster anymore, which is good. I think she finally learned to accept her inner demon.