The Book Thief

I have currently started reading this fantastic novel about a young German girl named Liesel Meminger is ripped away from everything she knows of a family. Her brother dies and her mother can no longer take care of her. She is sent to a foster home with this two strangers names Hans and Rosa Hubermann, its 1939, and World War II is on the rise. Hilter has gained full power over the German people. You wont go a day in Germany with out hearing the words "heil Hitler" from all the Nazi citizens. Liesel finds her first book in the snow soon after she finds out her brother is dead. I am at the part in the book where she steals a book left over from the fire. All Nazi's burned every Jewish thing in this fire."They began to leave the scene of the crime and the book was well and turly burning her now. The Shoulder Shrug had applied itself to her rib cage," (Zusak 122). Liesal has just stole the book from the fire and it was still extremely hot. It shows the risks she is willing to take to steal books and how she feeds off of this knowlege.

Hans and Liesel have a special kind of relationship, Hans finds out that Liesel stole the book from the fire. "Listen Liesel.'. Papa placed his arm around her and walked her on. This is our secret, this book. We'll read it at night or in the basement, just like the others-but you have to promise me something.' 'Anything, Papa.' The night was smooth and still. Everything listened. 'If I ever ask you to keep a secret for me, you will do it.' 'I promise.'" (Zusak 127). The trust and comfort in their relationship is far more dynamic than any other characters relationships in the book. Hans trusts Liesel to keep a secret if he asks her to and he promises to keep hers. He has been taching Liesel how to read and they read in the basement every night and she learns new words to catch up withthe rest of the people in her class. She has less of an education than the rest of the kids because she never went to school before she came to her foster family. Hans helped her to catch up and be in the correct grade level.

I am very excited to be reading this book and I look forward to seeing the movie. I predict that the secret her papa (Hans) will ask her to keep is the Jewish man they decide to hide in their basement. The family is not part of the Nazi party and Hans dislikes Hitler. I predict that they will keep the Jewish man safe but will go through a lot of stuggles and Liesel will find comfort in books and her learnings. I know that times are rough since this is during the war and Hilter is killing Jews and other types of opposing people to build a "Pure Germamn Society". I love to see Liesels family defy the rules of the society and keep the man safe. This book reminds me of the Anne Frank Diary i read a while back. They are both set at the same time fram and include Hitlers mass genocide of Jews.
                

The Fault in Our Stars

This is the movie trailer of the book I am currently
reading.  So far the book has been great and there are many dynamic plot twists and meaningful lines throughout the text. Hazel Grace and Augustus travel to Amsterdam to meet up with Hazel’s favorite author Peter Van Houtan to find out what happens to the characters of his famous unfinished book An Imperial Affliction.  While on the plane; Augustus says something absolutely wonderful, he is talking to Hazel on the plane. ‘I’m in love with you,’ he said quietly. ‘Augustus,” I said. ‘I am’ hesaid. He was staring at me and I could see the corner of his eyes crinkling. ‘I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all
doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to
dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have. And I am
in love with you.’ (Green 153).  Gus tells Hazel the story of his old
girlfriend Caroline who died of a brain tumor. She was mean to him but the
doctors said that the cancer “poisoned” her brain. She joked around saying
crude things like, ‘Gus has great legs. I mean leg,’ (Green 176). She would laugh
about it over and over again. Hazel tells Gus that she never wants to do that
to him and he responds with the famous quote; ‘Oh, I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace.
It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you,” (Green 176). I think
this line is so important because it shows how much he loves Hazel. He is
willing to go through heartbreak just to enjoy the happiness of being with her.
Augustus is one interesting dynamic character; I look forward to see him
develop even more. So far I love this book and I want to read more books by
John Green.

Blog Reflections

Looking through my past blog posts I have noticed that they have become more detailed and in depth. I have read a total of four books this trimester. I used Good reads and found out about the Divergent series which 3/4 of my blog posts were about. I chose to read Divergent because it had good ratings and a lot of my friends were reading it. I noticed in my past blog posts I didn’t explain very well and I wasn’t as interested in the book I was reading so I read less often. The quality of my writing has improved immensely over the course of the trimester, my first blog post compared to my last are very different. You can tell by my use of vocabulary and detail in my last post compared to my first post that I have improved a lot. An example of my first blog post is; “The theme of my book is that with every good thing that happens a bad thing follows shortly afterwards. For example my main character Ren, gets adopted when his chances were very slim which was fantastic but; he doesn't get the "perfect" family that he has always dreamed of. A quote that supports this from my book is "We all need prayers," Said Brother Joseph. "Especially when something good happens to us" He sighed. "Bad luck follows anything that’s good" (Tinti 12).” What I said in my first blog post wasn’t bad, I like how I included a quote from the book and stated the theme. Now here is an example of my most recent blog posts; The new discovery is that the Bureau gave Jeanine Matthews the serums! So they helped her kill the Abnegation. Why? I don't know, I suppose they do whatever is best to heal the genetically damaged people. They will stop at nothing to do so, and kill as many people as they want. Tobias recently discovers that he is a GD and this informer Nita who works at the Bureau explains how the government has treated GD's so badly and that we have had wars before people were GD. So the question to ask is, why waste time fixing the GD? The tragic event that occurred was a plan to steal death serums in order to get revenge on the Bureau. Nita however told Tobias that they were going to steal the memory serum. A series of explosions occur and Uriah gets hurt. He still remains unconscious. Later on Tris and everyone teams up with some Nita and her inside people in the Bureau as well as some people from this place called the fringe.” I paraphrased on my most recent blog post and really summarized what happened in the book and included a lot more detail. I also can tell just from comparing the two blog posts that I was more passionate about the book and enjoyed reading it more than reading my summer reading book. I think this was because I didn’t really have a wide range of options to choose from. One strength I had while blogging was summarizing and including a vast amount of detail. Also my use of vocabulary was good. I struggled with coming up with a topic to blog about, I didn’t really like going off the writing prompts because I felt restricted into only writing about one certain topic. I overcame this by explaining what was going on in my book. In other words I included a brief summary of what I read. Then I made predictions and included my opinion and thoughts on the book. Although I did not meet my goal I am still proud of what I have learned and read this trimester. I gained a lot of knowledge and learned a lot of lessons just about life in general from reading these books. I also have expanded my vocabulary and common sense. I now understand what is it like to have no one you can trust; like the character Tobias from the Divergent series. I also made some strong connections with the character Tris from Divergent. So a vast majority of my learning has come from the Divergent series. I highly recommend reading this series if you haven’t already. My experiences while reading these books have taken me on an emotional roller-coaster. The books are very action packed and unexpected. There are many cliff hangers and a lot of imagery and diction; as well as figurative language. So overall, I think I have improved a lot in my reading skills and writing skills.

Unwrapping Allegiant

 

As a follow up on last week’s predictions for this book I have recently "unwrapped" new secrets and some tragic event does occur so my prediction was correct. Although I do think that something even bigger will occur. The new discovery is that the Bureau gave Jeanine Matthews the serums! So they helped her kill the Abnegation. Why? I don't know, I suppose they do whatever is best to heal the genetically damaged people. They will stop at nothing to do so, and kill as many people as they want. Tobias recently discovers that he is a GD and this informer Nita who works at the Bureau explains how the government has treated GD's so badly and that we have had wars before people were GD. So the question to ask is, why waste time fixing the GD? The tragic event that occurred was a plan to steal death serums in order to get revenge on the Bureau. Nita however told Tobias that they were going to steal the memory serum. A series of explosions occur and Uriah gets hurt. He still remains unconscious. Later on Tris and everyone teams up with some Nita and her inside people in the Bureau as well as some people from this place called the fringe. The fringe is a poverty blown place outside the city. What I question is why the government doesn’t just help the people and give them food and shelter instead of trying to fix their stupid genes. Also, why are they hiding the history of our world from everyone? There are so many secrets to unravel still and I ponder on what is going to come next. I like the use of the author’s words that get to you emotionally. She uses great diction and figurative language and has a mass amount of imagery. I admire her writing greatly and enjoy her books.

Predictions for Allegiant

So far in my book the Allegiant group has escaped the city and ventured beyond the city walls to come to find some very interesting information. People from a place called the Bureau of Genetic Welfare. It was established because scientist tried to alter people’s genes to make the "bad genes" go away; this only caused more problems and created genetically damaged people. To create pure people they set up the faction system in Chicago as well as in many other cities. The Divergent are actually the pure genetic people. So Tris and Tobias are pure! Caleb and Tris find out that they're mother was an outsider who was put into the factions to solve the problem of people killing the Divergent. When the group of people that left the city find all this out they are astonished on how little they know. They don’t know what America is or what airplanes even are!! All of this fascinated me and made me excited to read on.

I predict that Tris and the others will live outside the fence and try to come up with a plan to fix the now disorientated city of Chicago. I also sense that more problems will also occur. From listening to my peers it seems as the book has an unexpected tragic ending so I’m fearful to find that out. I love these series and I really hope I’m satisfied with the ending! For now I will continue to read on and discover new things about Tris and her family. This book reminds me of the book “The Maze Runner” By James Dashner. People have their memories erased and live in an enclosed place like the factions; people have certain jobs and are separated. Scientist study and observe them to shape society in order to prevent war so both of the books have the same type of theme.

Blizzard Bag

I currently started reading the third book of the Divergent series called "Allegiant." It starts off with chaos as people find out that they were sent there for a greater purpose of helping the outside during wartime. A factionless lady; Tobias' mother takes over and says that no one is allowed to leave the city and all factions will be destroyed. Tris is sent off as a prisoner since she helped Marcus behind Tobias' back but, she is soon freed because she can lie while under this thing called the truth serum. As the townspeople have many different opinions and some are not loyal to Evelyn (Tobias's mother) a group is created called the Allegiant. They soon find Tris and ask her to join them to escape the city and do what they were sent here to do. I look forward to reading their journey outside of the cities gates.


In Romeo and Juliet I am really enjoying the twists and drama. I like how Romeo has first fallen in love with a nun named Rosaline and mopes because she will not love him back or marry him. I was not expecting that and I found it very interesting. I also enjoyed how Juliet claims that she does not want to be married and then at the party she meets Romeo and they kiss passionately. I look forward to see how they make their love work and how their families handle it. I am concerned about how Tyblat would handle the news because once he found out that their were Montague's at the party he wanted to kill Romeo! he seems very violent and ruthless, so I think he will try to keep them apart.

  I recently just finished the second book of the Divergent series called "Insurgent" by Veronica Roth. The last book left off on a huge cliff hanger so I was really eager to finish this book. Tris learns that her Divergence is more important than ever. It guides her along a rough and dangerous path as the world she once knew starts to crumble and fall into pieces. She learns to trust her boyfriend Tobias which is hard for her because many people have betreyed her including her own brother. "He chose faction over blood," thats what Tris says. This tears her into pieces; it reminds me of "The Hunger Games" because they are both books about dystopian socities, war, and love.

I would characterize Tris as stubborn, strong and very intelligent. Her divergence allows her mind to think in different ways for example she had an apitude for three different factions and that is almost unheard of. So she uses her open mind or in other words "divergence" to solve problems like saving all the divergent kids she can from the wretched symulations that an evil manipulative Erudite woman named Jeanine operated on innocent citizens. The book ended in a very chaotic cliff hanger. I am looking forward to reading the last book.