Summer Readers Response (8th grade)
Code Orange
Mitty Blake is someone you might identify as a slacker. Mitty never bothers to check what assignments he has and when he does, he doesn't do them. The only reason he sometimes does what is assigned is because he has a crush, named Olivia. Olivia has priorities, among the top five, is education. Mitty also has priorities except his top five contains video games, and Uconn basketball. The only class he has with Olivia is Advanced Biology. All of the students are assigned a disease to research. Mitty has to turn in his first draft but he doesn't even have a topic. Once he finds a topic, smallpox, he gets too into the research, inhaling dust of small pox scabs, and getting sick in the process. After around ten days after he inhaled the scabs, he realizes that he might be sick, and starts to avoid Olivia, and Derek his best friend. He posts his problem on a medical website and his message gets forwarded to hundreds of other medical professionals and he realizes that he might of just brought back the small pox virus to America.
“Mitty rubbed one dark crust of dark blood between his fingers. It crumbled. Mitty sneezed.” I like this quote because it sparks the start of why Mitty starts to think that he may have smallpox. At the time, he doesn’t know it, but when he starts to carry some of the symptoms of smallpox, he begins to think that he might have it. This passage describes the first “symptom” of smallpox that Mitty experiences.
I would rate this book a 4/5 because it was really good and it kept me on the edge of my seat. The reason I gave it a 4/5 and not a 5/5 is because I didn't like the author's writing style very much. At times during the story her writing was so confusing that I'd have to read the page over again. The whole concept of bioterrorism was new to me so even though it was realistic fiction, I occasionally treated it as a non-fiction book.
IP
Six million is a big number but that is how many Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust. Some 8th grade students in Whitwell, Tennessee were studying the Holocaust and one of the students asked, “what does six million look like? “ The teacher didn’t know, so they decided to collect six million paper clips to see how much it looked like. At first their collection was going slow, but then they got in some newspapers and on the news with their story and pretty soon they had a lot of paper clips—29 million, more than they even needed. The students didn’t know what to do with the paper clips but they decided to make a memorial in their town to remember the 6 million Jewish people and the 5 million other people who were killed by the Nazis. The students even got a train car from Germany, which was used to bring the Jewish people to the concentration camp, and they turned it into their memorial. They put 11 million paper clips inside the train behind a glass wall for people to look at and they put 11 million more in a sealed container outside the memorial. Now they will share all the other paper clips with other schools that want to collect paper clips. During this project, the students learned how much 6 million looks like and how evil it was that so many people were killed because of hate.
I liked this book because it was a true story. It was interesting to read about something amazing that kids my age did. The book has a lot of photographs and that helped show the project and the memorial. It was sad but nice when people who survived the Holocaust came to see the students and talk about their experiences. It is hard to believe that something like this could happen but that is why we have to lean about it so that it doesn’t happen again. I would recommend this book to people who want to learn more about the Holocaust and who like true stories.
Genius: A Photobiography of Albert Einstein
by Marfe Ferguson Delano
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, imagination encircles the world.” This is a quote from Albert Einstein who was a great person, a mathematician, a scientist, a violinist, and, most likely, the smartest person who ever lived. Reading this book I learned some interesting things about Einstein like that he was a good person who helped people escape from World War II. He was also funny because he didn’t comb his hair, his clothes were always messy, and he didn’t wear socks. I think he did these things because he was so busy thinking about math and science all the time. Einstein is most famous for developing his theory of relativity. This theory was important and made people interested in science and understating the universe and how space and time work.
This book is almost like a scrapbook of Einstein’s life. It has a lot of pictures and you learn a lot about his family, what he liked to do, and his work. I thought this book was really good and I enjoyed reading it. The pictures helped me put the story into my head and I liked seeing how messy Einstein looked. The most important thing I learned from this book is that Einstein was a pacifist. Some people think he helped develop the atomic bomb, but he didn’t. I really liked learning that Einstein was a person who loved peace and cared a lot about other people. I recommend this book to people who want to learn more about Albert Einstein.
HA
Six Million Paper Clips: The Making of a Children’s Holocaust Memorial
by Peter W. Schroeder and Dagmar Schroeder-Hildebrand
Six million is a big number but that is how many Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust. Some 8th grade students in Whitwell, Tennessee were studying the Holocaust and one of the students asked, “what does six million look like? “ The teacher didn’t know, so they decided to collect six million paper clips to see how much it looked like. At first their collection was going slow, but then they got in some newspapers and on the news with their story and pretty soon they had a lot of paper clips—29 million, more than they even needed. The students didn’t know what to do with the paper clips but they decided to make a memorial in their town to remember the 6 million Jewish people and the 5 million other people who were killed by the Nazis. The students even got a train car from Germany, which was used to bring the Jewish people to the concentration camp, and they turned it into their memorial. They put 11 million paper clips inside the train behind a glass wall for people to look at and they put 11 million more in a sealed container outside the memorial. Now they will share all the other paper clips with other schools that want to collect paper clips. During this project, the students learned how much 6 million looks like and how evil it was that so many people were killed because of hate.
I liked this book because it was a true story. It was interesting to read about something amazing that kids my age did. The book has a lot of photographs and that helped show the project and the memorial. It was sad but nice when people who survived the Holocaust came to see the students and talk about their experiences. It is hard to believe that something like this could happen but that is why we have to lean about it so that it doesn’t happen again. I would recommend this book to people who want to learn more about the Holocaust and who like true stories.
HA
This week I read the required book, Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. The main character in the book is Thomas, who is also known as Tommo. As he is at night, Tommo is working hard, fighting for his life as he is trying to recall all the moments of his life. As he is looking back at the moments he remembers his brothers Big Joe, Charlie, his mother, and what happened to his father. Also, he recalls the love of his life, Molly, living in the countryside of England and many more memories. Tommo remembers when Charlie and Molly flee to the Colonel's land after school to catch some leftovers or some bait. Even though they were growing they made a vow to always stick together. However, Tommo grew apart from them because Charlie loved Molly and at first they kept it as a secret for some time until Tommo found out. When the war came, Molly has a baby from Charlie and both are content. Sadly, one day as Tommo went to a market and he saw soldiers marching, saying that they must have more soldiers to defeat Nazi Germany, and with a lot of decision-making he and his brother Charlie went off the war. Helping France and his hometown, they trained and entered the great big war. As the Nazis kept Belgium occupied Thomas knew now how real fear felt like. He remembers the beginning of the war, that without Charlie by his side he would never have made it out alive to the barn in Belgium. As Thomas recalls all the devastation caused of the war he remembers the empty German dugout, where Charlie rejected the command that the sergeant said to do, and instead he stayed put with Thomas. Later on in the book, Charlie was sentenced to the death penalty, where he met his demise. Afterwards, Thomas made a promise to Charlie that he will be safe and sound while fighting, and that he will fight for his life, no matter what the consequences are and until he gets home.
Quote I Chose: “I tried to smile back, but no smile came, only tears. He seemed to me like Jesus hanging on the cross in the church back home in Iddesleigh. And I thought then of the hymn we used to sing in Sunday school, What a friend we have in Jesus, and sang it to myself only to banish my tears as I marched. I remembered Molly singing it down in the orchard when we buried Big Joe’s mouse, and I remembered I found myself involuntarily changing the words, changing Jesus into Charlie. I sang it to myself under my breath as we were marched away. “What a friend I have in Charlie.” (120-121)
Private Peaceful
This week I read the required book, Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. The main character in the book is Thomas, who is also known as Tommo. As he is at night, Tommo is working hard, fighting for his life as he is trying to recall all the moments of his life. As he is looking back at the moments he remembers his brothers Big Joe, Charlie, his mother, and what happened to his father. Also, he recalls the love of his life, Molly, living in the countryside of England and many more memories. Tommo remembers when Charlie and Molly flee to the Colonel's land after school to catch some leftovers or some bait. Even though they were growing they made a vow to always stick together. However, Tommo grew apart from them because Charlie loved Molly and at first they kept it as a secret for some time until Tommo found out. When the war came, Molly has a baby from Charlie and both are content. Sadly, one day as Tommo went to a market and he saw soldiers marching, saying that they must have more soldiers to defeat Nazi Germany, and with a lot of decision-making he and his brother Charlie went off the war. Helping France and his hometown, they trained and entered the great big war. As the Nazis kept Belgium occupied Thomas knew now how real fear felt like. He remembers the beginning of the war, that without Charlie by his side he would never have made it out alive to the barn in Belgium. As Thomas recalls all the devastation caused of the war he remembers the empty German dugout, where Charlie rejected the command that the sergeant said to do, and instead he stayed put with Thomas. Later on in the book, Charlie was sentenced to the death penalty, where he met his demise. Afterwards, Thomas made a promise to Charlie that he will be safe and sound while fighting, and that he will fight for his life, no matter what the consequences are and until he gets home.
Quote I Chose: “I tried to smile back, but no smile came, only tears. He seemed to me like Jesus hanging on the cross in the church back home in Iddesleigh. And I thought then of the hymn we used to sing in Sunday school, What a friend we have in Jesus, and sang it to myself only to banish my tears as I marched. I remembered Molly singing it down in the orchard when we buried Big Joe’s mouse, and I remembered I found myself involuntarily changing the words, changing Jesus into Charlie. I sang it to myself under my breath as we were marched away. “What a friend I have in Charlie.” (120-121)
SS