Don't judge the book by it's cover.

     Life is filled with journeys. Journeys we regret, Journey's we remember and journey's that teach us a lesson. Every person has gone through at least one journey in their life, whether its a short or long one. Each childhood is different and everybody's story is different, so don't judge them by their cover.

     I feel like the quote "Don't judge the book by it's cover" definitely fits this book more than any other quote. In order to understand the quote you have to go deeper than the obvious. By looking at the quote you can already tell that the quote is saying "Don't look at the book and put it away just because of the cover, it's a good book". But, actually I think that this quote can go beyond what is usually expected from that quote. I only actually understood this quote after I read The Secret Life of Bees. This book made me realize the truth, and how everybody is so judgmental. They may know your name, but definitely not your story.

     Lily is always being judged. Her being white, she is always expected to be the perfect "white daughter" but when life gives her struggles and pain she just can't be the person everybody wants her to be. Lily had to go through many journeys in life to really figure out who she really was. After being raised by a very judgmental and racist person she was taught from little to do what T-ray (her father) thought was right. Growing up without her mother by her side, Lily had to face the womanly phases by herself and T-ray just added to all the stress she already had. After lily has actually felt true love from the calender sisters, she saw the good in people from the inside not judging them by their cover.

      Zach is also always being judged. Judged by people and the colleges he applies to.  Zach is black, and he is always being judged  that all he can do is play sports because that's what black people can only do according to them. But what Zach really wants to be is a lawyer, and there is few people that only believe he can do that. But with love, he was starting to believe.

     Don't judge a book by a cover is a lesson everybody should learn. And not only the obvious one.

Can you answer it?

     Don't you hate being asked "What do you want to be when you grow up?" There's barely any people in the world that actually know the answer to that question or at least live up to what they said they wanted to be. The thing is you don't always get everything you want, and this is a big issue in my book, The Secret Life of Bees.
     That is a big issue in my book because the main character Lily Owens was always forced to be something she's not or something she doesn't want to be. Going to school, her teacher would always try to tell Lily that she can become a writer. She would give her extra assignments and summer reading lists that can improve the chance of her being a writer. Unlike the teacher, Lily's dad T-ray tried to make Lily less confident and he would remind her that she will become nothing in life. This helped me get a vision of who Lily is as a person. I was stuck on making the decision of which personality Lily has. Is it the shy and confused personality or the fun and outgoing because she represented both throughout times in her book.
      Zachary Taylor is also another character is my book that faces similar issues that Lily faces. Zach being black, limits his job offers. He's put out to be this football player and that's no even what he wants to do in life. Race, religion and gender definitely plays a huge role in career, not only back then but believe it or not now a days too. Zach really wants to be a lawyer and because of his race and skin color, he probably won't/can't be one. After Lily told Zach that "I don't think I have much of a future now, being an orphan". Zach said "Me either" and after Lily asked him why, his excuse was "I'm a negro".
     Lily has many bumps in her life, but no matter what, she never seems to fall. No matter how badly her father treats her or the memories she has in her head of her mother that taunt her, she never seems to give up. You can't see Lily's internal conflicts unless you pay close attention to the character she is. Without Rosaleen Lily would be a wreck. Even though at many times of the book there are moments when Lily says I hate you to Rosaleen, she really doesn't. Rosaleen is the only one that can pull Lily back to reality instead of this "dreamland" Lily is living in. Even though Rosaleen is happy in the house she knows that it won't last forever and she knows that she has to show Lily this too.  Rosaleen, August and Zach are very big influence on Lily because she has different loves for each of them. The love she has for Rosaleen is a motherly love, for August it's this substituted love and she's just in love with Zach. All three characters have a huge effect on Lily in different ways.
     There are some people in our lives that can show us the right path and there's some that won't. Nobody can choose who you will be and nobody can prevent you from being the person you want to be. If you are one of those lucky people that know what they are going to be and they are going in the right path, congrats but for other like me, well you can be anything you want to be if you put your mind to it. What do you want to be when you grow up? If you're even ready to answer that question.

     Jealousy is a big issue in my book Peace, Love & Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle. The jealousy is mostly between the two main characters, Carly and Anna. Two different sisters, different personalities and different styles but jealousy has brought them to fight.
      Carly is the oldest in the family, after going to a summer activity outside of the country she came back to a shocking surprise. Anna. She changed from being the sweet & adorable little Anna, to the new whoa Anna.
Coming home and seeing your little sister drastically change physically and mentally can be pretty intense.
 "During the six weeks I was gone, she went from being 'cute little Anna' to the kind of girl guys drool over, and I don't know whether to be jealous or not. Well, no. I am jealous, but I don't want to be. She's my little sister. I love her." Carly she didn't change much, maybe mentally but not physically. Having your little sister "hotter" than you, you will probably get jealous. Carly was also in the situation where many people would get her jealous of Anna because they would rub it in her face that she's prettier and etc, especially Carly's best friend Peyton.
     Even though sometimes jealousy makes Carly and Anna fight they always find a way to forgive each other for whatever the reason they were mad for was. When Carly's bestfriend comes in the story something change. Peyton was always on Carly's side for everything. Until the day she started hanging otu with Anna. Carly was worried that Peyton would leave her for her younger sister.     It was hard to find who Anna truly was. At many times in the book I found myself pretty confused when Anna was talking, whether it's the fact that Carly is different than she remembered or it was just Anna's hormones. Throughout the book I noticed that Carly isn't the only one that gets jealous in the family, Anna does too. Ever since Carly came back from the summer activity she went to. Anna has been jealous. Anna is jealous of her personality, the sweet girl Carly is and the fact that Carly doesn't care what anybody says, this really inspires Anna. But, it's hard to not care what people say when you have a body like Anna's that everybody is always talking about.
     Jealousy can be a tough thing to deal with, I would know because I am a pretty jealous person myself and I have a similar situation with my sisters. Friends can also make you jealous whether its looks, personality or just the way they are. but don;t ever let jealousy break up a important relationship.

Lovee ♥

     There are many different types of love. There's sibling love, family love, love that you think is love but really its just a crush love, and of course there's the actual love. But, what is love? The Meaning of Love offers and explains a definition of love in a way that is interesting, intense, clear, logical, and meaningful. Whether its infatuation, friendship, dating, marriage, family, community, or professional love. In my book Thirteen by Lauren Myracle love is the theme in the book but, unlike the other books I have read that also had love for their theme Thirteen had love presented in many different forms and ways. 
     Reading the book the first love Lauren Myracle introduced was family love. Winnie, the main character in the book of course had to have the sibling love. All though sometimes throughout the book it was hard for me to see the love Winnie and her sister Sandra had, but finishing the book it really showed how much they cared about each other. Like the time that Sandra helped give Winnie advice about Winnie's boyfriend Lars. Winnie also has a lot of love for her little brother Ty, no matter how many times he annoyed her she still loves and cares about him. 
     Another love that is put out there is the crush love. Winnie starts going out with a boy names Lars, and he's gorgeous! Everything is perfect about Lars except for when he starts ignoring Winnie, It happens to everyone when you think your crush is the "love of your life" and how heat broken you are when something goes wrong. After Lars fixes things up with Winnie, and it all seems like everything is going great another love is introduced.
     The love that is introduced is the love that Sandra and her boyfriend  Bo have. The love that they have is true love. They have been going out for a long time and they are perfect for each other. There is also the true love that mom and dad have. Even though it seems like everything is perfect, every relationship has its ups and downs. Winnie's family has been having its ups and downs and seems like the downs kept coming more often, mom would freak out and scream at everybody and it seems like it would tear the family apart but, that was before everybody discovered that....
.............................................................SPOILER....................................................................................
The mom was pregant, with her fourth child. 
     Then there's Joseph, the little boy in her brother's class who has leukemia. Even though she doesn't know him Winnie feels sorry for him. This makes her look at life in a whole new way. She has this love for Joseph that is pretty amazing, for the fact that she barely knows him and cares about him that much it just shows what kind of person Winnie is. Over the course of her thirteenth year, Winnie faces lots of new things, each one exciting in its own way. Even though life sometimes gets a little hectic, Winnie knows she loves being thirteen!
If you were looking for love, would you recognize it if you found it?

Blaming.

Being the loud person I am, I'm always talking, telling stories after stories, and some of the stories aren't even mine. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not a gossiper, but a little gossip here and there doesn't always hurt. I wouldn't be able to tell those stories if nobody had told me them. Every body by middle school should have a story; whether its good or bad, short or long, meaningful or pointless, we all have a story. Deanna from the book Story of a girl by Sara Zarr, is probably the story of her school, because her dad caught her having sex with Tommy in Tommy's car. After that, her life started falling apart. She blames everyone but herself, her parents, Tommy, her brother, her friends.

Most of all, Deanna blames Tommy. Whenever her an Tommy are in his car having sex and smoking weed, she complains how Tommny disregards her feelings. She says she doesn't want to have sex, yet every time he asks her to come in his car, she goes with him. She tells him to stop, and get off of her, and he doesn't. She cries every time they have sex, and blames Tommy for not being gentle. In my opinion, she has no right to blame Tommy because she willingly smokes weed and has sex with him. No one makes her do this, so I don't understand why she thinks she can blame Tommy for causing her life to fall apart.

Deanna also blames her brother, who was close friends with Tommy. She blames him for not realizing that something was going on between her and Tommy, and for not putting an end to it. This is also why she blames her friends. She blames her dad because he exposed her secret life. Obviously, sooner or later someone was bound to find out her dirty little secret. 

 Throughout this book, it was hard for me to figure out Deanna's character. This was only because she was a very confusing character, and I don't mean that I was confused, but that she was actually confused. She was stuck in between  making a decision to start her whole life over and move out with her bother (who is a teen parent) or stay home miserable with her dad, but have her friends by her side.

After finishing this book, I have come to the conclusion that I do not like Deanna. Being confused all the time and wondering why people talk about her, Deanna made her own life miserable. She did all of that to herself because no one picked her up physically and put her in Tommy's car, who was 3-4 years older then her. She has nobody to blame and it seems like she's trying to find somebody to blame for her mistakes throughout the whole book.

I shouldn't even be talking. We all probably had those moments when we tried to blame somebody and not take full responsibility. I guess when we start getting older we start taking full responsibility for things and not trying to always blame people. That's a thing everyone has to learn in life, we all make mistakes but it's up to you to take full responsibility.

Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare Legend, Baz luhrmann movie

                                      Two households, both alike in dignity,
                                         In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
                                      From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
                                   Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
                                       From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
                                        A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
                                    Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
                                Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
                                   The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
                                      And the continuance of their parents' rage,
                            Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
                                Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
                                     The which if you with patient ears attend,
                                What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

   I've been told by many people including my older sister that Romeo and Juliet is the worst of Shakespeare. That it's un-realistic and ridiculous. But, maybe it's not Romeo and Juliet mybe it's the fact that they are so young or maybe teh time period. Would they think differenly if Romeo and Juliet were in their 20's? Maybe, But they made me think that romeo and juliet was awful, when it wasn't.
   Besides the fact that they are young the plot was amazing,the scenery, the setting, phenomenal.
 I liked the whole movie but the most details was the prologue with the sonnet, it was so intense and detailed, it was hard to believe that it was romeo and Juliet. I liked that Baz used Shakespeare play and that he didn't change it up too much, but I also like that he made it to a modern Romeo and Juliet. Did I like it better because of its modern-like structure? or because Leonardo DiCaprio played in it? Haahaa, no but really I never saw Romeo and Juliet as this amazing movie,
   I'm not the kid of student or kid that goes crazy like "Oh my god, it's inspirational and blah blah blah, but for this movie I might not sound like myself, I'm mostly into intense and scary movies, so watching this, (from before I realized it was amazing) I wasn't really into it. Afterwards I didn't mind watching it, usually I watch movies in school to just get it over with, but with this movie because of the setting and scenery I actually enjoyed watching it. <3

M3n+0r bl0qp0$+

Henry's blog.
I chose Henry's blog post as my first mentor because his last post, Blew me away. There was such a simple picture and he wrote such a beautiful and intense poem about it. Henry's writing is so different, than everybody's. He writes so viciously and it just makes his writing very interesting to read. Henry definitely shows his personality in his writing and even if it wasn't Henry's blog, this would make me think of Henry right away.

 Aishwarya's Blog.
My second mentor is Aishwarya because being the quiet person she is, her writing really speaks. Her poems are amazing and so are her posts. Aishwarya was one of the first people I started following because I was very inspired by her writing. If there was anybody that can be my tutor in writing blog posts, it would be Aishwarya. Her writing really represents her personality. Oh! I LOVE HER BLOG.

Susan's Blog.
My third mentor is Susan. Susan is also very quiet and shy and reading her blog shows a different side of Susan, that I never saw before. It's a loud side of Susan. Her writing says a lot and her poems are interesting to read. I would never expect this kind of blog from Susan because its just so loud. Gooodd morninggg seniorss!!

YALL LISTEN UP.

if yall follow me ill follow yall back. kthxbye.

poetryyyyyyy

this poem wouldnt let me copy it and it was way too long to write sorry guys

one on my fav poems <---- click on that.

The first stanza reminds me a lot of the Maya Angelou's poem "Life doesn't frighten me at all" and a poem called "Please dont take my air jordans away"  These poems remind me of the poem above because all these poems have a special structure. "Please dont take my air jordans away" has a rhyming structure and so does the Maya Angelou poem. so THIS poem reminds me a lot of those poems.

After reading this poem, more than once, i noticed that this poem sounds like its rhyming but actually its not. The poem just uses words that sound similar and it makes it seem like its rhyming. I guess that it is a rhyming poetic trick because I did not notice that at first. Poetry and Poems in general is a mystery the poem wont just tell you what they are trying to do or what they are talking about you have to solve the mystery to truly understand the poem.

 Right away without even reading the title, I totally knew what this was about. The first stanza gave it away, and that's the good thing about poems because in books usually the beginning doesnt tell you the plot or the conflict its usually in the middle of the book and in poems, they are short and usually in the beginning of the poem. If i would to write a part 2 to this poem i would try to do my best to try to use the same structure that this anonymous poet wrote like.

The girl that has a story.

Title: Story of a girl
Author: Sara Zarr

       This book is about a girl named Deanna with a very regretful past. When Deanna was just 13 years old her father caught her in a boy named Tommy Webber's car. Deanna didn't even love the boy, and she was uncertain if she even 'liked' him, This totally jeopardized Deanna and her fathers relationship. Deanna lost the most important thing in her fathers and hers relationship, and that was trust. I think trust in one of the most important themes in this book, because we can all relate to this. We all want that trust from our parents, but not all of us get it.
      Another theme I that I think is important in this book is body image. Deanna's reputation also got demolished. She is now known as the "school slut". Obviously that is not a title that anyone would want to be known as. Everywhere she goes theirs whispers going around, and stares. Body Image is important to everyone, it's becoming more and more affective towards teenagers, and if your "image" is corrupted then you feel like everything has corrupted.  

Im dancing in my nuddy pants.

boys.

diary-style book about boy traumas and girl problems. typicalgirlbook.

This is the exact kind of books that I hate.
so obvious, predictable. The thing that I most hated about it is that It had such an interesting title so it lurrrrrrrrrrs me in. But once you start reading it you realize you hate it. The books that have the worst titles are probably the best.

The title barely even matched the book. Like she never danced in her nuddy pants like maybe they mentioned it once or twice but it was a shame to read.  waste of my winter break

Rate -  amazing, good, bad.........: bad.

Can dolls have feelings too?

During the break, there were a lot of books I could've chosen but this book caught my eye in the library.
"The Doll People" The cover was prettyawesome, but the Title itself just sort of  makes you want to read it.
Okay, got home, opened the book up, started reading. Chapters went by and it wasn't yet worthy enough to write a blog post about yet, kept reading and AHA! got it! got the chapter I want to write about. Chapter 10.

Mama doll and Papa doll got very upset about auntie sarah and how the doll family didn't go looking for her 45 years ago. This was getting the whole family fighting, but it was Uncle Doll that was losing his temper. He was mad that they didn't even, lift a finger trying to find Auntie Sarah. All they did was talk about her. Finally Uncle Doll couldn't take it any more, he blurted that he was moving out. Every one begged him to stay but he refused.

Uncle Doll Moves Out. Every body wanted him to stay and they had no idea why he was leaving. I mean how do you not know why he was leaving.. Like he didn't leave just because. He wouldn't do that, then he would have no place to stay, so there has to be somebody in the family that did something.

What this chaper made me think about was just how they were so clueless when it was so obvious, and i was wondering if this has anything to do with dolls whether its that dolls ate usually perfect and this family isnt or if it ahs nothing to do with real life dolls.

RATE- amazing, good, bad. ...good!