No Pretty Pictures a child of war (Blog 4)

The book I am reading is called No Pretty Pictures a child of war by Anita Lobel. Anita is the who writes the story. She talks about her past of when she lived in the times of World War II. She went through a lot back in those days. Her father escaped to Russia when she was little. Her mother was still with her but she just hid her background and got false papers. Pretty much all their years, before Anita and her brother were found, they were mostly with their Nanny (Niana). For five years, they traveled a lot with her to many places. Niana was the only person who they can put their trust on because she tried her best to keep them both safe from the Nazis.
While I was reading this book I thought about the signpost 'Tough Questions'.  Anita asked herself the question 'Is Niana really going to come back?' frequently. This made me truly think about how bad Anita wished she was with her nanny. It made me wonder how on earth was Niana going to cope with the thought of the two kids being stuck in a concentration camp. How did Niana really feel deep inside? Although it seems impossible that Niana would come back to them, I could predict that she would have done anything and risked anything for them.

Summary and Plot (Blog 3)

The book I started to read this week is called The Distance Between Us. The first couple pages that I have read, the book has taken place in a doll store. The main character, Caymen, works in her moms doll store and spends most her time here when she is not in school. Caymen is a young open-minded girl who is very sarcastic with everyone. One of her only friend, Skye, which supports her in everything she does. So far in the book there has not been any big events yet.
I do not know what the plot is in the story yet but I can make a prediction about it. I think that Caymen is going to fall in love with one of her customers that visited her store. In the story a guy comes in and buys a doll from the doll store. She says that he seemed very attractive but the problem in the story seems that its going to be that the guy is going to be greedy (because he is rich and gives money to much attention). So Caymen will have to cope with him acting like this. This is all I can predict since I have not crossed the plot yet.

No Pretty Pictures Blog 5

No Pictures ends in an amazing way. Anita and her little brother end up surviving the concentration camps they were in. When the war ended, Anita was fifteen (when it started she was 5). Her mother and father also survived. When it all ended, the whole family moved to Sweden to recover at the end of the war, then they came over to America. The sad part about the ending that I didn't like was that on day when they were in Sweden, they received a letter from the sister of their Nanny, Niana, and the letter had said that Niana had died from a brain tumor. Although Anita was very sad, Niana had also sent her a present for Anita, which was a doll. 

I can connect to this book because on the Holocaust Museum Field Trip, the man who let my group through the tour was also a survivor like Anita. He was even the same age as her when the war started. Both stories have things in common to what they experienced with the Nazis while they were kids. This has nothing to do with this but the field trip was a lot of fun and I learned lots. Thank you Ms. Belkov! 

Holocaust Blog

I believe that many people stood by and watched the holocaust happen because they were too terrified to do anything about it. While reading my lit circle book I noticed that many of the Jews didn't do anything about them being taken to concentration camps or being tortured horribly. One of the main characters in the story I'm reading, Anita, is taken to a camp along with her little brother. As they go through living their days there, I can see that they go through the worst things you can imagine. So, I believe that this could be a reason why Jews did not stand up and became up-standers.
There were also people that did stand up for what they believed.  In my book, there was a woman who stood up to the Nazis and fought for her son to get him back with her because the Nazis had taken him away since he was younger than everyone else. She did take a risky move but she believed she should do anything to save her son. In my opinion, she was a brave and strong up-stander.
I really don't know what I would have done if I were in their shoes. I'm pretty sure I would have been a bystander and do whatever the Nazis order me to do. If I'm scared to be an up stander in easy everyday life problems today, Im sure I wouldn't have done anything especially since I know that the Nazis were very mean and didn't care about anyone but themselves.

Workers' Rights My Thoughts

The article Don't Buy Nike by Natalie Nold has an interesting issue that was being argued about. It talked about how workers in Indonesia were being physically harmed in many ways. In 2011, Steven Wright of The Associated Press reported physical and mental abuse in Nike factories. Workers were being kicked, slapped, getting shoes thrown at them, and were forced to stand under the hot sun rays for making mistakes in their job. I feel that this type of abuse is non-tolerated for me because if I were a worker from Indonesia I wouldn't appreciate how they treat me. I learned that the people who have jobs should appreciate that they actually have a job that follows the rules of the Human Rights because many, like in the article, do not have very good ones. 

The poem expressed how a worker feels everyday in the life of a sweatshop. The worker expresses that she/he is feeling as if they were a machine. In the article it says that she/he had no feelings, no thoughts, nor understanding. I think the poem was different from the article because the poem was talking first person saying how they felt and the article was explained by a non-worker and was saying what was going on in the sweatshops. I was able to understand the poem better because it used specific feelings and it also used many metaphors which is easily comprehended better put together. 

"The Hunger Games" Blog

The book I am currently reading is called The Hunger Games. At the beginning it introduces the main character, Katniss Everdeen. Her mother and sister, Prim, are also introduced. They live in the nation of Panem. A capitol surrounded by twelve different districts. The Capitol is very mean to the people and forces each district to send one boy and one girl to participate in the annuel Hunger Games. When the names are being pulled out of the box with names, Prim is chosen to be the representative for their district. When Katniss hears her sisters name get called she right away volunteers to replace Prim. So yet, what happens after this is yet to be discovered.  

This book so far is going out awesome. In my opinion, The Hunger Games is one of my favorite stories because of its genre. The genre of the book is science fiction (which is my favorite type of genres to read about). What I liked about this book is that it has so many big events that make you want to read and read more. The book is also very suspenseful, since you don't know what's going to happen next. In conclusion, this book is so far so good and can't wait to read the next book.  

"Peak" Blog

          The book I finished reading is called Peak by Roland Smith. In my opinion, this book hasn't been one of those kind in which I get interested in. It had its ups and downs but I managed to finish it. I learned two things in this book which are, "You don't need to feel alone, to be alone" (pg.154) and also sacrifice, to think of others before yourself. In the beginning it talks about how the main character, Peak, gets arrested for illegally climbing skyscrapers in New York City. This leads him to the biggest climb of his life with his long-lost father. A climb on Mount Everest.
          The main conflict in this book is that Peak is trying to get to the top of Mount Everest but it just keeps getting more, more difficult. I believe that that is Man vs. Nature. Another conflict I think is in the book is that Peak attempts to be the youngest person ever to get to the top of Mount Everest. I think that that is Man vs. Nature because he tries his best to get up there but there are just so many obstacles in his way that nature puts in front of him.

SCOPE Blog

While reading the article "Call of Duty" I was pretty touched by the story being told. It talked about a man and a dog he was assigned to (in the army). After working together for a while, they felt like they were the perfect friends and cared for each other very much. An accident happened to the man so he had to go back home. The con about this was that the dog wasn't able to go along with him. So they were separated and the dog was assigned to another man. My opinion about this is that I think that no soldier or dog should be separated from each other if they don't want to. Luckily at the end of the story, the two were able to stay together and ended happily. Overall, this story was one of the best I've read in a scope magazine and I would also recommend it to anyone.

Summary and Point of View of "Peak"

While reading the book Peak by Roland Smith, I have read so far about a 14 year-old boy named Peak Marcello. He has been charged with multiple crimes. While in the court room, the judge decides to let Peak go under one condition, he must go with his father out of the country to Tibet. In my opinion I would not recommend this book to anyone because its a little too hard to read and understand it correctly. The book is also very predictable so I new a little of what was going to happen.


Peak, a fourteen year-old boy raised by his mother and step-father. He is the main character in this story. Something that Peak learns throughout the story is "The only thing that you'll find on the summit of mount Everest is a divine view. The things that really matter lie far below." Peak is a laid-back character that is overwhelmed by his surroundings. He gains wisdom as the book progresses and realizes the things that really mean something.

"Rash" Summary

I have finished reading the book "Rash" this week. The main character is Bo Marsten which is a teenage boy living in a society in which everything is bad. This story takes place in the late twenty-first century (2075). A plethora amount of things have changed for example the name of the country is now the USSA (United Safer States of America). Everything from laws to safety rules have been altered completely to make the society completely "safe". Even though these laws were created to protect the people, Bo's temper gets out of control and he gets puts in manuel labor for three years. Bo has to decide whether he rather live in a society that arrests you for the littlest things like playing football or continue in prison where a bad little step will make you polar bear food.