Pages 1-9, Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

I've only read 9 pages of this book, but I'll give you all the information I already know. Right now, the setting is in a place called Jordan College.

Boy - Going to Norway & The Magic Island by Roald Dahl

In these 2 chapters, Roald Dahl talks about what he did during his summer vacations. He sais that he always went to Norway. He doesn't know how his mother managed to do all the packing. 6 trunks plus loads of suitcases she had to pack!
First, the Dahls took a train to London, then another one headed for a town of which I've forgotten the name, then they continued by boat to Oslo (a.k.a. Christiania). There, they stayed for a night at their grandparent's house. Their grandparents were called Bestemama and Bestepapa. The next day, Dahls family took a smaller boat to a tiny, nameless island where a primitive old hotel run by some old people waited for them. Those old people always greeted them like they were old friends. The hotel was so primitive that they didn't even have a proper toilet! Imagine that! The only thing that came close to a toilet was a small outhouse. there, you sat on a hole in a wooden board, and what you did there dropped into a pit ten feet below. Disgusting, isn't it??? Dahls family always went to this tiny island even tinier than the one they were staying on, using an old rowboat, and there they would stay for a few hours and swim. When the kids were older, Dahl's mom purchased a not-so-seaworthy motorboat with a ridiculously old engine. That way, they were able to navigate to even further islands and much quicker than with the rowboat.

Boy - Mrs. Pratchett's Revenge by Roald Dahl

Because the boys put a dead mouse in the Gobstopper jar, Mrs. Pratchett wants revenge. Roald and his friends are called to the Headmaster's office to get a caning. Every boy gets 4 strokes, plus an extra one every time they straighten up. Thwaites has to go first, and, somehow, Roald ends up at the back. He describes the waiting as an even worse torturethan the actual caning. Mr. Coombes is and expert in caning, he is so good that he can hit on the same spot every time.
Then, at bath time at home, Roald's mom sees the scarlet marks with  the blue bruising in between that were caused by the cane. She goes to see the Headmaster to tell him that she doesn't want her son to be treated/punished like that.


I don't think that this punishment was appropriate, even though the boys did something that deserved a punishment. Physical punishment should not be applied, even if the student or students did something very bad. Caning is just painful, plus it could stop the boys from doing PE.


I think that punishment should be differnt for every single individual. Teachers should take away something that the student really likes, something he/she is depending on. For example the student's telephone, school privileges, etc. Or, teachers should make students write a sentence 100 times (or maybe not that much). If the student broke a window, the teacher should make him/her write "I will not break any more windows, nor will I do anything that might result in a broken window. When I went to school in France, they used to make us do that, no matter what we did. The number of sentences varied depending on what we did.


Roald Dahl made this chapter engaging by using similes and adjectives. Like, when Thwaites was caned "he straightened up like elastic". Or, Mr. Coombes "was like an athlete spurred on by the cries of the crowd" He also used some dialogue, which made the reader think thaey were actually there, listening to what was going on, for example when Mrs. Pratchett was shrieking and yelling to hit the children harder.

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

The book is about this boy named Percy Jackson. He has no father, but he has a very nice mother. Percy is going to a school called Yancy Academy. Percy was kicked out of school 6 times in 6 years. He has dyslexia (a learning disability that stops him from being able to listen and read fluently) and ADHD (where he is hyperactive, meaning that he finds it hard to concentrate in school. One day, the school is taking a field trip to a museum. After the visit, they eat their packed lunches outside the museum on the front steps. Percy and his friend, Grover, are sitting on the fountain, when the schol bully comes up and starts annoying them. Percy gets very angry, but suddenly, the water semmed to grab the bully and pull her into the water! The teacher, Mrs. Dodds, comes up immediately, thinking that Percy pushed the bully in the fountain.

I'll continue as soon as I have some more time.

Boy - Mr. Coombes by Roald Dahl

Now, Roald and his friends want to go see if the mouse is still in its Gobstopper jar, but when they come to the shop, they see an ominous sign hanging on the door: CLOSED. They all think that Mrs. Pratchett must have died from the shock of finding a dead mouse in the Gobstopper jar. At school, after Prayers, the Headmaster Mr. Coombes tells everyone to go outside and not ot talk, even though he doesn't tell anyone the readon for this unusual event. Then, Mrs. Pratchett herself comes in and starts going along the rows and rows of students lined up in the recess playground. When she gets to Roald's friends, she starts pointing at each of them in turn, until she'd pointed out every boy that had been to the sweet shop the day they had put the mouse in. Then, Mrs. Pratchett walks out of the school.
I think that next, Mrs. Pratchett will take her revenge by hitting them with a stick/cane.


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUlVckX3abMuBd74ESp7wYh6YPkoiHEB42YHEf2KuhfdVEVZyWtLFjHkBOCH4TfZEZtsI0il6DTj22K7Afk_a2rcFSryOJmCvoNbcL_LmuKxn3cFxiB16R28SYq1m_LSBekOzXH71RUMQ/s1600/closed_20sign1.gif

Boy - The Great Mouse Plot by Roald Dahl

This chapter is about Roald and his friends who discover a dead mouse in their secret hoard, a loose floorboard in the back of their classroom. They decide to put the mouse into one of Mrs. Pratchett's sweet jars. While Thwaites is going to order one Sherbet Sucker and one Liquorice Bootlace, while Roald will put hte mouse into the Gobstopper jar. They feel like a gang of desperados about to blow up the sheriff's office.
I really like the idea of doing such a thing because whenever I'm with my cousins, I get into this kind of mood where I want to do lots of naughty things.
Next, I think they're going to check on the mouse to see wether it's still there.

Boy - Kindergarten 1922-23 by Roald Dahl

In this chapter, Dahl'as oldest sister Astri dies because of appendicitis, an illness where the appendix gets infected. If you don't take it out quickly, you will get lots of pain, and when the appendix bursts, you will die. After Roald's sister died, his father was overcome with grief and died of pneumonia a few weeks later. Now Roald Dahl's mother had to look after 5 children in a foreign country, without any family except her children left. I imagine that life must have been very hard for the mother then, plus all the responsibilities she had to handle.

LA Writing Assessment by Thomas Edison

07/10/11

by Viper's Poisonous Consequences

LA

MYP1/G6

An Alien Stole My Brain

This story is about a boy that nobody really likes at school. One morning, while he is in the state between waking and sleeping, he hears a voice commanding him to stand up now. When he opens his eyes, though, his mum is nowhere to be seen. When he listens again, the voice seems to be in his head! He discovers that an Alien inhabits his brain. It takes control of his body and brain and makes him do things that he thinks are embarrassing and that he normally would never have done. The alien tells him that it needs internet to log onto some site to be able to go back to its own world. When the boy comes to school, he goes straight to the library, intending to look up books that might tell him what to do if he was being possessed by an alien and to see if a computer was available.

I really liked how the boy discovered the alien in his head because it was written in a funny way. At first he didn't believe in it, but when he started talking with the alien, he was always being mad at it because it kept reading his thoughts. One time, the alien reads the boy's thoughts about this girl at the boy's school and makes the boy turn and grin at her. The boy thinks that this alien was going to ruin all his reputation (if he even had any left).

Another thing I liked was when the boy was in the library, a gang of three boys starts taunting the boy. The alien, on the boy's command, turns him into a vicious, blood-sucking monster. Then, he has a fight with the gang. He bites one of the boys in the neck and sucks a little of his blood. It tastes bad, so the alien makes the boy taste good tastes. I liked the fact that the alien can change the boy's appearance at will.

I really would only recommend this book to over-10-year-olds because at times, it can be a little scary, especially if you think the story through very carefully at the end. Then, it might scare you a little (it did to me).

The 39 Clues - One False Note by Gordon Korman

I've only read four pages so far, but I'm going to summarise anyway because Mrs.Craig and Mrs.Franco are rushing me. So far, Amy and Dan are discussing a sheet music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Now I've read a little more, and right now, Amy & Dan are in Tokyo, Japan because they think that's where the next clue is. They're going to the library with Alistair Oh, their uncle but also the competition in the hunt for the 39 clues. In the library, they search for tungsten swords and for ninja warriors to see if they can work out the 3rd clue. Meanwhile, their uncle finds out about a japanese Tomas ancestor called Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a.k.a The Bald Rat.Suddenly, Dan's laptop cursor moves and starts flicking through the pages. Someone hacked into Dan's computer! It was the Holts, another enemy. They took Amy, Dan and Alistair prisoner and took them to a Subway station. They want to search for a hidden clue. But a train is approaching ahead of schedule. The Holts manage to escape by running, but Amy and Dan nearly get run over and killed. Luckily, Alistair manages to throw them out of the trains way and save them.

Feeding The Dog by Susan Price

Feeding The Dog is a story from the book Very Short Stories. It is about a male witch called witch Downing. He married a witch's daughter and had a number of kids. He also had a few cats. He had exactly as many cats as children, and when anyone of the townspeople raised either hand or stone against his children, they would be lying in bed for the next few days, aching all over because of witch Downing's curse. 

The cats steal meat and fish for Downing's family, and so do the kids. Because of fear of the witch's curses, the children usually get away with stealing. But once, a farmer named Hollis discovers the kids and gives the oldest one a slapping. Downing is so angry that he creates this thing. The thing was made from 2 dead cats, 1 dead dog, poison and some of the darkest magic Downing had ever used. Downing called his thing a Dog. Then, one night, Downing said to his dog "Hollis". The next morning, Hollis was reported missing from his bed. Every night, other people were missing.

I really liked this story because it had some suspense and it made me want to read more. The suspense was about what was going to happen to the dog and to its master. It made me want to read more because I was eager to find out the ending of the story.

I would recommend this story to people older than 10 years because it is sometimes scary, especially the description of the dog. Iwould not recommend reading it in the dark.

Artemis Fowl - The Eternity Code by Eoin Colfer

I really liked this book because I have already read the first 2 books from the Artemis Fowl series. There are 7 books in all. Artemis Fowl is a 12-year-old, criminal mastermind. He devotes his mastermind to illegal plans on how to get money. His 7-foot servant Butler helps him by protecting him and doing things like creating "diversions" and kidnapping. In Artemis Fowl, there also are the elves, fairies, trolls, goblins and others. The elves, thanks to a centaur called Foaly, have technology that humans don't even dare to think of. 

I really liked this book because I like adventure stories with high-tech and masterminds involved.