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When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed

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I first read When Stars Are Scattered in sixth grade, because it was on the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader’s Book Award list. It’s inspired by Omar Mohamed’s real life story. When I first read it, I thought it was pretty good, but now that I have more appreciation for the deep themes inside the book, I love it even more. When Stars Are Scattered is narrated by Omar, an adolescent Somalian refugee. He lives in a refugee camp called Daadab, with his younger brother, Hassan. Hassan has a disability that limits his ability to speak (he can only say one word), and he sometimes has seizures. Hassan is also the only blood-related family Omar has left; their father was killed in Somalia, and their mother has not been found. The book follows Omar’s day-to-day life in the refugee camp as they hope and pray for a better life. The fact that it’s narrated by Omar and not in third person gives the reader a unique window into his frustrations, worries, complicated emotions as a refugee. This book conta...
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Peanuts Comic Review

 Hi guys, in this blog I'll be going over the classic Peanuts comic series by Charles Schulz. Peanuts has been a world favorite ever since Schulz began writing it in 1950. Throughout my childhood, I have been reading these strips online and in The Complete Peanuts collections of the strips between the years. I have read almost every single Peanuts strip in existence, as when I was younger, I had nothing better to do during my free time. In this blog I’ll overview the strips from the 1950s to 1960s. Peanuts consists of quite a few characters: The main 2 characters showing up are Charlie Brown and Snoopy, showing up 8588 and 7744 times in strips respectively. Charlie Brown is often portrayed as a “wishy-washy” person, with a somewhat weak personality, often giving in to other people. He often has a lot of bad luck, shown in his many kite flying accidents and baseball games. A recurring pattern in these strips is when Charlie Brown chickens out of doing something, and everyone get...
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Event Horizon: Dark Descent

 Hello all,      Sorry for the late post, but the book I've been working on is surprisingly long and hard to get through. Instead of doing a list of books I want to read or complaining about my long book for four paragraphs, I figured I could find a quick interesting read, and I feel that I was well rewarded.      Event Horizon: Dark Descent  is actually a prequel to Event Horizon  (1997 film) that follows a government group who have just figured out how to teleport, go light speed, or create a wormhole. I'm not entirely sure. The head scientist has been grieving the death of his wife but continues to work. He achieves breakthrough after breakthrough all because of the visits from his wife in his dream. Eventually the space shuttle is ready and the crew sets off. Every crew member but one is running from something whether it be cancer, the death of a loved one or an abusive relationship. The crew engages the fancy machinery and gets goin...
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A Long Walk to Water: A Short but Uplifting Tale

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I decided to read  this story because I was looking for a short book that wouldn’t take too much time, but still had a good plot and was worth reading. I wasn’t sure I could find a book like this, but thankfully, A Long Walk to Water exceeded both my expectations! A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park follows the stories of two eleven year old children. It focuses on the story of Salva, set in 1985, and the story of Nya, set in 2008. Both stories take place in Sudan. Salva is on what seems like a never-ending walk to safety after his village got destroyed in a war. Nya has to walk 8 hours a day through an extremely treacherous climate just to get water for her family.  A repeated theme throughout the book, especially in Salva’s story, is to get through one day at a time. This makes sense because for a while, Slava’s entire life is just waking all day every day trying to get to safety. This gets especially hard for him when he realizes he will probably never see his family aga...
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Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

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Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is a historical fiction novel about two ranch workers, Lennie and George, who are trying to build a stable life during the Great Depression. Steinbeck portrays Lennie as someone with a cognitive disability whose strength and innocence often get him in trouble. They find a new job at a ranch and seem to be doing well until Lennie accidentally does something that puts his life in danger. I think I say this for every book I review, but I read this because it’s a classic, which I love :) One of my favorite parts of this book was the dream that Lennie and George share of having their own property someday. Lennie often asks George to tell him their dream, like a story of their future, where they will tend to animals and “live off the fat of the land”. I liked this aspect because their dream gives them hope, and for a while, it even seems possible when another ranch worker offers to help contribute to the property. However, when Lennie accidentally does...
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Sideways Stories From Wayside School

 Sideways Stories From Wayside School by Louis Sachar (author of the famous book Holes). The story starts off with these words: "Wayside School was accidentally built sideways"; apparently there was supposed to be 1 story with 30 classrooms, but instead the architects messed up and built 30 stories with 1 classroom per story. The book only gets more confusing from here.  The story revolves around the 30th story classroom on wayside school, and the 29 students in them, which is especially weird. There were originally 30 kids in the class, which was originally taught by Mrs. Gorf, who could turn students into apples. Eventually, the whole class is turned into apples, but one of the students manages to trick Mrs. Gorf to a mirror, leading to her turning herself into an apple. Louis the yard teacher then accidentally eats her, thinking she was an apple, leading to all the kids being restored.  Wayside school is a strange school. Although it has 30 stories, the 19th story does...
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1st half of Throne of Glass Series Review!

  Review of 1st half of Throne of Glass Series I have recently started the Throne of Glass series (on my TBR list in a previous post!!), but unfortunately the books are very long (500 - 700 pages) so I have only made it through Throne of Glass , Crown of Midnight , and part of Heir of Fire. Therefore, this will only be a review of the first half of the series.  Throne of glass is a fictional Series set in a fantasy continent Erilea, which has been taken over by the evil king of the empire Adarlan. In all areas of Erilea, magic has mysteriously disappereed. The first book in the series, Throne of Glass , shows the main character Celeana Sardoneth, an assasin, competing in a competition for the king. The competition is focused on finding the “Kings champion” or an assassin that will do the king’s bidding and take out enemies. SPOILERSSSSSSS  Celeana wins the competition and begins to work for the king, but — in the books following the first — she finds out many dark secre...
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