Stargirl

Plot: this book is about a 10th grade girl named Stargirl Caraway. She is very friendly and happy. She is a little unusual because she carries a ukulele around with her and strums it at lunch. She is also unusual because she shows up at stranger's funerals and cheers for the opposing basketball team. This book teaches a lesson that everyone should follow which is to always be yourself and never change. This is what made Stargirl better than everyone else. I recommend this book to everyone and of all ages too.

Character Description: the characters i am choosing to describe are Stargirl and Leo Borlock.

• Stargirl- she is the new student at Mica High. She has been homeschooled for 10 years nad is now going to a real high school where she isn't accepted very well. i like Stargirl because even though she is different she doesn't change or try to act different. i don't think i would like to be in Stargirl's shoes, especially on the first day of school. I say this because she was wearing like her Grandma's wedding gown and had a large canvas with a sunflower on it as her lunch bag. All i can say is that Stargirl is unique.
• Leo- he is an 11th grader who has an in-school T.V show called Hot Seat. When he first sees her, he thinks she is a complete weirdo just because she doesn't dress like everybody else and plays a different instrument. I like Leo because even though he think Stargirl is weird, he doesn't say anything mean to her, but what ends up happening is that he falls in love and is eventually known as "Starboy." Leo is not a bad student or a jock, whichmeans he is nice and mellow.

Your Thoughts: i thought this book was very good, but at the beginning it was slow. In this book there is a prologue, which doesn't make sense until the very end of the book. I like the way the author made the narrator one of Stargirl's classmates, this classmate was Leo Borlock. I liked it because since he went to school with Stargirl, it made me feel as if i was there too. This book was one fo the best books i have read and i can't wait to read the sequel, Love, Stargirl.

Reading Strategies: the reading strategy i used was making connections. I used this strategy by making text-to-self connections. The connections i made were like cheering for the opposing sport's team, being made fun of and having someone think your weird but still be your friend. I can also make a text-to-text connection. the book i can make a connection to is Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn. The songle connection i can make is that they are both different from the average person. This is not always a bad thing.

Author Information: the author of this book is Jerry Spinelli. He graduated from Gettysburg College and now lives with his wife, Eileen, in Pennsylvania. He has written many other novels such as Maniac Magee, Loser, Wringer, etc. He has won a Newbery Honor Award for his novel Crash and Knots in my Yo-Yo String. I like the way he put a prologue in the book.

Gingerbread

Plot: this book is about a 16 year old girl named Cyd Charisse. She has only met her real father, Frank, once and her goal in life is to reunite with him. She lives in San Francisco with her mom, brother, sister, and stepdad. She recently broke up with her boyfriend, Shrimp, because he wanted his own space for a while. She is rebelious which is why she got kicked out of boarding school and is boyfriendless and friendless. She finds out she has a brother who is gay and a sister whom she doesn't get along with from her dad's side. In the end, this book is very good for all ages, but i recommend it for girls.

Character Description: the characters i am choosing to describe are Cyd Charisse and Shrimp.

**Cyd- she is 16 years old, but mature for her age. She definitely has an attitude, but she is the sweetest person with her younger brother Josh and her younger sister Ashley. I like Cyd because she isn't afraid to say what she means, but yet i don't like her because she doesn't try hard enough, isn't a bright student, and is sneaky around her parents. From what i see on the cover page, i can tell she is goth like because of all the black plus the high combat boots.

**Shrimp- he is Cyd's ex-boyfriend. He has an older brother named Wallace who works at a java shop called Java the Hut. To me he doesn't seem like the best boyfriend because he didn't really support Cyd or treat her very nicely which i guess means i don't like him very much. When i first saw his name i kept wondering why his parents named him Shrimp. Maybe if Shrimp talked more and showed more emotion, i would likke him better.

Your Thoughts: I thought this book was good, but since i am completely different than Cyd, it was hard to make any connections. This book wasn't was i expected it to be because when i read the back i thought she was living with her dad and didn't get along so well, but when i read the first 2 chapters i noticed that the book is called Gingerbread because the doll her dad gave her at the airport where they first met, was called Gingerbread and to Cyd it reminded her of that precious moment. I would give this book 4 stars.

Reading Strategies: the reading strategy i used was questioning. I questioned a lot in the book because it was very confusing at times. The first question i had was, "is Shrimp really his name?" because the first page talks all about him. I also asked questions like why did she name the doll Gingerbread? Why she is goth? does the divorce of her parents have to do by the way she dresses? and more. The author didn't include much detail and i didn't like the way she transitioned from one subject to another.

Author Information: the author of this book is Rachel Cohn. She grew up outside of Washington D.C, but now she lives in Manhattan. Gingerbread is her first novel she has written. She hasn't won any awards. I like the way the author used her personal experience in the book to describe what was going on. i liked this because i knew that this situation could really happen and it wasn't just a story about a girl who is mean and goth. Rachel has now written 2 more books that are a series with Gingerbread, they are called Shrimp and Cupcake.

The Chain Letter

Plot: this book is about a 12 year old girl named Olivia Mcfee, otherwise known as Livvie. One day Livvie and her best friend Joyce were rummaging through the mail and found an envelope made out to Olivia Mcfee, it was a chain letter, "Dear friend, this chain letter hasn't been broken in fifteen years! Don't break the chain! This letter began one hundred thousand years ago when it was scratched into stone by caveman! You will be a very bad, bad person if you don't send it to all your friends!" This letter leads to adventures both good and bad. The only way to stop this bad luck is to find out who sent the letter in the first place. This book is a mystery inside a mystery. I recommend this book for all ages.

Character Description: the characters i am choosing to describe are Olivia Mcfee and Joyce Pullman.

• Olivia- is a 12 year old girl who lives with her mom and her ancient chestnut-colored cat named Dr. Brown in the small town of St.Paul, Minnesota. Livvie, her nickname, has brown hair and brown eyes. Something I like about her is that she doesn't believe bad luck, just like her mother. Sometimes Livvie can be very mean,especially with Peter and Phil Finch. She and her best friend Joyce are like peanut-butter and jelly, they are always together.
• Joyce- is also 12 years old and lives with her mom and several of her younger siblings. Joyce is more mature than Livvie because Joyce knows how to do laundry, change a diaper, fix a broken T.V and much more. Joyce on the other hand is VERY superstitious, she believes that black cats, the number 13, mice, open umbrellas in indoor places, and ladders are bad luck. Every time Joyce gets mad at school she has to twirl every lock in that part of the hallway before going into class or on the streets she has to tap every streetlight on the way. They are both different, but the same when it comes to thinking.

Your thoughts: I thought this book was very good because it was a mixture of mystery and fiction. The book was pretty slow towards the beginning, but then near the end it was suspenseful. This book definitely had cliffhangers which i liked because it made me want to continue reading the book instead of putting down and not liking it. I sort of feel like Livvie in part of the story because whenever i get a chain letter, i just delete it because all they do is make you feel guilty if you don't answer it, just like it did in the book.

Reading strategies: The reading strategies i used to help me with this book were mental imaging and making connections. The one i used the most was mental images because this book was so descriptive, i could imagine all the details. I could imagine what Livvie looked like in her cast, what Joyce looked like in bed, what Livvie looked like when she found that she was being partnered up with Peter Finch, and what Mrs. Mcfee looked like when she was twirling the phone cord.

The next reading strategy i used was making connections. One of the main connections i made was with Livvie. The connection i made was when she spilled the hot chocolate, i knew the pain she felt. I am sure that most people have received a chain letter at least once and by the time they finished reading it they immediately wanted to begin responding. Most chain letters are now sent by e-mail so you know who started it because you can see the previous e-mail addresses, unlike if you get it by postal mail you don't have a return address at all.

Author Information: the author of this book was Julie Schumacher. She has written numerous short stories and only 2 bok for adults which includes The Body is Water. Her first novel, Grass Angel, was published by Delacorte Press. Julie lives with her husband and 2 daughters in the very town of St. Paul. She has won the ALA Notable Book of the Year.

Princess in the Spotlight

Plot: this fiction book is about a 14 year old girl named Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo, otherwise known as Mia. Her best friend's name is Lilly Moscovitz. She lives with her artistic mom named Helen Thermopolis and her 25 pound, orange and white cat named Fat Louie. This book is the second book in the Princess Diaries series so this story continues where the first book left off. Mia is the princess of Genovia, a country in Europe, because her dad is the Prince. She is forced to take lessons to learn how to use a fish fork, speak in Swahili, and much more things that are insignificant to her and the world and tedious. Mia would much rather learn about overpopulation and gun control because she respects nature, is a vegetarian and worries about world issues. Anyway, her mom has just told Mia that she was pregnant, which was a good thing except there is one condition, it is Mia's algebra teacher's baby! All in all this book talks about Mia's life in school, her mom's secret marriage, and her torturous grandmother.
Character Description: the characters i am choosing to describe are Mia Thermopolis and Grandmere, Mia's grandma from her father's side.

• Mia- she is a freshman at Albert Einstein High School. She is five foot nine, size ten shoe, gray eyed, and short mouse-brown haired. She is not the smartest kid ever, especially in algebra which she gets tutored by Michael Moscovitz. I like Mia because even though she is a princess, she doesn't show off or brag to everybody at school. I know that Mia isn't good at being polite, but i still give her credit because she isn't "wild" like her best friend Lilly. I hope people in Genovia like Mia and will accept her politely in a new country.
• Grandmere- she is the queen of Genovia and grandmother of Mia. She is a rather critical women who has eyeliner permanently tattooed to her eyelids and dresses her hairless miniature poodle, Rommel, in chinchilla bolero jackets. I don't really like Grandmere because she is always in everybody's business. Plus, she is always pushing Mia to work harder and do things she doesn't want to do.

Your thoughts: I enjoyed this book because it was similar to the Princess Diaries movies except there were a few changes that made it different. I liked the way the author wrote the format of the book because it is like a journal so every time she writes a new entry it says the date, time and day of the week. There wasn't so much detail in this book which was okay because most of the "chapters" got to the point quickly. There weren't cliffhangers either which i was bothered by because i couldn't predict a lot. I couldn't make a lot of connections because most of the things she wrote about were about high school, girlfriends, and royal thrones. Overall, i liked it because it made me want to read the third book in the series.

Reading Strategies: i didn't really use any strategies that came of help to me. If i did use any i would choose summarizing because at the end of the book i summarized what i read so i knew what was going on when i read the third book. There wasn't much summarizing to do because when it was a new week in her journal, she summarized what happened last week. This was not a book in which i needed or used any strategies that is why i am stuck on what to write.

Author Information: the author's name is Meg Cabot. She has written several novels such as the Princess Diaries series, the Mediator series, All-American Girl, Teen Idol, Nicola and the Viscount and Victoria and the Rouge. The thing i liked bout this author is the way she shows Mia's feelings in a way that most girls do, through a journal. She resides in N.Y.C with her husvand and her one-eyed cat named Henrietta.

Ladies of the Lake

Plot: this book is the third book in the Gilda Joyce series. This time 13 year old Gilda Joyce gets a scholarship to go to an all girls Catholic school called Our Lady of Sorrow in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. Gilda's first choice was not to go, but when she went to go check the school out she found out that someone had accidentally suicided themselves on the lake in the school. Since Gilda is a "psychic investigator" she decided to go to the school and find out what really happened. In order to solve this mystery she has to encounter the headmistress, a group of senior girls, a handsome teacher and some pretty crazy stuff. This book was definitely full of thrill, excitement and really good cliffhangers.



Character Description: the characters i am choosing to describe are Dolores Lambert, the girl who drowned in the school lake, and Brad, her mom's cuckoo boyfriend.

• Dolores- she was the freshman girl that died because she drowned in the lake. I do not know much about her because it doesn't really talk about her except when the headmistress mentions the bridge outside the lake. this bridge was built after her death to make sure no one would take short cuts and only use the bridge. I know that she was dared to go somewhere but she didn't make it, i know this because it says it in the first chapter.


• Brad- he is Gilda's mom's boyfriend who got Gilda the scholarship. In the beginning of the book he moves in with the Joyce family and later on in the book he starts acting suspicious so Gilda and her older brother spy on him. He is described as a clown by Gilda but as a gentlemen by Gilda's mom. He doesn't get the spotlight to often in the book.

Your Thoughts: I really enjoyed this book because it was full of twists and turns that were unexpected. The part i liked the most in the book was when she figured who was behind the drowning of Dolores. I liked this part because it was completely unexpected and she figured it out in a cool way that wasnt dangerous. I was surprised that a girl like Gilda could figure out the people behind the death in only a short period of time.

Reading Strategies: the reading strategies i used were questioning and mental images. I mainly used questioning towards the end of the book when Gilda was figuring out the suspect(s) were. I used mental images in the beginning when it described Dolores walking in the freezing cold blindfolded. I also imagined when she fell into the ice and inhaled the icy water instead of oxygen.

Author Information: the author of this book was Jennifer Allison. She grew up in Michigan but now lives in Washington D.C with her husband and son, Max. The only books she has written are from the Gilda Joyce series which include The Ghost Sonata and Psychic Investigator. I like how at the end of most chapters she left off with a cliffhanger, which made me want to continue reading.

Psychic Investigator

Plot: This book is about a 13 year old girl named Gilda Joyce. She goes to school in the Detroit suburb with her best friend Wendy Choy. Gilda loves to read, type on her father's typewriter, and have adventures whenever she has the chance. This summer Gilda plans on visiting her mother's second cousin named Lester Splinter. When Gilda gets to California, she is in for the unexpected. But on the good side, she makes new friends, definitely has an adventure, and much, much more.

Character Description: the characters i am choosing to describe are Gilda Joyce and Juliet Splinter, her cousin.

• Gilda- she is a smart 13 year old girl who wants to become a writer when she grows up. She loves solving mysteries and reading her book called The Master Psychic's Handbook. Something i like about Gilda is that she is very sweet and polite. I like this because if she wants to meet new people, like Lester, than she has to be polite and make a good first impression.
• Juliet- she is also 13 years old, but resembles an 11 year old because of her height. She has silky hair, pale skin, and icy, gray eyes. Juliet's parents divorced when she was very young and lived with her mother until she was 10 years old. She now lives with her father in a Victorian Mansion on Laguna Street. Something i strongly dislike about her is that she has a major attitude towards Gilda, when all Gilda is doing is trying to help Juliet live in a calm, peaceful household. She is mean when unnecessary, but when needed she is nice and understanding.

Your thoughts: I really enjoyed this book because i felt as if i was in Gilda's shoes. This book was suspenseful at times, which i liked a lot because it made me wonder and predict. Plus Jennifer Allison, the author, was very descriptive when she described people, places, feelings, etc. I like the way the she transited to one setting and then to a completely different one, but using details that made it feel as if you were moving too. I recommend this book to everyone especially if you like books like Killing Mr. Griffin and the series.

Reading Strategies: the reading strategy i mainly used was mental images. I used this a lot because since there was so much detail in the story i could clearly visualize each character and their characteristics. I made mental images of Juliet, Lester's reaction when Gilda arrived, Gilda's book (the cover), and more. i usually made a "mini-movie" at the end of each chapter, so by the end of the book i had a whole "movie." I used other strategies, but this one was the main one i used.

Author Information: the author of this book is Jennifer Allison. This is her first book and it is great. She grew up in a small town in Michigan. Since one of her best friends lived on a farm with a spooky atmosphere, they found it perfect to do seances, which inspired her to write this novel. The odd jobs she had before being an author helped her generate ideas for characters and stories. As i said before the thing i really liked about her was that she wrote with great detail.

Eager

Plot: The main character in this fiction book is a robot named EGR3 otherwise known as Eager. He lives with the Bell family, which consists of Gavin, Fleur, baby Charlotte, Dad, and Mom. His only duties are to take care of the baby, sometimes make meals, and obey everything Grumps says. Grumps is also a robot owned by the Bell's except his internal clock has gone haywire so he doesn't know what time of day it is. Later on, Gavin notices that all robots seem to be acting as if they are being controlled by someone or something, including Grumps and Eager, this leads to lives being lost and memory. Eventually, Eager learned how to deal with real people, talking appliances, and the real world.

Characters: the characters i am choosing to describe are Eager and Grumps.

• Eager- he was brought home in order for him to help Grumps, who was gettign old, but ended up being the new household robot. Eager was the prototype of a new robot that could think for himself and have feelings. Eager was very intelligent because he could catch on to things quickly which the Bell Family liked a lot. I liked Eager because he was supportive of Gavin, Fleur, and Baby Charlotte, plus he always put the family before himself.
• Grumps- he was the Bell's robot since Fleur, the oldest daughter, was a baby. He did all the chores around house, but as time went on he started getting older which caused his internal clock to go off time. Mr. Bell wanted to replace Grumps with a newer model because he was making a lot of mistakes, for example he serves lemon pie for breakfast. They kept Grumps because all of the kids were so attatched to him, they couldn't let go, plus he loved this family.

Your Thoughts: I liked this book because i imagined myself having a robot doing all my chores, serving me breakfast and helping me with my homework. The book was very good in the beginning and middle because it was fun seeing how Eager learned by making little mistakes. Towards the end it got sad and boring because Grumps died, Eager lost all his memory, and I felt the author went off topic near the end of the book. I felt this way about the ending because it went from talking about a peaceful family to a war and tragedy.

Reading Strategy: the reading strategy i used was making connections. The connection i made was with Eager. I felt that both Eager and I are appreciative of what we have, are helpful to others, and we learn quickly. Something we don't have in common is that he is a robot made of metal and rubber and i am a person made of flesh and bones.

Author Information: the author of this book is Helen Fox. This is her first novel, except that now she has published 2 more books, Eager's Nephew and Eager and the Mermaid. She lives in London with her husband, a scientist and their son. I like how she makes it feel like it is really happening.