The Other Wes Moore - Post Reading

“Early losses condition you to believe that short-term plans are always smarter.  Long-term plans don't see to matter.” If children see the people around them get into trouble or die, they begin to believe that something like this could happen at any time. They think that nothing is certain. This is true: you never know if you might die in a car accident or of a heart attack tomorrow. However, in “The Other Wes Moore”, most of the boys saw bad things happen to their friends and family. They believed that something would inevitably happen to them, as well. 
They made bad decisions, believing that it did not matter in the long term, because there might not be a long term. They began to do drugs. They thought, if their family did not care what happened to them, they why should they care? 
Society forgot them and closed them off in run-down places, so the children such as both of the Wes Moore’s grew up believing that society did not need them, and did not want them. One of the boys changed his way of thought by going to military school. Through his years there, he began to mature. The other Wes Moore had a period of time where his outlook improved, but that change was not allowed to grow enough to stay when he got back home.
Both of the boys grew up without their fathers. The narrator’s father died, while the other Wes Moore’s father left. This is why he was not a good father to his own four children; he did not know anything different. However, if his own father had been there when he grew up, it is likely that he would do the same for his children.

Both of the boys grew up selling drugs. All of the other boys where they were from did the same. The boys wanted to fit in, as most of us do. They knew that their families needed money. When they made mistakes and got caught, or saw the same things happening to their friends, they learned that they never knew what might happen in their lives. They began to live how they wanted, because they didn’t know when that freedom would be taken away.

The Other Wes Moore - Pre Reading

People usually do what others expect them to do. Most of the time, if teachers and parents expect a student to make good grades, the student will. If teachers or parents says, “Well, you tried. You couldn’t do any better,” or something like that, the student will believe that he is not smart, and will give less effort in their studies, believing they cannot do well. However, if teachers encourage their students, the students will tend to get better grades and feel better about school and themselves.
If people around you act one way, they probably expect you to act the same way as they act. This is why teachers often say, “You need to represent our school well on the field trip”. They know that where the class is going has probably seen some misbehaved classes, and that the curators will see you the same way at first. Your teachers want to break the stereotype. If the curators at the museum you are visiting treat you like toddlers and have low expectations, you might stoop to those expectations.
Also, where you are from influences what people think of you. The region that you are from may lead people to have stereotypes about you. Some people have prejudices towards others because of where they grew up. Certain accents tend to make people think certain things about you: that you are uneducated, or that you are unkind.

People need to worry less about what other people think about them, and more about what they think about themselves. If you like who you are, who cares if other people do? If you strive to be a kind and fair person, does it really matter what others might expect of you? If you have different interests than other people, that makes you special! If everyone did what was expected of them, there would be no diversity. If you have different interests in life or a different way of speaking than people around you, just be yourself. There is no need to change who you really are so that people like you. If someone doesn’t accept you for who you really are, then perhaps there is no need to consider them a friend. If people don’t appreciate your true self, don’t worry. You will find someone who does, and you might get a new friend because of it.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Post Reading

"All you need to do is find the right book at the right time.”
I think that what this quote means is that when you do something, you have to do it at the right time as well. If you are making an important decision, you can’t just wait forever: you will have lost your chance. Both the decision and the timing are important. 
In “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore”, this quote is very prominent. When Clay sneaks the logbook out of the store, he has to time it right or someone will notice. If he did it at the wrong time, it wouldn’t work.

Also, Mr. Penumbra had many different ideas on how to crack the coded codex vitae of Manutius. Because Corvina is the First Reader, Penumbra could get in trouble for his ideas. In this case, the only “right time” would be if Corvina wasn’t in charge, which was unlikely to happen. Again, if Clay had not had the idea to get Neel as a patron at the right time, Neel might have refused. Clay and Kat wouldn’t have been able to go to New York, and they wouldn’t have seen Penumbra. Furthermore, if Kat hadn’t come into the shop when Clay had the 3D model on his computer, they wouldn’t have gotten into a relationship, and Kat wouldn’t have helped Clay with the other problems. I think what this quote is saying is, “You have to know what to do, but it still won’t work if you’re not doing it at the right time.”

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Book Store - Pre Reading

Books can do a lot for people, but only if they enjoy reading them. If you take the time to get interested in a book, you can forget the things around you. If you are stressed, a good book can be a way to forget what made you stressed in the first place. It is an escape, in a way. Books can inspire people to do good things as well. If a character in a book can be a good influence on other characters, chances are, they might be a good influence on you. The reverse can also be true.  If a character in a book you are reading is a bad influence, they will probably influence you in a negative way, too.
Books also improve language. Writers use interesting words and make us think differently. If people read, they remember some of those interesting words, and go on to use them in conversations, broadening their vocabulary. Books take us to places that we would never go to otherwise. If you read a book that takes place in another time or place, it gives you ideas of what might have happened there. 
Books make people want to write. I know this to be true. As a child, I was made to read a lot of books. I now love both reading and writing. Reading books has allowed me to learn to write in different styles, and to write about different characters.
Sometimes when I am really enjoying a book, I will write a spinoff when I finish it. I usually keep the same story, but from a different character’s view. I do this for practice: it is surprisingly difficult to weave another character into a plot that is already established.
Also, the more people read, the better they become at reading. Last summer, I was in a program that required me to read at 600 words per minute and pass a reading comprehension test. At first, they started me at 100 words per minute. A few weeks later, I was at 600 words per minute. I had hardly noticed that the speed had gotten faster. If you practice reading, you will get better.

Books make people more confident, because they make you feel smarter. If people are more confident in who they are, there will be less bullying and other school problems. You can never read too much.

Ship Breaker - Post Reading

“You toss your luck in the air and it rattles down on the gambling boards and you either live or die.” This quote was important to Ship Breaker as the book regularly talked about luck. I think what this quote means is that, you can do a certain amount of work to get something to happen, but it’s not certain that it will.
To me, it seems like a lot of this book has to do with luck. Perhaps this is because they live in a world where your life depends on how much goods you can pull from a small, dangerous space so that someone else can profit off of it. Everything in their lives depends on how much wire they pull out, if the weather is good, and if they don’t have an accident. In Nailer’s case, his day also depends on what kind of mood his dad is in.
Some people, like Lucky Girl, are born rich, and don’t seem to be affected by luck at all. However, she made it through the storm, when all the others on the clipper were killed. Others, like Lucky Strike, are born poor, but happen to find or do something that makes them rich. For example, Lucky Strike found oil and smuggled it out, becoming rich and using his influence to become richer.
Pima and Sadna say that Nailer is lucky after he escapes alive, and call him “Lucky Boy”. Others say that if he was lucky, then he would have escaped and still kept the oil.

I think that the characters became too consumed with luck and the like and didn’t do anything themselves. I think they went from “I can’t control everything, so I shouldn’t get upset if something doesn’t work out right”, to “If I can’t control everything, then why should I make any plans in advance at all”. In my opinion, we should try to do what we can, but realize that it won’t always work out.

Ship Breaker - Pre Reading

The word “loyalty” is defined as “obedience, allegiance, devotion, steadfastness, or reliability”. Often, someone is only seen as loyal if they are unconditionally loyal. It is nearly impossible to be loyal to someone at all times. There are many times when it is hard, or wrong, to be loyal to someone. 
If what someone is doing is wrong, should you be loyal to them? If being loyal to one friend goes against being loyal to another? There are reasons not to be loyal to someone, but it is hard to know when to be loyal. It is up to the person to make that judgement. This can be difficult, because the person wouldn’t want to offend their friend. 
It is also hard to be loyal when others disapprove. For example, if your friend wants to try something new, such as a new sport, you would support them in their decision. However, if others think that the idea or plan is dumb, peer pressure could convince you to be disloyal to your friend. In this situation, it is easy to know what the right thing is, but just as hard to go through with it.
Some aspects of loyalty are somewhat easier. Don’t talk behind your friend’s back, for example. In theory, this is easy, but if other people are talking about your friend, it can be tempting to say something. Still, this type of loyalty is simpler to understand: you usually know it’s not good to gossip about your friend.

If you feel that you should be loyal to someone, then be loyal. If what they are doing feels wrong, then confront them nicely. These rules are more like guidelines, because they don’t work in every situation. So when should you be loyal, and when should you not? Trust your instincts and remember to think it through.

Code Name Verity - Post Reading

           "Careless talk costs lives” is a quote that is often repeated throughout Code Name Verity. If you tell someone something that is secret, it will soon make its way to someone who should not know. In wars, this is especially important. Code and important information is kept closely guarded so that it is harder for it to get to the enemy. This is also true today, in different situations, such as school. If you tell someone a secret, they might accidentally tell someone else, who they trust. That person might tell another of their friends, not knowing that you did not want the information to get to that person. Of course, it does not “cost lives” in that situation, but the idea is basically the same.

In Code Name Verity, if Julie or Maddie, or anyone else, were to be too loose with information, the enemy would probably get it. Both of them are involved in very secret missions. They often say that careless talk costs lives, meaning that they do not want to talk about what they do.

Julie gives false information to her interrogators. However, she tells it in such a way that they believe it to be true. She pretends that she is upset about writing it out, while, in reality, she is faking all of it. She is able to do this because she is good at acting, and uses that for her job.

Maddie, however, has a more practical job as a pilot. Still, she takes the people who have secret missions, such as Julie, to where they need to be. While she is in hiding, she writes out all that has happened as an “Accident report”. This is foolish because the papers could fall into the wrong hands.

If “careless talk costs lives”, then we should all be more careful about what we say. We never know who it could get to, and how fast.

Code Name Verity - Pre Reading

Ten Things I Am Most Scared Of

1. Having dreams so big that they will never happen

I have really big dreams. I feel like I spend so much time planning them that I don’t have time to work on making them real. I feel like they are so big that they will never happen, and I give up.

2. Losing the chance to do something important

I have plans of what I want to do, often with other people. Because of being shy, I often don’t pursue the plans and lose the chance to do these things.

3. People not liking me

I always have the problem of worrying how people will like me or what I do. Many times, I changed something or backed down because of this.

4. Not being good enough

Before I do something, I always worry about how good the others there are. I worry about how I will compare to them.

5. Time going by too fast

I like to take time to plan things out. When time seems to go by too fast, I feel like I lose control of everything, and that makes me waste more time.

6. Not knowing what I am supposed to do

I always get nervous when I am told to do something and not given clear instructions. I want to ask how to do it, but I’m scared to. I have plans for most things, but I hardly ever know where to start.

7. Forgetting something important

I always worry that I will forget to do something important. I wonder what will happen if I do, and I plan everything out so that I won’t. Still, I worry about forgetting to do something that I need to do.

8. People controlling everything I do for all my life

I always look forward to when I can make my own decisions. I have plans for what I want to do later in my life. If there is someone telling me every little thing to do all of the time, I think I will go insane.

9. Freedom

I don’t know how I will act when I am given more freedom. Right now everything is so strict that I hardly have any time to sit down and think. It’s like every second of my life is planned out. Without this, I might only want to sit and think, and never get any of the things I think about done.

10. Spiders

I was playing outside one day in fourth grade, and I got bit by a huge spider. No one knew whether it was poisonous or not, so we went to the doctor’s. It wasn’t poisonous, but I still remember how bad it hurt and the hole in my thumb. I know that most people are at least a little scared of spiders, but ever since then, I have been more afraid of them than the average person.

Year of the Hangman - Post Reading

         As I was reading Year of the Hangman, one quote stood out to me. “The course of history often hinges of very small events”. This is because I often realize this while watching a documentary or reading a book. If some small event in history had happened differently, then everything would be different.

For example, the plot in Year of the Hangman is is based on the idea that the Americans lost the Revolutionary war. If this had happened, then most of the more modern world history would change. If we lost the war, many other countries would not have tried to gain their own independence. In reality, other countries saw that we could win our freedom, and were convinced to fight for theirs. If we had lost the Revolutionary war, the exact opposite would have happened: countries that had any ideas of becoming free would have abandoned them. 

If America was not free, it is likely that our Civil War would have never taken place. The fight for freedom and racial equality would have progressed much slower, if at all. America would never have become the superpower that it is today, and the outcomes of both of the World Wars would have been different.

If the Axis had won the Second World War, then they would certainly have continued conquering Europe. The shapes and borders of many European countries would have been different today.

In conclusion, if America had not won its freedom from England, the history of the world would have been very different. This is proof that the statement made in Year of the Hangman, “The course of history often hinges on very small events”, is true in the real world as well as in fiction.

Year of the Hangman - Pre Reading

Wars are fought for countries to gain rights or land. Sometimes it is fair, like if a country’s land was taken away in a previous war, or if another nation is too harsh on them. Most of the time, however, a nation will wage war so that they can gain more land to open up trade routes or to get access to resources.

The American Revolution, for example, was a war in which the objective was to gain freedom. Still, in the political sense, the British were right. They had established a colony, like other European countries did at that time. Their colony (America) wanted to be free. Since we live in the United States of America, most people tend to think the British were cruel and that we wanted to be free of heavy taxes (a fraction of what our own government taxes us today). It is often said that history is written by the victor. This means that the victor of a war will write the history of that war in their opinion.

World War Two started the same way. Some countries wanted more land. Hitler wanted to take over all of Europe and establish one “superior” race. The Americans entered the war only when they were forced to do so, fighting against their attackers, the Japanese. Other wars in history were fought for religious reasons. Still others are fought in areas of unrest, where there always seems to be a war.

Wars do serve a purpose: they warn people of the danger of wars. During the American Civil War, Robert E. Lee said, “It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we should grow too fond of it”. War can accomplish things, but it is never good. Unless a war killed no one, it can not be called good.

However, wars do serve some good purposes. They can help build an economy. Even though Roosevelt’s New Deal helped create new jobs, the need for war equipment created many more. 

War also creates technological advances. For example, in WWII, the Chance Vought F4U-1 Corsairs (American fighter planes) became the first single-propeller plane to reach over 400 mph, or 347.5905 nautical miles per hour. However, the plane still had some faults: the enormous power that the engine produced led to the plane’s tendency to roll. This, as well as the long nose, made the Corsair relatively difficult to fly. Also, it was difficult to make landing gear struts long enough that the large propeller could clear the ground. Their solution was the inverted gull wing shape, which made the Corsair difficult to land because of a tendency to bounce after carrier landings. However, in the later models (F4U-2, -3, and -4) these problems were fixed. If this plane was not made during a war, it is likely that manufacturers would have simply abandoned production of the “Bent-Winged Bird” rather than fix errors. This was because of the need for weapons. If the manufacturers had stopped production of the Corsair, the Pacific front would've looked very different: the plane was so feared it was known as “Whistling Death” by the enemy.

In conclusion, while some products of wars can be beneficial, they are bloody and result in the deaths of many people. The wars themselves should never be considered good, but, as humans are sinful, it is impossible to stop fighting.

Touching Spirit Bear - Post Reading

“Life is a circle and every part of a circle is a beginning and an end.” This quote from Touching Spirit  Bear is very true. It means, if you begin something, it changes things from how they were before. If something changes, things cease to be how they were before the change. For example, if you got a new pet, it is the beginning of life with your new pet. However, it is also the end of life without that pet. To start something, you have to end something else. This can either be beneficial, or not.

In Touching Spirit Bear, the change was both good and bad. To Cole, the change seemed bad, but after he got used to it, the change made his life better. Cole lived a life of anger and fear. He was afraid of his father, who beat him, and angry with him for doing it. When Cole beat up a schoolmate, he was sent to an island to live by himself for a year. He was mauled by a bear, and rescued. He later returned to the same island by choice. This may have seemed bad, but being hurt gave him time to think and realize things. Returning to the island and building a shelter gave him work to do so that he wouldn’t fall back into his previous pattern of life.

If “life is a circle and every part of a circle is a beginning and an end,” it is important to realize this and accept new opportunities. However, it is also important to remember that things cannot stay the same forever in life.

Touching Spirit Bear - Pre Reading

Trust:

The definition for the word trust is the “firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something”.  Most of the time, it is very difficult to earn someone’s trust. Usually, it doesn’t happen overnight. It can take months, or even years, to gain someone’s trust. The person becomes able to trust you over time by small things that you do, like keeping secrets, sticking by them, or giving advice. Sometimes, however, trust is earned very quickly. This is usually the result of a dramatic event. For example, in “Touching Spirit Bear”, Cole begins to trust the others and himself, but only after he is nearly killed in a fight when he is mauled by a mysterious white “Spirit Bear”. It takes still longer for the others to trust Cole because of his previous record. The more times someone betrays your trust, the harder it is to trust them again.
There are many circumstances where it is difficult to trust someone. Either they have treated you poorly in the past, or someone else has. Gaining someone’s trust is slow work. If you seem too forward, a cautious person will think you want something from them and trust you even less. In this method, there is no absolute point where the person suddenly  decides to trust you. They gradually begin to see that they can trust you. Even starting this process will take time. When something horrible happens, people that usually would not be friends are brought together. This can be seen all the time in today’s news. When an event, such as a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, or disease strikes an area, the inhabitants seem to band together to get through it. People who didn’t know each other the day before are suddenly looking out for each other, living in the same shelter with each other, and sharing food and stories with each other.
If someone breaks your trust, it is only natural that you will be wary to trust them again in the future. I can remember this movie quote, “You crossed ___. You are willing to cross ___. Why should I expect any different?” Even if the person did not betray your trust, if they have betrayed someone else, you still have reason to not trust them. It is even harder to trust someone if the betrayal is personal. Some people are more forgiving than others, but what I have learned from reading “Touching Spirit Bear” is that it is difficult to forgive people, but if you do, you will trust them as well. 

In conclusion, trust is not a word to be used lightly. Trust is not to be given lightly, either. There is always the risk that someone will break your trust. Trust is either gained very slowly, or very rapidly. After trust is broken, it is extremely difficult to gain back. In “Touching Spirit Bear” there are at least five different times when people have trouble trusting, and many more in the main character’s past.