It only looks easy

title: It only looks easy
Author: Pamela Curtis Swallow
Publisher: Scholastic
Place and year of publication: New York, 2003
Number of pages: 167 pages
Where I found the book: Christian Heritage School’s library

Story review:
The title of this book shows that life can’t always be easy and it might not look complicated as it is. Kat Randall lives with her beloved dog, Cheddar, her sister Hannah, and her parents. Kat is going into 7th grade and she’s feeling that this is going to be her best year. Kat comes before the school day and she finds out that Cheddar gets into a car accident. Cheddar goes to the veteran hospital before Kat’s first day of school that she’s been very excited for. She tries not to worry for her school day, but she gets impatient and “borrows” a bike to go to the veteran hospital. When she’s done, she finds out that the bike got stolen. Kat tells her parents about it and they tell her, to tell the bike owner (which is Melody Whiezersky), what had exactly happened to the bike.

Mrs. Lawrence is the one who gets Cheddar into a car accident and Mr. Lawrence invites Kat to go fishing together. While they’re fishing, Mr. Lawrence tells about his wife, about the Alzheimer’s disease that she has which makes you so confused that you can’t be left alone in the house and can’t remember things very well.

When Kat gets home, she finds out that Cheddar gets to come home soon. She gets excited but she remembers that she still got the bike problem. Kat’s school year is not going great as she expected and she tries to solve the problem as fast as she can, but doesn’t go smooth as she expects. Kat calls her two best friends; Abby and Matthew to see if they want help Kat to look for the bike. They look all over the place, but still can’t find it.

When she gets back, she gets a call from Mr. Lawrence and he asks if he can take care of Mrs. Lawrence. Kat says she will, because she still needs to earn more money for the bike. Kat helps Mrs. Lawrence with the gardening and when they are done, Kat gets some drinks and when she goes outside, she can’t find Mrs. Lawrence. Kat looks everywhere in the garden and the other side of the house and she’s not there, so Kat calls 911 and tell them what had happened. After she hangs up, she finds Mrs. Lawrence, coming out of the Bathroom. A moment later, a police car screeches at Mrs. Lawrence’s house and Kat tells that they lost a track of each other for a little bit.

About a half an hour later, Mr. Lawrence arrives and when Kat is about to leave, she sees a police officer, stretching something in the water and it was a bike. Kat tells the officer about the missing bike. He kept reaching the bikes out of the river and the fourth bike that he found was Melody’s bike. Even though the bike was missing some pieces; at least she found the bike. When Kat goes to the school the next day, she gets called in the principle office and she finds out that, her classmate, Dennis Boyle and his brother was the bike crime. They found the missing pieces in their shed. Dennis and his brother apologize to Kat and she is so happy that the bike crime is over. Kat realizes that everything is over now, and everything is now back to normal again.

Christian perspective:
This book doesn’t specifically talk about Christianity, but there are some actions and believes that Christians also believe and act in. The family kept praying when their dog got into a car accident. They also prayed when the bike got stolen. The main characters shows some Christianity perspective, when her classmate asked for help, she helped her classmate even though she didn’t wanted to and had lots of other things that she had to deal with.

My thoughts:
In my perspective, I think this is a great book, especially to those who like dogs. I enjoyed the book, because this book taught me some lessons about being patient and looking at the positive perspective. I like how this book makes you curious and makes you wonder about the next chapter. I like how this book isn’t just focused on one main idea, but focused on school, friendships, family, and lots of other things that are happening around you. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to talk about their friendships, communities, school and who likes animals.

Escape Under The Forever Sky -by Olivia

Title: Escape Under the Forever Sky
Author: Eve Yohalem
Publisher: Scholastic
Place and year of publication: December 2009
Number of pages: 215
Where you found the book: School library

Story Review

13 year old Lucy Hoffman has to move to Africa with her mom because her mom accepted a job as an American Ambassador, while her father stays in Indonesia with the World Bank. Her mom is very protective and won’t let her go anywhere accept for school. Her best friends are Teddy, Tana, and Iskinder who works in the residence.
Her mother always makes her come to boring dinners for her work, but one day Lucy and Tana decide to sneak out to a café called Mmmm My Flavour. While they are there, Dawit her driver, comes to the café and tells them that he is supposed to take them home. They’re busted! Dawit drops Tana off and is going to take Lucy home, but all of the sudden Lucy notices that they’re not going the right way but Dawit doesn’t listen, she gets frantic and yells at him to pull over. He swirves over and a man gets in the car and knocks her out.
The next thing she knows, she’s in a dark room and she bruised and hungry. After a few days of being there, eating nothing but ingera and water to drink, she finds out who kidnapped her. Marcos is the mean leader and Helena and Dawit are just in it for the money. Lucy realizes that she will die if she doesn’t make a run for it, so she gets out through a window and runs as fast as she can until she get to the jungle in the distance. She hides in a tree until her abductors are gone, then she goes off to find a river. She decides to follow the river and hopefully it will lead to a village. On her way she has to hide from her abductors, find food, and watch out for animals. Will she find her way home? Will she die by animals? Or will Marcos, Helena, and Dawit find her?

Christian Perspective
This book wasn’t written in a Christian perspective but Lucy (the main character) had heard about God before and sometimes did a little prayer of thanks or when she was in trouble. Since this book wasn’t written in a Christian perspective, Lucy could have dealt her problems with her mother by trying to understand why her mother was so over protective. She could have not run off to the café or markets and obeyed her mother.

Your Thoughts
I really liked this book because it was an adventure book so it was really interesting and there was never a dull moment. Another reason I liked this book was because it was inspired by a true story of a 12 year old girl in Ethiopia who was kidnapped for a week until she decided to escape. She ran into the jungle where she met three lions they chased off her abductors and surrounded her for several hours until the police arrived. I would recommend this book to people who like adventures and suspense.

Every soul a star

Title: Every soul a star
Author: Wendy Mass
Publisher: Hachette book group
Place and year of publication: New York, 2008
Numbers of pages: 322
Where you found the book: In the school’s library

Story review:

This book is written in 3 perspectives: Ally, Bree and Jack. If they were in a same school, they won’t even talk to each other.

Ally, she lives in Mood shadow campground, Middle of nowhere, U.S.A. She will not and cannot imagine life anywhere else. But fate has different plans for her, after the eclipse she has to “civilization “or in other words in a city. She is shocked so she and Bree make a plan. They even helped Jack and Mr. Silver in Mr.Silver's project with Ryan, Melony, Bree, Kenny (her brother). They had time of their life. Next afternoon, they saw their saw the eclipse right above their heads.

Bree is a popular, pretty and believes that she got switched at birth because her parents and her sister are geniuses. She wants to be a model .When her parents told her that they are moving to a campground; she was crushed because she’s not actually a nature girl. When they arrived, she decided she would never survive here. She got together with Ally and Kenny to make a plan. She even looked at the moon through a telescope. Then she realized that her "inner geek" is realeased. When she saw the eclipse she never ever saw anything that beautiful.

Jack is an overweight and always lonely plus no friends, just failed Mr, Silver’s science class. So, instead of doing summer school Mr. Silver offers him to be his assistant at an eclipse tour. He’ll write a report at the end and that will count as his science credit. On the way he made a strong connection with an old lady named Stella(he met her on the bus) and Ally. He plans to miss the eclipse.

As the eclipse is approaching all three of them are looking for something(even though they might not know what it is). In the end would they find it...or not.

Christian perspective:

I don’t think this book was written in a Christian perspective. Ally and Bree should have prayed and should have asked God to guide them. Before they actually put the plan into place they should have prayed and that if it didn’t work, they should know God should guide them, and he as always with you.

Your thoughts:

I really liked and enjoyed the book. I liked how the book was divided into 3 perspectives, and how sometimes one person starts from where the last person left off. I liked how each chapter ends off with the cliff hanger and it forces you to read more into it. I loved all the characters. My favourite one was Ally. The reason why I thought she was a nature loving girl, cheerful and did not care what people thought about her. I think the name of the book “ Every Soul A Star” correctly because every soul is as precious as a star. If could recommend this book to anyone it would be a person intrested in Science or a person who just loves realistic fiction.

Firewing

FireWing

By Kenneth Oppel

Published by Harper Trophy Canada

Published in Ontario, Canada in 2002

285 pages

I found this book in the school library

Story Review

Griffin is a young silver wing bat. He and his friend Luna try and steal fire and there is an accident. After, Griffin gets sucked down into the underworld. Now Shade, Griffins father, has to save him. But something else is trying to find Griffin, something Shade hoped he would never see again...

Shade meets Yorick, Nemo, and Java, three bats that he meets in the underworld who are trying to get to the tree – a magical tree in the underworld that gives life to whoever enters it, but they don’t know if it even exists…

Legend says that the living can’t survive long in the underworld and since griffin glows with life (literally) and all the dead bats want to take it for themselves. Can Griffin and Shade make it back to the upper world or will a deadly foe take their life first?

The title of the book, FireWing, has to do with Griffin and Luna stealing fire and the accident.

Christian Perspective

This book was not written in a Christian perspective. But most of the characters dealt with situations somewhat Christ-like. When the accident happened – if they were Christians- they could have prayed. There were lots of times where they could have prayed. Some bats attacked others because of their beliefs. Instead of fighting they should have respected each other’s beliefs.

My Thoughts

I loved this book. It was suspenseful, thrilling, and it also has nice, calm parts. It had great description and you could see everything well. I liked the way the author switched between characters every chapter so you could see the story from all the main characters perspectives. I would recommend this book to someone who likes suspense, adventure, and some mystery.