Cobra Strike

By: Aaron Fincher

Roy Linden, a senior star athlete for the Johnstown Cobras, is happy because his team just got a new quarterback, Waymen Whitley, Roy’s best friend. The Cobras have a chance at having a winning season and maybe even a collage scholarship for Roy. Roy would love to focus football because he his so good at it but he comes upon a terrible secret that could change his life and his relationship with his new best friend.

Roy Linden is a senior high school football player and has a severe stuttering problem and can’t find a cure for it completely. But one thing that he does do to overcome his embarrassing problem is that he recites and memorizes Shakespeare’s poetry. When he does these sayings he doesn’t stutter at all and feels normal. Roy loves football so much because he doesn’t have to worry about stuttering and is a really good wide receiver and kick returner. In one of Roy’s home games he was ready to catch an opening kick off and is so good that he ran 101 yards back for the touchdown, they lost the game 49-7. But the rest of his team isn’t so good, and they haven’t won a game in a long time because their quarterback is really bad. Their Head Coach, Mr. Donaldson is old and is about to retire but Mr. coach Pitt is the exact opposite of Coach Donaldson, he is young and is a retired marine and is very harsh on the high school players, so they will do good.

But off the field he finds a big problem at his grandma’s house, he lives with granny because his parents died in a car crash when he was only eight. At his grandma’s house he finds that all her birds are dead in her back yard! This is because the water the birds were drinking is toxic. The Johnstown Cooperation is dumping harmful wastes in to the river that leads to his grandma’s way back in the deep forest. Roy immediately tells the reporter about it but he does nothing, he tells the health department but they also do nothing about it. Because Roy’s Grandma is the only one that lives back in the woods and the Johnstown Cooperation keeps on doing what they do because no one has found out before. The cooperation offers Roy’s grandma 3 million dollar to buy the land grandma wants to accept the money, but Roy says “Do you want do what is easy but wrong or what is right but hard?”

Roy and Waymen are trying to figure out a way to make the Johnstown Cooperation stop dumping waste products into the river and killing all of the animals in the forest. They must go over many obstacles and conquer them to do what is right.

I choose this picture because it represtes in the book how much the football team sucked before the new quarterback came.

Review

The book I read Cobra Strike by Sigmund Brouwer is a very good book. I like this book because it is about football and is also a mysterious, suspenseful kind of book. Roy Linden is the senior high school player but has a terrible stuttering problem and gets mad fun of a lot for it at Johnstown High School. His football team isn’t that great but Roy is defiantly good. He is wide receiver and a kick returner; also he is the fastest runner in the county. If his team won a couple of games he could probably get the college scholarship of his dreams at Notre Dame.

I recommend this book to people how really like to read about football. Also people who like to read mystery books and have a lot of action it. The book is about how all of Roy’s grandma’s birds are dying in her backyard, and the Johnstown Cooperation has a big part in it. The Cooperation is dumping toxic chemicals into the river and all of the animals are dying because of the chemicals in the water in the deep forest where she lives. The cooperation wants to buy the land from grandma for 3 million dollars, she wants so accept the money but Roy won’t let her.

I like this book because it’s a lot about football and teaches you some life skills. It teaches that there are no shortcuts in life. Whatever situation in your life that might seem easy probably will be wrong and whatever situation that would be hard probably is going to be right. I also like it because Roy is a strong person because he could easily give up on life because he gets mad fun off a lot but, he doesn’t, he keeps on doing what he thinks is right. Like save his grandma’s home and stop the cooperation from dumping harmful chemicals into the water, because Roy and Waymen are the only ones that know what they are doing.

"The burn Journals" by Brent Runyon

by: Brooke Austwick

summary:
I read the book “The burn journals”. The main character was named Brent Runyon. He was fourteen years old. One day at school, he lit a pack of matches on fire in the locker room. His hand was a giant ball of fire, so he threw it in the gym locker, to see everybody’s reactions. A gym shirt started on fire, and the gym teacher found it. Brent didn’t want to confess to it, because his parents thought very highly of him. If the teachers called them, his life would be over. So instead of causing his parent’s the hurt, he wanted to kill himself. Brent went home from school that day, drenched his bathrobe on fire, put it on, and lit a match. When he woke up, he was laying in a hospital bed with third-degree burns over 85 percent of his body. During the whole next year, he spent every day recovering in rehab facilities, and hospitals. Everyday he’d get up, and lay there all day. It wasn’t for months, until he could actually be removed from the bed. This story explains the journey of a eighth grade boy, and his adventure between depression, humiliation, and the first day of high school. He’d have to walk in with the guilt of the pain he’d caused not only himself, but everybody around him. Of course everybody had known what happened, he was just another overly depressed and emotional boy, who had nothing better on his hands to do, then to light himself on fire, and live with the pain. “The burn journals”, was a true story, written by an author named Brent Runyon, also known as the main character in the story.

review:
I enjoyed “the burn journal” very much. It’s a story based on depression that some kids our age go through every day. You learn about how Brent Runyon went through high school, and all the consequences he suffered from his stupid mistake. It was a story filled with a lot of emotions, and feelings. You read through therapy sessions, and learn about what each family members opinion and thoughts were on the situation. Not only is it a sad story, and a depressing story, but some part's are very exciting. There's part's of the story, where you think his life will never be what it was before, and your right. But he never gave up. Once he started getting better, he went out to the store, or to the movies, with his nurses, and parents. Eventually he recovers enough to go to a special school before he enters the regular high school. All the kid's that go that have some sort of problem, or drug addiction. He doesn't make friends their, but when he goes back to school, he still had all his friends who were there for him from the start. All though there's plenty of thing's he'll never be able to do, and plenty of things he might never be able to try, he lives with the consequences of suicide attempt. Overall this story is my favorite I've read so far. i recommend it.
picture: I chose a picture of matches, because that's what he uses to light himself on fire.

Soldier Boys

Summary

World War II has struck and the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Two boys from opposing countries joined for the same purpose. They didn’t join for revenge or for money; they joined to prove that they were something. Spencer Morgan had just turned 16 and dropped out of high school. He lied about his age to join the American army. He then began training to be a paratrooper because he heard that there were men who became great heroes with little education. Dieter Hedrick was 17 and the Scharfuhrer, leader of his troop. When Dieter was 10, he was in the Hitler Youth and all of the other boys were 14 years old. Although Dieter was too young, he was still a member of the Jungvolt- the “Young People.” The boys were scared, but they were not afraid of getting killed by a bullet or an explosion from a grenade. They were afraid that the war would end too early so they would not get to prove themselves. The point of this novel is that the test of manhood is to devote your self to a cause, not just kill the opposing army for no reason.

Review

This book is great depending on how you look at it. It is about devoting yourself to helping out a cause. It’s not just about killing the enemy whether it would be the Germans or the Americans because you want to. I like the fact that each chapter alternates between the boys’ stories so you can see the war from their vantage points. It is tragic that over 60 million people died during World War II. I didn’t like the fact that the book wasn’t about getting to Hitler. The book was all about supporting a cause, but it isn’t about lying about your age to get into the military against your father’s orders. I also didn’t like that when there is something important coming up in the chapter, it would cut off and go to the next chapter. I would highly recommend this book to people who like war novels and World War II, but not for the violence or the fact that Hitler is dead now. I would not recommend it if you like action packed books or books that are all about killing for no reason, or if you don’t like World War II.

Burned

Summary:



In the book Burned, Ellen Hopkins book shows the life of Pattyn Scarlet Von Stratten. She is tired of the Mormon lifestyle and rebels against her family and the rules of her home and church. Her Dad spends most of his time drinking and being abusive towards his wife and children, while leaving her mother to take care of the household, like a servant. After she experiences a fight and breaks the girl’s nose along with a glass window, her family has had enough of her rebelling so they send her to live with her Aunt, out in the middle of nowhere, for the summer. While staying with her Aunt, she learns a ton of new things such as how to drive and also how to ride a horse. Also while there she meets the boy of her dreams named Ethan. And they fall in love. But when the summer ends all hell is raised loose. Pattyn is forced to go back to her old home. Leaving her with nothing but the locket Ethan leaves for her that represents there love. During her first week back her father shows aggression towards her and while this was all happening she had noticed a change in her menstruation pattern, which than she realized that she was pregnant. She calls up her man and tells him the news and they make plans to runaway together. While attempting to do so, they get into a car accident, when she wakes up; Pattyn finds out that both her lover and her developing baby both died tragically in the crash. In the end she says that "God could not be love because love was a corpse, and because she lost the love of her life, and the only thing remnant of him."(quote from book). She makes arrangements to kill the ones who made her life miserable, and also to kill herself.







Review:
In the book Burned I read by Ellen Hopkins. I thought it was a very good book and it caught my attention very quickly. The book was very interesting and I did not want to put it down. I also like the book because I could relate to the main character Pattyn. I think this book would be good for readers between the ages of 13 to 16, because in the book the character faces problems that teenagers between those ages can relate to. I also like this book because you can feel for the character and understand what she is feeling and going through. My favorite character was Ethan because he sounded like he would be a babe and a nice guy that I could fall for. I also liked him because he was kind hearted and truly loved Pattyn. I also liked that even though the book was fiction, it felt really real because in real life everything doesn’t always turn out like a fairy tail like the end of this book. The book itself was an excellent read and because of the book Burned I would like to read more of Ellen Hopkins books. The text of this book was very interesting. I liked how each page was written in a different style of poetry. This story has everything a book needs Happiness, Love, and Tragedy. I would love to see every reader read this wonderful pick.

Picture

I chose this picture because Ethan gave Pattyn a her a gold locket which represent their love.

Summary of Elephants on Acid and Other Weird Experiments

Summary of Elephants on Acid and Other Weird Experiments
By Alex Boese Summary by Tarek Weber
Elephants on Acid and Other Weird Experiments is by Alex Boese. It is a collection of strange experiments all organized by subject. There is a chapter on sense experiments, Frankenstein-like experiments, memory experiments, sleep experiments, animal experiments, a chapter titled: Mating Behavior, baby experiments, bathroom experiments, and there is a chapter of experiments that deals with death. There is also a chapter dealing with what cause a person to be good or, evil. This does not do any first hand recording of experiments. It only records what was already recorded, and it just takes information from many different sources and puts it in the same book. The book is about 266 pages. It is a book where you do not have to read the whole thing and you can also just skip over boring parts.
It has very interesting experiments in it. There is a section that describes a few fart experiments and I enjoyed it. The author mixes science facts with his opinions. The section describes an experiment where the average amount of flatulence was measured. The other experiment measured types, amount and intensity of farts. There is another experiment testing the popular myth that elephants never forget. It turns out that they can forget, but not for a very long time. The experiment dealt with patterns on food boxes. The same experiment was performed a year later and the elephant did well. In another experiment on psychology a 14 year old kid was tricked into remembering something that did not even happen. A researcher gathered details on his life and adjusted them to fit into a story about being lost in a mall, and with the familiar details the kid told the researcher a story about how he got lost in the mall. None of it ever happened though. The experiments in this book are real things, not just things done in some guy’s garage.

Vegan Virgin Valentine by Carolyn Macker

Summary

Mara Valentine is the perfect straight A student senior, and in a close race with Travis Heart, her x-boyfriend, to become valedictorian. She is on the road to success and is accepted to Yale early. Her much older sister Aimee is a huge screw up that moves somewhere new every time she has a crazy idea for a new job or dream as she calls it but eventually gives up a and tries something new. Mara is desperate not to disappoint her parents as her sister did. Aimee’s 16 year old Daughter who only goes by V, is a trouble maker and gains a new bad habit everywhere she moves. Mara and V don’t get along and when Mara finds out V is moving in because Aimee is moving to Costa Rica to pursue her dream in cooking (but is actually pursuing a surfer dude). Mara is upset and starts acting out on her parents. Mara hates that V can read through her to her insecurities, and that V uses it to annoy her. One of the first things V does when she enters the new school was hooks up with Travis in the girls locker room. When Mara finds out she is pissed and on the verge of tears. Travis was the only reason she became a Vegan because she was obsessed with the thought of them being together she had to find something else to obsess over. She was so angry at V that she couldn’t stay in the house when she was around so to avoid her she would take long walks and stay longer at her job at the coffee shop. She soon came to realize that she had feelings for her twenty-two year old boss James but cannot get with him because her friend Claudia who also works with her had feeling for him and have since they started working together. On one of her walks to stay out of the house she finds herself in front of his apartment building at 11 at night. When she is inside she finds out he also likes her also when he kisses her. She ends up freaking out because she feels like a bad friend to her co worker and runs out. Soon after she finds out that the right thing may not make her happy so she starts to question whether what she thinks is right is really right. So she goes back to James and tells him she’s sorry and that she really likes him and so they end up dating. After that she ends up winning Valedictorian. She forgives V and they become close because V taught her that its not always about what’s right or doing what your told but following you heart.

Review

Vegan, Virgin, Valentine, is a wonderful story for girls and boys of all ages. It relates to teens because Mara and V experience problems that everyday teenagers face. Carolyn Mackler is and excellent writer and really shows it in this book. Carolyn Mackler has also written many other books. I chose this book because have read another book by this author and loved it. Another reason I chose this book was because of the title, I caught my attention right away. V also known as Vivienne was my absolute favorite character in this book. In the begging you knew her as this trashy, pot smoking, mean girl who loved to party, but as the story soon reviles that there is much more to her then that. She helps Mara out of her goody goody princess role and into more free and happier version. Through out the story you find out little by little why she does the things she does and why she stops. Mara also rubs off on V and gets her out of some of her bad habits. So in the end they both help each other into becoming better happier people. The book itself was very real even though it was a fiction. I know that many girls can relate to this kind of story. I think the novel was very interesting and could be funny in certain moments. One thing I noticed is that one of the messages in through out the story is live life the way you want to,and don’t hold on to things forever , get over it. The hole story was based on a young 17 year old girl, who was obsessed with being perfect and an overachiever who learns to get over it and get a life.

Picture

I chose this picture because the questin marks represent the decisions Mara and V face. They don't always know whats right and whats wrong.

Story of a Girl By: Sara Zarr

Story of a Girl
By: Sara Zarr
Summary:
Her name is Deanna Lambert, she is thirteen. Deanna’s story starts with a boy named Tommy Weber. He was seventeen, cute, and her brother’s friend. What more does a teenage girl want? Daren is her older brother and is extremely protective of her. He will never forgive himself for letting this happen to her. Tommy came over one day and it starts now. He is nothing but nice and sweet to Deanna. Tommy falls for her and she was so caught up with being cool she fell for him too. They start hanging out more and more. Tommy is older and more experienced and drinks and smokes pot. She thought she could handle herself but she was wrong. One night they went for a long drive and were out late. They were in Tommy’s Buick and they were high and drunk things started to get serious. They ended up in the back of the car having sex. Her dad found where his car was since she was gone long. He caught her and that’s when her life went down. It was Tommy’s last year of high school so of course he went and told everyone about them. He said she forced him to have sex and everyone pity’s Tommy now. Deanna is now looked at as a slut. She has but two friends. Sophomore year she decided to get a job. Her brother still looks after her. She gets a job at the local pizza place and her partner is no one other then Tommy. Things start to heat up again and her brother is too caught up with his girlfriend and their baby to notice. To make it worse when everything is going wrong again she kisses her best friends boyfriend while she was out of town and tried to steal him from her. Read this book if you want to know Deanna story.

Review:

Honestly I think this was a very good book and relates to some teenage girls. I’m not one to read but this book kept me reading and I think mostly fourteen to sixteen year old girls would enjoy. I chose this book in the first place because the name was very catchy, and the book cover was very colorful. This was the authors first book ever published, Sara Zarr, the author; I think did a wonderful job writing this book. The book is fiction and was not based off a true story; it was all imagination, though this sort of stuff does happen. Now, the reason I chose this picture to go with the book was because she looked very lonely and Deanna is very lonely. The girl in the picture looks helpless which Deanna is in a sort of way. She is neglected by her classmates and her father that she loves very much. This is because everyone thinks she’s a slut, even her own father. Her father can no longer look at his little girl after he caught her that night. Also, if you look at the picture it makes you wonder what happened to her. It goes perfect with the book, since when you read a story of a girl, the first thing that you think is what happened to her? I think Deanna was girl who just needed some guidance. She made a mistake and people should forgive her and listen to her side of the story for once. I do think what she did was wrong, but no one is perfect. I think the story had a good point to it by showing girls how you could ruin your life so fast but doing stupid things. People should think before they act and then act as what they think is right.