A carnival of children

People in the daytime streets

Ring-a-levio warriors

Stickball heroes

Hide-and-seek knights and ladies

Waiting to sing their own sweet songs

Living out their own slam-dunk dreams

Listening

For the coming of the blues

I chose a stanza from “ Harlem: A Poem” by Walter Dean Myers to write my final response of the semester on.  Walter Dean Myers’ purpose of this poem was to describe life in Harlem.   I feel like the stanza ( seen above ) describes a street in Brooklyn, even though this poem is about Harlem, and thats why I chose it.  In this stanza Walter Dean Myers talks about the different stories of different people on a street.  He also talks about kids dream chasing.
I first made a connection with a Brooklyn street and this stanza when it talked about “ Stickball heroes”.  My dad always tells about how when he was a kid, him and his friends used to play stickball.  All the boys on the block would come out, and play from sun up to sun down.  I also made a connection with the first two lines of the stanza, and a Brooklyn street.  The first two lines talk about streets filled with children and adults during the day.  In my neighborhood, streets and avenues are busy with people during the day.  All of the culture you find in these two stanzas, you can find on a Brooklyn street.
This stanza also talks about dream chasers.  These dream chasers happen to be kids looking for a way to get famous.  In Brooklyn lots of kids have big dreams they hope to acomplish.  The first line I saw this theme in was when he said, “ Living out their slam dunk dreams”.  In this line he’s talking about all the little boys who want to make it to the NBA and get rich.  He’s also talking about the boys, turned teen, turned me who are fulfilling this dream.  
I chose this poem because it was about something I could relate to, city life.  From dreamers to legends, these are some of the people you experience if you when you come to Brooklyn.  Everything about this poem tells me Brooklyn culture.  

Blog On “ Coraline”

By: Neil Gaiman

     I recently finished the book “ Coraline” by, Neil Gaiman, for my book club.  Our book club chose to read horror books, and I picked Coraline as my book.  Surprisingly the theme in “ Coraline” seemed to be the importance of family, not violence or any other usual horror story theme.  Through most of the book the main character, Coraline, was fighting to get her parents back.  Through this tough journey she learned not to take people for granted, especially her parents.  When she finally wins her parents back, she loves them and respects them like never before.  

     Before Coraline lost her parents, she was disrespectful to them and very ungrateful of them.  For example her dad would make “ special recipes” and she would be disgusted, and make herself frozen pizza.  This shows she’s ungrateful because her dad takes the time out of his day to make Coraline and her mom food, and Coraline doesn’t even try it.  Also when Coraline’s mom offers Coraline to come to the supermarket with her, Coraline says no because she’s “ had enough” of her mom.  That’s not only disrespectful, but also shows how ungrateful she is to have  two parents that love and care for her.  Before she loses her parents, Caroline doesn’t even realize how lucky she is to have two parents!

     This changes when she lost her parents, and when she got them back.  When she realized that her parents were missing, Coraline got scared.  All her life her parents protected her, and never left her alone for long periods of time, now she was all alone.  She was also very sad.  She missed the warmth of her parents, and her dad’s recipes.  You could tell she felt awful in how she  treated her parents because she was always regretting being rude to them.  So when Coraline won her parents back she made a change and started treating her parents better.  She even decided to try one of her dad’s recipes, and she liked it!

     Coraline always loved her parents, but at first decided not to believe she did.  Once they went missing she showed she needed them and loved them.  If they had gone permanently missing Coraline would have been distraught.  In the end Coraline learned the importance of family.        

 Reading Response To “Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People and War”

By Yukio Tsuchiya

“ Faithful Elephants: A True Story of Animals, People and War’’ by, Yukio Tsuchiya is a story filled with death, sorrow, and many emotions.  In the story the three most important deaths, are the elephants’.  The elephants’ deaths represent the consequences of war.  John, the first elephant to get killed, dies almost on his own, yet his death still stands out to me.  Tonky and Wanly die together.  These two deaths stir many emotions not only from the zoo keepers that are forced to kill them, but from all of the zoo keepers that work in the zoo.

John is the first of the three elephants to die.  In my opinion John is the strongest of the three elephants because the zoo keepers try to kill him two other times without success, before they’re forced to starve him.  This is what the story says when it talks about the first time they try to kill John, “ John loved potatoes, so the elephant keepers mixed poisoned potatoes with the good ones when it was time to feed him.  John,  however, was a very clever elephant.  He ate the good potatoes...”.  This shows me that not only is John clever, but he’s a warrior too, being able to realize he’s trying to be killed and not give in.  They end up having to starve John.  John being the warrior that he is, lasted seventeen days before starving to death.

That leaves Tonky and Wanly to be killed.  Tonky and Wanly die as one.  When the zoo keepers describe them, they describe Tonky and Wanly together as if they’re the same elephant.   I think their attachment makes the zoo keepers decide they want to starve both of them at the same time.  Unlike John though, their deaths fill the zoo keepers with sorrow and anger.  It says that when their elephant trainer first found out that Tonky and Wanly died, “ He buried his head in his arms and cried...”.  The zoo and the elephant keeper loved these two elephants, and showed so much emotion when they both died.  At first they were sad, and then they became frustrated with the war because it forced them to kill the elephants.

The elephants’ deaths during the war hurt and affected the zoo and the zoo keepers deeply.  The importance of the elephants’ death shows because after the war the zoo gave the three elephants - John, Tonky, and Wanly - a monument in the zoo.  The zoo keepers didn’t get as emotional for John as they did for Tonky and Wanly.  John’s death was just as important as the two other elephants because the monument was dedicated to all of them.  The three elephants will always have a place in the zoo.  

Character Response To

Ready Player One  by, Ernest Cline

“ Ready Player One” by, Ernest Cline, is a sci-fi book set in 2044 where people spend more time in an online virtual utopia, OASIS, than on  Earth.  OASIS was originally created as a video game, and many people treat it like a video game, making their avatars wizards with magical powers and things like that.  When the creator of OASIS dies, a hunt is setup where you have to clear three hidden gates.  The first person to do all of that takes over the whole game!  The main character, Wade, goes through many changes when he becomes one of the few people to clear the first two gates, and eventually the only person to clear the third and final gate.

Before Wade cleared the first gate, or any of the gates, he was a different person mentally, socially, and physically.  Mentally Wade had low self esteem.  For example on page 30 Wade says, “ I was a painfully shy, awkward kid...”.  Socially Wade had no friends in the real world and only one in OASIS.  He also didn’t like being around people.  To prove this on page 25 he says, “ This van was my hideout, out of sight and very isolated...”.  I think Wade’s weight had something to do with Wade being socially awkward, and having a low self esteem.  On page 30 Wade says, “ I was overweight, and had been for as long as I could remember...”.

However, after Wade cleared the first gate and eventually the last two gates, Wade changed for the best.  Wade’s self esteem was high as ever.  He even became a little bit overconfident after clearing the first gate, taking a break from the hunt to enjoy his fame after becoming the first person to clear gate #1.  Socially Wade had become a celebrity and a hero.  On page 214 he even said, “ The usual suspects crazed fans, and wannabe disciples..”.   This was definitely a big jump from when he had no friends before the hunt started, now he has fans and was a role model.  Thanks to Wade’s huge popularity growth he decided he wanted to look presentable to himself and the rest of the world.  By that he meant wanting to get into shape.  On page 197 he says, “ The pounds began to melt off , and after a few months, I was in near-perfect health!”.  This was a huge change for Wade and it showed me something about Wade.  It showed me that if Wade was motivated he could do anything he wanted to.  It took months, but he stayed committed to the workout plan and diet and exceeded all of his goals.  Also, he diminished all of his weight problems.

All in all, I think winning the contest, and just competing in it helped Wade out a lot.  He changed for the better and saw that he could do things.  Surprisingly the hunt also helped Wade realize that OASIS wasn’t everything.  Things like friendship and change, helped a boy whose escape was OASIS, escape the idea that OASIS was life       

“Before we were Free” By, Julia Alvarez

In “ Before we were Free” by Julia Alvarez, the lesson is to fight for what you believe in.   This book is set in the Dominican Republic in the 1960s during the Trujillo dictatorship.  The main character, Anita de la Torre, is a twelve year old girl who’s father is in a plot to take down Trujillo.  In the beginning of the story Anita’s cousins move away to America, while Anita’s family stays and plot how to fight the cruel dictatorship.  During all of the chaotic things that happen while trying to take down the dictatorship, Anita’s dad is killed and her sister moves to the United States for safety reasons.  By the end of the book what’s left of Anita’s family, Anita, her brother and her mom, are forced to leave the country.

  Anita’s dad is what you would call a freedom fighter because he organizes riots against the dictatorship of Trujillo, and participates in the assassination of Trujillo.  When Anita first learned this about her dad, she wanted to leave the country just like her cousins so they wouldn’t get killed by the government.  But the more she learns about the horrible way Trujillo treats the people of her country the more she wants to help her father take him down.  And in some ways she does, like the time when the SIM (the secret police that work for Trujillo) came to her house while her dad was having a meeting about organizing riots with other rebels.  She warned her dad who broke up the meeting and the other rebels left undetected.  Anita’s dad’s plan to kill Trujillo works, but the head of the military, the most important piece in the plan, double crosses the rebels.   He tells Trujillo’s son who was responsible for killing his dad.

     As you could expect, Trujillo’s son isn’t very pleased with his fathers death, so he places a price on all rebels and their families heads.  This is why Anita, her brother, and her mom have to flee from the Dominican Republic to the United States.  It takes a year but the United States government convinces Trujillo’s son to stop the bloodbath and give up his power.  In the end Anita’s dad got what he fought for, freedom for his country.  The dictatorship didn’t end right away, but it did all because the rebels fought for what they believed in.