Lunchtime Battle :)

Lunchtime at school is a battle. No one knows where to go or what to see, and everyone is just too engrossed in their own thing to help others out. Lunchtime in a British school is segregation at its most obvious. There are the popular kids, te jocks and middle populars, the canteen geeks, the Chavs, the emos, the goths,the library nerds and the computer roomers. For me as a nomad, with no particular group, it is hilarious to watch. The interactions between groups are so forced that you just wonder if it is like this everywhere. For example, if a popular person walked into the canteen they would get looks from all round, as would a geek into the populars, although they'd also get stuff thrown at them.

Lunchtime at British high schools.

Just typical.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein Review

I loved this book. That's it. This book was written in such a way that you didn't feel it was a story, you really felt you were living it. Code Name Verity tells the story of a young woman, who was captured as a spy in France in the war years, and given two weeks to write a confession about all she know of the British war effort. Through this confession she tells us the story of The pilot who brought her to France, and all she knows about aircraft. One amazing writing technique the writer has used is that in this confession, the narrator doesn't refer to herself directly, and we only half way through do we realise who she is in the fable. It is a simply fantastic book, that appealed to me particularly as a person who loves historic books, and one about spy work is so different. It's plot line sweeps and turns like I've never seen before, so you have to pay attention as to what is going on. I personally enjoy the character relationships, with tales of love and intrigue somehow being interwoven into this as well. Another avoided cliche is that it ( spoiler alert ) doesn't have a happy ending, which is the obvious thing to go for in this kind of book, when so much of it is about sadness. This book tells of an unseen side of world war 2. When young English roses brought giant hauptfurhers to their knees.

It is simply exquisite, a masterpiece.

Book Review - Wonder by R.J Palacio

This book tells the story if August Pullman, a boy born with a terrible facial disfigurement that leaves him open to all kinds of bullying and abuse. We learn of his first year at school, in 5th grade, after being home schooled. The story explains how he deals with people's reaction to his face, and how it affects others around him. I think it is a wonderful book, because it opened my eyes to a kind of prejudice that I wasn't even aware I was showing. I had never thought from point of view of someone who had this disfigurement, and I was really ashamed of the way I sometimes behave in front of people who are different. The book is written through many different people's eyes, and we can see that August's face doesn't just affect him. A lovely metaphor in the book describes how August is the sun, and all his family and few friends merely planets orbiting him. It is interesting to see his sisters view. She loves him, but envies his parental attention as well. I feel I can relate to this.

I would recommend this book as a truly humbling read. It made me think of what I perceive as being unkind, and what other people do.

Shadowing Carnegie :)

I don't know if any of you have heard of the shadowing Carnegie scheme, where students can read the shortlist of the CILIP Carnegie books, write reviews and then have a discussion day in their local area. If you're interested in reading its a really good thing to do, though it does take a while to read all 8 books. I'll be posting my reviews on here as well, so you can all see what the books are like. So teenagers, if you like reading..... Shadow Carnegie!!!

Ich spreche deutsch auch

Ich mochte mein blog zu internationale sein also werde ich auch im deutsch schreiben. Ich bin nicht sehr gut am deutsch, und wenn du mochtest mir zu korrigieren, bitte mache! Ich lerne deutsch im der schule, und ich habe austauch zum Munchen gemacht um meinem deutsch zu verbessern.

sprechen zu mir im deutsch wenn du mochtest :D

My Story - The Manor and the Man

“But why did we have to move mum?”exclaimed Rosie in an exasperated voice.                                                                                                                                    “I told you dear” sighed her mother “Your father has a new job in the country”.                                        “That’s right” mumbled her father. This is stupid thought 14 year old Rosie Jones, why her family have to move to a massive big house in the country, away from all her friends and family she just didn’t know. Her Dad’s job wasn’t that important.                                                                                                                          “Are we there yet?” she pestered. “2 minutes Rose” laughed her father, “and I thought you were too old for that”.

That night as Rosie lay in her horrible big new bed in her horrible big new room she was reading. She was reading an old news article she’d found in a box in her room. It was about a young girl about her age 20 years ago called Millie Aston. She had been abducted and supposedly murdered but the police had never found a trace of her.  Oh and she had lived in Rosie’s house. Rosie felt a shiver down her spine as she read this. Supposing the killer was still here? What would happen if he came after her? Then she went straight to sleep and forgot about it.

A few weeks later and Rosie was finally settling down. Her parents had been worried about her but she had made friends at her school and was kind to everyone in the village.

Then she was gone.

Her parents called her on a Thursday to ask what time she would be home from her night out but her friends said she’d never gone to the cinema. It was like a repeat of Millie Aston. They called the police and they started combing the house and grounds to find her. Her distraught parents did not think the efforts of the police was enough, so they hired the private detective Grace Ingles to see if she could help them.

“Hello Mrs Jones, I am Grace Ingles. I believe you called? I hope you do not mind, but I brought my niece and helper, Lilly. She has left school and her mother died so she is under my care. May we come in?” The fragile Mrs Jones was taken aback by this sudden introduction.

“Well yes, hello, do come in” she mumbled in reply.

 “Thank you very much, and good to meet you” said the teenage girl who breezed in after Grace, “I’m Lilly, by the way.”Mrs Jones shook her head in disbelief and followed obediently.

“So when was the last time you saw your daughter?” asked Grace.

“The morning of the day she left for school” said Amy Jones calmly.

“OK, we are going to have a look around, if that’s OK” said the detective as she rose to leave.

“Right, first I want to look at her room” whispered Grace, as Lilly bounded up beside her. As they stepped into Rosie’s room, Grace had a look of deep sadness on her face. The room was exactly as the young girl had left it on that fateful Thursday morning. As Lily scanned the room there was a cry from Grace. “I thought so” she exclaimed, picking up a piece of paper off the floor. “I’d heard about this case before.”  “What have you found?” asked Lilly.  “Listen to this Lilly, Millie Aston was a girl who lived in this house 20 years ago. She was abducted too, from this same village, but she was never found.”

“And you think there’s a connection between that girl’s disappearance and Rosie’s?” gasped Lilly in admiration.

“Well it’s only a hunch” replied Grace, “but I do want to talk to everyone in the village who was around 20 years ago”.

“It annoys me when people don’t answer their doors” shuddered Lilly as she and Grace stood outside one of the few houses in the little village in the freezing cold.

“Hello Miss, sorry to disturb you, we are investigating the disappearance of Rosie Jones from the Manor house. Can we ask you some questions?” asked Grace as the door finally inched open.

In the third house they visited they got what they were looking for.

“Why, yes, I’ve been here over 20 years with my old girl”, said the old Reverend Davis. AS Grace looked round the room she found herself asking “so did you know Rosy, Revered Davis? “.

“Why, yes, she used to come and sit with Edith and me, and chat in the evenings. So nice to hear how the young minds think, you know”.

“OK, thank you. Do you mind if I have a look around” asked Grace for a second time as Lilly stood beside her.

“Please do” replied the old man. As Grace walked round the room she suddenly thought

“So where is your wife at the moment Reverend, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Oh um she’s at oh what’s it called oh, the Town Council meeting that’s it” was the hesitant reply.

“Ok thank you for your time Reverend” said Grace hastily as she ushered Lilly out, “we’ll go now”.

“Well” said Lily as they trudged their way up to the big house. “What did you think of our little excursion”?

“Oh it was good” answered Grace. “I think I learnt a lot”.

“Lilly” asked Grace as they sat round a table in the parlour of the hotel they were staying at.

“Uh huh”replied Lilly sleepily for it had been a tiring day.

“Did you notice anything strange about that house?”asked Grace eagerly.

“Well to be honest no” mumbled Lily. “Did you?”

“Yes, a lot” was the unhappy sounding reply.”There was the fact that he never made a comment about this 20 yrs ago even when we asked him if he’d been there, and also the fact that he didn’t know where his wife was”.

“Do you think he did it?”asked Lilly who was now thoroughly interested.

“I don’t know Lil, I just don’t know”.

The next day Grace was uneasy and restless. Lilly was worried because all she was doing was pacing up and down the room thinking and whenever Lilly asked if she could help, Grace bit her head off. Then suddenly she exclaimed “Aha I’ve got it”

“Please Lilly it’s the only way to catch this awful person, you’ll be safe all the time!” pleaded Grace as she tried to get Lilly to co-operate with her plan.              

“N o spells no” was Lilly’s very stubborn answer “I will not be used as bait to try and lure in an abductor to try and kill me!” she added for extra morale. This was after Grace had proposed to Lilly that they use her to pose as a 14 yr old girl and pretend she was the Jones’ adopted daughter in replacement of Rosie, therefore luring in the abductor and catching them.

After a lot of persuasion and promises Lilly finally gave in.

“Ok ok I’ll do it” sighed Lilly. “But only if we can go home afterwards”.

After that they enrolled Lilly in school as the “new girl” of 14 in the village. Then they only had to wait a few days. Grace had put a tracking device in Lily’s shoes so they always knew where she was and what she was doing. Then a couple of days after she’d done that Grace noticed something strange going on with the tracker. Lily wasn’t going the agreed walk home through the field. She had stopped and was now moving very fast left.

“Right lets go find our abductor” smiled Grace as she started off following the tracker to where Lilly was. As she was walking Grace suddenly realised something. She had been so stupid and put Lilly in so much danger by making her be bait! Then Grace started to run. The tracker led her to a clearing where it said Lilly was. Grace looked around her cautiously and then suddenly heard a muffled attempt to make a sound coming from her left.

“Thank you” was all the Jones’ could say when Grace brought back an undernourished but stable Rosie, A very angry Lilly and an even angrier Mrs Edith Davis.

Yes although Lilly had thought it was Mr Reverend Davis who had came up behind her and put her hand over her mouth and stopped her screaming it was actually his wife who was following young girls around. Edith Davis had been hiding Rosie Jones and Millie Aston in her cellar with gags around their mouths and very little food and water. Unfortunately Millie Aston hadn’t survived the 20 yrs she had been kept down there. She claimed she did it because of the young daughter she lost when she was walking home from school. She said she had wanted revenge on the world.

“So all in a good day’s work I think” chirped Grace as she and Lily made a sound as if to say “Indeed” as they packed the car to go home and to solve another mystery.

My Story - The Tennis Girl

The Tennis Girl

An extract from a story I have yet to write.

It was a perfect day for it, the sun was shining the wind was calm and the world was waiting as the 14 yr old child star Rosie Boswell stepped out onto the court. Her mother and father waited anxiously in the stands nearly breaking each other’s hand with excitement. As for Rosie she was thinking win. That was all she had to do.

“C’mon Rosie” she said to herself “it’s not hard”. It was the final of junior Wimbledon 2009 and this match was all that stood before her and the Championship cup for 3 yrs running.

“It wasn’t my fault” she screamed as her mother sighed at her for the 100^th time today, “the other girl had an amazing serve”.                                                          “Yes I know dear it’s just you could have done so well”

As Rosie stomped up the stairs to her room her mind was racing with unhappy thoughts for tennis, her mum, and the world. She had lost the match this afternoon and her mum had been giving her a hard time about it ever since. She flopped down on her bed and sobbed, she sobbed till her heart could sob no more and cried herself to sleep.

The next morning was back to training, 2 hrs in the Gym, 5 hrs on the court and then another 2 hrs in the gym. Only then could she finally rest. She went through this every day with the bare minimum amount of schooling, no holidays and no friends.  She just didn’t have the time. She knew her Mum and Dad were doing what was best for her but she did sometimes think they were depriving her of her childhood.                                 

                                                                                                            

My Story - Wartime Evacuee

My name is Bessie John, and I am being made to go and live in the country because otherwise I might get bombed because of the war. My Ma says that she won’t get bombed because she’s older, but I don’t think she is right. But anyway James (that’s my little brother) and I are leaving tomorrow, and Sally (my big sister) says that I should write a Diary to tell her what happened when I get back. So that’s what I’ll do. Ma says she’ll write every day, and that it won’t feel any different to here. But she’s wrong. It will.

It is the morning now, and Ma is getting James and me ready, she says we have to look smart so that we will look nice for our new family. She gave us our gas masks in their special box, and even brushed my hair. Then Ma and Dad drove us to the train station (Sal had said Goodbye at home). James was really excited now, because he had never been on a train, and he kept making “Choo-Choo” noises. He is 6. When we got there, Ma started looking anxious and asked me to look for our class teacher, Mrs Baylice (we call her Mrs Bedlice). When we spotted her, she was on the platform, surrounded by all our class, and handing out strange little tags that looked like the kind of thing you put on Christmas presents to say who they’re for.  Ma held our hands and took us up to her, and Mrs Baylice smiled (which she very rarely does) and gave James and I our tags. My one said “Elizabeth John, age 12, St Peters Primary School”. I scowled; no-one calls me Elizabeth.

Standing on the platform

Then Ma took me aside, and told me to look after James, because it will be frightening for him without Ma there. I said I would but who would look after me? Then she smiled with tears and said “Oh Bessie!” and gave me a big hug. Dad was giving James a last piggy back, before he went so I asked Ma “How long will we be gone? and where exactly are we going?” She said that James and I would be going to a nice family in the country, maybe who even already had children I could play with, but that she didn’t know when I could come home, but it would be when the war ended.  Then I asked why my friend Maisie wasn’t coming because I couldn’t see her on the platform, and she said that Maisie had gone to stay with relatives, and that her mother had gone too.

I thought that was a bit strange and was just about to ask why Ma couldn’t come with James and I then, when a big Steam-train drew up, billowing a thick fog. James was really excited to see the train, but got really upset and started crying when he realised Ma and Dad weren’t coming. I tried to be big and strong and not cry, but I was sad too, that I wouldn’t see Ma and Dad for ages, so I started crying as well. Then Ma started sniffing lots and I buried my head in her shoulder. Then it was time for us to get on, and Ma said she would know where we were when we got there, and that all our clothes were packed in our little suitcases, which Dad had been carrying. He gave them to us, then ruffled our hair and lifted James, then me into a train carriage. We all hung out of the windows waving, and James was crying lots.

Waving from the train.

When we were on the train I realised that while I had been crying, we had been given little packs of food for the journey. It was nice but I told James not to eat all of it at once. After 5 hours (I counted on my watch) we had eaten all the food, so it was lucky that after 6 hours we stopped and were told to get out, and get onto a lorry. The people in my carriage all went out first, so James and I were last, both carrying suitcases.  On the platform it was unbelievable! There was green and fields everywhere! It was very different from our house on Falconer road. James even stopped crying to stare a bit. It was all sunny as well, very different from the stuffy train.

Getting checked over by a nurse.

We got onto the lorry and James laughed as we bumped and jumped along a little road. It was only then that I realised Mrs Baylice had come with us, and she was sitting with the driver looking a little green.  The drive was reasonably short, and when we stopped, everyone got out and had another good look round. We were at what seemed to be a little hall, where a sign above the door read “Bridlingwell Parish Hall”. We followed Mrs Baylice in, and there was a large group of people in there, who seemed to be waiting for us. All 20 of us were told to stand up on the stage, and people in the crowd would soon come and take us away to their houses. I could feel James was a bit scared, and so was I! What if no-one picked us and we were sent back to the bombs! First a nurse checked our teeth and hair, to see if we were clean, and then people began to choose.

The first people to leave were the little girls with blonde hair, and the older boys who had big muscles. James and I waited patiently, smiling at the crowd, until, when there were about 10 children left, a woman and a man came up to James and said to Mrs Baylice “We’ll have him”. James looked at me and clutched my hand harder. I knew they were going to try and take him away so I said, “Sorry Sir, Madam but could you possibly take me too? because I really don’t want to be separated from my brother”. The man frowned but the woman’s eyes were kind. “Yes of course dear, come along as well”.

She looked at our tags, nodded to Mrs Baylice, who scribbled down their name, and then James and I left the hall, following the lady and the man. She told us her name was Mrs Cheney, and she asked us lots of questions as we walked through Bridlingwell, our names, how old we were, where we came from, if we had been to the country before, and stuff like that. I replied as honestly as I could, (James walked silently, still clutching my hand) and I was beginning to like this lady. I didn’t speak to the man (I suppose he must have been Mr Cheney); he was walking fast up ahead. After about 10 minutes walk we came to a little gate which led up to what looked like a big yellow house with squawking and other noises coming from beyond it.  Mrs Cheney opened the gate, and led us up to the house. As she opened the door she said “Welcome children, to Broadwood Farm”.

Mrs Cheney made us firstly take off our shoes, because they were muddy from the walk, then she told us to go upstairs to our bedroom, and wash our hands ready to eat. She showed us our room, and I was surprised at the size, it was quite small, and there was just enough room to fit 2 beds in it, but I can see that she had tried to make it nice and I was grateful for it. As we washed our hands and faces in the bathroom basin, I heard a strange sound coming from the open window. Being a curious girl, I went on tiptoes to see what it was, and almost fell over with glee. I knew from my storybooks that it was a horse! I hadn’t seen one before, (you don’t get many horses in Coventry) but there was no mistaking it. I really wanted to go and see it at once, but I thought I better obey instructions and walked slowly back down the steep stairs.

When we got downstairs, we found Mrs Cheney in the kitchen cooking. She told us to take a plate of stew through to the dining room and to sit and wait for dinner. As we sat down, Mr Cheney came in and sat down. He was a big burly man, and he looked a lot like a farmer. We didn’t know whether to start eating until Mrs Cheney came in, so when she did, James picked up his spoon and was about to eat when Mrs Cheney cried “Stop!, We haven’t said grace”. This was a little puzzling to James and me, but we just listened to Mrs Cheney say a prayer about food, and then got on with our dinner.

As I sat there wondering what the future in this family would hold, I looked round at my brother, laughing with Mrs Cheney and Mrs Cheney, smiling back, I thought, it might not be too bad, being a wartime evacuee.

read me and riddle me.

books. reading. that's my thing :) I'm the kind of girl who's interested in everything. Particularly history. Because how better to understand yourselves, than by understanding how you came to be the way you are? And isn't that history. But sorry, back to books, I have been reading ever since i was a tiny girl, when my mum used to read me books, and gradually the mess of letters above her finger separated into words, and made sense. I threw myself into a world of Enid Blyton, and J.K Rowling, preferring to be amongst Darrell and Sally, or Lavender and Hermione than the stupid girls who were beginning to create cliques throughout the school playground. As time grew on my tastes developed and I began to explore older writers, enjoying Adeline Yen Mah and Jacyln Moriarty. I developed a likening towards adult thrillers, using the intrigue to mystify myself.

I prefer reading to writing, but I do like to write. I don't seem to be able to write like others can, so I prefer to read :D