School of Fear: Class is not Dismissed blog

Lucie Pascarosa                             705                             SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

             After reading the "School of Fear," I decided that is was worthy enough to buy the second one on my Kindle. Needless to say I finished it in three days. The second book is about the foursome coming back to school of fear, saying they have conquered their fears. For example, Garrison is a surfer, Madison likes spiders, Lulu goes on elevators, and Theo has stopped checking to see if his family is dead every five minutes. There is just one problem: They are lying. Exactly what you expected from them isn't it? As much as they claim they are cured, you will see why they desperately need another year at school of fear.

             At the beginning of the book you see all of the students happy and cured. But when you see them go back to the school, you see they are all FAKE! Maddie still wears her veil to sleep and fumigates her room, Lulu waits for hours for someone to go on the elevator with her, and Theo stalks his family. Yes you heard me, stalks them. He follows them so he can keep track of where they are so that he can ensure that they are alive. Don't worry, I didn't forget about macho Garrison. You can't rally feign being a surfer, can you? Well, apparently you can. Garrison would go to the beach with his board and wetsuit, and goes into the bathroom and gets his hair wet, so people think he was at the beach.  How do we know this? Mrs. Wellington the teacher, stalks them a bit like Theo and takes videos of their "progress.'' Personally, I thought it was a good idea to look at what they were doing because otherwise, the honor system is out the door. Unfortunately, this is not the only obstacle. There is a new student named Hyacinth, and she is the most obnoxious ten year old you could ever imagine. She blames all of her problems on her ferret, and her phobia is being alone, so she is annoyingly clingy. I would HATE a person like that. Take this for example " OMG! We are going to be besties! We are going to have sleep overs and OMG, I forgot to bring a camera to document our memories! Don't you just love making memories!" That wasn't directly out of the book, but it could have been.

            In the middle of the book, we find out the real problem.  The first thing is that Abernathy is living in the forest near the school ( Abernathy is the stepson of Mrs. Wellington, an the only student she failed to teach, as his phobia was stepmothers). The biggest problem is that someone had been stealing Mrs. Wellington’s valuables, which we find out later to be their neighbors who are dog crazy, and are mad because Mrs. Wellington doesn't have a seat belt or  doggy braces for Mac, her bulldog. When reading this section of the book I nearly screamed and or punched my Kindle. Who would do such a horrible thing? But it gets worse! Schmitty, Mrs. Wellington, and the five kids go to this pageant to look for the thieves. When they find it's their neighbors, they go home as fast as they can. But they are stopped by the sheriff and are informed that the student with a ferret leaked the secret about the school of fear to a reporter, which is always kept secret from the public. For those of you idiots who haven't figured out who spilled the beans it was Hyacinth, who blamed it on her rodent. I think she deserved to cry in her room alone. She didn't care about other people and needs time to get her act together. Hyacinth does do something that change everything at the end of the book, but I have already spoiled this book for you so I'm just going to make you read the whole thing so you can get to the end. Sorry.

          This is why I thought "School of Fear: Class is not Dismissed!" was a very interesting book, and I think it teaches us you should treat people the way you want to be treated, and you can't always get what you want.   

        

School of Fear blog post

          I am reading the interesting book, School of Fear. The book is about four neurotic children, about twelve or younger that have insane and unreasonable fears about the most common objects. For example, one girl goes around with a veil over her head and bug repellent, a boy faints if he sees a pond, another boy calls his parents, sister, and three brothers at school every hour to see of they are alive or not. The fourth girl has a reasonable fear, as she is claustrophobic. They all are a problem for their parents and friends so they are sent to a school to get over their fears. I have not finished the book yet and I am only about 100 pages in. However, I think that by the end of the book, they will get over their fears. But right now, they are pretty much scared out of their minds.

          In School of Fear, each of the kids have big problems. In one story, a girl named Madeline is deathly afraid of spiders, and other bugs. Basically anything that moves. She wears a veil on her head at all times, and carries bug repellent. even though besides her phobia she is pretty much sane, with good manners and a normal life in England, she can't get over the fear of bugs. Her night gown has a built in veil, so that when she sleeps at night no bugs will bother her (even though she has a mesh canopy bed). I think she is insane. anyone who is that afraid of bugs and spiders, needs to do some research. If there were no bugs, how would break down the dirt for wildlife? Who would eat those mosquitoes that you hate? I think that she had a bad experience with bugs once and has a hard time forgetting it. A boy named Theo is scared of death, ever since his grandmother died. He would call his family members often to make sure they were alive, or dead. His brothers thought he was neurotic, his sister thought he was annoying, and his parents thought he was just had issues. He was always reading death reports in the news paper, and would never take the train in fear the tracks would light on fire, or he would get pushed into the tracks. Worse, he could barely take the car in fear they would get into an accident. I think when his grandmother died, he became obsessed with death because he didn't want to lose any of his family members, like he lost his grandmother.

         There are two other children going to the school. One is Garrison, the most popular and attractive boy in his middle school, with blond hair and blue eyes. He seems normal, he plays sports, gets love notes from girls, and goes to school. But he is hydrophobic. For those of you who haven't guessed what that is yet, it is the fear of water. Not drinking water or showers, but deep water like oceans, ponds, lakes, rivers, and so on. Until the bus ride there, he seems pretty normal to Madeline, until they go over a bridge. He notices, and hopes for dry land. Instead he finds what could be a lake or ocean and freaks out, and faints. I can understand the fear of drowning, to a certain point, but  can't understand the fear of water itself. As someone who comes from a wind-surfing dad, and and a former swim-racing mom, this one of the harder things to understand. As a surfer myself, I have had to hold my breath for a while under water while my board goes over my head. Back to the hydrophobe. I think, like Madeline, he had a bad experience with water, or trying to swim that made him scared, and I will most likely find out later in the book. As for the fourth girl, there isn't much too tell. The most insane thing she has ever done so far is hit her principal in the head because she didn't want to go on the elevator, and the stairs were just painted. I can understand the fear of small spaces, I don't like them much either, but I would have sucked it up and went in the elevator.

All in all, this is why I think that the new students of School of Fear are insane and neurotic. 

Catching fire Hunger Games blog post

Lucie Pascarosa                  705               10/14/12        HUGE SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!


        I am rereading the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire. In the beginning, Katniss is recalling her first hunger games and is trying to forget it. Unfortunately, she has to be made up and go on a tour around the districts that as she put it, "secretly hate her." If you have not read the hunger games series, then you won't know that she has to go up on a podium with Peeta, and make a speech about the honor of being the winner of the 74th hunger games, while the families of the other dead children look up at her and are forced to also be put in the spotlight. I think now, after reading it a second time, and reading The Girl Who Was On Fire it is easier to sympathize with Katniss. I think that Katniss plays a very strong female role, unlike Bella in Twilight. This is why I think Katniss is a strong female character in Catching Fire.

        I think Katniss is a strong female character because she endures two hunger games. In the first book, Katniss volunteers as a tribute to save her sister, watches a twelve year old die, and outsmarts the game makers by almost eating the berries. But even if they didn't tell her to stop, she would have sacrificed herself for an audience. Then she is taken away and eventually sent home, only to be interviewed about the thing she wants most to forget. Half a year later, she goes on the Victory tour, and that is when she really sparks the rebellion. She promises to send food and money to Rue from district eleven (rue is the twelve year old that died), and puts her three fingers to her lips which is the sign of her district and what she did when rue died. this was what sparked the rebellion. It started when she was there. she had to hide while three people were shot and killed. I couldn't live through that if my life depended on it (no pun intended). After another half a year, she finds out that she has to be in the games again for the quarter quell, and almost gets killed by killer monkeys, poison fog, and other obstacles the game makers thought up. If someone from our everyday life had to do that, well, they couldn't. They wouldn't have survived the first hour of the 74the hunger games! After, her own ally cuts open her arm an pulls out her tracker. Then all of a sudden, a helicopter comes out of nowhere and picks all of them up an out of the arena. But Peeta is left behind and tortured by the capitol. No one could live through the PSTD of that.

      This is why I think that Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay is a very strong character.

   

the Hunger Games: the girl who was on fire 705

Lucie Pascarosa          705               10/7/12      SPOILER ALERT!


          I am reading an interesting book, The Girl Who Was On Fire. The book is a collection of opinionated essays about the authors' opinion of The Hunger Games. There are multiple authors, and they all share their experiences with The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay. They compare the trilogy to real life, and show how different yet similar the books are to real life. So far I think The Girl Who Was On Fire is a really good book.

          In The Girl Who Was On Fire, the most common topic with all of the authors is the rebellion. They try to decipher the meaning of the rebellion, by finding the symbols in the three books. One of the biggest topics in The Hunger Games is how the berries sparked the rebellion. Katniss holds out the berries and forces the game makers to let her and Peeta win, or as one author put it, the engineers gave in to the watched. In Catching Fire, she gets rescued from her second games and is brought her to district thirteen, or as I like to call it, the rebel district. This really gets the rebellion going and finally, in Mockingjay, Katniss kills Coin, her little sister is shelled, and Snow goes down. The authors show symbols that only authors can find, and show you the true meaning of The Hunger Games.

        In The Girl Who Was On Fire, I noticed that one author categorized people into sections. There were the watchers, or the people from the districts, they watch the games. there was the watched, or the tributes, who fight to the death. Then there were the engineers, as I said before, they were the game makers. The author explains that it is a cycle, or a food chain. The engineers make the games for the watchers, and the engineers have to keep the watchers entertained or they will go against the engineers, and the watched. The engineers help the watched to entertain the watchers. And the watched try to entertain the the watchers to get sponsors to save their life. See what I mean? It's a cycle.

      That is why I think The Girl Who Was On Fire is an excellent book so far, and I am glad that even though the authors write about the same things, it is interesting every time because each author has her own way of writing.