William Brookes School Blog

My book review on Ways to Live Forever- By Sally Nicholls

By Nicola Moore

Genre - ‘Ways to Live Forever’ is realistic and slightly depressing and sorrowful.

The story line of the book is about a boy called Sam, and he has leukemia. He writes about his life and what he wants to do when he grows up… if he grows up.

The main characters are:

Sam- He has acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He has had a relapse and wants to do all of the crazy things he’s dreamed of.

Felix- He is Sam’s best friend. Felix has a type of cancer and he met Sam in Hospital. Felix always wears weird hats to hide his bald head.

The theme of this book is that Sam has to deal with dying (maybe) and his wacky friendship with Felix. This book makes me think more about dying and what it feels like.

This book makes me feel a lot of sympathy for both Sam and Felix, because they don’t know if they will live and when they will die. I feel very sorry for Sam, because he doesn’t know if he will live or die, and you get really attached to him by reading this book.

Title: War Horse

Author: Michael Morpurgo

Genre: War

War Horse is about a horse that gets taken to war, and doesn’t know what is happening, so he doesn’t realise why he is going and why everyone is sad, it is a very gripping book.

The main character is the horse that is sent off to war, he is describing how he feels, what goes wrong, and why he is scared. This is really good because you can sympathise with him more than if someone else was saying it.

This book makes you sympathise with people and horses at war, and how you can help and you really feel as if you are a part of the book, so you understand everything that is happening and also you always know how they are all feeling, even if it’s not described.

I really enjoyed this book, because I found it really interesting and exciting. When I was reading this book I couldn’t put it down because I really wanted to know what was going to happen next! After I read this book I felt I could sympathise with people at war a lot more, as this book speaks about the terrible conditions and everything that happens, so it is really good because I know have realised that war is not only horrible, and terrible, but the conditions are dreadful, and I also know that at war, anything can happen at any time…

Sarah Price B8

Title

Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror

Author

Chris Priestly

Genre

Gothic-Horror

Storyline

Edgar likes to listen to his uncle’s stories in his house on the other side of the woods until one day when Edgar finds objects from a particular set of chilling tales his uncles just told him. How did his uncle come across such a grim collection?

Characters:

Uncle Montague- The sinister story teller and great great great uncle of Edgar.

Edgar- Uncle Montague’s great great great nephew.

Franz- the mystery maid in uncle Montague’s house who has never been seen.

And all the Characters from the stories

Themes

-Murder

-Losing your parents

-Deaths of relatives

-Running away from home

-Stealing

-And lots and lots of mystery deaths

Personal Response

A very short read with a big impact. Quite scary but a good read!

Oliver Haynes

Twilight

Author

Stephenie Meyer

Genre

Fantasy and romance.

Storyline

Bella just moved to Forks, a small town in Washington, to live with her dad. Everyone  at  her school  overwhelms  her  with  attention. Except for the mysterious Cullens, with pale white skin and golden eyes they stand out at Forks High School. But her normal life changes dramatically when Edward Cullen saves her from being crushed by a speeding van.

Characters

Bella

Bella is a typical 17 year old, except for extreme clumsiness. She has dark brown hair and dark eyes but with very pale skin. Bella is realistic because Stephenie Meyer portrays her as a girl who is not perfect and who has terrible balance.

Bella isn’t a stock character or a stereotypical, she isn’t the same as everyone else. I like Bella because she’s her own person and she doesn’t follow a crowd with stuff like fashion.

Edward

Edward seems 17 years old. He also has pale skin but whiter than Bella’s. His hair is bronze and he has gold/black eyes. The Cullens are described as the most beautiful people you’ll ever see so Edward can’t be that realistic because you wouldn’t find gorgeous people with eyes that change colour at an average high school. Even though Edward isn’t that realistic, he isn’t a stock character or stereotype vampire with fangs and such.

I like Edward because he is different and kind. He doesn’t need to follow crowds either because he doesn’t need to.

Themes

Bella has to be careful not to cut herself because Edward- who she loves more than anyone and he feels the same about her- is a vampire. He’s a good vampire though, who only feeds off the blood of animals. But he wouldn’t be able to resist the smell of fresh blood. Near the end they run into some bad vampires, and Bella’s blood smells a little too sweet…

Personal Response

This is the best book series I have ever read –and I’ve read a lot of book series-,better than anything at all. Since I‘ve read these books I only ever think of them.

By Angharad Crump E8 12 years old.

Title

Twilight

Author

Stephanie Meyer

Genre

Fantasy, romance

Storyline

Edward Cullen has managed to keep his secret identity hidden for over 80 years, until Bella Swan moves to the small town of Forks. Hypnotized by his charm, she’s determined to discover the truth.

Characters

Bella Swan – Very clumsy, 17 and daughter of Forks’ police chief. She immediately notices a difference between the Cullen’s and the rest of the pupils at Forks High School.

Edward Cullen – The alluring Edward and his family are very different from everybody else in Forks. Spending time with Bella, he realizes the risk he’s putting her in, the danger he is to her.

Theme

Truth, secrets, love.

Personal response

My personal response to the book was that it was very good. It’s so interesting, and the way that Stephanie Meyer writes, just makes you never want to put it down until you have completed it. I think that anyone can enjoy it if they give it a chance, although it is mostly aimed at teenagers.

Feelings for the characters

Throughout the book, I felt many different feelings for different characters. At the beginning of the book, I felt curiosity towards Edward Cullen. During other parts of the book, I felt sadness, and at the end it was happiness.

By Isla Rees. C8

The Swan Kingdom

Written By Zoë Marriot

Fantasy ~ Tragedy ~ Romance

Alexandra has lost all her family. Her brothers are gone. Her mother is dead, and her father has been bewitched by a creature in the form of a woman. Exiled and betrayed, Alexandra faces magic and murder. Ashe will lose all and gain all against the struggle with the new woman in her father’s life. But is all as it appears?

Alexandra: She is a 15 year old girl with long red hair, she is tall and thin and feels she is the changeling of her family. She is sent to another realm, with her late mothers sister. She is very lonely and faces many hardships.

Zella: She is an evil witch whose natural form is a wolf like creature with a blood red pelt and a deadly poison in her attacks. An innocent, naïve girl on the outside, and a devious, cunning witch on the inside.

Alex has only ever felt loved by her father but he stopped loving her, the others who loved her are now dead or gone. Zella comes and enchants the entire kingdom and drugs Alex into a deep sleep and sends her away to Midlands. When Alex realises, it is too late for her to stop the event. She is now alone in Midland; will she ever feel loved again?

I enjoyed it because even though it was a little difficult to get into at the beginning, it is an excellent and captivating read. It has taken the ‘classic evil stepmother’ story and made it totally unique and original. I thought it told you to never judge someone by their appearance. Also, to me; it says sometimes, the answer to something may be hard to reach and you must delve deep, but other times to be careful as the answer may be right in front of you.

Emily Pell

The Poison Apples

Lily Archer

Teen Fiction

Life used to be fine for Alice, Reena ad Molly, but since their evil stepmothers came into the equation everything started to go wrong. When they all finally make the decision to go to boarding school life becomes more interesting for the girls when they form the poison apples group so they could plan the perfect revenge.

The book is written from each characters point of view in turn, which adds a nice twist to the book.

The characters suffer, as their fathers are totally clueless about what plans the evil stepmothers are making to ruin the girl’s lives even more.

I enjoyed this book because it was different. It draws you in after reading the first few pages. It is a good book, which combines reality with fantasy.

Georgina Jones B8

Title

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

Author

Sherman Alexie

Genre

Teen Fiction

Story Line

Junior, an Indian, who is beaten up at school regularly for being a skinny kid with glasses, moves to rich white school miles away from his reservation and the only other Indian there is the school mascot!! This is a funny diary describing Juniors everyday struggles at home and at Reardan school.

Characters

Arnold “Junior” Spirit - the story is told through his first-person perspective. Junior is a full-blooded Native American and lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation with his mom, dad, and his sister Mary. Junior’s grandmother lives close to his house, which is not far from where his grandmother’s parents were raised. The Spirit family’s roots run deep on this piece of land.

Rowdy- Rowdy is Junior’s best friend on the reservation until Junior moves school. Then Junior becomes Rowdy’s enemy. Rowdy always gets into fight with Junior but they have a perfect love hate relationship.

Personal Response

I thought this book was amazing. It was very funny and made me want to carry on reading. It is packed with many events; some funny, some sad, and some heartbreaking. I think the Pictures, by Ellen Forney were very good as well. Junior seems to have a very hard life and struggles a lot but gets by. I would definitely recommend this book as it is different to the average books about teen romance and it is brilliant if you just want a different type of comedy to read. I liked this book as it was very different and there are not many books out that state the struggles of a teenager but put them in a funny way.

Reanne Parkash

Spy Girl; Dead man talking.

Carol Hedges.

Meet Jazmin, flaming red hair, covered in makeup, fifteen and a wannabe spy.

Assia, her mom is a real spy agent. Assia is everything Jazmin wants to be.

The story starts with a murder, a murder Assia has to solve.

After a cold day at midnight, two men are carrying a man firmly in their arms. It appears to other passers by that the two men are helping s drunk man home. But this is not what is happening, this is brutal murder.

While Assia is figuring out how exactly the murder happened and why, Jazmin is having troubles at the learning centre (school). Fion Davies, the popular, prettiest girl in Jazmin’s year seems to have taken a certain dislike to Jazmin. Jazmin is continually bullied by Fion.

Two days after starting the new term at the learning centre, Jazmin has a strange request. She is to go to the head’s office immediately.

When Jazmin gets there she find’s she is not in trouble, she has a responsibility. She is tasked to looking after new pupils, Celia & Caden Smith. No problem Jazmin says, brother and sister, easy. But when Celia & Caden arrive at the learning centre, Jazmin gets a shock. Celia & Caden are not normal.

They have perfect skin, shiny hair. So perfect, Jazmin is beginning to think that they are unreal. They also walk and talk in exactly the same way. Weird?

Meanwhile, Ashia uncovers the main killer, but how could he be in a restaurant out of town and at the murder scene? Thing’s just are not adding up.

Jazmin takes to watching Celia & Caden as her ‘spiderey-sence’ is telling her something is wrong. Just as Jazmin is about to give up, she makes a startling discovery.

Why are Celia and Caden picked up in a black 4×4? Why do they get collected from a dingy side street?

It’s not long before Celia changes and leaves Zeb, (Jazmin’s best friend / personal lifecoach) for Nick Gilbert, Fion Davies’s boyfriend. This causes problems and before Celia knows it, Jazmin isn’t Fion’s prey, she is.

As the investigation continues, no progress is being made. The police still can’t figure out who the murderer is and they still can’t figure out how 1 man can be in 2 places.

As the investigation carries on, an item called the Trujillo, has been missing since Massimo Iovanni’s death.

The investigation gets hotter, suspects get quieter. After interrogating a man called Jake Stokes, police are gradually getting closer to figuring out why the murder happened. Police have also named the first killer, Conrad Weiss.

But as soon as the first killer is named, suspect Jake Stokes dies in mysteriously the same conditions, bagged in a sack, sack tied to rope, hung off a bridge.

The hunt is now on for the two serial killers that murdered Jake and Massimo. Meanwhile, Celia & Caden have not been at the learning centre so super-spy Jazmin goes to visit the house where she meets Havers, Conrad Weiss’s bodyguard.

The next day, Haver’s turns up at the learning centre. He tells Jazmin, Celia wants to see her but in reality, this is kidnap.

Does Jazmin get away? Does Assia find the killer?

Book Review by Kallum Hislop E8 age 13

Title:  Shivers. An Animal Rebellion

Author: M.D Spenser

Genre: Horror

Story line: A boy called Winston stays at his cousin Brads house with his uncle Bob.

But unusual attacks have been happening from the well trained animals.

Somehow it is linked with a video game  

Characters: Winston (main) Brad (co main)

Themes: unlikely people can become best of friends e.g. nerd and a jock

Personal response: this book was enjoyable because it was interesting to see what happens next.

Identify with Winston as he has never left the city before

Identify with Brad as he has never had any one sleep at his house before and he almost got killed