Danger Zone

The main character in the book the Danger Zone is Jimmy Doyle. Jimmy is an average kid. Average grades, average looks, and average personality. Pretty much everything about him his average. Except for one thing. Basketball.  Jimmy is the best basketball player to come out of Graham, Minnesota. He’s probably the best player to come out Minnesota. Everybody knows it and he does to. For his high school basketball team, Jimmy is the team. Jimmy plays shooting guard for the team and is a three o’clock shooter. He can shoot from almost anywhere and make almost every time.  Sometimes when Jimmy is playing really well, he drifts off and goes into the zone. The zone for Jimmy is when he is almost untouchable. Nobody can stop him in the game and he just seems to make every shot, beat every person, and make every perfect pass. Jimmy is a hard working kid who is loyal to his family. His father had died when he was younger and throughout the years Jimmy had knew that it was going to happen. So when it did happen, Jimmy took charge and helped his mom take over the small hardware store that their father had owned. He didn’t run off and hang out with his friends. Instead he helped his mom out and did all of the work that he could to do to keep the store open. That shows that he cares about his family and has respect for them.

 In the book, Jimmy comes to many points where he is in trouble or something bad is about to happen. For example, when Jimmy went to Rome to play with the American “Dream Team” he meets Augustus LeMay, the point guard for the team and the star player. When Jimmy meets him, Augustus starts talking smack about Jimmy to his face, because Augustus has a cousin that played shooting guard also and was really good. The coaches had talked to his cousin to play the position, but they took Jimmy instead. Augustus was furious about it because he was very close with his cousin. So then him and Jimmy starting arguing about it. Then it turned into a shoving match and soon Jimmy lost control and took a punch at Augustus and hit him in the face. Even though Augustus was about two inches taller and way more built, Jimmy still took a punch. In the end he ended up getting knocked to the ground. It shows that Jimmy doesn’t back down from things and that he isn’t afraid. He knew that Augustus was stronger than him and he still tried fighting. It also shows that he is stubborn and doesn’t think before he acts.

Feed:Book Report

The main character in the book Feed is a teenager who lived in the future. His name is Titus. In the book, Titus tells the story from his point of view, so we don’t get to read much about what he looks like or what people say about his personality. We really only get to read about him telling about other people. So I have to dig deeper and look into what he says and how he talks to find out what he is like. In the book, Titus isn’t such a responsible person and is with his friends partying more than anything. He is always looking for fun and never really doing what he should be doing. He isn’t really close to his mom or his dad who don’t really know what he does and he thinks his brother is probably the most annoying person in the world.

            Titus isn’t really the outgoing type who tries to meet new people or talk to people he doesn’t know. He hangs out with the same group of friends all the time (Link, Marty, Calista, Loga, and Quendy). The way that Titus acts sends out different emotions towards people. His mood changes a lot. For example, right in the beginning of the book, Titus and his friends go on a vacation to the moon. When they’re on the way there, he is kind of getting annoyed by his friends and is really tired. But instead of telling his friends that, he puts on a show to try to hide how he is really feeling. In the book, Titus made a number of bad choices that made his life worse. For example, when him and his friends are on the trip going to the moon, Titus met a girl named Violet that he soon found out he loved. They did everything together and he brought her everywhere. Titus knew that his friends didn’t really like Violet because she tried to act smarter than everybody, and Violet knew that to. But instead of being smart and not bringing her to hang out with his friends he brought her every time, until Violet got mad at them and freaked out and started yelling. Another example is also about Violet. Later into the book, Titus and Violet went on a trip to an hotel where they were going to stay the night. It started out well until Violet said one thing wrong and then Titus yelled at her. That was also a big mistake because Titus knew that Violet did not deserve to be yelled at an yet he went ahead and did it. That same night they broke up. I think those are examples of how Titus made many wrong decisions. Also, I think that he is maybe just a little bit self-centered. The reason I think that is because there were a couple times when everybody else was having a good time and Titus was having a bad time so he had to make everybody else feel bad like him. That shows that he is self-centered and I also think it shows the ways that his emotions change.

            I think that Feed was a pretty good book. It had kind of a weird plot but it kept me reading. I thought that the book was somewhat complicated. It was told in the future future and there were a lot of weird things they did differently from the time were living in right now. For example, people talked really weird. Instead of saying something was really cool or sweet they would say that it was “meg” or instead of trying to get a person’s attention by saying “hey you” or “hey dude” they would say “hey Unit”. That kind of confused me when I started reading the book but, I understood it a lot better farther into the book.

            I would defiantly recommend this book to many people. I think that the kind of people that would like this book would be the people that don’t like books that are fast paced and have action. People that want to have a good read should read this book because even though there isn’t that much suspense, it kept me reading and wondering what was going to happen next. This book is about kind of about life and what happens when you make a wrong choice. That’s I think this book is about and if you like to read books that have a plot like that then this is a great book to read.

           

Choice Book Report 2: The Juvie Three

In The Juvie Three, there are three main characters: Terence Florian, Arjay Moran, and Gecko Fosse (his real name is Graham Fosse). I am going to write about all three because they are all equally important in the book. The first main character is Terence Florian. Terence grew up with an abusive father on the streets of Chicago as a teen gang member. He knows how to survive by playing the game of street criminals. Terence is skinny, tall, and not very muscular, but all the things that he lacks physically, he makes up for with brains and by running his mouth. Terence is the kind of person who is always cracking jokes and is barely ever serious. People always yell at him telling him to listen to them or do what he’s told, but he never does. He is always trying to find a way to make a quick buck (like robberies), which often gets him into trouble.

Another main character is Arjay Moran. Arjay is 15 years old and a whopping 260 pounds and 6’5” tall. The football team wanted him to play on the team, but Arjay refused every time.  This makes them angry so they constantly taunt him. Finally the football team snapped. Arjay was all alone when they jumped him and he fought back for the first time. He pushed the quarterback, who was also the team captain, sending him flying back causing him to hit his head. He dies. Arjay is found guilty of manslaughter. Even though everybody thinks that he is a horrible and mean person, Arjay is actually one of the nicest people ever. He isn’t vicious and wouldn’t hurt anybody unless he had to. He cares for his family and close friends. Arjay is also an amazing guitar player. Later into the book he joins a band and is the lead guitar player.

The last main character is Gecko Fosse. Gecko grew up in a family where he was ignored most of the time, which is probably the reason he gets into bad habits, including the robbery with his brother that got him sent to juvenile detention (“juvie”).  Although he was only 13, Gecko could drive better than anybody he knew. He was the getaway driver for the robbery that his brother led, right before he got sent to juvie. Gecko is a very smart person when he wants to be. For example, when he got out of juvie and was given another chance, he took charge of all three of the boys, becoming the leader of the group and keeping them in line when Healy was in the hospital. (Healy is their mentor who took all three of the boys out of juvie to give them another chance.) He was probably the most responsible person in the group.

 This story was told from the point of view of each of the three main characters. I think that the reason the author told the story this way is because it makes the story more interesting.  Telling the story from three different points of view made it so he could write about things that happened separately to the characters. If the story had been told by just one person, that person would be able to tell a very detailed account of what happened, but even though it would sound like that was exactly what happened he wouldn’t be able to tell all the little and the most important details. Also, it wouldn’t be as reliable as if it had been told by the person who actually had it happen to them.

For example, when Gecko went to the hospital every week to check on his mentor, Douglas Healy, he met a girl named Roxanne and fell in love with her. There were many reasons he fell in love with her. She was really pretty, nice, funny, smart, and everybody loved her. But, only Gecko knew the little reasons why he loved her. When he is with her he doesn’t feel like anything matters and that she makes everything better. If it had been told from somebody else’s point of view, you wouldn’t have known all the little details.

Another way the different points of view help is when the reader learns about how Arjay got sent to juvie. People thought that Arjay killed the football quarterback on purpose because he was a big, strong, and almost everybody was intimidated by him. Nobody believed Arjay that he was just trying to defend himself from the football team. The reader knows that Arjay was innocent and that it was an accident because we get to hear it from his point of view. Telling it this way gave all the details of what really happened instead of just having somebody else say, “Oh yeah he killed that guy on purpose, he deserves to go to jail.”

One final example is how everybody sees and treats Gecko. People at Gecko’s high school are afraid of him because he had been to juvie. When Gecko was in chemistry class he accidently spilled a chemical on a kid’s shoe. The kid was a lot bigger than him and, at first, was really angry that something got spilled on his shoe. Then when he saw who Gecko was he got really nervous and said, “It’s nothing!…Don’t worry about it!” When Gecko tried to say he would, the guy said he would clean it up. Gecko was surprised by this and didn’t understand. The other guy was afraid of Gecko and thought he was going to hurt him because he went to juvie, even though he wasn’t going to do anything to him. The reader knows, though, because it was told from Gecko’s point of view.  I think that the author told the story in the best way possible by telling it from three different people’s views. For each character, the reader learns more about their feelings and motivations by hearing about their stories from them. Seeing things from each point of view lets the reader sympathize with the characters.

Choice Book Report: Stumptown Kid

The main character in Stumptown Kid is a 11 year old boy soon to be 12 named Charlie Nebraska that lives in Holden, Iowa and baseball is pretty much his life. When he was young his father was killed in the war. There were times when he tries to deny that his father is dead. Charlie thought he wasn't dead because when the army sent back his father's casket, his mother didn't open and Charlie thought that meant that it wasn’t his father. He would always think that one day his father would come back to his house and Charlie would have a normal life with his whole family. That tells you that he doesn’t like to accept things that he thinks aren’t true. Even though that it seems like Charlie is depressed because of his dad, he's actually a very friendly, generous, and caring person. For example, when Charlie tried out for the Wildcats, his friend Will did to and when Charlie found out that he didn't make the team but Will did, he was happy for him and congratulated him instead of being jealous. That shows that Charlie cares about his friends and is a generous person. It might seem that Charlie is all nice and that he wouldn’t be able to stand up for himself, but he isn't the kind of person that would back down from a challenge and  he is a stubborn kid that doesn't really listen or do what other people tell him to. Like when Charlie and his friends were playing baseball, Lobo a kid that was on the Wildcats, started yelling loud remarks about Charlie. Charlie's friends tried to tell him not to listen and block it out of his head, but he didn't listen and lost control and jumped at Lobo and started hitting him which gave Lobo a bloody nose. Charlie had always loved to play baseball. Charlie plays baseball for the love of the game, not to win or try to beat somebody. Win or lose he would be glad that he got to play. In baseball, Charlie wanted to be the best. He was always trying to get better whenever he could.

His mom is a sweet and caring person that loves Charlie more than anything, and Charlie loves her just as much. For Charlie, baseball is everything. He doesn't play to compete he plays for the love of the game. He plays pitcher and is very good. Except when he tries out for the Wildcats (a 12 year old team he had wanted to be on forever) he gets nervous and angry because Lobo is yelling rude and distracting remarks at him so he can't concentrate.


      There were lots of confllicts in the book, but I think that the biggest one had to do with Luther Peale. Throughout the book Luther helps Charlie with baseball and his personal life and Charlie also helps Luther. One very important conflict that happened was when Ruckus Brody came to Iowa to kill Luther. The reason is because before he went to Iowa, Luther played baseball for an all negro leauge and when he was pitching against an all white team, a drunk player named Sam Brody came up to bat and his head was over the base. When Luther pitched it hit Sam's head and he died instantly. Everybody knew it was good pitch and wasn't Luthers fault but Sam's brother who was on the team told Luther that he was going to kill him no matter what to avenge his brothers death. Later after Luther had been in Iowa for a while, he found out that Ruckus Brody (the brother of Sam Brody) was coming to Iowa to find Luther and kill him. As soon as Charlie found out about this he went to Luther and told him that he needed to get a weapon of some kind, but Luther said he didn't know and he would think about it. After that because Charlie was so worried about Luther he went back to his house and took his fathers bayonet from the war and went to find Luther. Charlie found out that Ruckus Brody was asking around for Luther and was told that the owner of the apartment that Luther was staying in had told Ruckus that Luther was working. Ruckus went to where Luther was working and almost killed if Charlie hadn't saved him by throwing a egg rack at Ruckus's head. Later the police arrested him and took him to jail so he couldn't try to kill Luther again.

Memoir 2

     I had to wake up bright and early but I didn't care. I was so happy and excited for today to come when I would would finally get to go to Illinois to play soccer for ODP. I had barley got any sleep because i had stayed up so long thinking about it. I had a long car drive and it felt like the longest car ride ever. When I finally got to where the bus was taking us to Illnois I went and talked to all the other kids about the games.

     The bus ride was long but fun with all the other kids on. We talked about who we would be playing and what we would do, I couldn't wait. When we got to the hotel we found out who are room mates were. Then we got dressed to have a first game. When we got to the field we found out that we were playing Iowa. We ended up winning 3-1 and I scored two goals. When we got back to the hotel we went and had dinner in the meeting room. There were other teams from other states staying in are hotel so we just had tons of tables where we ate.

The food was really good and we went sat with some other teams to talk to them. Later the day after that we played Michigan and beat them 2-1, and I scored once. We had the rest of are games but sadly we didn't get to the championship. We lost 3-2 to Colorado in the semi-finals. I didn't care though because it was probably one of the most fun experiences in my life.

This summer I went to San Fransisco for vacation. The plane ride like all plane rides was boring and long. When we got to San Fransisco I was really happy to finally be there. My family and I went and got are bags and then went to go find a taxi to take us to the hotel we were staying in.

The taxi ride was long, but it was a fun ride because I got to lots of the building and cool places. When we got to the hotel, we got the key card and went to are room. It was definetly the coolest hotel room I had ever stayed in. It was like a groovy/funky room with all this cool funiture. The pop-sun chair was my most favorite thing in the room and right when I got into the room I went and sat in it. After we had all cleaned up we left to go hang out with some of my moms friends from college and highschool.

When we met up with my moms friends we went to there house and talked for a while. After that we went to go find a place to eat. We chose to go to a really good buffet that they had gone to before. I got a turkey wing that was a big as my head!!!!!! It tasted really good and so did all the other food. Later we went to go walk around and they showed us lots of cool places. It was a really fun first night in San Fransisco

Everybody follow me!!!!!