library

On a small island there lived a 12 year old boy named Phillip. Whether it be running to the dock or leaping around the town Phillip was always having fun. Although there was something that came upon this family. A war was started and there was an army heading toward the town that Phillip and his family had lived. The mother had the idea of abandoning the town to seak out safe lands in america, but this did not go well with the father. After arguing the decision was made that Phillip and his mother would take a ship to new lands for safety while the father had to stay and work. Traveling through these waters by ship was dangerous, due to a risk of submarines shooting the ship down. Phillip and his mother took the chance.

Three days had passed by and the town of Curacao where they had lived and abandoned was now attacked. Shortly after the ship they were on had also been shot. Chaos circled the passengers and put everyone into panic mode. Luckily the passengers had practiced how to handle these situations previous to being shot at. Within a few minutes the ship was hit again this time beginning to sink.

Phillip opened his eyes and woke up to a black man, a cat, and a endless sea of water. Phillip had hit his head while the ship sank, luckily the black man named Timothy had taken Phillip aboard the raft. Unfortunately Phillip has been seperated from his mother. Phillip has no idea where his mother could be or if she was even alright. On top of that he is stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean.

Hours had passed on the raft and Phillip was dying for a drink of water. Timothy pulled out the keg of water, only pouring Phillip a few drops. Chuckling Phillip thought Tim was joking, but young Phillip did not realize that they may be stranded for months. Timothy explained to the boy that you must only drink enough to wet your mouth, just in case the two are not found for a long time. Conserving their supplies is crutial for survival in the open waters. Open waters surround the raft meaning they would have to spend quite some time afloat their life support.

“The Cay” is a book of adventure, one must learn to rely on another. Color of skin does not mean they are dumb, or weird, or slow, but instead we must learn everyone is simply human. One particular thing I really enjoy in this book is the text. When the black man talks you can tell his accent by simply reading. Timothy says,”Do not be alarm now, young bahss. I am goin’ to jump into d’wattah an’ kick dis raff to d’shore.” Dialogue like this makes a book that much better. It describes who the man is and personality. Theodore Taylor is a very thoughtfull author.

Beware, The Snowman is absolutely bone chilling. Jaclyn and her Aunt Greta had just moved to a small creepy village called Sherpia. Sherpia is located in the mountains where there is lots of snow and freezing weather. There is not a whole lot to do in this village. Jaclyn has nothing to do during the day except shovel the driveway.

One of the first things Jaclyn notices about the village is that every house has a snowman in the front yard. Each snowman is exactly alike, every snowman has a deep scar carved into the side of it’s face, this caught Jaclyn’s attention. One afternoon Jaclyn is bored so she decides to walk a little ways up the mountain. While on her way she runs into a couple kids who warn her not to go up the mountain. Jaclyn didn’t listen. A ways up the mountain Jaclyn runs into a old scary man named Conrad, who sends his dog to chase the girl back down the mountain.

Determined, Jaclyn decides she is going to find out why everyone is scared of the mountain. Jaclyn later finds out that the villagers believe there is a snowman monster living in a cave, on the top of the mountain. Jaclyn didn’t believe the tale. Eli and Rolonda who are Jaclyn’s friend, told Jaclyn that the reason the villagers build snowmen like him is to honor the monster so he won’t attack the town. Jaclyn needs to find the truth behind this myth, she won’t let Conrad stop her.

The Chocolate War is a very unique book. There are many action packed chapters that made me nervous. Jerry is the main character in the story. Jerry is a boy with lots of courage as he shows it in the first chapter. Jerry gets hammered playing high school football and is badly hurt, but forces himself to get back onto his own two feet. Jerry took a beating because he wanted the coach to keep him on the team, Jerry would do anything to impress the coaches.

Jerry is 14 years old and goes to Trinity High School. Trinity is a male prep school. At this school there is a gang of boys called the Vigils who always force kids to do tasks for them. The principal at the school thinks the school needs lots of money so they are forced to sell chocolates. This chocolate selling business is a tradition for the school, but this year they had to sell twice as many.

The Vigils bully Jerry and force him to do a task. Eventually the Vigils gang up on him and play nasty tricks on him. Jerry feels threatened by the gang and thinks no one is on his side. Personally I enjoyed the book and the message it was sending out. Throughout the story there is a few boring chapters, but it only leads up to intense situations. I would recommend this book to all who are interested in intense and believable reading.

This story was very interesting. Two neighbors are competing to win a backyard garden contest. When Joe’s dad brings home two creepy looking gnomes, that’s when the trouble starts. The Major already thinks that Joe is going to destroy his yard, so when he finds his melons beat up and thrown all over the next day, Joe is exactly who he blames. But, Joe didn’t do it, the gnomes did. Finally Joe convinces his sister Mindy to go outside and see for herself just what those gnomes are up to one night, and they almost get attacked by a whole bunch of the creepy little gnomes.

I like how this story is about lawn gnomes, they are sweet. The book does a very good job in describing the lawn gnomes. I could easily picture their appearance in my head. I like the cover because the cover shows what the lawn gnomes are doing and in the story, also tells why they do mischief. The cover is the main reason I chose this book, the cover is colorful and caught my attention.

Overall I wasn’t satisfied with the book. Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes wasn’t scary. The book is about ornaments destroying gardens, like come on I thought Goosebumps could do better than writing about gardens being destroyed. By the end of the story the gnomes had caught Joe, Moose, and Mindy. The book is all gardening, there was an entire chapter about the family spraying the tomatoes with insecticide. If R.L. Stine likes gardens so much he should write about gardening in a book that isn’t made to actually scare you.

The author did have memorable cliffhanger at the end of chapter five. The cliffhanger was about Joe and Mindy who were being forced to go to the ornament store with their dad. They thought going to the store would be a nice walk but turned out to be the most horrifying adventure of their lives. Personally I think the idea of any more gardening is pretty scary. To sum up the book I thought the gnomes would at least have scary names, not hap and chip.