Choice Book Report 4

The Ivy

By: Lauren Kunze with Rina Onur

   Callie Andrews- bleach blond, beautiful, exceptionally smart, wears flip-flops with everything, and is a freshman at Harvard University. From west coast to east coast, Callie doesn't know how to dress, how to act, or what to even do at Harvard. Her roommate Mimi is from France, speaks five different languages and is there on her dad's money. She tends to drink a lot, but is a great roommate. Dana is the good girl type. She's very religious and even just mentioning drugs, alcohol, or sex she doesn't want anything to do with it let alone listen to it. Studying is way more important to her than dating or partying, but I think that changes once she meets a certain person. Vanessa and Callie are each other's newest best friends. They get really close and Vanessa drags her to all these amazing parties. She's very fashionable and gets hurt easily, but really helps Callie out around Harvard.

   The Pudding is a group formed by the upperclassmen. Any upperclassmen can invite someone to the Pudding party. After the party they will decide who gets to be in the Pudding this year depending on how many people already graduated. As there are limited number of seats many get cut. All upper Pudding members get to decide who will get into the Pudding. If there is disagreement about a person, that person doesn't get in. It's a very popular group and if you get in you're considered to be one of the higher-ups, and you get extra privileges.

   Fifteen Minutes Magazine (FM) is like the Crimson's sister. The Crimson is Harvard's newspaper founded back in 1873. FM takes place in the Crimson headquarters. Now like the Pudding, you have to get past rounds. In FM you have to COMP. COMPing is when Alexis Thorndike, the head, picks topics for you to write about. You will have to write pieces and those pieces go through a number of editors. At the end they give you a score, they cut the lowest, then you go through two more rounds. By the last round only the people with the highest scores will get into Fifteen Minutes Magazine.

  
   Callie might have her classes and COMPing organized, but her love life is out of control. Evan, her boyfriend from California, decided that to get into this frat he was going to tell them his and Callie's little secret. Gregory, OK, Adam, and Matt are roommates from across the hall. Gregory is the first person she meets and it turns out that she hates him, but he's really strange around her. Matt is also trying to get into FM with Callie, so they spend a lot of time together reading over each other's pieces. Alexis Thorndike's boyfriend Clint Weber- sweet, very attractive, independent, and doesn't like to be pushed around. Between Evan, Matt, Gregory, and Clint, Callie needs to get everything together or she's screwed.

   She stands up for herself, for others, and for what she believes in. People can still put her down though. She's also a little uncomfortable with herself. She's especially uncomfortable and parties for the Pudding or if Clint invites her because she doesn't really know any one there besides maybe a few people. Most people at those parties have money, Callie doesn't. She borrows clothes from Vanessa (usually Vanessa makes her borrow them) since all she really has are jeans, T-shirts, flip-flops, and a mini-dress or two.

   Everyone in the book either hates her or loves her. She's either a really kind, sweet girl that doesn't care what anyone thinks or she's a "back-stabbing, heartless, crush-stealing, bitch." She honestly doesn't mean to be like that. She's actually is a kind, sweet girl, but she has to keep something hidden and if anyone found out it would be the end for her. Callie's also very dedicated to FM. She really tries with her work and knows what she wants to do. Callie's very smart, intelligent, and dedicated, but so far the Pudding, Clint, Gregory, Matt, Evan, parties, Alexis, and Callie's little secret are getting in the way of what she wants and what she could have. 

   

Choice Book Report 3

Bullet Point

Peter Abrahams

   Wyatt Lathem never knew his father. He never knew him because his dad is in jail. Sonny Racine, Wyatt's dad, apparently committed a murder. His mom never really told Wyatt about him, just that he was convicted of murder. Wyatt grew up just with his mom. Later, she got re-married to Rusty Halenka. They had Wyatt's half sister, Cameron, who they call Cammy. Rusty and Wyatt do not get along very well at all, so mostly growing up with just his mom, and a really hard step-dad, really shaped him. He is a huge baseball lover. Probably the best on his team. The economy around East Canton isn't very good, so when the school can't afford to keep any of the sports teams or academics Wyatt doesn't even know what to do. His coach tells him he could probably get a transfer position down in Silver City. Wyatt accepts it right away. Silver City is mainly where the whole story takes place.

   Wyatt is obviously in good physical shape since he's played baseball his whole life and has to put up with Rusty. I don't know if he had a job, but he must have a decent amount of money if he can drive 200 miles to Silver City, afford everything he needs to get there and still have a bunch left over. He also drives a Mustang, and apparently has nice clothes.

  Silver City is where you find out the most about him because he meets Greer. Wyatt is very accepting of everything, almost too accepting. He just kind of accepts everything people tell him, especially later in the book. "Last year, when things started to go bad- the economy, all that- the amusement center burned to the ground. My dad was found guilty of arson in a court of law- so it must be true, right?" -Greer Torrence. Later Wyatt was talking to Aunt Hildy and she said, "It was pretty clear that she was involved, too- they just couldn't prove it, is all." Wyatt choose not to believe that because Greer had told him something else. He's mostly too accepting of Greer and his mom.

   Wyatt has a huge heart. He forgives so easily and does things for others too. He doesn't like to make people feel bad. Before he leaves he really wants to help out his mom and make sure she's alright. Cammy too. Make sure they have money and live with out him. Let's Dub take the position on the team, " You go. You take the position. You're  better anyway. I can't hit the curveball, and that means I'll wash out sooner or later."

   Though later he meets his dad. Sonny and Wyatt are so much alike. Sonny was a baseball player, he's smart and seems to know what Wyatt's thinking. Wyatt thinks Sonny is innocent, so he want to help him prove it. He's helping Greer too since Greer thinks he's innocent too.

   He has intuition and listens to his instincts well. He knows when he's in trouble and comes up with a quick solution. When he sees something that could lead him closer to the answer he follows it. He'll play along with things to get what he wants, and he's good at it. You might think he's dumb because he has poor grades, but he's actually very smart and has a lot of common sense.

Part 2/Recommendation

  Peter Abrahams is a very, very good author. Last quarter I read his book, Reality Check, and I loved that book, so I decided to read another one of his books. He mostly writes thrillers and suspense novels. He plans out his books so well, I wonder how he does it. From the two I read, they start out a little slow for the first chapter or two. Then it's very attention grabbing, and the end has a HUGE twist. Something you wouldn't even suspect or think of.
  Bullet Point was so good, and different from Reality Check. I really wanted to just keep reading it and find out what happens next. Try to figure out what's going on and who did it. It seemed like Greer and Wyatt had a love/hate relationship going on. First they'd fight, Greer would run off, Wyatt would find her or she'd come back, then they'd kiss and make up.
  Wyatt would always get these creepy, at least I thought they were creepy, calls from his dad that's in jail. Greer would always be getting calls from some guy in Hong Kong. Suspicious? Well Peter wouldn't tell you anything so you couldn't know who it was. He said a few things about a few people. He would lead you towards someone else, like a red-herring, except you didn't know who the red-herring was. In most books you can probably put the pieces together and figure out the whole book before you even finish reading it, but in this you couldn't even figure it all out until the last page. At least he didn't leave me hanging.
   I would recommend this to probably anybody around my age. You could easily relate to the book. Maybe not the whole dad in jail because he's a convicted murderer thing, but with what he's feeling and going through with school, Greer, his family, and sports. It's only about 300 pages, so it doesn't take that long to read.
  The book has some humor too, so it's not just boring reading about some kid helping his dad and having some annoying, short-tempered girl following him around. Dub is probably one of the funniest guys in the book.
'"How was practice?" asked Wyatt.
"Not bad," Dub said. "It's such a piss-off."
"Dub," said Aunt Hildy.
"But it is, Aunt Hildy. They-we've got nobody close to Wyatt in the outfield. He'd be starting in center and leading off, maybe even batting third."
"I didn't mean that," Aunt Hildy said. " I meant your language."
"Language?"
"Piss-off," said Aunt Hildy. "We're at supper."
"Oh."'
He just says, oh and he goes on after that with some more of  "that language".
  Peter Abrahams is a brilliant author and I would recommend any of his young adult books. They're suspensful, attention grabbing, funny, and have huge twists you'd never suspect.
 
  

Choice Book Report 2

   Reality Check

By: Peter Abrahams

  Cody Laredo LOVES football. It's his life, besides his girlfriend, Clea. Cody is the main character in my book. He isn't very good at school. Clea is so smart. She aced every class accept for calculus. Both Clea and Cody are eleventh graders. He lives in Little Bend, Colorado with his dad in a small apartment above the Red Pony. Cody is QB of the football team. They were doing really good until a sore loser ran into him and tore Cody's ALC. Junior year is the most important year and now Cody can't play. I'd say that Cody can make some good decisions and others I wouldn't make myself. He took not being able to play actually really well, better than his own dad. He worked out at the gym everyday and his knee got better.

  Cody wasn't very good at school to start with, but I think it was because he wasn't trying hard enough and that's why he dropped out. He dropped out because he said he wasn't good at school and he kept missing it because of his knee. To me it just sounds like he's giving up, but he did get a job paying more than minimum wage. That was the only time he gave up.

  Because of a B in calc, Clea got sent to a boarding school in Vermont. She went missing. It was all over in the papers. Cody had broke up with her before she left. When he finds out he goes all the way to Vermont to look for her. He doesn't really reveal much of himself to others, and he plays detective a lot. I think it says that he cares deeply for people close to him, but he's too negative about himself. He doesn't give himself enough credit. He's so positive about everyone else, says good things, but he doesn't say too much about himself. Cody needs to give himself more credit for what he does.

  Another thing is he has a good sense of judgement...most of the time. You can't let your guard down and it's hard to know who to trust. He didn't let his guard down and he judged who to trust pretty well I think. One part in the book that really showed this was when Cody was driving down the road, at night, and noticed a car behind him. He sped up, so did the car. Finally Cody finds out it was a cop and the cop pulls him over. Cody was sure if this was just some poser or a legit cop, so he didn't give away to much information and never let his guard down with him.

  Last thing is Cody doesn't seem to know what to say at important times, says the wrong thing, or doesn't understand what something means. A lot of times it's funny. An example would be, '"Why?" Cody said. The word just popped out, totally unplanned, not even making any sense that Cody could see. He clicked off." That's what he said to his dad on his phone after he left Colorado to Vermont. 'Cody hadn't known what to say to that.' An example of Cody not knowing what to say during a job interview.

  Overall I'd say Cody is good at making decisions, has a pretty good sense of judgement, but should probably think before he speaks or actually think of something to say!

             Part 2/Conflict

  I think there was conflict everywhere in the book. Conflicts with the weather, others, himself, even animals. First there are problems between Clea and Cody as one and Clea's dad. It doesn't actually say, but you can get that Mr. Weston, Clea's dad, doesn't like Cody being Clea's boyfriend. He seems to think he's bad for her and that's why she got a B in calc. Then between Clea herself and Mr. Weston, he likes perfect. A 'B' in calc isn't perfect enough for him, so that causees more problems between all three of them. Mr. Weston ships Clea off to boarding school in Vermont, Cody breaks up with Clea. That's actually a decision I wouldn't have made. Cody took "advice" from his dad and it didn't make much sense to me. I don't think Mr. Weston likes Cody because he's not loaded with money and he isn't very good at school. Those are just little ones at the begining.

  When Cody's in Vermont there's a huge conflict between Cody and what ever made Clea disappear, whether it's nature, a person, or herself. It's not necessarily right there, it's more indirect. I don't want to give away the book, but there were somethings I wouldn't have done. The way he ended up and the choices he made were actually things I wouldn't have thought of and they were actually really good ideas.
  Another conflict was with nature. Cody, not really thinking, didn't bring winter clothes. No boots, gloves, hat, not even a warm jacket. So while there's a search group looking for Clea, it's snowing. Driving didn't seem like a problem for him. But he never bought gloves or anything. He thought about it, and he had lots of money. If I were him I would've bought at least something to keep me warm.
  There were conflicts with Cody himself too. Deciding on where to go to college. Clea wants him to be somewhere close, but he wants to go for football. Then he's thinking about being away from her and other colleges. He switches back and forth about that a lot. Then there's problems when he breaks up with Clea. First when his dad says they should break up because they're too different, Cody disagrees.Then later when Clea's about to leave he decides his dad is right and he breaks up with her. Literally right after Clea leaves Cody regrets everything. I wouldn't have listened to his dad. His dad is an alcoholic and sounds like he was abusive when Cody was young. He obviously doesn't care about Cody's relationships and didn't see what Clea and Cody had. He just cares about Cody's football career. Most of this fits Cody's personality well except for breaking up with Clea.
  The book really grabs your attention and is actually suspensful. It's kind of funny too.