March 2009 Archives

BOOK NAME: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw    
AUTHOR: Jeff Kinney

This is the third of four books that I know of about Greg Heffley, The Wimpy Kid. I've read all but one of the books and I like them all. Even though each book has "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" in the title, Greg makes it clear at the start of each one that the book is NOT a diary, but a journal. He explains that diaries are for writing down your feelings and others might think he's a sissy if they see him carrying around a diary. So his books are journals, which just tell about what happens in his life.

In the beginning of this book, Greg is always accidentally making his dad mad by doing things like watching TV rather than going outside to play and making noises at night that wake up his dad. In the book, Greg admits to having a crush on a classmate named Holly Hills so he tries to make her have a crush on him by doing goofy things, like telling jokes. It doesn't work. Greg then meets a girl named Trista and he ends up falling in love with her. He  plans to bring her to his friend Rowley's pool for a date, but he runs out of paper in his journal before he tells what happens.

I like the Wimpy Kid books because they are funny and they give me ideas for pranks and jokes to do with my friends, my dad, my mom and my brothers. If Greg were real, I'd like to play with him.

Here's a cool idea.

Have you ever thought up an interesting story that your REALLY wanted to tell? Or thought to yourself... "Self, why doesn't anybody ever write books about 3-legged magical hamsters who star in their own reality TV show?" (Um, or something similar.. you get the idea...)

Write your own book! You Are Here: Jordan blogger Ayat did. She wrote a story called Stardust about a sand cat who is bullied. Click here to see more about her story.



Then, SHARE YOUR STORY IDEA in the comments section below. C'mon... bet you have an awesome idea. Tell us stuff like...

-- Who's the main character?
-- Is it a funny story or a sad one?
-- Will the reader learn something from it?
-- Where does it take place?
-- What's the problem or BIG thing that happens in the plot that will make people excited to read all the way through to the end?

 

BOOK NAME: The Fire Within
AUTHOR: Chris D'Lacey

David is a tenant living with Liz and her daughter Lucy. Liz makes special dragons out of clay. She makes one for David named Gadzooks, who is a writing dragon.

Lucy asks David to tell her a story and David says maybe. Lucy tells David about two squirrels named Conker and Snigger. Conker has an injured eye so they try to trap him and bring him to the vet. It's almost Lucy's birthday so David writes a story called Snigger and the Nut Beast. On Lucy's birthday David isn't finished so he reads the first couple of chapters in the book and Lucy loves it. David starts to figure out that the clay dragons are real! He pictures Gadzooks in his mind and the dragon writes something on his notebook and it helps David on his book.

Lucy and David catch Conker and bring him to Sophie for help. David and Sophie fall in love, but Sophie tells them that Conker is going to die. Lucy and David are very sad. You have to read the rest because I don't want to give away the whole thing! The next book in the series is IceFire. 

BOOK NAME: Homer Price
AUTHOR: Robert McCloskey

If you like mini-stories, you'll love this book because it's full of them. All of the stories were about one boy named Homer Price, who is very smart. In fact, he's so smart that he can build his own radios. There is a lot of trouble where he lives and he's always in it, but he also always figures out how to get out of it.

My favorite story in the book is called "Mystery Yarn." In the story, Homer's Uncle Telly and the Sheriff try to save as much string as possible to see who can make the biggest ball. Whoever collects the most string gets to ask Miss Terwilliger to marry him. However, what they didn't know was Miss Terwilliger also was saving string on her own and she ended winning by making a huge ball of string that was bigger than the others. I didn't expect that.

Most of the stories are just about Homer and his adventures. I thought this book was very cool because instead of being full of different chapters in one big story, each section was a completely different story, which made it interesting and fun.