THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE

THE EVOLUTION OF CALPURNIA TATE
By Jacqueline Kelly
352 pp. Square Fish. $7.99. (Ages 9 and up)

ISBN
9780312659301

Rating: ? Stars

      I came to read this book because my mom had bought it from America. She had read some of it first. She thought it would be nice if I read a book about a girl born in the same place as herself, Texas, and liked that it talked about evolution and nature.
      You might be wondering what this book is about. It is about a girl called Callie. She turns into a naturalist, but then faces the problem of what she is expected to do. The moral off this book is that it’s not really fair that girls are expected to be house wives. The truth is that some girls want to do other things for their life. I completely agree with the author’s point. This book teaches you about naturalists and how a long time ago in Texas girls weren't allowed to be naturalists but had to be housewives. A naturalist is a person that studies nature, like plants and animals.
      Callie (Calpurnia tate) is a bit realistic and a bit unrealistic. I think she is a bit realistic because she is not “Mrs Perfect” and acts like a normal person. However Callie is a bit unrealistic because most people don’t find a humming bird’s nest a few weeks after they start looking for a new species. In contrast J.B. (Callie’s younger brother) is definitely realistic because he is a lot like my younger sister who always wants cuddles.
      The setting was quite realistic because it wasn’t magical or anything. I do acknowledge, though, that they must have been one of the richer families to have everything they had. Ages nine and up should read this book because if you are any younger you will think it is boring because it's not magical or silly.

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Write What You Almost Know (Deborah Coates)

If you're a writer, and even if you're not, you've probably heard the phrase, 'write what you know.' Some people will tell you it's good advice. Some people will look at it as a rule and argue ways to break it. I find it useful and yet sometimes I also find it difficult advice to follow.

It's impossible, especially if you write fantasy or science fiction to always write what you know. And yet, even then it's good advice for writing believable characters, compelling details, and for walking that narrow line between sense of wonder and suspension of belief.

Wide Openis contemporary fantasy set in the present day US. There are ghosts. There's magic. Hallie, the main character is a soldier who is returning home from Afghanistan. Those are not things I know. Though some of them are things I can know, that I can research.

But there are also things in Wide Open that I know or have known or almost know.

A friend once told me that the better piece of advice is to 'write what you almost know.' And I have to admit that advice resonates with me. When I almost know something, when it's not unknown, but not yet, or no longer, intimately familiar, I can see it and recognize it, and still notice the detail. I can appreciate it in ways that I often can't appreciate the everydayness of my house or my street or the state of Iowa. In my own house, I ignore the squeak of the back door, the splash of yesterday's mud across the glass. I don't remember that the driver's side door of my car sticks when the temperature drops or the light at the end of my street goes out every time it rains.

It was years after I left western New York State where I grew up before it appeared in a story. If I set a story in Iowa, it's usually in a part I've been to, but not the central part where I live. I've visited western South Dakota. I almost know it. And so I can write about it.

From Wide Open, here's a description that's almost South Dakota, set in a county that doesn't exist:

The clouds had turned steel gray and were starting to spit rain by the time they pulled onto Seven Mile Creek Road. Hallie was cold, but she couldn’t tell if it was because the weather had turned even colder or because there were two ghosts in the car with her. Probably both. They’d come up the county road, turned north, and headed back toward Highway 54.

Hallie thought they’d stop at that intersection, the one between Seven Mile and 54, thought that must have been where it happened because there was a stand of trees right there, between the road and the creek—cottonwoods mostly and a couple of old bur oaks. They did stop, waited for an old black Suburban to cross the intersection, then turned left onto Seven Mile Creek Road past an old garage and a partially collapsed house. The old cracked asphalt crumpled to nearly nothing as they came up on the town of Jasper, or what was left of it after the tornado in ’94—a couple of concrete block buildings without roofs or windows, stalky weeds ranged along what was once a road or driveway, a rusted-out car next to a stack of old tires.

Beyond Jasper, Seven Mile dwindled to practically nothing—old asphalt, then gravel, then, abruptly, hard-packed dirt.

Davies turned left again, bounced a little as the car dropped onto a dirt track with dusty brown blades of grass spiking up along the crown.

“This—,” Hallie began, then stopped when the deputy looked at her. But this couldn’t be right. What would Dell have been doing up here? At night? By herself? “I thought she hit a tree on Seven Mile,” Hallie said, eyeing the deputy suspiciously.

“I didn’t tell you that,” he said.

“You didn’t tell me anything.”

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GRACE

GRACE
By Morris Gleitzman
192 pp. Puffin. £6.99. (Ages 12 and up)

ISBN
9780141336039

Rating: ? Stars

We borrowed this book twice from the library but the first time I didn’t read it because I was busy reading other books. You may think that I finally started reading this book because it had a really cool cover or because the name sounded exciting. If you did think one these things then you are completely wrong because the front cover was only a picture of a girl and the name of the book was the name of the girl, Grace. The reason I read this book was actually because I had been to the Red House Book Awards and he was one of the people that might have won the award, so I thought it must be a good book then and decided to read the book.

You are probably wondering what the book is about. It is about a girl called Grace who starts doing what she calls ‘sins’. In her church the dad always gets the blame. Because of this her dad gets expelled, which means he has to go away and never gets his family back. Grace is for most of the book doing more sins while trying to get her dad back so that she doesn't have to do sins anymore and so that she can be a whole family again. You probably think that she is breaking a car killing a person or something like that. If you did think one of these things then you are completely wrong because she only did things that were bad for her religion like touch an outsider.

This book was set in Australia. It takes place in Grace’s house, Grace’s new house, the farm of prayer, the zoo, Kyle and his dads house and finally in the hospital.

This book gave a really good moral that suggests it is fine to have a religion as long as you respect other people’s religions and don't go to crazy about your religion. I completely agree with the author’s opinion. In this way the book is really similar to My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece. If you have read this book and liked it I greatly recommend to you My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece.

There were some parts of the story that I wish were longer, like the part where she got her dad back. In contrast, I despised that it never actually tells you why the project she did was so bad and when her dad's there and when he's not. There are actual, real religious sects like the one in the book all over the world, like in Arizona, USA, and they have lots of people that are extremist Christians just like in the book like that there. I discovered that this book is similar to My Sister Lives On The Mantelpiece except the crazy people in that book are Muslims and the person that isn't crazy is Muslim. When I came to the part where they were taking her dad away I started to tremble and feel my eyes moisten with tears because he was expelled, and when you were expelled you normally never saw your family again. I would absolutely hate if we had that rule and if my dad ever got expelled because I like my family and never want to have it be broken apart.

The characters were quite interesting because Grace (the main character of the title) who completely loved and believed in God (not too much though, like the crazy people) became friends with Kyle. Kyle did not believe in God and when he did believe in God at all he definitely didn't love him at all and sometimes when he was in a bad mood he would completely hate God.

Ages nine to twelve should read this brilliant book because if you are younger you won’t understand and your brain will be bursting and if you are older you won’t like that it has lots of adventure and action.

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RUNNING WILD

RUNNING WILD
By Michael Morpurgo
196 pp. HarperCollins. £6.99. (Ages 8 and up)

ISBN
9780007267019

Rating: 5 Stars

      Michael Morpurgo is FAMOUS. Michael Morpurgo is so famous that at today’s book fair everyone was shoving past each other to try and find one of his books. However, “Running Wild” sat on my shelf for over a year unread. It is by Michael Morpurgo and I am not interested in most of his books, unlike most people in my class who have his whole (or nearly whole) collection. Michael Morpurgo’s books are less appealing to me for three reasons: most of them are about domestic animals, most of them start off with an adventure but then they quickly detour into drama before getting on with the story, and because he uses some description that is not needed.
      This book was set in the Indonesian rainforest. It is about a boy named Will who is saved from a tsunami by a very unusual elephant called Oona. Will has to try and learn how to survive in the rainforest with the help of Oona. You might guess that I read this book because of the adventurous cover, which is actually misleading because the cover looks Indian, although the story is set in Indonesia. Anyway the actual reason I read this book is because my mom urged me to after reading it herself and liking it, and because we were going to The Red House Book Awards and we wanted to have read it before having it signed by Michael Morpurgo.
      I think that the story would be much better if Michael Morpurgo took out the first two chapters. They have absolutely nothing at all to do with the rest of the story and don't even really make any sense. You might not figure out how good the rest of the book is if you start snoring before you are even on the second chapter. Besides taking away the first two chapters, I think he could expand the part about the bad people who catch him in the forest. The villains are based on real-life threats to the rainforest. The baddies cut down the forest to plant palm oil trees, kill mommy orangutans to steal their babies and sell them as pets, and kill tigers to sell their fur.
      I really liked how the author noted some real life problems like illegal hunting and burning trees to grow palm trees in place of them for palm oil. I wish the writer would write more about the growing of palm trees in place of the rainforest because that applies to the whole forest and is serious. The author gave some hints about his own opinion because most writers make the main characters have the same opinions as themselves. I discovered from the subtle hints in the book that the writer thinks that what people are doing to the rainforest is bad and I completely agree with his opinion. The reason I agree with the author is because I've actually been to the Indonesian rainforest. While I was there I learnt about what people were doing to the rainforest and how it was affecting the orangutans, gibbons and lots of other animals. I thought it was really sad. I even saw illegal logging and saw people cutting down the rainforest.
      The writer may think that he can write about just any animals and no one will notice but he is completely wrong because in Indonesia they do NOT have any long tailed lemurs or any humming birds! In spite of these big differences between my adventure and Will’s adventure, there were some similarities, for example he did see some of the same animals as we saw such as gibbons and poisonous snakes. When I came to the part where the bad people had him locked up in a cage and were deciding what to do with him I started to shiver with fright that the boy and the three orangutan babies would never get out again and felt a bit like I was there, in that situation.
      Meanwhile the writer could have written about the characters in much more detail because sometimes I didn't understand what the characters look like or who they are. Provided the information I did get about the characters, I think Oona was a bit like the guide we went to the rainforest with, and I think that Will is a bit like ME. I think that the writer made the characters a little bit unrealistic because wild orangutans do not just come down and hold peoples’ hands, people cannot swing in trees that well, and elephants don't understand humans. Besides these things that make the story unrealistic, there are some things that make Will realistic, like feeling sad about death, not knowing what to do, and getting angry from sadness.
      I think that this book is similar to “The Primate Puzzle” because they are both about going to the rainforest and trying to save the animals. For anyone who has read this book and liked it, I strongly recommend to you “The Primate Puzzle”.
      This book was so good that I wish the writer would write more good stories like it. I think you should be at least nine to read this book because you may not understand the boring parts and it will be twice as boring for you if you are not nine and up, even the exciting bits might be a little bit boring if you are too young. This book has taught me that Michael Morpurgo is actually quite a good writer and has inspired me to read another book by him ("Escape From Shangri-la") and swap one of my books for his book ("Adolphus Tips").

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