THE GiVER..

In The Giver by Lois Lowry, Jonas is raised in a "perfect" society. Where Jonas lives, there is no unhappiness, no love, no illness, no violence, and absolutely no freedom. When Jonas turns twelve, he is chosen to be the Receiver of Memories. The Receiver of Memories bears all the past memories for the community.

As Jonas is receiving memories, he learns of war, color, trees, and snow. Jonas begins to learn that the "perfect" society he is living in isn't all that perfect. The people have no freedom to make any choices for themselves. He must choose between his world of sameness and the real world.

I recommend this book to anyone, young or old. Lowry shows the significance of memory. To get rid of pain, the community first had to get rid of memory. Would you sacrifice your memory to keep yourself from experiencing pain?

ANiMAL FARM..

Before reading Animal Farm by George Orwell, I thought all books with animals as characters were pointless and goofy. Animal Farm definitely surprised me. It's usually hard for me to understand history. But, the way Orwell made the characters into animals made it easy for me to understand the Russian Revolution.

In this book, the animals have been overworked and underfed. They get tired of being mistreated and start a revolt against the people. Eventually, the animals take over the farm and begin to run it by themselves.

A conflict arises between the two main pigs, Napoleon and Snowball. One pig takes over and makes the rest of the farm miserable. He begins to give the best to himself and makes conditions much worse for all the other animals. In the end, the animals can't tell the difference between the pigs and the people, which is a very meaningful statement.

I learned a lot about communism from this book, and definitely recommend it.

MY FAVORiTE TECHiE TOOL.

My favorite techie tool is blogging. As technology is advancing, the methods of teaching are too. Why do I like blogging so much? Because it...

• allows students to access work from anywhere
• provides a way for students to communicate with teachers and other students
• is a great tool to keep up with assignments
• allows people to express their thoughts
• lets you view other people's opinions

So far, blogging is definitely my favorite techie tool, for these reasons and many more!

ANTHEM EXCERPT..

Equality must have lived a very hard life. With the way our present-day society is, I cannot imagine living without all the different emotions, thoughts, and even actions that Equality had to live without. Without hope, life would not have a purpose. Without a purpose, the people would have nothing to live for. Also, there was no “I.” These people had always been taught to care for everyone else, not themselves. They were always so busy trying to care for their brothers that they did not even have time to think about themselves. This is why the life expectancy was so short. The people did not have family and friends to help support them along their life journey either. They were deprived of so many different things that we take for granted. If these people had other people that truly cared about them, they might have lived longer, and accomplished more.

SPRiNG BREAK..

My spring break was pretty good. I realized, once again, how boring Batesville really is (especially when most people are gone somewhere else). It was still fun though. I got to go shopping with my two best friends and hung out with people I hadn't been around in a long time. Oh, and I went to my friend's quinceañera. I had definitely never seen anything like that before. The best part of spring break was being out of school. No more homework, no more stress, and most importantly, no more drama. The only bad thing is, now I'm wanting summer to hurry up and get here!