If I go to a batting cage and practice hitting 200 pitches, I am going to improve my skills.  Reading is no different.  The more a student reads, the better they become at that skill.  Better readers make better writers.  So, why is it English teachers would rather shake their heads in disgust at the student’s excitement over vampires, wizards and bee hives?  I think it is fear!  I think many of the teachers haven’t taken the time to read what is firing up the interest of kids today.  As much as I enjoy classic literature, I would prefer the kids read!  Why not encourage that thirst for learning while incorporating some of the classics.  Are the kids going to be less of an employee if they don’t understand Shakespeare?  Me thinketh not! 

I cannot think of any classics which have children reading 500+ pages in a day or two.  That kind of excitement should be promoted no “poo pooed.”  If Edward, the dreamy vampire of Twilight, prompts the kids to turn off the television and become engrossed in the pages of words, I say, “Kudos, Stephanie Meyer!”  We need to change with the times, get out of our old habits of lecturing at children and start talking with them.  This brings pages to life and sparks a thirst for reading.  How many adults can actually remember, much less carry on a conversation, about any Shakespearean, Whitman, Sophocles or Homer reading passage from their high school years?  Do we really believe they are less productive citizens because they cannot recall the characters, messages, or prose incorporated in these passages?  Again, me thinketh not!

Ask those same adults who the main character was of Harry Potter, The Secret Life of Bees, The DaVinci Code or even the Twilight series, I bet they can tell you at least something about any or all of those books/movies; especially if they are parents!  We must embrace the hot titles of today.  We must put effort into reading that which interests our students, while integrating the classics!  If we truly want our educational system to excel, we can throw as much money at it as we want, but if we don’t change our thinking, me thinks the coffin will close and be nailed shut!

When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not resonable to grieve when it comes to an end.

My favorite quote:

End of Chapter 9-About three things i was absolutely positive.  First, Edward was a vampire.  Second, there was a part of him-and i didn't know how potent that part might be-that thirsted for my blood.  And third, i was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

All I can really say is that this is the most amazing series that I have ever read.  I loved the saga so much that I read each of the four books two days each, it was a hard thing to do but I was able to, I just couldn't put the books down. Stephenie Meyer did an excelent job on the series and I hope that everyone else out there that read it enjoyed it too.

When I first picked up this book I thought that this was just going to be another one of those regular, old, boring stories about traditional vampires but i was completely wrong.  "Twilight" is more than just a vampire love story but it tells of the difficulties and struggled the human girl, Bella, and her vampire love, Edward, had to go through to be together.  "Twilight" is a story that is far beyond explainable and I really enjoyed the whole story of how Bella and Edward's love continued to grow even through the hardships that they had to face.  The two characters learn to love each other even through the worst times in their lives and they somehow learned to deal with it, even when Edward thirsted for Bella's blood and all he wanted to do was kill her.  It is a storyline that I never expected to see out of a vampire love story. 

This book, saga, goes through love, pain, lose, and lots more that is hard to bare.  The pages will keep you flipping and thirsting for more in each of the books until the very end of their story, I know it did that with me.  It is an excelent read for teenage girls and guys alike, mainly it directs at the girls but I know some guys that have read the books and they like it too.

Another note, the "Twilight" Movie, for the US will be coming out this Friday(Nov. 21), if you didn't know.

In the novel Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick a love between two boys changes lives forever. They were divided in kindergarten but weren’t really friends until they moved next door to each other. After that Max’s and Kevin’s “Freak’s” friendship couldn’t be split. They turned out to be best friends and united they rose but divided they fell. They had differences and similarities but put them aside and became friends. Max is the Mighty in Freak the Mighty. Max is a giant and is clumsy and hates his life until someone new came wobbling along. Max has dyslexia and wasn’t bright. He had low self-esteem. The neighbor made Max happy and made him believe in himself. The neighbor boy’s name is Freak and made best friends with Max. He always says I never had a brain till Freak came along and let me borrow his. Max turned out to be intelligent and confident. Even if he is a huge ugly looking monster, he is still nice. The friends are much different but didn’t care. Freak was the Freak in Freak the Mighty.

Freak was a tiny and brilliant little boy. He liked to show it all off, everywhere. He also has a disease called morquio syndrome. He can barely use his legs and will not grow. Only his insides would grow. He needs someone to watch after him all the time. He will get seizers and heart attacks out of no where. Max needed help with school and Freak needed a way to get around and they were a perfect match. Together they formed Freak the Mighty. They both are very intelligent but don’t know it, but they both don’t have fathers. Freak’s dad ran away because Freak was disabled. Max’s dad is crazy and was put in jail for killing his mother. They were alone it seemed liked but they always have each other. Also, they always have great times and always use their brains. They never quit, always overcame, always together. As you can see Freak and Max were great friends. Nothing ripped them apart except for Freaks death but there friendship is still growing inside of Max. He will always look up to Freak and always hope for the best. Friendship can be in all shapes in sizes. So don’t over look anyone. While Max is down on earth still helping everyone, Freak is high and mighty in the sky. We’re Freak the Mighty that’s who we are, were 9 feet tall in case you haven’t noticed.

Allison is a very clever story teller; she always manages to make her point across, even though she has a few mistakes. For example; she never explained how she tried to abuse Janekin, her fifth husband, like she had her previous husbands, but she did show the abuse he returned to her. He read a book of “wicked wives,” and

“whan I saugh he wolde nevere fyneTo reden on this cursed book al nyght Al sodeynly thre leves have I plight Out of his book, right as he radde, and eke I with my fest so took hym on the cheke.”

She carefully explained how he started this brawl by provoking her and abusing her while she was the “innocent” victim. Throughout the prologue and tale, she shows how women are superior by explaining her techniques of “controlling” her previous husbands when in actuality she was receiving the same kind of abuse from Janekin. The thing that makes her story so effective for passive listeners is that she never actually says what she did wrong. This way, a lot of things are overlooked, and her story builds up to promote some sense of sympathy from the listener such as not mentioning she ripped three pages from Janekin's book until she got to the subject itself. She also knows her tale is for entertainment, so she keeps a jolly tone with colloquial language, such as her constant allusions to sex and joy. She also tends to make rash generalizations in appointing herself as the universal wife who simply “tells it as it is,” and since she is the only wife among the pilgrims, she has a bit of an advantage since none of the other pilgrims would know that point of view.

“In th'olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour… Til he his lyf hym graunted in the place, And yaf hym to the queene al at hir wille.”

She even uses King Arthur to justify her single point; if women have sovereignty

in a relationship, then the results can only be positive for everyone. From that quote it is obvious that men are the troublemakers, while women, the queen in this case, are the forgiving angels, teaching the men how to repent and live happily.

“Was noon housbonde to the Samaritan? How manye myghte she have in mariage?”

Her constant use of rhetorical devices also tends to add strength to her argument, such as the Hypophora above used to justify her five marriages, especially with the repetitions of sovereign women leading to men's happiness. Allison also manipulates the pace of narration, thus making the audience go through what she had to go through; she sped up the pace as she got closer to the climax in the fight scene, and then she began a syllabic repetition thus emphasizing her tearing out the pages from Janekin's book. Although she doesn't wander away from the topic in the fight scene, throughout most of the play, she tends to digress, especially in her tale. These digressions show a deeper insight into how the Wife of Bath thinks, basically an eye for an eye since most of her digressions are just attacks on either men or the pilgrims who interrupt her, an example being how friars killed all of the fairies.

Allison tends to generalize men in an exaggerated negative manner. In the fight scene, she also shows men as wild and impulsive when she said,” And he up-stirte as dootha wood leoun.” Allison uses a dramatic tone with some exaggerations to enforce her points of men and their impulsiveness. Allison's tale also follows the lines of the passage in the fact that the knight was impulsive enough to rape the innocent girl. Allison was clearly degrading Janekin as nothing more than an animal, and then went on to explain how “with his fest he smoot me on the heed That in the floor I lay, as I were deed.” She shows how strong and wild men are, but then goes on to insult men by saying how cowardly they are-“ And whan he saugh how stille that I lay, He was agast, and wolde han fled his way.” Her tale goes on to follow in the footsteps of this passage; the knight also tries to run away from his promise to the old lady. Allison tends to tell things men do wrong, then says her wrongs in order to be seen as acceptable for only following the “eye for an eye” motto. In both her prologue and tale, both the men commit some sort of treason against their wives, and in the end both men end up living “happily ever after” due to their wives loyalty and mercy. Allison keeps sure to follow a set order of things in her story. She always has the couples with a dominant wife as a successful one, such as King Arthur and his queen, and while showing the female as the stronger, dominant, compassionate and forgiving figure:

“By cours of lawe, and sholde han lost his heed… But that the queene and othere ladyes mo Til he his lyf hym graunted in the place, And yaf hym to the queene al at hir wille”

Basically, the Wife of Bath just wants to say that men are creatures that need to be taken care of in order to be happy, but also implies that they're only positive quality is the ability to please women in bed; that being the man's wife alone:

“I have the power durynge al my lyf Upon his propre body, and noght he. Right thus the Apostel tolde it unto me, And bad oure housbondes for to love us weel.”

Allison only wants sex from a man, nothing else since the times didn't have anything else to offer.

“How pitously a-nyght I made hem swynke… They had me yeven hir gold and hir tresoor.”

She demands loyalty and respect from men, as seen in how she withheld sex for money in the quote above with the men “swynke-ing,” but due to the times, those were rare privileges. Knowing this, she always portrays a happy ending for the men who grant women these privileges, such as the knight, Janekin, and her first three husbands of whom we hear were happy:

“I governed hem so wel after my lawe, That ech of hem ful blisful was, and fawe.”

Allison's narrative order tends to be repetitive, but reveals much about her character.

The Wife of Bath tends to have the most peculiar style of story telling among the pilgrims and through these idiosyncrasies, she is able to persuade people at little a slight amount. She tends to draw on sympathy first, such as “For, lordynges, sith I twelf yeer was of age,” The Wife of Bath then proceeds to draw on faulty logic, supported by misinterpreted passages of the bible. An example of a misinterpreted bible statement is when she misinterpreted what Jesus said about a marriage and the Solomon the wise king story, along with what Peter said in Corinthians. She twisted the meanings of the stories to fit her point of view and tried to impose that view onto the audience. With her view being imposed onto the audience, she hoped for some sympathy as she tried to justify herself, as when she was paralleling herself with Solomon. Her main point is to show how women are better than men, and she even went on to say in line 145, “Crist was a mayde, and shapen as a man.” The Wife of Bath then proceeds to tell a bad action men perform, then how she responds to the action with a wrong action, and finally how she was superior in the end of the situation. Her first example was with her first husband, when he began asking questions about her constant absence, to which she wittingly responded with a phrase much like this:

“You're out at your friend's wife's house a lot, but if I go to see my friend's husband you automatically assume I am cheating? How do I know you're not cheating?”

Allison manages to always keep a dramatic and a serious mood when she has drama in the stories, since she is trying to entertain and tell a story at the same time. She tries to keep the audience interested, but at the same time never stops talking. The passage seems to parallel the tale, keeping the tone, diction, and moods similar but changing the characters and setting only. The way she presents events in the story are also very similar to the tale; the man starts by doing something incredibly wrong, then his wife does something in protest to his action, after a few exchanges the husband asks for forgiveness and in the end they live happily ever after.

Allison may seem to be a hysterical figure to Chaucer's audience, because many Allison was a common name among widows. She also seems to fit right into a hysterical figure with her constant talking and jolly attitude, along with the constant exaggerations which make her seem like a funny character because of her absurd arguments and misinterpretations of the biblical texts. Allison tends to enforce her points through her narrative methods, but her position in the story seems to seem odd to the male audience. Chaucer could have intended to portray the unfairness towards women during his time period, but the Wife of Bath's style seems to be crude and too exaggerated to fit the part throughout most of her narrations. The Wife of Bath uses many different techniques to make her points shine, but to the audience of Chaucer's day, her points and repetitions must have seemed hilarious.

This is the first novel I have ever read by you, I am not into mystery but And Then There Were None was fantastic. I am a 9th grader who goes to Scotch Plains High School. I read your book because I needed to read an outside reading novel. The one reason I choose yours is because my cousin read it and told me it was an amazing book. I am glad I did choose it. You could never know when something was going to happen. It was a thriller; I loved it from start to finish.

I enjoyed how the whole time you made everyone look suspicious. The whole time I thought the murderer was U.N.Owen, but it surprised me who was. It was very creative and it was cool how they all died from how it went in the poem. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading mystery and exciting books. In the novel I couldn't really relate to anyone but if it would be someone it would be with Dr. Edward George Armstrong. The one and only reason I could relate to him is because I am also very gullible. I would fall for anything if someone told me to do it. I am so glad you really described the characters. Something I got out of this book is never judge someone from what he or she did in the past or how he or she look. That's how the all died, they suspected everyone of being the murderer because of their past. You also made it very descriptive so I could picture the story happening right in front of me and all the characters were described so I could picture exactly how they looked.

The novel is definitely a book I will remember and recommend. I give it a 4 and ½ out of 5 stars. I really hope you decide to write more mystery novels like this one. I will read your other books but I don't think they will be as great as this one. When I started to read it I just couldn't put it down. Thank you for taking your time to read this and I hope you respond back.

Sincerely, Zack Carow

Adults are known for fighting for all different reason, often-ridiculous things. They argue and there always needs to be a clear-cut winner. But children occasionally show adults how closed-minded they really are. In To Kill a Mocking Bird, Scout stops an angry mob from killing Atticus and the innocent black man Tom Robinson simply by talking to one man from the mob. Many parents have fought before and children can simply end it by just asking, “Why are you fighting?” A French writer, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, once quoted “It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.” Adults have to stop and think is this argument really necessary?

Everyone needs the four-one-one on every single person at every moment. The problem is everything you hear isn't always true. People gossip in this world for many reasons and it isn't essential. In the novel, Scout hears many things about one of her bizarre neighbors, Arthur Boo Radley. It's just the neighborhood gossip and really no one even knows him. She finds out who he really is and understands that not every story is true. Irish writer Richard Steele once stated, “Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of a Gossip.” Gossip can destroy a person's reputation even if it's false.

There is at least one time in your life when you know something is right but you decide to do the opposite. Scout learns that you need to stand up for what is right. During the novel she stands up for a poor kid at school and gets scowled at by her teacher. She is furious by her teacher's reaction but she still stood up for the student. Musician Jim Morrison once said, “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”. If there is someone getting teased in your school you should stick up for them even if it's difficult, think if you were in their skin?

We have come a long way since the 1930's. From society filled with racism then to a black president today, life has changed but the lessons learned in the story should remain. We need to apply these and more lessons to our lives. Another lesson Scout learned is you need to walk around in other people's skin before you judge anyone, especially black people. If the racism in that society was still active today, do you think there would be any chance that Barack Obama would be president, or black people would even be able to vote?

The following list is just a sampling of some of the books that I think any eclectic reader should discover. They are not mass market paperbacks (although some were eventually packaged that way after settling on the bestseller lists for eons). Some are fun, some are thoughtful, some are just…well…have a whole weekend ahead of you before you start them.

It's just a start. Don't let this list stop you from exploring on your own.

1. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (and if you're over 50, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid)
3. ANYTHING by Edward Rutherfurd
4. Pillars of the Earth (and sequel World Without End) by Ken Follett
5. Beach Music by Pat Conroy
6. The Outlander Series by Diana Gabaldon (okay, warning to men-romance)
7. A Painted House by John Grisham
8. The Redwall Series by Brian Jacques (be nice and share with your children)
9. Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
10. The Eight by Katherine Neville

Well if the movie's okay, I thought, the book must be okay too. Thus I found myself in my high school library looking for the book. I spotted it right away. The librarians had just put out the brand new books with the fancy covers. I picked it up and headed to the check out.

"Revisiting fairytales!" the librarian smiled at me. "Well, this one's good to read again," she continued as she stamped the return date on the back of the book.

"Thank you." I smiled. I put the book into my backpack and hurried home. Once there, I finished the book in one night. It was amazing! The whole story was about Jesus! I marveled over Lewis' genius, partly annoyed that I hadn't done it first.

"This guy is amazing!" I whispered as I shut the book. I had seen other books in his series at the library as well. I determined to check them out as soon as I could. One by one, The Horse and His Boy, The Magicians Nephew, and all of the others passed through my hands and into my heart.

As I read, I pushed down feelings of regret... regret at having not been exposed to them at a younger age. I wanted so badly to be able to compare a childhood view of Narnia to my now grown-up view. I placated myself with the fact that my future children would have the chance to read it in their youth and then the choice of revisiting it in adulthood, perhaps when they read it to their children. Most of all, I want my children to fall in love with Aslan.

As soon as I finished it I recommended the books to my siblings, but it wasn't until the movie came out and we saw it that their interests were truly peaked. My siblings and my mother are all in love with The Chronicles of Narnia. I don't regret picking up this book for one moment.

Narnia is an amazing read. One of my high school friends remarked that, "C. S. Lewis doesn't talk condescendingly to kids. He makes you feel like you know something, and I really like him for that." I hope that your kids will be able to discover for themselves, the magic of Narnia and fall in love, as I have, with the greatest story ever told.