Snow White and the Seven Dwarves Re-Written

Author's Note: I am writing a twist to the story of Snow White. Instead of the girl eating the apple falling unconscious, she refuses the apple and doesn't get poisoned. This is going to be based off of Disney's movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."


As most people know, Snow White is the pretty girl who hides in a forest to live in a cottage with seven dwarfs. She is running away from her wicked step-mother who is trying to kill her. Her evil step-mother comes to the cottage, disguised as a helpless old lady, and offers her a poisoned apple, but, of course, Snow White doesn't know that it's poisoned. She takes a bite and is immediately unconscious. The seven dwarfs lived in the cottage too, but they weren't there to witness what had happened because they were out working in the mine. I am writing my own version to the scene where the evil stepmother tries to bribe Snow White into eating the apple, but in my version, Snow White refuses to eat it.

"Just take a bite!" The old lady said.
"No!" Snow White refused stubbornly.
"Come on, it's really good!" Stubborn teenagers these days. she thought.
"Nope. I'll only eat it if you take a bite first."
The old lady hesitated. "Uh....OK, sure!" The poison doesn't affect someone for a few hours, I should probably be safe. She took a small nibble from the apple, and waited a few seconds for extra drama. "See, I'm fine!"
"No, you probably poisoned that thing. That's such an old trick. I'm not gonna eat it, no matter what you say!" Snow White slammed the door in the old lady's face. Then she opened the door again. "Don't come back! If you do, I'll call... The FBI!" She added. Then she slammed the door again. "Man, that lady was weird." She said to herself.

A few hours later, the dwarfs came home. Immediately, Snow White told them about the weird lady at the door who was trying to give her an apple. "She was so persistent!" She told them.
"Wow, that is weird." Sneezy commented.
"Yeah!" The other dwarfs agreed.
"She was probably one of those salespeople trying to sell their stupid products." Grumpy input. "I've seen plenty of those people around here lately."
"Yeah, I guess." Snow White agreed, even though she still thought that the lady was more important than a door-to-door salesperson. "But why would she offer me food?And why was the creep so persistent?"
"I don't know, but I think the apple was probably poisoned or something."
"Well I'm glad I didn't eat it. I'm gonna go text my friends about this, and see what they think about the whole situation." Snow White said to the dwarfs.
"OK. Let's just not open the door to a visitor unless it's someone we really know." Doc declared. "It's probably safer that way." Then he added more to himself, "I really need to call the health insurance company. I mean, why poison apples?"

Snow White decided to ignore whoever this weird old lady was, because if she did go find her, the lady might try to bribe her again. Nothing is more creepy than an old lady trying to give you an apple. She thought. Imagine what would happen if I did eat the apple!

The Hysterical History of the Trojan War Response

Author's Note: This is my two-paragraph response to the short play The Hysterical History of the Trojan War. It isn't COMPLETELY edited yet, but I will fix that soon.

In the short play "The Hysterical History of the Trojan War", the characters act like modern day teens. They talk sassy to each other while using cell phones and acting like the war wasn't such a serious objective. They also use alliterations to describe different types of objects that we see today. The person who wrote this play know how to captivate the audience by relating to things they would know about, such as modern-day commercials. The characters are introduced in the beginning, and most of them have sassy teenager attitudes which makes the play comical. The whole play is basically about how the Trojan War was started, along with describing important deaths and other events within the war. The ending of the play makes it clear how the war actually ended: with the Trojan Horse trick. All of the characters and events match the real objective, too. To which makes it less confusing for the people who want to understand the concept of the real meaning of the play.

It's good that they made those changes because if they didn't, it wouldn't be that interesting. The characters wouldn't say funny things that made people laugh. We don't live back then, so it's more interesting to the audience when the characters talk about things that they know about, instead of having them say things they would say in stories about Greek mythology. They don't use long or confusing words (except for the names of the people and the names of the place), which made it easier for the audience to understand. The person who wrote The Hysterical History of the Trojan War knows how to captivate the audience by relating to things they would know about, such as modern-day commercials. Without the changes, the plot, the personalities of the characters, and the important events withing the play would be harder to understand.

Theme Makes a Story Have Purpose

Author’s Note: This is my theme essay. I am writing about the theme in the short story The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. I had found a website (http://www.americanliterature.com/short-stories) that had a bunch of short stories by various authors. This one was a recommended one, and it wasn’t sad and didn’t have anything to do with horror, so I decided to use that one for this essay. It had about three themes that all came together to make the story what it is.

What is it like to give something away to make someone else happy? You must feel a sense of pride that you did the right thing. In life, people sell things they hold dear to themselves to buy something for someone they love. In the short story The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry, it’s exactly like that, but the two people end up getting Christmas presents for each other that wouldn’t make sense to use anymore. The definition of love is "a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person.” In The Gift of the Magi, the two main characters possess a love for each other that is so strong that they are willing to sacrifice their greatest treasures for each other, with no regrets.

There are many themes that would be accurate to describe the short story The Gift of the Magi, but poverty is one of the major ones. The characters were poor, and couldn’t afford a gift for each other without having to sell something they hold dear. The fact that they were poor was something that they feared, because they really wanted to give gifts that Christmas. Della and Jim were poor but still decided that they would spend every penny they could afford to buy gifts.

Sacrifice is another theme in the short story. The two characters sacrificed something that they could’ve gotten trouble about to afford gifts on Christmas Eve. Sacrifice is a common theme within short stories and books. The fourth book in the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer which is called Breaking Dawn, one of the main characters sacrifices her “humanness” to be with the one she loves. Sacrifice is a theme that is found in many texts such as plays, books, short stories, and poems. The main thing about the theme ‘sacrifice’ is that it’s normally one person sacrificing themselves or something they hold dear to be with someone they love. In The Gift of the Magi, it’s both of the characters sacrificing something for love.

Sacrifice is a theme in the story, but here is another: Love. The two characters felt that they needed to buy each other gifts for the holiday because they loved each other. Here is a direct quote from the story: “She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please, God, make him think I am still pretty."” Della felt that because she cut off her hair that Jim wouldn’t think she was pretty anymore. Eventually, when Jim came come and they exchanged gifts, they still loved each other.

In the story, the two characters would sacrifice their most precious things to make each other happy. The man, Jim, gets the woman, Della, a set of combs for Christmas. The conflict is that she cut off all of her long hair to get him a watch, and he sold the watch that had been in his family for a while to get her a set of combs for her long hair. Basically, the gift that Della received were combs, but she had sold all of her hair so she couldn’t really use the combs anymore until her hair grew out. Generosity is a theme in The Gift of the Magi because they were generous enough to sell their only prized possessions to make each other happy. Della and Jim didn’t regret selling their only possessions to get each other gifts, because they felt that their love for each other was more important than having long hair or an expensive watch. All themes that I mentioned were accurate for the story: Poverty, sacrifice, and love.

A Sneak Attack on the Trojans

Author's Note: This is my two-paragraph response to "The Trojan Horse". I wrote the two paragraphs based on the questions that we looked at and discussed in class.

The fact that they were playing a big trick on the Trojans, and that they were hiding in the giant horse and ready to attack the whole time was the sneaky part of the whole story. The conflict of the story was basically the war. The whole war was over the 'most beautiful woman in the world' (that's what she was known for). The conflict was resolved because of the smart Greeks playing a trick on the Trojans. They brought the giant horse into their city without the Trojans realizing that they were being tricked into letting the Greek army into their city. Once they were in the city and most of the people were drunk or sleeping, the Greeks came out of the sculpture and attacked the town, therefore resolving the whole war and conflict of the story.

I have seen this tactic before, but not in the way of sneaking a giant wooden horse into a city. That specific tactic couldn't be used nowadays, because we don't have those kinds of wars anymore, where one side interacts more with their enemies. But the thought could be used nowadays because in computers, a virus can come without you knowing, opening the doors so other viruses can affect your computer too. That's not the only way the Trojan Horse tactic is seen nowadays, because it is also seen in things like TV shows. Let's say a person in a movie tries to get to know another person more and more, and when the other person trusts them enough, they sneak in and attack them (in most TV shows or movies, they try to kill the person for revenge or money).

Which One to Believe?

Author’s Note: This is my essay about the book Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Once I finished the book and the movie, I had so many questions about it, I did a little research and decided that I wanted to write an essay about it.


Life of Pi by Yann Martel is a book that’s hard to figure out. There are two confusing stories that makes you think twice about the whole story. The first impression of the book is, “Oh. A tiger and a man have to survive on a boat together. So what?” But after you read it, and more you think about it, the more confused readers seem to get about the storyline or plot. Yes, the book is about a man who gets stranded at sea on a boat with some wild animals, but there’s a twist at the end that leaves you wanting to know more. The movie recently came out, also, so people have seen the movie too. But the real question is which story is true?

Yann Martel makes the book seem so unrealistic and so untrue. But towards the end, the main character named Pi reveals another side of the story that makes you think twice about the book. There’s the animal story, which is basically the main story throughout the book. Pi’s family gets on a boat with all the animals at their zoo, and when the ship sinks, Pi gets on a lifeboat. He is soon joined on the lifeboat by a zebra with a broken leg, an orangutang, a nasty hyena, and, of course, a tiger. The majority of the book is about the animals trying to survive each other. The hyena kills the zebra with the broken leg, and then the orangutang eventually gets killed by the hyena too. Out of self-perseverance, or revenge, the tiger kills the hyena until it’s just the tiger and Pi. Pi has to learn to cope with the hungry and confused meat-eater. That's the part that most people find hard to believe.

Pi’s family weren’t very supportive of him because he couldn’t figure out which religion he wanted to follow. His family couldn’t trust him because he thought that more than one religion was easy to follow. His peers always made fun of his name, so Pi proved himself smart by writing the first hundreds of numbers in Pi, starting out with 3.14159, and continuing across multiple chalkboards in the school, impressing his fellow classmates and earning his dignity. In the scenes towards the middle of the book, when he’s on the boat at sea, Pi seems like he is capable of being dominant towards a strong animal such as a tiger. Pi’s past may relate to why he thinks about the story in two different ways, but it’s hard for anyone except the author to think of how. The reader has to decide which story to believe, and in the book, it tells how Pi has to decide which religion to follow. In the end, he follows multiple religions, which is similar to how the book ends: You can either believe one, or both.

In the book, it tells how the tiger got its name. There was a mixup with paperwork, and the two names were switched, so the tiger got the name Richard Parker. The family who owned the zoo thought it was hilarious, so the name stuck. The author used the name because there were multiple men with the name Richard Parker that have either become cannibals or have become cannibals at sea. The author probably chose that name for that reason, because the author tells how the tiger kills the hyena which killed the other two animals on board, so the name Richard Parker is significant to the details of the story.

Even reading the book and seeing the movie, it’s hard to figure out which of the stories that Pi tells is right. You can believe one or the other, which is sort of how Pi followed his religions. Neither of the stories are correct to Pi, and the author writes how Pi doesn’t really know which one is real, but he does know about being on a boat and having some mammals, animals or humans, on the boat with him. Nobody really knows which of the two stories that Pi tells are true, but it’s up to the reader to figure out which one to believe.

What Did People Do for Beauty?

Author's Note: This is my response to the short story "Ribbons" written by Laurence Yep.

It seems that people do a lot of crazy things to be beautiful. Society makes an image of what modern-day beauty is and people change themselves to be acceptable in society. In "Ribbons," the grandmother's feet were bent in a weird way when she was young so she would look more "beautiful." Back then, the mothers of a five year-old would bend the toes back the toes on their feet so their feet were smaller, and in society then, it was better for women to have their feet that way. Today, women do things to make them more pretty such as piercing their bodies, wearing a lot of makeup to conceal their face, and using damaging products on their hair to make their hair more beautiful. That is similar because in China, mothers bent their daughter's feet back just to make them pretty so they could marry a rich man, which meant having wealth back then in China.

Grandmother didn't want anyone to see her feet because she didn't want anyone feeling the pain that she felt. The daughter didn't understand why she was so crabby at first, but then when she saw her feet, she asked her mom why her grandmother's feet were like that. The mom told her the story, and finally the main character telling the story understood why she didn't want anyone to see. The grandmother didn't like seeing her granddaughter's ballet shoes because they reminded her of the ribbons they used to tie their feet that way, so she didn't like the shoes because they reminded her of the pain. The title is significant to the story because it's ribbons, and the ribbons were used to cause the grandmother pain. 

What Character Am I?

Author's Note: This is a piece I wrote with the "Who am I" writing prompt. If you can't guess it after a while, just comment on this post or talk to me and I'll tell you.

My show first aired on TV in 1965, and it's a cartoon. I always seem to have bad luck wherever I go. I cannot play football, and that's one of the things that I'm well-known for. I also fail at most of the tasks I am assigned, such as directing a play and even finding a suitable Christmas tree. People get mad at me a lot because of these things, and I have a hard time having confidence in myself. 

I have a pet that can't talk but somehow makes everyone laugh. I have a few friends that never understand me. Whenever I need advice, I have to pay 5 cents when the doctor is in. Sometimes, my other friends will try to give me advice, but I never take their advice the right way, and something bad always happens that ends up embarrassing me in front of people. In the end, I always learn to make something good happen out of something bad.

Most people think that I'm bald, but I do have some hair. I wear the same clothes all the time, and so do my friends. One of my friends is a musician, one has to bring his blanket everywhere with him, and one is really dusty. They are all known for those things, just like how I'm known for saying "good grief." every time something embarrassing, frustrating, or confusing happens.

"After You, My Dear Alphonse" Response

Author's Note: This is my response about "After You, My Dear Alphonse" by Shirley Jackson.

"After You, My Dear Alphonse" is a short story written by Shirley Jackson. The story is mainly about stereotypes, and, in this case, racism. A boy in the story brings home a friend for lunch, and the mother is being overly nice because the boy is black. She offers him multiple things like clothes, food, and other things that she thinks that he wouldn't have. She also thinks that his mom and dad have to work as laborers, and she tries to act like she pities him, even though he doesn't have anything to worry about. The mother assumes that because the boy is black, he's poor, hungry, and doesn't have enough money to buy clothing.

In the story, the friend of the little boy is named Boyd. Boyd doesn't understand why the mother keeps offering clothes, food, and other things to him. Towards the beginning of the story, the mother, Mrs. Wilson, sees Boyd carrying the wood that they got, and gets angry at her son, Johnny because he isn't carrying the wood. She thinks that Johnny is using Boyd as a 'slave' because he's black. She acts overly nice and is extra nice to Boyd by offering him a lot of food. This shows that Mrs. Wilson thinks that Boyd doesn't have enough food at his home, so she tells him to eat as much as he wants. Mrs. Wilson also offers Boyd some clothing that the family has because she thinks that Boyd's family doesn't have enough money to buy the necessities like clothing. 

These are all things that shows that Mrs. Wilson is very stereotypical and racist. She doesn't even realize that Boyd refuses the offers of food and clothing because he doesn't need it. She voices her thoughts out loud saying that she's disappointed that he's turning the offers down. People like that don't have to pity people from other races and be overly nice, because it shows how stereotypical they are.

Video Clip of "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" Response

Author’s Note: This is my response to the video of “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” originally written by Ernest Hemingway. I will analyze it, and evaluate it.

I noticed in the video clip for “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” that the music was really off. It was a good choice for music for this story because it matches the mood and theme of the story. I also noticed how bright the cafe was, even when it was dark. The lighting made it seem really clean and well-lighted hence the title of the story.

One of the things that I liked about the story was that the message was clear. The two waiters were talking about the old man, and the looks on each of their faces made people know what was going on. When the old man left, the older waiter looked like he was going to cry, and that’s a hint that the older waiter was wise, sympathetic, and understanding for the old man. The younger waiter showed signs of annoyance such as rubbing his face, and having an attitude to both the other waiter and the old man. The reason I like how the story was put together is because the message was clear through the actor’s actions and tone of voice.

A Sequence of Unlucky Adventures

Author’s Note: I wrote this essay because I am currently reading “A Series of Unfortunate Events” By Lemony Snicket (a series of books). The reason I titled this piece “A Sequence of Unlucky Adventures” is because it is using all the words in the real series, but synonyms for each of them. This is a text analysis piece about how the author planned the stories out. I thought this was a good idea for the books because of how the author wrote each of the books within the series.

“A Series of Unfortunate Events” by Lemony Snicket is really a series of unfortunate events. The three Baudelaire children, the main characters, have a domino-effect life that doesn’t work out too well. Each unfortunate event that happens leads to another, and another, and another, hence the name “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”

The author, Lemony Snicket, uses the same plot for each book except for the last book in the long series, “The End.” In the first book, the ‘bad guy’ is introduced. His name is Count Olaf, and is willing to do anything to gain the money that the children’s parents left behind when they died in a fire, and each time, his plan fails and he escapes. In the next book, he always comes back in some new disguise, attempting yet again to inherit the Baudelaire fortune. I thought that it was interesting how the author set up each book, with a new clue each time. Sometimes, Olaf escapes with the children’s friends or something important to them, and they have to find out how to get those things back without falling into the clutches of Olaf. The author used an interesting method for these books, because once one book ends with Olaf escaping, the reader is on the edge of their seat, looking forward to the moment they can read the next book.

Not only does Lemony Snicket bring the bad guy into each book, he also uses the other important characters in each of the books. For example, in the second book which is called “The Reptile Room,” the author brings an important character in that was from the first book, and who is also in the third. This character is Mr. Poe, and he is a banker in charge of putting the children in a safe home. He appears towards the beginning, end, or both when he puts the children in a new home each book. Mr. Poe has the same personality in each book, too, because he always has a cough and never gets help quick enough.

The books may sound like they’re boring and predictable, but there are a lot of times in the book where something surprising happens. The author writes the books in such a way that it makes the reader want to read more. The author adds new and unpredictable parts to each book at the end to add more suspense so the reader will go to the library or bookstore and get the next one in the series. I haven’t read the whole series yet, but I can predict that the book will have many more surprises and many more things revealed. The last book is called “The End” and is about three times longer than the other 12 books, so more of the mysteries throughout the series will be solved in the last one.

As you can see, the author of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” had a good plan to get more readers. He set up the series in a way that makes the readers want to read more, but it also has the readers guessing what will happen next. A mystery comes up in the children’s lives that is most likely going to be solved in the next book or the book after that, so it makes the reader read more and more eventually finishing the whole series, knowing everything.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

Author's Note: I chose: "Pick out at least three phrases/quotes which you think are especially important to the story (what you might mark on a printed text.) Briefly describe why you chose each."

I think that there are a few phrases or quotes from the story that were important for the understanding of the story:

1.) "...he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep."

This is an important thing because it shows that he doesn't like sleeping at night, he likes sleeping during the day and staying awake during the night.

2.) ""We are of two different kinds," the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. "It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the cafe.""

This is also important to the story because it shows that both of the waiters have different views on why the man is there, and the older one has much more wise things to say than the younger waiter.

3.) ""No, it is not," agreed the waiter with a wife. He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry."

The younger waiter doesn't realize that he is being rude, and he is also not learning anything from what the older waiter says. He isn't figuring things out for himself, either.

The Ransom of Red Chief

Author's Note: This is my response to my quote from the short story "Ransom of Red Chief" by O. Henry. I have the quote stated first, then the reason why I think it's the most interesting part of the story.


"Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home?"
"Aw, what for?" says he. "I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?"
"Not right away," says I. "We'll stay here in the cave a while."
"All right!" says he. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life."

I think that this is the most interesting part of the story because the kid reveals that he doesn't want to go home. This is proof that the kid's parents don't let him have fun, so when he is taken by Bill and the other man who took the kid, he doesn't want to return to his parents. He says in the story that he doesn't have any fun at home, he hates going to school, and he likes to camp out. He likes being in the cave and 'playing' with the kidnappers because he didn't have to go home or go to school, and he was outdoors. The quote from the story basically sums up why the kid isn't fighting them or begging them to go home to his parents. The parents obviously don't want the kid back, so when the two men ask for two-thousand dollars in ransom, the parents ask money from them to take the annoying pesk of a kid off their hands. They asked for two-thousand dollars, and ended up paying two-hundred and fifty dollars to have the kid taken away from them.

The Book vs. The Movie

Author’s Note: I wrote this piece because I noticed that a lot of books have a movie based on the book a few years after. You are probably dreading the fact that I am going to do a compare and contrast piece between “The Hunger Games” books and movies, but I can assure you that I am not going to relate anything in this piece (besides this author’s note) to “The Hunger Games.” This is more of a piece about the differences and similarities that I and other people seem to notice between different books and the movies that go along with them.

When a book becomes really popular, movie producers make a movie based off of the book. Sometimes, the movie is made soon after the book is published, but other times, the movie is made years after. There are, of course, a lot of books out there that have been published and do not have a movie based off of it, but there are a lot of books that have been. More and more books are being written, and more and more movies have been made recently.

A lot of movies are based on a book. But not all of the movies include all of the details that are mentioned in the book are in the movie. Most of the time, the character has a lot of thoughts going on in their head. Normally, these “thoughts” are just things that are going on in the story, but the character is processing everything and thinking about what’s happening. But in the movie, you have to watch and see what happens, instead of “hearing” the characters thoughts.

Most of those thoughts are either what’s going on then or in the past. Sometimes, in a book, the chapters switch back and forth between then and now, otherwise known as the past and the present. In the movie for that book, it’s the same. The character appears to have a flashback of some sort, and it is normally obvious when that’s happening because the edges of the screen are blurry, or in slow motion. Sometimes, the voices of the people in the memory are really quiet, loud, or echoey. That’s a similarity that can occur between the same book and movie.

That’s a thing that’s similar with the book and the movie, but a lot of the time, most people imagine a book differently than the movie that comes out. Let’s say in the book, someone imagines a house that’s painted yellow, but in the movie, it’s painted blue. Seeing the movie and reading the book can give you different images of the story. Not all movies match the book exactly, and some details are different in the movie. Sometimes, characters have blonde hair in the book, but in the movie, they’re a brunette. That can mess up the image of the story that you had in the first place. There are plenty of older books that came out years ago that now have a movie.

Sometimes, people don’t even read the book (that normally comes out before the movie), and then they just go to see the movie. Other times, they might only read the book and not go see the movie. For example, the book “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel was published in 2001, and the movie just came out recently. Once the movie came out and everyone went to see it, they read the book because it was really popular. As you can see, there are a lot of differences and similarities between a book and the movie.

The Railway Train

Author’s Note: I decided to use the poem “The Railway Train” by Emily Dickinson because it used a lot of descriptive language. I liked how the author incorporated figurative language in the poem.

The poem “The Railway Train” by Emily Dickinson is great poem to look at if you’re looking for figurative language. The author used figurative language correctly. She described how the train moved as well as where it went, also adding some figurative language to describe the scene.

Emily Dickinson used a lot of personification to describe the train. When the author is talking about how the train “lap up the miles and lick the valleys up,” She is describing how fast the train is really going. It can put an image in the reader’s mind of the train speeding through the mountains and valleys. The tone of the poem would probably be a sort of childlike wonder and enthusiasm; imagining this train in the scenes that the author describes puts a good image of it in the reader’s head.

The author also uses similes. It describes how the train was docile and omnipotent when it advanced to its final stop. It describes how the train is all-powerful and obedient or submissive. The use of words like those affect the tone in a way that makes it sound almost magical.

The overall impact of the figurative language has on the meaning of the piece and of the train is that it sets the mood. It makes you wonder more about this train like where it’s going or what it looks like. The tone is almost mysterious, almost as if the author wants you to wonder those questions. As a reader, I thought of those questions when I was reading the piece.

Overall, I think that Emily Dickinson did a great job of using figurative language to describe what she wanted to put in the reader’s heads. If you show this to another person and ask what they thought of the piece, they would probably be thinking the same questions that other readers thought of while reading this poem. 

Homework: Good or Bad?

Author's Note: When I ask people, "Do you think that homework is beneficial to your learning?" their automatic reply is "No!" But have you ever actually thought it through? The cons about homework are widely unknown, while the pros, well, nobody ever thinks about the pros. That's why I'm writing this essay. I'm not with homework, or against it, and I'm not here to list the pros and cons about it. But ask yourself this question, and think it through thoroughly: Is homework really necessary?

There is a huge difference between working at home, and homework. Homework is a piece of paper with questions on it, assigned to the student by the teacher. This may help students, but it is really motivating them? Working at home is work that students do without being reminded by parents and other adults. If students realize how different their learning experience was without homework, they would actually do extra work without constantly being reminded by a teacher. Outside of class, students, especially as they get older, want to have a social life. They are not motivated enough to do their homework, so they resort to watching TV or being with friends or playing video games. If doing extra work outside of class was more interesting, I'm sure that more students would be more motivated. Not every student in each school has the right motivation at home. Some students may have family problems at home, they have to deal with that and a high amount of homework while the teachers have no idea what's happening. Some students are bullied. It's hard for kids to keep up with homework and any other huge problems they may have. 

Students are so against homework, that they don't even think about their answer when someone asks them if homework is helpful. Most people just laugh and say no. But if it was more fun, would their answer be more thought out? In some schools, the teachers can't assign their own homework. They have to assign the homework that goes with the curriculum. But if teachers could make their own assignments, maybe only for the kids that need the extra help, would students feel differently about homework? A lot of students have after school activities that they go to. Some have clubs, or sport events, or things for church, or things like Student Council going on. Students can't finish their homework if they have drama club, an orthodontist appointment, then two volleyball practices, then dinner. Even the thought of having homework during these activities makes life stressful for everyone. Some students get home most of the days of the week at 8:00-9:30. They will be tired, and they will be stressed because they have an essay due the next day.

I did a survey about this topic. I asked a bunch of my peers what they thought about it. All of them have different opinions, and it's interesting to see what they said. One said that they kind of liked homework because it helped review the things that they learned during school, but they never had time to do it because of all of the after-school events they had going on. Being a student, I know that as you get older, the work in school is harder. I understand that it's hard to finish things that you don't have the time to do. One person said that they have seen students who only have so long to finish an assignment, but don't have time to do it so they get in trouble for it. Is it necessary to punish students who just don't have the time? So why do teachers set the expectations so high? So you can actually learn. If you didn't have an essay to write, or a math worksheet to finish, or a presentation on the Revolutionary War to do outside of class, you wouldn't learn much. So if students wanted to learn, but they didn't have time to do homework on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays because of an after school activity, why should they be pressured to do so? One of my peers told me that they feel like they are rushed after school, and they don't like to be rushed about everything after school every day.

Kids also have trouble keeping a good attitude in school because of homework. The more pointless, long, time-consuming assignments they get, the less excited they are to learn. Most kids used to love going to school when all they had to do was color in sheets of paper and cut little pieces of paper out and glue them to something. Students would like school much better if assignments were less boring. It is hard, once you get older, to make the assignments less boring because it's so much more complicated than before. But the reason that you have to do it is because you have to do good in your future, and that's a thing that a lot of students overlook.

When people say that they don't like homework, it's because they feel pressured to do things, and more and more homework keeps piling up on them, and it isn't good for people when they're so stressed out. Their learning won't be as good because they don't have a good attitude because of the homework assignments. A lot of my peers, more than I expected, didn't really mind doing the homework, but they just didn't have enough time to do it. It wasn't hard, it was just time-consuming. So is homework really beneficial to a student's learning? Maybe not homework. If a student doesn't understand something, or is struggling to keep up with the pace of learning, they should be able to do work by themselves, not being pressured to finish an assignment at a certain date: That's the difference between homework and working at home.

Fire

Author's Note: I did my personal metaphor piece that is describing how I am like a fire.


I am a raging fire.

It takes the smallest spark to start me
And I'm hard to control once I'm going.
You might want to give me space when I'm burning
Because I leave a path of destruction.
Sometimes I cannot be contained,
Especially when the spark that started me
Is more dangerous than an earthquake.
It's hard to cool me down,
And it might take a lot to put me out,
But once I've stopped consuming everything in my way,
And the wild spark is gone,
I am completely harmless.
Except for the burning tang of smoke I leave behind.

Change in the View

Author’s Note: I am doing my point of view piece about if the whole book was from a different character’s point of view.


13 year-old Nathaniel is a boy who is an indentured servant working on a tobacco plantation in Virginia, living in the year 1775. He has a friend on that plantation named Moses. However, soon after, he is sold to a kind, elderly schoolmaster named Basil. Nathaniel is separated from Moses, and finds out that the people where Moses is don’t like the idea of liberty in a country that depends on slaves and indentured servants. Moses’s only chance of liberty is to run away and join the British Royal Ethiopian, a regiment of escaped Virginian slaves. I am going to describe how the book would be different if it was told from Moses’s point of view.

Moses was separated from Nathaniel, and the things that Moses saw weren’t mentioned often because they were two different stories taking place at the same time. If it was Moses’s point of view, there wouldn’t be much information about the war going on. The reader would be much more confused, just as Moses would’ve been. This is because Moses’s top thing on his priority list was to escape to gain his liberty. The reader would be curious about Nathaniel, because it was Nathaniel’s job to help Moses without being caught by Basil because he was known to be trustworthy.

Not only does the book mention how Nathaniel is friends with Moses, but the part where they are separated would be much different from Moses’s point of view. He would’ve had the same emotions, but he would have to form his plan to escape, and Nathaniel didn’t know exactly what his plan was. He just had to help Moses because they were friends, and they didn’t want to not be friends anymore just because they were separated. The reader would’ve felt much different about the war taking place if it was from Moses’s point of view, because Moses would’ve played a different role if he was free in the first place.

As you can see, if the point of view in a book like this changed, the reader would’ve felt much differently about the situation going on. They would’ve also felt different because the thoughts that go through the characters’ heads would convince the reader to think different things about the situations in the book. The point of view in a book or story or any type of literature is very important.

What am I?

Author’s Note: I am doing my creative piece from the point of view of an inanimate object. I can’t say what it is yet, because when people read the actual story, I want them to guess what it is. If you’re really stuck, I’ll tell at the end of the piece.


Why me? Are my only thoughts for most of my existence. Why would anyone want to be me? I can never see what is going on because I’m always on the ground. I can’t move, I can’t talk, and I don’t have any features that are anywhere near humans. I’m always cold, unless it’s a hot day or if I’m washed with warm water. But the worst thing about being me is: lunchtime. Lunchtime at this school is the worst time of the day. There are children everywhere, stepping on me, not caring what I think. But how would they know what I feel? They’ve never been me before, and they never will. The kids are dropping crumbs and bits of disgusting lunch food on me. They never pick any of the stuff up. They spill juice and milk all over me, never bothering to clean it up. They slide their tables around when they get up, and leave scuff and scratch marks all over me. The food is kicked around, only to hit me on the other side of the large eating area. All I can hear are the pounding noises of kids feet stomping on me, and the little tinks and thumps and crashes of things landing on me. The little kids who spill juice all over me don’t clean it up, and other kids come along and slip, falling on me, hurting me. I hate this job. From the moment I was installed in this school, I knew that I would hate it. But I can’t help it. After all, I am a cafeteria floor.

Viewing the Story

Author’s Note: I chose to do this book because I thought that it would be interesting to see what it would be like from another person’s point of view.


I am doing my point of view piece on the book Give Me Liberty by Laura Elliott. This piece will be about the point of view in the book, and what would be different if the narrator changed.

The person who is telling the story in this book is the narrator telling Nathaniel’s story. Nathaniel  is a 13 year-old boy who doesn’t know much of what is going on during the American Revolution, but finds out more information about it as the book goes on. The whole book is an unknown narrator telling what does; describing Nathaniel’s life. If the main character walked to the door trying to figure out what the people in the other room were saying, it would be described like this in the book: “Nathaniel inched toward the door attempting to listen to find out what they were talking about.” The book never specifically mentions who the narrator really is.

If the story was told by someone other than the narrator, it would be much different. For instance, if it was told from Nathaniel’s point of view, then the book wouldn’t describe so much information that Nathaniel didn’t know at the time. There aren’t very many scenes where the main character isn’t there, because it seems like the narrator is only telling what is going on with Nathaniel. There is a lot of extra information of the American Revolution in the book, but if the book was in Nathaniel’s point of view, there wouldn’t be so many facts and information about the things that were going on away from where the main character was.

In conclusion, a book or story can be changed a lot when the point of view is changed. Sometimes, even in song lyrics, poetry, and many other types of literature,  there are different points of view. In this case, the point of view would definitely change the whole story if it was changed.

Alike Yet Different

Author’s Note: This is my compare and contrast essay. I used the characters for my compare and contrast piece, but an essay would have more information about how these  characters are alike: Reynie from the book The Mysterious Benedict Society and Violet from Paperquake.

Sometimes it’s easy to find a character from one book that’s like or not alike from a character in a different book.  Characters should be classified as alike if they act the same way. So if one character is brave and confident and another character is timid and shy, they wouldn’t be alike. Sometimes characters grow during books in the same way. They start out as mean, and end up becoming nice, then they also would be alike. I found that Reynie from The Mysterious Benedict Society and Violet from Paperquake were similar yet opposite in many different ways.

Reynie Muldoon started out as an orphan, often picked on by the people he saw every day: the other kids at the orphanage. Violet Jackstone started out being in a family of with sisters who always picked on her because she was born with a heart defect. She was also bullied by people at school. Reynie saw an ad in the paper for “special” and “talented” children to take a test. At the time, Reynie didn’t know what was coming. Violet started finding these notes addressed to her nickname, and she didn’t expect that the clues would lead to something so big. What happened to both of them was something that they didn’t know would happen.

As I mentioned before, they didn’t know that they would end up in a huge adventure to solve a mystery, so this is why they didn’t feel like they were brave. Both characters didn’t feel like they were brave when their adventures started. They didn’t have confidence that they could do something for themselves, and they didn’t think that anyone liked them because they didn’t get the support that made them more confident. Violet’s family and peers didn’t think that she was capable of doing anything for herself. Peers, sisters, and even parents thought that she was just a weak little girl. Reynie was bullied into thinking that nobody wanted to be his friend, or his family. As their stories went on, they figured out that with the help of the right people, they were actually brave, but it just took time to figure it out for themselves.

One of the few things that are different between Reynie and Violet is that Violet had a whole family: Parents and siblings. She wasn’t adopted like Reynie. He lived in an orphanage because he didn’t have a family. There was a woman who worked at the orphanage: Her name was Ms. Perumal and she was the closest thing to a mom that Reynie had. Ms. Perumal was the only one who saw potential in Reynie, because she had taught him everything that he needed to know and more. Violet had a family, but they didn’t support her. Reynie didn’t have a family at all, but someone that he was close to taught him to believe that he was smart enough to do whatever he wanted to when he got older.

As you can see, characters in books can be alike yet different in many ways. They were alike in ways that also could also make them different from each other. Both of them weren’t sure about who they really were, but as their stories continued, they figured out that they were brave after all.

Sacrifices that People Make

Author's Note: I thought it would be interesting to do the same book as I did for the prediction essay.

A lot of parents don’t want any of their kid suffering from unhappiness. They want their children to have a great childhood without any huge problems. Everyone knows that people always face problems, but not everyone has to deal with things like Leukemia. Leukemia takes many lives of children. Having a disease like Leukemia as a child doesn’t give you a chance to stop and enjoy childhood. If you were the person responsible for a child with Leukemia, what would you do to help them?

The main theme in the book My Sister’s Keeper is sacrifice. Sacrificing one child for the safety of another. Imagine having a kid, and, at the age of two, she is diagnosed with leukemia. Would you have made the same decision as the parents in the book? It’s a huge sacrifice to have another kid to help cure the other, like the parents did. One kid is a huge deal. Children require a lot of care: They need to be sheltered, clothed, fed, and cared for by a loving parent. Put yourself in the place of the parents in the book. What would you do about it? Do anything for a cure, or do nothing and feel bad for yourself? 

Doing something about your child’s cancer is one thing. Coping with how long it would take is another. In My Sister’s Keeper, the parents have a kid that was genetically altered to be Kate’s exact donor match. Waiting for the next child to be born to have surgery on her right when she turns one month old was horrible for the parents. They were watching their little girl slowly die, waiting for the cure to come. Sacrificing the safety of this new child was something that the parents had to do. They had to transplant bone marrow from the new girl, Anna, to Kate. It was helping Kate with her illness to have transplants right away. However, the whole surgery took place when Anna was only one month old. They had to have surgery performed on a very small baby so their other child could live. That is what we would call a sacrifice.

Some people, like Anna, would think that this was wrong. Having a kid only to have her be a harvest crop for another girl. As the girls get older, Anna becomes more and more agitated with being in the hospital almost as much as Kate. Now put yourself in Anna’s position: Wanting to play hockey, wanting to have friends, wanting to live freely only to be put in a hospital as much as the girl with leukemia. What would you feel? Pride? Would you feel like a hero for helping your little sister live? Or would you only wish that you could live a normal life and have someone else be a donor?

Not being a donor to your dying sister is a hard choice to make. Either way, there would be someone hurting. The choices that Anna had to make were hard for a girl her age, because most younger teenagers don’t have to make decisions between life and death. 

Reynie and Violet Character Comparison

Author's Note: I am comparing Reynie from The Mysterious Benedict Society to Violet in Paperquake.

Reynie- 

• He does things for himself, because he has a special talent.
• He doesn't have much of a family.
• He doesn't have a role model.
• He makes friends while solving mysteries.

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Violet- 

• She depends on other people to do some things.
• She has a big family, and is one out of three triplets.
• She has someone that she tries to shape herself into.
• She already has friends at the beginning.

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Their similarities- 

• They weren't sure if they were brave or not towards the beginning of their stories.
• Towards the end, they both found out that they can be brave in times of need.
• They were both pulled into something that they didn't think would be so big.
• They both like to solve mysteries.
• They are both really good thinkers, which helps them solve mysteries.
• They don't have a past of solving mysteries.
• They are both picked on for different reasons.