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.