Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul By bubblelover

Title: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul
Author: Mark Victor Hansen
Format: Soft cover
Price: $12.05

This book has so many stories. I loved this book so much, it had stories about love, about losing love, and about learning. There was one story were three kids had gone to the store with one of their mothers and they saw a huge box, and took it home when the got home they took it to the back yard and sat in it all day using there imagination. Then when they all had to go home one of them was supposed to cover it in case of rain and forgot. The next day it was soaked from the rain they were sad for a while and then they decide to ask for a new one. It wasn't as great as the old one but there will always be more boxes out there and the'll find one like that someday.

What I liked about this book was that it had lots of different stories about learning and mistakes. I could relate to a lot of the stories because lots of them are about family and stuff. My favorite part was the box in the rain story, but I've already talked about that, so my second favorite part was the one where a boy is at a golf course, and this was when there was a lot of racism. The boy was black and his team was white, and they stuck up for him, and they forfeited because they didn't want to play without him.

I would recommend this book to people who like advice in books.

I rate this book 5 out of 5 chocolate bars.
Appropriateness: It's not inappropriate, except there's some talk of racism and stuff. I suppose there were also mentions of suicide.
Cover Thoughts: They could have put more on it, but it was okay.

Wednesday Wondering: Genre Edition

Is Non-fiction as Popular as Fiction is? WW By: ZombifiedUnicorn (a.k.a the best student evaa)                   

A couple of weeks ago I noticed that a ton of middle schoolers were saying that they “don’t like non-fiction books” because they’re so “boring." And I was kind of appalled. I wandered if they even knew how vast and voluminous (vocab words!) the non-fiction genre is, just like fiction is. So I decided to conduct a survey and not just ask one student, but to ask 20, because 20 students would probably be more reliable than 1. And I needed to find out about a few things. At first I needed to know if each individual liked fiction or non-fiction, and why. If they knew some examples of non-fiction. And if any non-fiction interested them. I surveyed roughly the same amount of 6^th, 7^th and 8^th graders and here were my results.  

           
Fiction or non-fiction?: 15 fiction, 2 non-fiction, and 3 said both.

           
Why do you like that genre?:

• Don’t like the real world, like fake things. – 5
• Boring. – 3
• Too serious [in non-fiction] – 2
• Everything is perfect [in fiction]. – 1
• Lose interest [in non-fiction]. – 1
• Truthful [in non-fiction]. – 1
• [Non-fiction] is helpful to learn. – 2

Examples of non-fiction?:

• Magazines. – 8
• Newspapers. – 5
• Science/math books. – 4
• Biographies. – 3
• Journals. – 2

Does any non-fiction interest you? What kind?:

• Science books. – 1
• Math books. – 1
• Biology books. – 1
• History books. -1
• True stories. – 1

When I saw the results, I wasn’t that surprised. I kind of figured that fiction would be more popular than non-fiction because the students were almost telling me this BEFORE I did the survey… and the reasoning behind their decision was ‘normal’ in a sense. But when I saw how many examples of non-fiction people said, I was blown away (...almost). Everybody knew a lot of works of non-fiction and they still didn’t like it. I thought that if, and when they knew what was in the non-fiction genre they would like it. But evidently that wasn’t the case. So, my conclusion is that they are all aliens… (Just kidding)

Just Getting Started, a review by BiebersBelieber

Title: Just Getting Started
by: BiebersBelieber
Format: Hardcover
Author: Justin Bieber himself
Length/number of pages: 225
Price: 21.99

Short Summary: Justin tells about how he gave up everything for his life now, and he tells stories that happen while he's on tour. In some parts of the book he tells about what pranks he has recently done. He is telling about his journey and how his world got so big so fast. He knows he's got a great career right now, but he's Just Getting Started. Also with sneak peeks of his recent album Believe.

Strengths/Weaknesses/Favorite Parts: my favorite part in this book was when he was telling about his recnt prank on his guitarist Dan Kantar.

Rating (out of five chocolate bars): I give this book a 5 out of 5 for sure!!
Appropriate for everyone.
Cover Thoughts: I love it because I think it's a good picture of him.

The Art of War, a review by Benjy

Title: The Art Of War

Author: Sun Tzu, Also with editing by Dallas Galvin, and translated by Lionel GilesFormat: Paper back 

Price: $7.95                 

Plot summary: Because of how it is written, the book has no plot.  It is essentially a guide on how to wage war. The book has also been compared to The Book Of Life, as it is describing how to combat any opponent of any kind. This book is written in a way that it seems to apply to any type of conflict. The book is split up into sections based on the type of actions that need to b preformed as to win the succeed.

Theme: The theme is essentially you need to deceive the enemy.

I rate it 4 out of 5 chocolate bars.

        

The cover of the book that I have is a a army of soldiers, It looks like a very old painting. I would like it to have a cooler cover.

This book has no inappropriate content, it has slight references to killing, but that's it. 

Tuesdays with Morrie, a review by Solveig

Title: Tuesdays with Morrie
Author:  Mitch Albom
Format: Hardcover
Price:  $15.59

Basically, Tuesdays with Morrie is about a man named Mitch who rediscovers his old college professor, Morrie Schwartz, when Morrie is diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, and is interviewed by Ted Koppel.

The story is about Morrie holding one last class, with one student.  They meet every Tuesday because they are "Tuesday People."  Mitch brings in a list of topics he wants to discuss, such as family, life, death, etc., as Morrie slowly dies. 

The two main characters are Mitch and Morrie, and Mitch is just a rich sports reporter who is trying to get through life.  He grows from a cold businessman to a loving person.  Morrie is a dying old man who is loved by everybody and also loves everybody in return.  Morrie just wants to live the last bit of his life as best he can. 

This book was extremely strong in the "teaching" aspect.  There were a lot of life lessons in there.  I thin its biggest weakness was that whenever Mitch spook, his quotations didn't have quote marks, which really bothered me.  The book was never slow, and there wasn't too much description, which helped the story move along.

The ending of the book had some really good closure, with everything really resolving itself.  I don't know if I would like other books by Mitch Albom, I think the character of Morrie Schwartz really holds it together. 

I would rate Tuesdays with Morrie 4.75 chocolate bars out of 5.

The book's cover was just beige with the author, title, and some quotes on the top in red.  I thought it was classy and simple, like the story.

The book was mostly appropriate--there was a little use of the "a-word."

To Be a Slave, a review by James

Title:  To Be A Slave

Written by: Julius Lester

Paperback, $6.99

Recently I read the book To Be A Slave by Julius Lester. The book is a compilation of testimonies given by former slaves in a series of interviews conducted by the American Anti-Slavery Society supplemented with comments and notes written by the author. It covers the history of slavery from the voyages of the first slave ships to the end of the Civil War. 

The book is a compelling firsthand  account of what it was like to live as a slave in America. Lester covers the topics of transportation to the New World, the life of the average slave, slave auctions, slave rebellions and uprisings, and reactions to the Emancipation Proclamation and newfound freedom. To Be A Slave demonstrates the cruelty of slavery and recounts horrifying tales of inhumanity on the part of the slave owners. 

Lester's notes are both enlightening and shocking, and they also clarify some of the slang and sometimes confusing dialect of the interviewees. The book is very cohesive and goes from topic to topic in a sensible way. The author's choice of selections perfectly conveys the information he intended to convey. The book does have some downsides, though. While Lester's notes are informative, they sometime fail to explain certain slang words. The narratives sometimes got very lengthy, and I believe more cutting could have been done on the author's part. Also, I would have appreciated seeing stories of slavery from outside America, despite Lester's saying that the slavery in America was the most barbaric and cruel. 

For these reasons, and also because this style of writing is not my favorite, I give To Be A Slave 3 ½ chocolate bars out of five. I thought the ending of this book with the end of the Civil War, was fitting and a good place to end. I would recommend this book to anyone older than 10 due to mentions of nudity, violence, and profanity. Overall, To Be A Slave was a gripping account of the horrors of slavery in America.

Rating: 3 ½ chocolate bars out of 5

Cover Thoughts- I thought the cover was simple yet fitting.

First Step to Forever, by Justin Bieber, a review by jblover6

Book Title First Step to Forever: the Justin Bieber Autobiography Biography  

Format: hardcover

Author: Justin Bieber himself 

Price 14.95

Short Summary

In this book Justin Bieber talks about his childhood and about how he got famous.  It tells about his favorite times when he was a kid and that he was teased a lot in school. His mother was very poor, so he didn’t have as many toys and games as other kids did. He told about his sad times when he was always doing what he loved, playing on the streets for people and about the time that he brought his mom to Florida with the money that he made from singing to people.

Strengths/Weaknesses/Favorite Parts:

My favorite part about this book was when he told about his first singing competition he went to and he got second place. But I didn’t like when he told about things that I already knew.

  

Rating (out of five chocolate bars) I would rate this book 4.9 it wasn’t perfect even though Justin Bieber is perfectly perfect.

Appropriateness: nothing in this book is bad--it just tells about his life.

Cover Thoughts: the cover is a picture of him and I like it because duh it’s Justin Bieber!

Two Book Reviews by pink muffin kitty

Book reviews by:pink muffin kitty

title: A Child Called It

format:paperback
author: Dave Pelzer

 I like the book  A Child Called It because it has some mean/very sad parts in it that almost made me cry. And because it has some good parts. My favorite part is when at the end the mom is nice to him.  My unfavorite part is when the mom calles him it and she said that it is his name.  And his mom also starved him almost to death. :(


rating:three chocolate bars
appropriatness: I think that it is a vampire for 6th grade and up because it is an really sad book.

Title: Junie b.Jones: Boss of the Lunchroom
Format: paperbackor hardcover

Author: Barbara Parks


I'm doing my second book review on the book Junie B. Jones:Boss of the Lunchroom. I like this book because it has good parts and it has like one bad part in it. The worst part is that Junie B. got in trouble because she was blurting in class. The best part is that in the end Junie B. got out of trouble and she got to be the teacher for the day and she was very happy. I like this book because it is for all ages and a lot of people read these kinds of books, so that's why I did the book review on Junie B. Jones.