During December we have been delighted to hand out a free book to every student in year 7. This was an early Christmas present from the school to encourage reading for pleasure. Students have been able to choose from a range of 17 different books and they get to keep their book forever!
In the new year there will be a inter-form competition between all year 7 classes to see which class can write the most and the best book reviews of their free book.
7DLD with their free books
It has been wonderful to read the brilliant book reviews that have been submitted for the competition. A couple of reviews did make us want to pick up the books that were being reviewed!
Because of this, it has been a very tough decision to choose the winner and runners up. However, without further ado, the winners are:
First Place
whose review actually made us buy the books because we didn’t have them in the library!
Runners up
Jasdeep Singh and Aaminah Sidat
who both created a lovely poster (with more than one book reviewed!) and booklet (that mimicked the book itself!) and you can tell they spent a lot of time on it.
Well done to the winners but also a big well done to everyone who entered. The competition really was tough!
The graveyard book is such a good and scary as well as horrifying
My favourite character was Connor as he was such a scaredy-cat and to be honest I feel like the story ended on a cliff-hanger so I really want the author to make a part 2. The author presents it very well.
By Shubh Naresh (7GRB)
This book review is about the hobbit.
I first stumbled upon The Hobbit on my sister’s shelf and I started to read it and I found it really visualising and making me carry on reading. Also, it brings you on an emotional roller coaster following the story of Bilbo Baggins of Bag End, who has been sucked into an adventure with a wizard and 12 dwarves but other than that this book is 5 stars.
By Gursimran Singh (7LIE)
The Fox and the Ghost King
By Michael Morpurgo (a book author that writes amazing books)
Illustrated by Michael Foreman (also an amazing man)
Hello everyone today I want to tell you about this book. If I say this book is amazing you won’t believe it of course but now I’m going to prove my statement by telling you all about this book. So let’s start with a short summary. There’s a family of foxes that live in a garden shed. There are football fans one afternoon just coming back from a football match they meet the ghost king and things start going wild. My favourite part about this book is when they introduce the ‘ghost king’ because the words they used were amazing and it’s full of adventure. To be honest I have read this book a lot, well at least 8 times, I still don’t find it boring. The bad part is at the end the king dies so I think they could improve this.
Overall rating: 4/5
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
This book is called ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ as many people must know of. I enjoy reading it because it is not boring like other books also this book has amusing pictures. I have read all the books in the series but I liked ‘Dog Days’ the most, not saying the others are bad but there is just something special about ‘Dog Days’.
I recommend this book to people that don’t like long books also to the people who like funny books. By the way, these books are written by Jeff Kinney he is such an amazing author as he has written all these books. And isn’t is just amazing that he came up with the diary idea. People say that only kids are allowed to read these books but I think everyone can read these amazing books. If you don’t like reading you can watch the official movie. My primary teacher said these books won’t teach you new words but I still like these books.
Overall rating: 5/5
Gangsta Granny
By David Walliams (also a brilliant author who has written a lot of books)
Gangsta Granny is a very amazing books about a boy who has to go to his granny’s house every Friday afternoon when his parents have to go out. He thinks his granny is boring and always eats cabbages but one day he catches her stealing from a jeweller’s shop. Things begin to change… That was a sort of summary of the book. My favourite part of the book is when the boy makes jokes of his granny and when she gets caught it’s so funny. Also this book is full of adventure. If you are a person who likes funny books you will love this. One part that made me upset is when granny dies by the police and her jewellery was donated to the charity. They should improve but that’s alright. Long story short this book is amazing!
Overall rating: 5/5
Dog Man Series of books
Hello everyone these books are one of the most popular books all over the world many people I see read these books. They pop out they are very unique not just because it pops out there’s more valid reasons. These adventure book with different stories by the way are comics. I want to tell you that in my primary school I also read it a lot but my teacher is like ‘don’t read it because it won’t teach you anything’. I agreed but didn’t stop reading them. I read them day and night I read it because it was adventure it pops out different words, different story-line, different place. It’s good for children. There are many different characters playing different roles. I would want to tell you my favourite part but I can’t because of the book’s quantity. I’ll tell you what I find unique in the book because it has to be the fip-o-rama. Those things are awesome because I’ve never seen them in any other book. If you ever went to the library this book will be the right one because you will never get bored also if you like funny books this is the best.
Overall rating: 5/5
By Jasdeep Singh (7DLD)
Book Review on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
A Teaching
‘A Christmas Carol’ is about an old man named Scrooge who is presented as an emotionally closed, penny-pinching, stingy businessman, who is cold-hearted and insensitive. He doesn’t like to interact with his family and those who surround him. His dead business partner, Jacob Marley, comes to warn him that three ghosts will come to visit him. The ghost try to teach him a lesson. I think the main reason why Dickens wrote this book and displayed Scrooge like this is because he wanted to make a change towards those less fortunate. He wants to get a point across to say that we should actually focus more on relationships between our close ones because making the wrong choices in life won’t have a good outcome and those close to you are the ones who actually bring you happiness, not money. The response of people’s attitudes on higher levels towards poverty can mean that Dickens can show an example of a punishment/punishments that you’ll get out of these actions, even the tiniest ones can have a great impact.
Meaning
In ‘A Christmas Carol’, I believe that this has made a big impact on a great number of people’s lives about regret. Charles Dickens, as the author of the book, simply tells us to think about our choices before we make them. To think about the other side of us, one we can’t see, people close to us and how they will feel. I feel this book provides you with suspense as you actually wonder whether Scrooge will change his behavior and feelings towards everyone. There are many scenarios in life where we go through regret from the choices we make but I think the point is to prevent us from making the same mistakes over and over again. Malthus is basically portrayed as Scrooge in a sense, he didn’t like how people were having children because it would increase the population, like in the novella it has the same saying where Scrooge says “surplus population” because there isn’t enough to go around but the rich people are actually just selfish. ‘A Christmas Carol’ is an allegory which is there to represent one clear meaning. Scrooge displays all values in opposition of the idea of Christmas. The Ghost of Christmas Past portrays memory; The Ghost of Christmas Present represents generosity, empathy and the Christmas spirit; and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come represents the terror of death and moral reckoning. The Cratchits represent the poor.
Views
I personally love this novella because of the meaning in the background story. I like how Dickens feels confident to spread his own point of view which back in the days wasn’t the majority of people’s belief. I’m really proud of people who have that confidence to stand up to people and show that they can make a difference. In the world, we have people who like to attack others because their beliefs aren’t the same as theirs or they don’t like how they think but knowing we have people who fights for others rights feels really assuring and it feels good to know that there is someone that stands by you and acknowledges you. The world can be cruel at times but everything bad ends at some moment in life. I think this teaches a beautiful lesson to people, sometimes we can’t have everything we want, we can’t be selfish and have this and that, we have to make sure others are happy as well, to make sure that they aren’t suffering and think that they are alone, to make sure they get the help they need, to think before acting and making choices as it can impact one’s life. Whatever we have is enough and we should appreciate it.
Background Story
In 1798, a man named Thomas Robert Malthus, who was an 18th century English cleric, scholar and influential economist, came up with a theory that states that food production will not be able to keep up with growth in human population, resulting in disease, famine, war and calamity. He argued that people were better off in life having families later in life and not have lots of children to stop the population from getting too large. Dickens believed that Malthus was in the wrong and there was plenty of food to go around but if only if the rich were generous, and that it was unfair for the less fortunate people as they would have to suffer because the rich were too selfish to share the tiniest amount of their wealth. Some people even thought that helping the poor would just make poverty even worse. So in 1834, a new Poor Law was introduced to reduce the financial assistance available to the poor. It ruled that all unemployed people would have to enter a workhouse in order to receive food and protection. Bu5 the negative side of this would be the way that they were treated as inhabitants, had to work hard and families would be separated quite often. People would live in terrors being forced to enter a workhouse, where the conditions were made deliberately unpleasant to discourage the poor from relying on society to help them. In the novella, ‘A Christmas Carol’, Dickens attacks what he saw as an unsympathetic point of view towards the poor, Scrooge tells the charity collectors that he can’t afford to “make idle people merry”, and he also mentions that he supports the Poor Law of people working in workhouses and believes that people should just go to prison. Scrooge conveys pity for Tiny Tim ( Bob Cratchit’s son, Scrooge’s clerk’s son) and Ignorance and Want, the spirit mentions Scrooge’s cruel comments from stave one about “surplus population” and sending the poor to workhouses and prisons and Scrooge then realises that his beliefs about the poor were wrong and Dickens wants everyone to learn a lesson just like him.
I believe that this should be recommended to teenagers and older readers and I would give it a 5/5. This made me realize how important it is help others and to stop wasting my life on things that aren’t necessary but focusing on the things that make me happy.
By Preet Basra
The author has written it from the point of view of a 9-year-old, the way he sees the world. Infact the author -John Boyne has gone into great details of elaborating and mentioning each thing from a 9-year old’s perspective. Even the chapter titles makes one believe a 9-year-old has has written them. The narrative is simple and it makes one fall in love with Bruno. The author has brilliantly used a child’s imagination in depicting his whereabouts, people’s demeanour and their character.
Before starting this book though, I did read a few reviews, which said, ‘it is sad’ and hence all throughout, my imagination was set on Bruno getting hurt. Maybe because I am a woman or the brilliance in the author’s words, I so wanted to protect Bruno all along. And here is the truth – The boy in striped pyjamas is based on the Holocaust. Yes, that in itself sounds deadly and scary. But what took my heart was the narration. the author engrosses you from starting to the end into the life of Bruno. Infact for people who love books which set you free to imagine while laying the plot, this is a treasure. I loved it, I could almost see Bruno walking around with his tiny feet and little shoes getting dirty in mud by all the walking and the ‘young man’ sitting and cleaning his shoes at the end of the day.
By Payal Jentilal (9HAG)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules is a fiction book written by Jeff Kinney and he has written a lot of other Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and they are all a pleasure to read.
This book is about a boy called Greg (Gregory) who talks about all the ups and downs in his life and it talks about what Greg does. In this book Greg’s older brother Rodrick always annoys him and he is very lazy which means Greg has to do all the hard work. Greg’s younger brother, Manny, is the one who always tells of Greg or Rodrick to their mum.
In the beginning the author describes what the characters are like and what they do:
Rodrick-is in a band. Greg-hates school.
This book has a new story of Greg’s life in every few pages which keeps the reader engaged in the book and keeps them interested.
My favourite character is Greg because he has a good sense of humour and is very relatable. My favourite part was when Greg let his younger brother, Manny, eat all his candy so he wouldn’t tell of Greg for watching horror movies but he still tells of him even though he got all the candy.
If you like a good and funny book you would love this. I would rate this book a 5/5.
By Ayesha Muhammad (8MAM)
This is a book is very inspiring and different. Many books have a happy ending but this one is very different it is based on a young girl named Opal attending a very posh school. One day she finds her self from a school to a factory. Yes she is forced to work. She has no other choice as they have no source of income. Opal’s life takes a real turn. There was those days when she was a happy girl with everything she wanted and now her father (the closest member of the family to her) was in prison after being caught buying personal expenses with a business card. Opal does not want to make her self believe her father is a bad person but life made her. Opal was bullied at work (she worked at a candy factory). To prevent this she was promoted to the designer section there they designed silk patterns for classic candy boxes…..
Over all this book has taught me a lot about how life is not always fair and how sometimes you have to accept the fact that you’re unhappy and sad and don’t have money and have lost loved ones but you just have to move on. I really recommend this book to really any one interested in a book they can almost relate to that they can compare their life to Opal’s and then realise that how much worse her life is than theirs.
I recommend this book to any one who wants to read about a young girl about their age who never gave up. She tried till the end and never forgot her loved ones.
Over all I really enjoyed this book and I have read it many times
By Harsimran Kaur (7JJV)
This book is a great book. It is about a boy whose name is James who lived with his snooty aunties aunt Sponge and aunt Spicker because his parents weren’t in the world anymore, where as his parents were going shopping and were caught by a big rhinoceros.
One day James met a man in his backyard, with a dark-green suit on that man gave him some seeds, and so James planted them. On the next day he came out with his aunts (the snooty aunts) and saw the big peach it kept on growing and growing they were all surprised. When it stopped his aunts decided that they were going to keep a party, and so they did but, poor James was led inside and was not aloud to come out and enjoy.
And that night James was to clean all the mess that the visitors made and then he heard something, it was the peach he went by the orange juicy peach, and found a hole he went inside it and through the hall way he ate the peach walls and met some creatures. First he met the grass hopper who introduced everyone (he was the wise one) and he said ‘we have been waiting for you it has been days’. The other animals were miss Spider, the glow worm, the earth worm, the centipede and the lady bug, they were the size of an dog.
The next night James slept there miss spider made a bed hanging from the ceiling with her cobweb for everyone. One day the aunties were inside and the grass hopper came out to the stem and broke it, miss sponge ran out and got so angry, the peach started rolling down and ended in the middle of the sea. After days James decided to tie seagulls to ropes and use them as balloons, miss spider to excited to go back, after that the seagulls lifted the peach and set off they came in a big city and landed in a pointed tower and this is how they were famous.
By Shupali Shantilal (7MAP)
