This Is Just to Say

I'll be the first to admit I was really skeptical about reading a poetry book. So I picked This Is Just to Say because it was really short and I thought I would just be able to read it and be done. But I actually ended up kind of liking it. It's split into two parts, the first is poems of apologies to people, and the second is the responses to these apologies. The poems were written by the kids of Mrs. Merz's class in a school in New York. I liked the poems because they were all so different. There's one about dodge ball, but then there is also one about how hard it is for a boy to live up to his mother's expectations. There was also a poem to an unknown boy from a girl named Raneesha, and the response was from one of Raneesha's friends and it said how awesome she was and I thought that was really cute. My favorite poem and response was The Black Spot. The Black Spot is by a girl named Alyssa to her sister Carrie, and she is just saying sorry for stabbing her sister with a pencil. The lead left a little black scar in her palm. I liked it because of Carrie's response, it says, "Roses are red, violets are blue, I am still really pissed off at you."

The Mediator Series

I just finished the rest of the Mediator series books. They were so good! I read them really fast because once I started reading them I just didn't want to stop. The third, and fourth books were a little bit slower but the last two were really really good. The sixth, and last, book was my favorite. It really tied everything up nicely. And the ending was really unexpected, but it was the perfect end to the series. I really liked to read about a girl my age because I felt like I could relate to a lot of the stuff she's talking about, and I can understand the mistakes she makes because I've made some of them myself. It's also cool to see how much Suze grows up in the series. She starts out a total tomboy, she likes to fight and she isn't really into boys much, and she doesn't like the mall. But by the end of the series she's a lot more feminine and it seems like she finds herself and is way more comfortable with who she is. I also like that even though there's a lot of action, but it's also a kind-of love story. Anyways, to wrap it all up, girls, read this series!

The Mediator Series

I'm currently reading The Mediator Series by Meg Cabot. I have finished the first one Shadowland, and the second one Ninth Key, and I'm currently reading Reunion. So far I really really like these books! It's nice to get to read something funny after reading these stories about murder in class. The Mediator Series is about a girl named Susannah, "Suze" who can talk to dead people. She can also see and touch them. Her job is to get them to wherever they're supposed to to go next, and to figure out why they haven't already gone there. Then there's also the cute ghost Jesse, who lives in Suze's room. The series is also about Suze growing up and the sometimes not-so-smart things she does, which I can relate to. These books are really fun and fast to read and I like them a lot. I would definitely recommend this series to anyone looking for something light and fun to read.

No One You Know and Pledged

Over spring break I got sick, lucky me I know, but some good did come out of it I guess. I finished the two books I've been reading that were kinda slower reads. The first was a book called No One You Know by Michelle Richmond. I'm just gonna come right out and tell you, it was a snore-fest. The story itself looked really good, it had a good plot, and the librarian at school told me she really liked it. It's about a girl named Ellie whose sister Lila is murdered. The police never figured out who Lila's killer was but it always haunted Ellie. So the story is really about Ellie's search for the killer, but then there is all these weird math facts and stuff that really slow down the reading. Lila was a brilliant mathematician so Ellie looks through Lila's old math journal for clues. That's when the book gets really really boring for a while. Not to mention I didn't really get into the story until over halfway through it. So all in all I wouldn't recommend this book, unless you really like math and you want a lot of math in the story. Or else you'll end up skipping a whole bunch of paragraphs like I did.
The other book I finished was Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities. It was actually a pretty good book, it has four different girls perspectives on sorority life. My only complaint was that the sections about each girl were really short and then it moved on to the next girl, so it took me a while to remember which character was which. Also, there were these essay-like things every once in a while that explained things about sororities and fraternities and those were kind of boring. But if you're thinking about being in a sorority it's a very informational book, if not a bit dramatic. I would recommend this one for sure.

p.s. There was pretty much no worthwhile quotes in either of these books. Bummer...