Book Responses

 3/17/14
I think that the pearl is going to corrupt everyone that knows about it.  Already in chapter 3 the author foreshadows it by talking about Kino holding the pearl in his bloody hand and him closing out all of the light from the pearl.  Also, the pearl has caused a fair amount of violence that I'm sure will grow.  Finally, read ahead a little bit and Kino kills someone.  Probably not for the last time either.

2/11/14
I don't think that students should be payed to pass tests.  While the amount of people passing the test did go up in the school, in the long run I think that it will harm the students.  In 1970 there was a test in Stanford that that showed that students told they would get rewarded for drawing were less likely to draw in their free time later.  This same concept can be applied to the test payments.  While the test scores may go up in the long run the students are going to be less likely to study for college tests.  While I think it would be nice to be payed for passing tests I don't think it is a good idea to implement.

2/06/14
Today I finished reading the fourth and possibly last book in the 13th Reality series.  This book evoked a sad reaction from me because of the sad ending.  It also excited me because near the end something very interesting happened.

2/5/14
The waves of the strange beach crawled across the sand...
The massive centipede grabbed it's torn off leg and threw it like a boomerang.

The main conflict in my story is the combat between the humans and the XCs.  This conflict started when the XCs launched an attack on Sky Spy.  An asteroid controlled by humans that was devoted to spying on the XCs.  After Sky Spy was destroyed the humans sent in another ship to ensure that all of the good technology was destroyed.

After a lot of fighting a couple of humans managed to develop a translator that could translate between human and XC.  From there those humans negotiated with the XCs and came to the equivalent of a peace treaty.

11/05/13
The theme of the poem "Dreams" is: Without dreams life is boring.  This is the theme because it says "For if dreams die. Life is a broken-winged bird"  It also says "For when dreams go. Life is a barren field, frozen with snow."