Saturday, December 18, 2010

You git me that money

I read the first five chapters of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and what stood out to me most was how he felt about his father. At the beginning of the book, he was told that his father was dead, although he doesn't believe it. When he speaks of his past, he says that he was afraid of this father, and that his father was always drunk. Although he has been adopted by the widow, he is still affected by what his father. His father made him give all his money up, walk around in rags, and would never let him go to school.

When Huck sees a footprint with a mark he recognizes, he immediately gets rid of his money. When he runs into his father, in his room, his fears come back to him for a moment and then we realise that he wasn't that shocked to see his father. The footprint belongs to his father. His father is mean, and he insults Huck. He is jealous that his son is getting a better education then him. He doesn't want his son to be better off, and he doesn't like the fact that Huck has better clothes, and most of all he doesn't like that he has money, since the money should be his (so he thinks). His father has no ambition in life, except to drink and get the money to drink wherever he can find it. He takes the only money his son has, a dollar. His son gave up all his money to the judge, so that he wouldn't be in danger, and so that his father wouldn't put himself in anymore danger.

It was rather sad that the new judge didn't see that Hucks father was a bad influence for his son, and that he could actually change a man like Hucks father.

sad.sad. sad.


No picture for this blog.

Child, Do Not Throw This Book About


Book nosing by *Tooshtoosh on deviantART

In the library looking for a book,
In the poetry section did I look.
Up and down and all around.
A good book of interest cound not I find.
A book for the holidays, keep in mind.
Took a book out of the shelf.
Then another book came out and dropped
Then when I opened it I was quite shocked.
On the page was a message:
"Child, do not throw this book about."
That was the book to check out without doubt.


This story is true. The poem I read is the foreword at the beginning of the book where they speak of the importance of children reading poems.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Words... Words!... Words? English. An opinion blog



Our english language is very strange. So to understand it, we have to read it. We have to realise that our pronounciation is diffrent from other languagues. It is a unique language developed from its latin roots and from the phonecians alphabet, who had 22 letters instead of the 26 we now see in our own alphabet. Offcourse its an alphabet shared by many other languages, but its one of the few that you can almost never tell how a word is spelt. English is a beautiful language, with each word producing an image or an idea. It could be ear sights of disgust or ear sights of beauty, but all the same an image arrives in our heads which is developed from our past memories of that word. Grammer in english is not as difficult as in other languages. Offcourse this is just an opinion, but I am sure that grammer in english is much easier than grammer used in languages such as German or French. The only real difficult thing about english is spelling, we don't spell things the way they sound.

I like the idea that I can take one sentence in english and transform it in many different ways to achieve diffrent ideas.
Lets take the sentence:

The girl and her dog.
The sentence is very simple, yet it explains it all. The sentence could be said differently.


The dog and the girl.

This changes the image silightly but we still have the same idea. If we separate the dog, from the girl, we get an entirely diffrent idea.

The dog. The girl.

You can almost paint pictures out of these three sentences, and although they all have the girl and the dog, each painting would show a diffrent meaning to each sentence.

Adding descriptions adds to the magic of language.

The well kept girl and her stylish dog.

The poor girl and her dirty dog.

The sad girl and her comforting dog.

The teenage girl and her unwanted dog.

The little girl and her toy stuffed dog.

Each sentence conveys a different image. Looking at language is so cool! Sometimes you don't need a novel to enjoy words. All you need is a sentence. You can play with the sentence. Try to understand it differently, or change the word order. Words are not just Words to be thrown about, but when they are really thought out, its art, its almost music. Its an way of expressing ideas that can not be seen anywhere else unless, offcourse, you read these words aloud, or if they are meant to be acted out.

Reading is an amazing thing, but at times we put it aside to do other things which appear to be, "more important." I know, I have been putting off actually enjoying what I read for a year and a bit more. Theres a joy you find in reading that you dont find anywhere else.

So this Christmas break I plan to enjoy reading. I don't want to be youtubing all day, or facebooking all day. I want to read. So I checked out a book called 'This Singing World.' Its a book of poems. It looks very good. Plus the book spoke to me. I was looking for a book in the library and I dropped this one accidentally. When I opened the book, the first thing I read was, "Child do not throw this book about" from one of the poems. More on that book later. I also checked out, "The Count of Monte Cristo." I am told its really good, so I wanted to read a classic. I have to check out one more book from the library, but finally for AP literature, I will be reading "The adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

Dear reading.

I come.

Reader.