I was searching on my favorite author’s website, and found a link to this awesome writing website for kids! It’s called NaNoWriMo and it gives kids a challenge: write a novel in a month! 
(November) Here’s the link so you can sign up if you want and write a novel! Happy writing!
And don’t forget to enter the FreshTalkingKids writing contest!!! Remember, if you win you get a signed copy of Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld!
In the spirit of Halloween, we watched a “scary” movie at school on Friday. So I was thinking about that this morning, and I started wondering- what exactly makes horror movies and stories so scary? (and so fun!) So, in case you ever want to film your own horror movie, here’s my list of things that are just plain scary. (Note: these are just my theories, not actual facts. They may or may not make sense to you. But I thought I’d share them.)
Happy Halloween to everyone!
Selia opened her eyes. Her room surrounded her, as usual, all greens and golds and yellows. But then she thought that something was off. Selia rose slowly and put on her tunic, then checked the calendar. When she tore off the previous date to reveal the date, she gasped.
“Midsummer’s Eve!”
Selia and Katalia, Selia’s friend and fellow student, were to go to the woods that day to witness the Ceremony of Ghosts, which had been performed for generations upon generations, to call upon and pray to their ancestors. In this most important of rituals, only priestesses and their apprentices were aloud to attend.
“Selia! Breakfast is ready!”
The call kicked Selia out of her reverie, and she sped to a gallop to the kitchen.
“ Don’t gallop inside the house! I can’t count how many times I’ve said that and you still don’t listen!”
“Mother, I was just trying not to miss breakfast!”
“No matter! Your punishment will be to clean out the pigsty.”
“You know I have the Ceremony to go to!”
“Well then, you’d better get cleaning.”
Selia mumbled, “No fair, Katalia never has to clean out her pigsty,” but only so her mother couldn’t hear. Selia knew very well that Katalia couldn’t, because she didn’t have one. When she realized what she had just said, she tried not to giggle.
To avoid further questions, Selia rushed out of the house, making a clopping noise. She quickly mucked the pen and put down fresh hay, replacing the pigs, and then feeding them. She knew she wouldn’t have very much time left for eating, and had taken a cheese sandwich with her. As she galloped to the village center, she noticed the woods and decided to take a detour through there.
The woods were silent as the wolves during a solar eclipse. As Selia galloped through them, she spotted a glitter, and stopped. The glitter turned out to be a stone, and quite a pretty one at that. She turned it over in her hand, wondering. The Priestesses were supposed to have removed all of the stones from the woods that morning, to use for the Ceremony.
She heard a rustle and her torso spun around.
“Katalia! You scared me!” Selia cried accusatively.
“Well, at least I didn’t sneak up on you and say ‘BOO!’”
Selia sighed. She knew this was a hopeless attempt at making Katalia slightly more civil. Then came the sound of hooves, coming from the west.
“Don’t be late! Get to the East, both of you! The Ceremony’s about to start!”
Both of them nearly kicked in surprise. It was the Mistress Thel, head of the village. She had short black hair that was graying slightly, with olive toned skin and a palomino body.
“Oh!” Katalia and Selia both cried in unison.
As they walked through the woods, the sun began creeping westward, and they sped to a gallop to get to the Ceremony on time.
The Ceremony was like a dream. The sun had set, and there were torches all around the clearing, creating an eerie light. Mistress Thell walked slowly toward the center of the clearing with a bag of sage and eucalyptus, to summon all of the non-flesh-eating ghosts in the area, and poured it over the ceremonial fire.
The effect was a column of black smoke, rising up to about Selia’s chest, and then disappearing. The smoke was quickly replaced by a swirling fume that smelled like sea salt. An ear-splitting shriek filled the clearing, and then all went black and utterly silent. It was like a cloth was being pressed against Selia’s eyes and ears, lifted and then, with a small swirl of smoke, the ghosts appeared.
They were like the faint images left in your retina after looking at the sun for too long, only more solid. One of them came up to Selia, and whispered in the echo of a voice,
“You are the one.”
When Selia had regained her bearings, the ghosts had disappeared and the centaurs in the clearing were just recovering.
“Now I know why the priestesses don’t look forward to the Ceremony all that much.” Katalia whispered in her ear. Selia giggled. As the party of ceremony-goers proceeded to the village, yet another centaur galloped into the woods.
“Mistress Keltar is ill!” the messenger gasped.
Selia simply stood there and gaped. Mistress Keltar was her mother, and she had seen her, healthy as, well, a horse.
Soon everyone in the village was infected with the strange sickness, including Mistress Thel. Selia decided to figure out what was doing this, once and for all. It didn’t go quite as well as expected, because everyone who Selia met wanted her to go away, or weren’t really sick. Then, when she took with her the stone she had found on the day of the day of the ceremony, it all changed.
Selia went down the path at a brisk trot. “This should be it,” she mumbled to herself wearily. She knocked on the door.
“Hello? Oh, it’s you. Come in.”
The woman who spoke was lying in a straw bed, with her tail swishing somewhat with anticipation. Selia took off her bag of supplies and put it on the windowsill, so that her stone glimmered in the summer sunlight.
“Could I see that stone? It’s very pretty.”
“Yes, of course. Here,” Selia passed her the stone.
Suddenly the woman twitched. Then a stream of black came flying from where her heart was. The woman was knocked out cold, and Selia went to check her breathing, pulse, and temperature. Amazingly enough, her heart was back to normal, her lungs were clear of fluid, and her forehead was no longer burning with the heat of fever.
Selia gave the stone to many others who were diseased, and the scene repeated itself every time. Selia was then known for the rest of her life and perhaps longer, as the healer who cured the Great Disease.
My parents thought she was a genius. At age 3 she could walk, talk, run, skip, pace, hop, and jump. On her first day of kindergarten she was all smiles. I couldn’t help but smiling when I looked at her. I sighed, I was a little jealous about how excited she was. After the bell rang and ended the school day, I ran to meet her so that we could walk home together. But she didn’t even respond to me when I asked her how school was, she just bit her lip and stared at me, unsure about anything. And so that was when she became her. I wondered why nobody noticed it sooner, but how could they? When we got home mom hugged her so tight. I was so sorry when she found out…and I was so mad at Alexa even though I knew I should be worried, for turning and walking out even when she saw the scared expression on my moms face.
“L-Lexie…”I called after her. I tried not to yell you could hear it in my voice that I was frightened. It just made her walk faster.
We named her Alexa but now she wouldn’t respond to anything but Alex. She was born with long black gorgeous hair and on her seventh birthday, she learned how to put it up with a slim wooden stick. She had carved it herself; it was beautiful, thin and smooth. There was a tiger glaring at you from each side. It was so well carved, every little detail, it looked as if they would break through the wood and run around Alexa like tiny guard dogs. This is the story of how my happy life became miserable.
My parents were going to have a baby, a girl. My only hope for the baby was that she wouldn’t be like Alexa. While mom was resting and my dad was taking care of her, I was busy with the charge of cleaning, working, and making sure Alexa obeyed the law. This new job was not easy to maintain, and I often fell asleep around 7:30. Then I dreamt terrible dreams of Alexa silently walking to me and the tigers would jump out at me from her hair and become real. They would circle me growling and roaring for my death. I would wake up early, wanting to scream through the lips I kept pursed, shut tight and I would get to work, sweeping and washing dishes as I waited, dreading the moment Alexa would wake up.
Alexa woke up like a robot, opening her eyes in swift sync. She always seemed to be on the verge of yelling, screaming, but she kept quiet and to herself. The last time she said something to me was about 3 months ago when she found me snooping in her closet. “Watch your back, girl,” she said “That was strike one. If you ever, ever, get three strikes, I’ll kill you.” So now I’m dead. Mentally. Now I’m just like Alexa. Now I’m dead.
“Yeah? Well do you ever do anything for me? Huh?” She slammed the door shut in her face. And locked it. She was trembling, and tears poured down her face, she felt so weak she couldn’t stand and so she toppled over onto her bed. But that was what you could see. A crying child. Inside, she burned with anger, she boiled with fury and rage and hatred. She tried to swallow her tears, and anger overcame her. She turned around and kicked over her music stand. She stared at it then started crying again and picked it up.
She sat down at her desk. She took three deep breaths and counted to ten. Her grandmother had taught her that, she started bawling harder, her grandmother had died from cancer three months ago. Her mom was a writer and had put a pencil in her hand as soon as she could draw a legible A. Writing had always calmed her down,
‘“Yeah? Well, do you ever do any thing for me? Huh” She slamed the dore shut in her face. And loked it. she was trembling and tears poured down her face she felt so weak she couldn’t stand and so she topled over’
She wrote. She threw the wet paper into the trash. It was so tear-stained that you could barely read her sloppy handwriting. She picked up her phone and called her best friend Eliza. She lived really close, down the block, kitty corner, go three houses down and then cut across the yard into hers. When Eliza picked up, Katya didn’t say anything, she just sobbed into the phone and Eliza was knocking on the Sunstrum’s front door in 93 seconds flat.
Eliza pushed by Katya’s mother and stood in front of Katya’s door “Sunstrum” she said quietly “Katya Sunstrum” she whispered to the door. She said it in rhythm, as if it was a song that had only three words. The door opened and Eliza walked in. She sat on Katya’s bed and picked the piece of paper out of the trash and started reading it out loud. The crying got quieter and quieter. Eliza knew Katya like no one else did. She knew a lot about Katya, more than anyone else did. She knew about her abusive father, her dyslexia, her dead mother, and her goth sister who had threatened her more than once with a knife. She was the Cinderella that had lost her prince.
I just got a new book from one of my favorite authors. When I finished reading it, my dad commented (once again!) on the way I read books. It is kind of complicated but I’ve found it’s the best way for me to fully enjoy a book:
First (after gazing lovingly at it and reading the back cover several times), I read it all the way through. I don’t take my time looking at every single word, because I’m just reading it for the plot. I go all the way to the end, fast, and then…
I flip to my favorite parts, and reread. Now I soak up every little detail, noticing how the author writes, getting a sense of the characters. And when I’ve finished reading all of my favorite parts, I flip to my least favorite parts, and reread those, too.
If I still like the book, I do what I call “backwards reading”. That means flipping to a favorite part of the book, reading from there to the end, and then going back to the beginning and reading until I get to where I started. Reading the book in that out-of-order way helps me to read without being distracted by the plot. I can focus my attention on the author’s writing style instead.
Then I reread the book from start to finish one more time. By now, I know exactly what’s going to happen. I know the characters almost like a member of my family, and I can tell you which characters are at which setting at different times in the book. When I read it for the first time, I felt like a newcomer entering the book’s world. But now, rereading again, I feel like the book is a close friend who I’m seeing. It’s a completely different experience than before.
Finally, I just sit and think about the book. I feel like I journeyed with the characters, experienced the setting, and lived the plot. It’s fun to just let myself think over what was in the book. Sometimes I imagine what would happen if I were in that world, and sometimes I learn from the author’s writing.
My way of reading is kind of complicated (and it takes a while) but it works for me. It helps me really understand books, and feel like I get a lot out of reading them.
This will kind of be a Twilight post. I think that Twilight is awesome. I haven’t read Uglies but it has to be REALLY good to compare with Twilight. In Twilight, Bella moves into Forks and meets Edward. They like each other and there is Alice Cullen, Jasper Hale, Emmett Cullen, Rosalie Hale, Esme and Carlisle. The colored ones are married. There is also Jacob Black a werewolf and his pack/tribe in LAPush, I love that name!!!!!! Enough about the summary. The series contains of four books,
One day this summer, in the library, I found several lists of books picked by teens. At the top of one list was Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer. Another list had Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld. I had read both books, and I found it funny that they both ended up on Teen Picks lists. Why? Well, they are both sort of about beauty, which is something teenagers and pre-teens focus a lot on. (girls especially!) But, while both books have beauty as a theme, they actually send opposite messages.
Twilight takes place in the present-day town of Forks, where the main character, a 17 year old girl named Bella, falls in love with a vampire named Edward. Edward is amazingly gorgeous, and not only that, he is perfect at everything he does. He is the fastest runner, the strongest, and he plays the piano wonderfully. On the other hand, Bella, (who is constantly saying she’s not beautiful, she’s ugly, she’s nothing compared to Edward), is a very weak character who does whatever Edward says. The fact that the pretty character is perfect, and the not pretty character is weak, says that people who look good are better on the inside too.
Uglies is different. It takes place in the future, a completely different world. At age 16, everyone gets an operation that makes their skin smooth, eyes big, and basically makes them into what they call “pretties.” Of course, everyone wants to be a Pretty. But before Tally, the main character, turns pretty, she finds out a horrible secret about the operation. Being pretty not only changes the way you look, it also changes how you think. Pretties are lazy, weak, and whiny, while Uglies, (normal people), are able to think for themselves. This actually sends the message: it doesn’t matter how you look, it’s what you do that makes people like you. It’s like David, one of the characters, says: “What you do, the way you think, makes you beautiful.”
I would say I like both of the books. Twilight is a fun book to read when I want something light and happy. The plot is good, and the writing style fits the tone of the book: a teenage girl’s romantic fantasy. And I like the action-packed plot of Uglies, and the way the author’s writing style makes me really think: what if I lived in this world?
On a fan website, I found a teenage girl who recommended both Uglies and Twilight. She said she liked Twilight because: “Edward is so hot, and Bella is so cute!” She liked Uglies for similar reasons: “Zane (Tally’s boyfriend) is so hot, and Tally is so cute!” Could she be missing the point here?
