Dog Song by Gary Paulson

In the book Dog Song it is about a teenage boy that want to know what his "song" is so he has to go on a great journey to find out what the song is. They are in the middle of somewhere snowy like Alaska. He would have to run until he died or he finally found his song. Russel the boy really wanted to go on the adventure to find it since he was not really someone that was appreciated so his older friend Oogruk give Russell his 6 dogs to go on the run. They would sat off into the hundreds of miles of just snow,trees,and rivers.

 He want on his journey sledding through the white snow only to find a young pregnant woman that was kicked out of her village because she had sex without being married so they discovered of it and kicked her out. So he picked her up in the slide and took her back to his village but the problem was that he was out of food so he would have leave her with the camp and take the dogs to go find some kind of food. So he was gone for 6 days with other food then they finally found a polar bear trying to find food so Russell want over to kill it with his dogs and hands.

He had the dogs go up to it as he want the long way to go behind with only some wire. Then he killed it eat the meat just to go back on the 6 days journey back to the camp. When he got back the young woman was going to have the baby but when it came out it was dead so he had to take it to a far spot. She lived only by the food Russell had gotten back with his help she was able to live but sadly the baby died. The book would end on the journey to go back to the village to start a family with the young woman.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights War

Dr. King was a very good man he fought for the biggest American war. He wanted his people to be free from the whites so they did many very strong things to make the whites lose the war they would never win. He was born on January 15, 1929 and died on April 4, 1968 in his 39 years alive he was one of the most inspiring people in the world. He was tired of being bullied from the whites because they just got done being in slavery for almost 300 hundred years. He had just gotten out of college when he saw that Rosa Parks had not gotten out of the seat on the bus for the white man and saw how she got treated. He thought it would be a better to help millions of black then just himself so he joined in the walks and started to speech out at many different places. So he was going to help them get out of trouble with whites so after many years of struggle they would finally get free from the whites to get all of the human born with rights back. Many blacks were killed for no reason but they didn't do it for them only they would do it for each other and their kids they wanted to be free and they would do anything to get it.

Cracker by Cynthia Kadohata

Cracker by Cynthia Kadohata

In Cracker there is a dog that will be in Vietnam because they needed dogs, so the military came to every house they could to find healthy dogs. They took Cracker from a young boy named Willie who would her up for the military. So in the beginning she want to a military training place in Georgia and meant her new owner Rick. At first Cracker hated everyone and thing around her because she wanted to go home but she learned that Rick and the camp was her new home. They didn’t get along at all but then she learned Rick was all she had. They started to be friends when Rick would give her wieners even though they were to make her listen to the instructions he would tell her like smell for booby traps or walk slowly.

They had been training for a few months so they learned to work together as a great team even though they had gotten off to a bad start. They knew that it was going to be time to go to Vietnam really soon. The day they want to Vietnam they packed up everything and land there a few days later in the Southern part of Nam. They unloaded everything then want to a little camp together then a few weeks later were going out on a mission to find 4 marines that got captured. She saved many men in the mission because she smelled out over 20 traps with great nose to smell trap.

They had a few more missions until she got lost when Rick had to go into a firefight. When Rick got shot she jumped on top of him so he pushed her off and she ran away into the jungle. The “Charlie” captured her so they tried to kill her but she ran out of the house. She was out in the jungle for about third to four days until Rick best friend found her and called Rick because he was sent back to America. So Cracker got sent back to America and they meant at the Chicago International airport. The boy Willie should up at the airport to see his dog that was able to survive the harsh environment and weather.

In the story in think a good theme is to never give up because they had may hard time getting through the camp then she got lost in Vietnam. In think even though they had hardships they still got through it with each other. One other theme that really stuck out to me is that everyone needs to work together to have success. They were in a hard place to survive but they did so that’s all that counts at the end of the day. It was a great book to read and I would tell others about how good it was.

Folktale Remix

       There once was two little brothers that were the exactly the opposite of each other there names were Michael and Larry. They both had the opposite of taste in life, so Michael was a very tall, around 6'2 and skinny but his brother was not he was the average height of most 8th graders but he was very unhealthy. One day Michael had went to get the mail when he found a flier that read "On November 5, we will have our four annual bike-a-thon. One that the Michael knew he was going to sign up but the next day he was ranting about he was going to win, so Larry overheard and had taken the flier to sign up. They both got their in the mail numbers when Michael started to make fun of Larry because he said he was overweight and had no chance to win but Larry started to train the week before the race.

         It was the day of the race and Larry had lost 5 pounds so he knew if he set his mind to it he would be able to stick with his brother and others. They had started at 9 o'clock in the morning and it was a 13.1 mile bike ride so he told himself first or last he was going to do it. His brother started only two minutes before him because of when he signed up so he knew he had to pass many others to get to him. Larry pushing himself sped ahead of them and rode right next to him brother so when Michael looked over he started to be very angry so he sped ahead. Larry who still was having a hard time to keep going that long keep with it and at the last mile he saw that Michael was right ahead of him. Pushing himself Larry went right up to Michael and they started to go a little faster to bet the other but they were at the finish line and finished right at the same time. Michael amazed after the race told Larry that he was sorry and told him that he had just wanted to win so they forgave and then want home to be friends again.

The Pearl

In The Pearl there are some main events that people set up the theme of the pearl. The characters had a big part of the story because some were trying to get the pearl but people like Tomas tried to tell Kino that people would trick him. So some of the events that could have lead up to the theme is that the scorpion stung the kid,they found the pearl,and that they buried the pearl.So they at the end throw the pearl back in the sea and then they feel better because all that was happening that was back seemed to go away and get better. The theme to me seems to be that everything good won't always end up going your way because they did find the pearl but all they did was fight and then they were like getting used.

The Day I Got Lost/The Dark Brown Dog

  
    In the stories they had 3 main characters The boy and the dog in "The Dark Brown Dog" and The elderly man in "The Day I Got Lost". Both of the stories had a very odd ending because in the stories you would have thought they would have a different ending. In "The Dark Brown Dog" the boy would always abuse the dog but the dog thought they were just playing around but the boy thought it was funny until the end died. In the story the family were not very good owners so they would treat the dog poorly. But that day that the Dad had come home drunk the little dog had got in to the way of the father, he hit the small dog with the hard coffee maker twice. Then after that he had gotten so mad at the dog he lost it and threw the dog out of the window five stories down on top of a shed that had stopped him. They had gotten there to late because the dog was dead on the shed.

     In "The Day I Got Lost" there was a man that could almost never find his way back to his house or where he had left the newspaper the earlier. So in the story he would never remember anything that would happen the day before but at the end of the story it says that he was going to write a book about his memories. So than when he started to write the story he never would leave it on the subway, park, or the library so that would mean that he had remembered where he left his piece.He had written for his book. After he started to write down the places he would always go to then he would never leave his belongings there.

We Breathed You In

In "We Breathed You In," Patti Tana wrote the poem to tell us what America was felling all the moment it all happened. The poem was about how the people in the planes and the towers had died to the 9/11 terrorist attack. We have the souls of the people that died in a way because we all will never forget that day so most Americas have made a spot in there heart for them. Then it talks about how they had seen the tragedy happen while everything was in ash and broken. The tone of the poem of the story is tragedy and very scary and sad moments.