Hiatus

Hi... I've been MIA lately. Student teaching has really gotten the best of me and turned me into an old lady. It is past my bedtime as we speak. Pretty soon I'll be yelling at kids to get off my non-existent lawn, collecting things with lace on them and raising an army of pet rats (I can be the crazy cat lady in this apartment). I am officially taking over the block 1 class Tuesday morning, so I thought it would be a good time to announce my hiatus. I feel like I'm taking a sabbatical to try out the real world for a while. I will try to be back once in a while and don't worry, I will always be spreading the book love. I even added a book talk once a week to both of the 10th grade classes. Some of them like it and some hate it but they have to suffer because it makes me happy. I got another fantastic award and will do a post on that soon. I'm currently taking a break from lesson planning for the next week and as I said, it is past my bedtime, but I promise I will get around to it soon. I'm definitely going to make time to read all of your wonderful posts. I'll be back as soon as my brain stops bleeding and gets used to this student teaching thing.

Wish me luck! <3

101 Movies to see before you die

Hi. I have another snow day.. or rather ice day. These kids are never going to get to learn from me. Anyway, I found this kinda floating around and I LOVE movies so I wanted to see how I stacked up. The ones I have seen have a star never to them.

• A Clockwork Orange
• A Fish Called Wanda
• Alien
• Amadeus
• Amelie
• American Dreams
• Annie Hall
• Antonia's Line
• Apocalypse Now
• Before Sunset
• Being John Malkovich
• Ben-Hur
• Blade Runner*
• Bonnie and Clyde
• Braveheart
• Breakfast at Tiffany's*
• Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
• Cabaret
• Carlito's Way
• Casablanca
• Chariots of Fire
• Chinatown
• Chocolat
• Cinema Paradiso
• Cool Hand Luke
• Dead Poet's Society*
• Deliverance
• Dog Day Afternoon
• Enter The Dragon
• E.T*
• Fargo
• Fiddler on the Roof
• Forest Gump*
• Four Wedding and a Funeral
• From Here to Eternity
• Gandhi
• Gladiator
• Gone With The Wind
• Goodfellas
• Talk To Her
• House of Sand and Fog
• In The Name of the Father
• Jean De Florette
• JFK
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Life is Beautiful
• Lost In Translation
• Midnight Cowboy
• Midnight Express
• Misery
• Mississppi Burning
• Monty Python's - Life of Brian
• My Fair Lady
• Mystic River
• Waterfront
• Once Were Warriors
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
• Philadelphia
• Psycho
• Pulp Fiction
• Raging Bull
• Rebel Without A Cause
• Remains of the Day
• Salvador
• Saturday Night Fever*
• Saving Private Ryan*
• Scent of a Woman
• Schindlers List
• Shine
• Sideways
• Singin in the Rain*
• Star Wars
• Taxi Driver
• The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert
• The Deer Hunter
• The Dirty Dozen*
• The Falcom and the Snowman
• The French Connection
• The Godfather
• The Graduate
• The Great Escape
• The Killing Fields
• The Lord Of The Rings*
• The Lion King*
• The Magnificent Seven
• The Matrix*
• The Mission
• The Odd Couple
• The Pianist
• The Rocky Horror Picture show*
• Shawshank Redemption*
• The Silence of The Lambs
• The Sound of Music*
• The Sting
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being
• The Usual Suspects
• The Untouchables
• West Side Story*
• When Harry Met Sally*
• Y Tu Mama Tambien
• Zorba The Greek

Boy, do I suck at this. But now I'm thinking that a lot of those movies don't make sense to be on a list like that. I know they're good and all, but I don't know if I have to see them before I die. So I found myself another list. Lets try this again.
Here is Roger Ebert's list of 102 movies to see before you die:

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick
"The 400 Blows" (1959) Francois Truffaut
"8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini
"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) Werner Herzog
"Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott
"All About Eve" (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
"Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen
"Apocalypse Now" (1979) Francis Ford Coppola*
"Bambi" (1942) Disney
"The Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler
"The Big Red One" (1980) Samuel Fuller
"The Bicycle Thief" (1949) Vittorio De Sica
"The Big Sleep" (1946) Howard Hawks
"Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott*
"Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
"Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch
"Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) Arthur Penn
"Breathless" (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
"Bringing Up Baby" (1938) Howard Hawks
"Carrie" (1975) Brian DePalma
"Casablanca" (1942) Michael Curtiz
"Un Chien Andalou" (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
"Children of Paradise" / "Les Enfants du Paradis" (1945) Marcel Carne
"Chinatown" (1974) Roman Polanski
"Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles
"A Clockwork Orange" (1971) Stanley Kubrick
"The Crying Game" (1992) Neil Jordan*
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) Robert Wise
"Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick
"Dirty Harry" (1971) Don Siegel
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) Luis Bunuel
"Do the Right Thing" (1989 Spike Lee
"La Dolce Vita" (1960) Federico Fellini
"Double Indemnity" (1944) Billy Wilder
"Dr. Strangelove" (1964) Stanley Kubrick
"Duck Soup" (1933) Leo McCarey
"E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) Steven Spielberg*
"Easy Rider" (1969) Dennis Hopper*
"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) Irvin Kershner
"The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin
"Fargo" (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
"Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher*
"Frankenstein" (1931) James Whale
"The General" (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
"The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part II" (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
"Gone With the Wind" (1939) Victor Fleming
"GoodFellas" (1990) Martin Scorsese
"The Graduate" (1967) Mike Nichols
"Halloween" (1978) John Carpenter
"A Hard Day's Night" (1964) Richard Lester
"Intolerance" (1916) D.W. Griffith
"It's a Gift" (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) Frank Capra*
"Jaws" (1975) Steven Spielberg*
"The Lady Eve" (1941) Preston Sturges
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) David Lean
"M" (1931) Fritz Lang
"Mad Max 2" / "The Road Warrior" (1981) George Miller*
"The Maltese Falcon" (1941) John Huston
"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) John Frankenheimer*
"Metropolis" (1926) Fritz Lang
"Modern Times" (1936) Charles Chaplin
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
"Nashville" (1975) Robert Altman
"The Night of the Hunter" (1955) Charles Laughton
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero
"North by Northwest" (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
"Nosferatu" (1922) F.W. Murnau
"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan
"Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) Sergio Leone
"Out of the Past" (1947) Jacques Tournier
"Persona" (1966) Ingmar Bergman
"Pink Flamingos" (1972) John Waters
"Psycho" (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
"Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino
"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa
"Rear Window" (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
"Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) Nicholas Ray
"Red River" (1948) Howard Hawks
"Repulsion" (1965) Roman Polanski
"The Rules of the Game" (1939) Jean Renoir
"Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks
"The Scarlet Empress" (1934) Josef von Sternberg
"Schindler's List" (1993) Steven Spielberg
"The Searchers" (1956) John Ford
"The Seven Samurai" (1954) Akira Kurosawa
"Singin' in the Rain" (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
"Some Like It Hot" (1959) Billy Wilder*
"A Star Is Born" (1954) George Cukor
"A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) Elia Kazan*
"Sunset Boulevard" (1950) Billy Wilder
"Taxi Driver" (1976) Martin Scorsese
"The Third Man" (1949) Carol Reed
"Tokyo Story" (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
"Touch of Evil" (1958) Orson Welles
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) John Huston
"Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
"Vertigo" (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
"West Side Story" (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise*
"The Wild Bunch" (1969) Sam Peckinpah
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939) Victor Fleming*

So, I guess I didn't do much better on this one. Maybe I should spend my ice day watching movies.. 

Review: The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher

The Water Wars

by Cameron Stracher

Hardcover, 240 pages
Published January 1, 2011
Sourcebooks Fire
bought for Kindle
Synopsis (from Goodreads): Welcome to a future where water is more precious than gold or oil-and worth killing for
Vera and her brother, Will, live in the shadow of the Great Panic, in a country that has collapsed from environmental catastrophe. Water is hoarded by governments, rivers are dammed, and clouds are sucked from the sky. But then Vera befriends Kai, who seems to have limitless access to fresh water. When Kai suddenly disappears, Vera and Will set off on a dangerous journey in search of him-pursued by pirates, a paramilitary group, and greedy corporations. Timely and eerily familiar, acclaimed author Cameron Stracher makes a stunning YA debut that's impossible to forget.

"Let us pray that the world which Cameron Stracher has invented in The Water Wars is testament solely to his pure, wild, and brilliant imagination, and not his ability to see the future. I was parched just reading it."-Laurie David, academy award winning producer of An Inconvenient Truth, and author of The Down to Earth Guide to Global Warming.
 

My Thoughts: I liked this novel enough. Not my favorite but I thought the story was interesting and different. I have been reading a lot of dystopian lately and I think I have been getting a little bored with them. The story would have to be really great for me to keep reading dystopian. Still, I liked the story. It was felt a little like a wake-up call for saving the environment. Water is scarce, highly valuable and closely guarded. This was one of the first times that I actually thought of all the things that we do with water; shower, wash dishes, have fish, cook, so many things that we take advantage of everyday. I think that the limit of something so common made the book a lot more believable. 
The characters in the book felt a little lackluster. I liked Vera well enough, but I liked Will so much better. I almost wish that he could have been the main character. But we had Vera and I thought that she was a pretty strong character. I was never sure whether she was going to find Kai because she liked Kai or because she wanted him to find water for her mother. Kai was a bit one-dimensional. I just didn't understand why Vera would risk everything to go find him. She had a better relationship with the pirate that saved her and Will than she did with Kai. 
Overall, I thought that the story moved quickly, although it seemed to get a little but muddled in the middle and at the end. Everything happened so fast that at times, I didn't know where I was or quite what was going on. Don't get me wrong, I thought the story was good, it was just confusing at times. At the end, I felt like I had spent all of that time following their story and all of a sudden it was over. I needed a little more wrap up.

Would I recommend this to 9th graders? Sure. I think the boys would like it because there is a lot of action and less explanation. The love story only plays a background part to the rescue.

My rating: 3.5/5

OTHELLO!

We start Othello tomorrow with my 10th graders!!!! I am so excited. Othello is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays and we get to watch the whole first act from the Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Fishburne movie which I love! I have a small unusually large and creepy obsession with Kenneth. I don't think that man has ever made a bad movie. Plus, he's Hamlet and Benedick. Hamlet is my favorite Shakespeare play and Benedick is my favorite Shakespearean hero/character/lover/man/whatever. (I tried to find a video of the last scene in Much Ado, but they were all way too long and I didn't even want to watch the whole thing.) Shakespeare is one thing that I am really passionate about other than YA lit. I'm just afraid that all of my students will hate it because its Shakespeare. I know that most people have to read Shakespeare in high school, but I don't know if anyone else liked it other than me.
So, my question(s) to you tonight:

What is your favorite Shakespeare play? 

Did you have to read Shakespeare in high school? 

What did you have to read?

Did you like it or dread it?

Thanks all. I hope to get a chance to read some over the weekend or if the power goes out from the massive ice storm that is supposed to hit us in the next two days. Stay warm and safe!

Updates...

Oh, hello there.. What's that you say? Where have I been? Well, other than student teaching, I've been a little lost in a pit of devastation. Actually more like a small hole that sometimes gets bigger and threatens to swallow me up. I got into a car accident coming home from the first day of student teaching. My car, who is my baby and a huge part of me, is totaled. I am, for lack of any better word to describe it, devastated. I love that car so much and I only got a year and a half with him and now he is gone. So its been a pretty emotional week for me.

On the bright-ish side of life, I finally got some real students and I am SO excited.These kids are fun even though they say that they don't like reading and I wish that I had a couple more girls. We are totally outnumbered. I'm starting out teaching greek mythology, so I really hope that this goes well. I am going to try to update more, even though I don't get much time to read. I hope that everyone is having a great weekend and have a great week.

Review: Sleeping Beauty Vampire Slayer by Maureen Mc Gowan

Sleeping Beauty Vampire Slayer (Twisted Tales #2)

by Maureen McGowan

Paperback, 320 Pages

Publish date April 1, 2011

Silver Dolphin Books

Received from Netgalley

Synopsis (from Goodreads): In this thrilling story full of adventure and romance, Sleeping Beauty is more than just a lonely princess waiting for her prince—she's a brave, tenacious girl who never backs down from a challenge. With vampire-slaying talents that she practices in secret, Sleeping Beauty puts her courage to the test in the dark of night, fighting evil as she searches for a way to break the spell that has cut her off from her family. In a special twist, readers have the opportunity to make key decisions for Sleeping Beauty and decide where she goes next—but no matter the choice; the result is a story unlike any fairy tale you've ever read!
Sleeping Beauty: Vampire Slayer is an entirely new type of fairy tale–one that will keep today's kids guessing and offer them hours of magical fun.

My Thoughts: I love fairy tale retellings. I have a real soft spot for classic fairy tales with any kind of twist that the author can come up with. Sleeping Beauty was never one of my favorite fairy tales. It was always pretty boring for me. She pricks her finger, falls asleep, gets kissed and lives happily ever after. Pretty basic. And as much as I have become wary of a vampire novel, this one looked too good to pass up. Plus, it's a choose your own adventure story. I haven't read them in so long. I have to say that this one didn't disappoint. 
Sleeping Beauty, Lucette, is tough, spunky and angry at being cursed before she was old enough to defend herself. The vampire queen curses Lucette with sleeping all day and being awake at night while the rest of the kingdom sleeps all night. Lucette and her mother believe that Lucette needs to train as a slayer to protect herself while her father believes that finger prick protection will be the only way to stop the curse. This story was not Disney-fied at all. She lies to her father, her parents fight, she gets angry a lot and she kills vampires. There's nothing Disney about that. I really liked the character of Lucette. I thought she was strong and funny when she needed to be, but she was also shy when it came to boys. She had never had any experience with boys and learns quickly that they are not what she expected. And McGowen gave Lucette two pretty awesome boys to fight over her. Tristan trains her as a slayer and Alex almost falls into her life by accident. Both have secrets and both help Lucette learn what it means to be a slayer and a Princess. The choose your own adventure was a pretty awesome way to have this story written. I thought it was really interesting how a path could start at the same place, split off completely and then come back and satisfyingly end at the same place. I'll admit that I cheated and read the whole thing through instead of choosing my adventure. I just had to know all of the stories, and it was hard to do on my Kindle. The story was great and the updates were just right. The story was just enough Sleeping Beauty mixed with just enough vampires and romance. 

Would I recommend this to 9th graders? Yes. There is a little killing but nothing too major and the romance is pretty tame. 

My Rating: 4/5

Back to School...

Hello everyone! I hope that everyone had a good MLK day, whether you had off work or school or not. my day consisted of coming back to college, much to the dismay of my mother, and going grocery shopping. I think we have enough meat in our freezer to last through a blizzard.

So tomorrow if the first day of the spring semester and the "first" day of student teaching. I have meetings all day tomorrow and then I get to go to school on Wednesday!! I am really excited but also really nervous. I hope that the kids like me and I can possibly get them to learn something. So if any of you teachers or students out there have any advice for me I would be more than glad to hear it.

I would also like to know if anyone has ever read Bless the Beasts and Children by Glendon Swarthout. Anybody? Its the one book of the semester that I am going to be teaching on my own and I don't really know where I'm going with it. I just want to hear if anyone has ever heard of it or read it and what you think.

Anyway, I am going to go watch Castle then go to bed. I hope everyone has a great week!