Room 227’s Blog

The book starts off as two builders discussing about instructions to escape out of the city after 200 years. They kept the instructions inside a box with a timed lock. The first mayor of Ember was given the box and after she dies it was passed onto the next mayor in charge and the next. Not one of them knew what was inside except the builders. One of the mayor in the other hand, stole the box from its hiding place hoping it would be something that could cure his coughing disease. He tried to open it but he was unsuccessful. Too bad he died before he was able to return it back to its hiding place. The box ended up stuck inside his closet year after year, forgotten forever. When 200 years came, the box secretly unlocked itself.

Why was the instructions kept as a secret? Why 200 years? Why was the instructions so important? I had a feeling something bad would happen to the city if no one discovers the instructions sooner or later. The prologue makes me want to find out more.

It was year 241. You can see, it was already past 200 years. As I continued to read, I discovered Ember was a city that was always pitch black even during the day. Only lamps around the city were able to brighten Ember a bit. The city was so old, even they would start flickering or shut down all of a sudden, and Ember would be filled with darkness.

I cannot imagine how frightening it would be not to be able to see in the dark especially when you’re outside on the streets. Of course I can’t since I never lived in a city like theirs. Why isn’t the mayor of Ember doing anything about it? He is suppose to be in charge of making the city a better place for the citizens of Ember. So far no one seems to protest about it.

The main character in the story are Lina and Doon. They are both 12 year old students assigned for jobs. Lina wanted to be messenger but instead she drew out pipe working. Doon draws out messenger and they both asked to switch jobs! In reality, I don’t think its suitable to have a job when you’re just 12. Wouldn’t that be child abuse when you have to work on pipe working?

It was assignment day, and the mayor payed a visit to their classroom to assign the students in the class jobs. He had a bag where students would draw out a paper inside and read what was written on the paper and that was their job. When Doon got messenger he was furious! He crumpled the piece of paper up and thew it on the ground. That is when I learned that Doon can’t control his temper very well. Neither was the mayor.

“Disgraceful,” he said, glaring at Doon. ” A childish display of temper! Students should be glad to work for their city. Ember will prosper of all…..citizens do their best.”

Suddenly Doon spoke up. “But Ember isn’t prospering!” he cried. “Everything is getting worse and worse! The blackouts!”

I agree with Doon. He is speaking for himself. I don’t like what the mayor said though. I don’t understand why we should be glad for our job when we don’t have the freedom to pick what we want to do. Why do we even have to work for the city? I don’t think its fair. These things are suppose to be for the mayor to handle. I think he is so lazy!

The reason why Doon wanted to do pipe working was because he wanted to find a way to save Ember before it runs out of electricity. He even sneaked into the generator room bu he had no idea how it works or how to repair it.

Poppy, Lina’s little sister, discovers an old box in the closet in Lina and her grandmother’s apartment. By the time Lina could grab it out of Poppy, there was already chewed up pieces of paper torn apart.

This must be the instructions out of Ember I thought. How is Lina going to decipher the message when its all messed up? Why was the box in the closet? Her ancestor might use to be one of the mayor that stole the box a long time ago.

She tried asking some of her friends but they didn’t seem to care or know. Together Doon and Lina tried to work the message out. Before they could share their news to Ember, the mayor tries to ruin their plan and put them for prison. Doon and Lina have no choice but to escape out of the city with the instructions since the guards were after them. Before they left, Lina took Poppy with her.

I knew the mayor was a bad person! I can tell by his personality.

Lina, Poppy and Doon escaped from the mayor and the city in a small boat using the informations from the instructions to guide them out. They finally escaped above the ground. It was so different from Ember! There were actually lights coming from the sky!

They never knew that Ember was actually below them, underground. They wrote the instuctions and hoped Mrs. Murdo will find it. The ending was a cliffhanger.

The social issue in this story might be something concerning the environment, loss (since Lina’s grandmother died, leaving Mrs. Murdo to take care of Poppy and Lina.) and freedom. This makes me want to read the 2 sequel of the book.

Now I am just finished a book called “Anastasia at Your Service.” It was kind of a book about Anastasia who was only 12 years old. It was all started by her dad, forced her to go to the boarding school but Anastasia didn’t wanted to, so she promised that she will find something to do this summer. She didn’t like her job and her friend who’s going to be in Anastasia’s class this year was the daughter of Mrs. Bellingham (Daphne was her name). This book quite has many social issues, but I think the main one is Humiliations. Because really Anastasia thought that she’s not going to be a nanny or a maid, she thinks she’s going to be Mrs. Bellingham’s mother (Mrs. Fox) jewelry guard.

If I were Sam I would be so hurt and felt like someone is pushing and chop and skull. Because if I fall down from the window like Sam, it would enormously shocked me a lot.

I think the author message is you could do your own little service during summer, and it would be if we could find our own money.

By: Ken Mochizuki

Angie and I (Jackie) were reading the book called Baseball Saved Us by Ken Mochizuki. Our teacher introduced us to the strategy where good readers build the world of the story in their heads as they go along. We saw the cover of the book. It made us predict that the place was China, because they looked Chinese. In the background it made us think they were in a prison even though they were kids. The reason why we thought this was because there was barbed wire surrounding them. It also made us think that these boys were playing baseball so they could win money to get out of prison.
But we found out that they were Japanese and they were in a desert. The Americans and Japanese were at WAR! In one picture, he was wearing a hat when he was about to hit the ball. Nowadays people wear helmets when they are about to bat. Another example was in a picture, and little boys were helping the adults make a baseball field. Now kids don’t do this. We have to pay builders to make baseball fields, uniforms, bats, gloves, hats, bleachers, and ext.
These reasons were how we used that strategy. First we compared the past and the present. We looked at the pictures to help us prove that we compared it.

Harry and I (Kentaro) were reading book called The Scrimshaw Ring by William Jaspersohn. By looking at the cover we thought that it was about 300 hundred years ago because there was an old ship behind the boy. Throughout the story, we were using the strategy of building the world of the story in our minds by looking at all the details of how the story is different from our own lives.

We read the blurb on the front jacket of the book and we found out that it was from 1710 and it was from the East coast in Newport Rhode Island. On pages 5 and 6, the family of  William was wearing old clothes that we don’t wear right now.

On page 7and 6 the picture showed us that there was a difference between now and long time ago. We now don’t have a buggy but in the olden days there was a buggy. We can call horse and a carriage. We also know by the picture of page 11 and 12 that mutiny was when the crew went against the captain.

The crew stole all the food and animals maybe because they did not have many things to eat in the ship. We also think the pirate did not hurt Will because William was special, instead he did give William the ring.

We thought the story was old because of the clothes and transport the ship.

I read a book called “The Other Side” By Jacqueline Woodson. I used a strategy of “Good readers build the world of the story in their heads by noticing little details that make the characters daily life experiences different than our own.” When I looked at the cover, there was a black skinned girl and a white skinned girl. And I saw that there was a fence separating the two girls. Then I guessed that this probably took place when there was segregation.

And on page one, the mama of the black girl said it wasn’t safe for the girl to climb the fence. Then, I knew that the white girl must live on the other side fence. And at the time of segregation, the white and the black didn’t play together or talk to each other.

Also I know where this takes place is old because, when the black girl and the white girl went to town, they were all dressed up wearing hats, gloves and fancy dresses. Now, people just wear t-shirts and jeans when they go to town.

In page 4, when the black girl was playing with her friends, the white girl asked if she could play. But one of the black girl’s friends said “No because you are not our kind” and now, white and black play together and don’t say no just because they are not your kind.

With all those hints in the book, I noticed that this takes place in the time of segregation. And if you use the strategy of “Good readers build the world of the story in their heads by noticing little details that make the characters daily life experiences different than our own.” You will know it too. Also, if you want to stay organized, you can use post-its to record what you already did.

Now Let Me Fly

Katy, Daniela and I are writing a blog post about the book “Now Let Me Fly” by Dolores Johnson. The reason why we are writing this is because we are trying to build the world of the story in our mind. One part in the story, we noticed that Americans kidnapped children, babies, and adults from Africa to America and some of the children and adults were departed from their family. Once they reached America they were bought from strangers and were forced to be slaves. At this time period we don’t have much slavery so this tells us that this happened years ago.

In another part of the story, the main character had a child. The child grew older and she became a slave but the child learned how to read by listening to her master’s children at their lesson since she was a slave it was against the law of a slave to know how to read. Many children learn how to read today in a school setting. That is also how we know it happened years ago.

Pauline and I are reading a book called the Cats of Krasinski Square by Karen Hesse.

We are responding to the historical fiction reading strategy we learned where good readers build the world of the story in their minds as they go along. The book is about this girl who wanted to help 7 cats that used to have rich owners, but are now put out and living in the streets because of the war going on.

We know that this is taking place during World War 2 because we looked at the picture and it has a soldier marching and the front cover, some roof tops were blown off.  We wouldn’t see that often now!

We think this story takes place in Poland because there is actually a place called Krasinski in Poland and plus we know that Polish always have a ski in the end of the language.

Our prediction is that since the book is taking place during world war 2, the cats owner might have escaped or died so the cats were roaming free.

The girl wants to help them by smuggling food from the passengers of the train station.

That’s how we know this story is a historical fiction.

Tim and I are writing a blog post about the book Ruby’s Wish by Shirin Yim Bridges.

The book is about a girl named Ruby. Back in Ancient China, the boys would go to University while the girls would get married. But Ruby didn’t want to get married. She wanted to go to University. She told her grandfather. And on New Years Day, she got her wish and became one of the first female students.

Our teacher told us a strategy that good readers build the world of the story in their heads by noticing all the details that make the characters daily life experiences different than our own.

We made post-its in the book to help us pinpoint where the time is different from ours by using the text and the pictures. For example, in our book, our setting was in China. And we made a post-it of the character’s clothing, the houses, ink brushes, and an abacus. We noticed they wore silk robes but now we wear T-shirts and jeans etc, the houses have an old-fashioned roof, circle shaped doors, patterned windows, and small houses. This made us notice that the book was Historical Fiction.

Olivia and I ( Kayo) were reading The Story of Ruby Bridges: by Robert Coles and illustrated by George Ford together. We are trying this new technique about inferring and using the text and pictures to give us clues so that we can relate and compare that to our own life experiences.

This book starts off with a black girl named Ruby, and her family living in a small cabin. They were very poor. Her father works for getting crops, but then machines started to take over his job. That was why they moved into the city hoping to find another job. In the city, her father worked as a janitor and her mom worked in the bank, scrubbing the floor. We thought that this was the time when factories were being built everywhere.

By looking at the pictures of the book, ladies wore fancy clothing. This made us think that the timeline was during the 50’s. In our experience, we never seen anybody wore such things.

This book talks about the time when segregation was happening very seriously and how Ruby was so brave to be sent to an all white school. When she was walking to the school entrance, many white people were surrounding around her, protesting “NO BLACK PEOPLE IN OUR SCHOOL.” Even some of the white policemen didn’t want to protect her. That was why the president had to send marshals to protect her from the large group of white people. We think segregation was unfair. Even though Ruby is black, she is the kindest girl in the book, since she prayed for the white people to god for forgiveness even if they had treated her badly. One time, Olivia and her mom went to a hotel and wanted to have breakfast. When they went to the restaurant, they were only a loud to order omelet, but the people from the other table was able to have fish’ rice and squid. So we checked out of the hotel. We had enough of this racist!

But times have changed now. Surprisingly, we have a black American president, Obama to lead America now. But forty years ago, if you talked about ever having a black president they would laugh at you. SO TIMES REALLY CHANGE!

Ty and I (Matt) are writing a blog post about the book “Cheyenne Again” by Eve Bunting. We learned the strategy of making references about when the story was taking place and how did we figure that out. For example, on page 13 we thought the young Native American was having a hard time adjusting to the lifestyle. We figured that out because they were taking away his buckskin, and the Americans took away the deer skin moccasins his mother made him.

What was happening in the book was the Whiteman taking the boy away from his family. He was taken to a boarding school. However the Americans had a different lifestyle. Most all people were making fun of him. Then his favorite teacher told him to not give up and don’t forget that you are always a Native.

Throughout the story we were using this strategy. For example we used the strategy on the title page by saying that we thought that the word Cheyenne is a Native tribe that existed many years ago. So from that we could say that the book was placed a long time ago. We thought that it took place around the 1800’s.

Another example is on page 25 when the boy was getting chained to a brick and left there for the night. We think that the boy must have done something wrong or disobeyed a rule that the Americans had. We think this might this might be prove that the story is being taken place in an earlier time because of the amount of money they were using. When this might have been taken place 5 dollars could have been a lot of money.