The choice multicultural memoir we are reading is Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. It is written in verse (like a poem), and tells the story of Woodson's life growing up black in both the North and South during the Civil Rights Movement (1960s and 70s). She was born in Ohio, and moved to South Carolina with her mother and siblings when she was young. Her mother then made the decision to move to New York, and they have been living there ever since.

During the course of the book, there is a subtly noted (but nevertheless important) emphasis on the power of words, which became a central idea in the book and Jacqueline's life. For example, when Jacqueline was young, she was fascinated with her first composition notebook and enjoyed writing poems. She liked when her sister read to her, losing herself in the stories and wishing she could write like that. In addition, the power of words showed in the way whites treated/talked to African-Americans and the way they spoke to and behaved toward whites during the Civil Rights Movement (examples could probably be easily found in The Color of Water as well).

Now for the outside research...From this news article by Huffington Post, a nice lesson-teaching flowchart that suggests how what people think of certain words makes them powerful in various ways:

Another news article, by the same site, also points out that words' power to define or harm somebody should not be denied.This is especially true when it comes to talking to and/or about people who differ from the speaker in some way or another, It is shown both ways --good and bad--in our memoir as well as others plus The Color of Water. To stand up for their beliefs peacefully, many turn to words. Take Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Baldwin, so on and so forth. They wrote, spoke, sang, using words to express their opinions and thoughts and bring change. This links to Jacqueline Woodson's dream of becoming a writer who could change the world through words, which would later more or less come true.

Blog post 6

Most recent book, Reign, of my favorite book series, Unfortunate Fairy Tale by Chanda Hahn. This book takes a whole new meaning to the series, it really puts all the pieces together about the Grimm curse. This book takes us back to the beginning of time. But the beginning is present day in Mina's life. She ends up telling Brody Charmichael and Nan Taylor about who she really is and about the curse, ad they both agree to help her. Brody and Mina end up dating again and she goes to Brody's family ball. She has to go back in time to save herself and other family members from disappearing completely and the shoes she gets that act like a time machine end up taking her back in time during the ball. Once she's back in time she meets the good Teague and he tells her to go to his palace and compete with the other 11 girls in a battle to see who will marry Teague, betrothed, "'In three days' time, I'll be betrothed'... 'I'll send a coach for you, and you can come to my palace. I'll tell my parents there's one last addition to list.'" (Hahn ??).  These quotes show how Teague is soon to be married and wants Mina (Elle Cinder) to be the one he marries. Mina goes to his palace and competes against eleven other girls. She has to pass a blood test, defeat an ogre, and find the end of a maze where Teague stays waiting for his wife to come. Mina passes all tests, fights with other girls, argues with Teague, defeats a reaper, saves an assassin, and betrays Teague. After the tests are done, Teague becomes evil because of an enchanted knife and the betrayal of Mina. Then Mina goes through the seam ripper to the Human plane and saves her dying great-great-great, etc. grandfather, Wilhelm Grimm (one of the Grimm brothers that started the curse) from dying. She tells the brothers what they need to do then she returns to the future, her present. She tells Brody what happened, then they finish the ball. While Brody is gone for a few minutes Teague shows up and confronts her about how he wants his gift back but when Mina doesn't give it he says, "' At midnight I have a surprise of my own for you.'" (Hahn ?). The surprise ended up driving all the God mothers and Mina's protection and teachers of the curse to leave her and go somewhere safer. Mina didn't have her God mother any more because she died during the surprise, so Ever said she'd be Mina's new God mother. Mina is happy now that she has her boy back, him and her best friend know what's going on and her new God mother is a good friend of hers that she trusts, but Teague still isn't finished with Mina so the happiness is soon to come to an end.

Blog post 5

Book 3, Fable, of the series Unfortunate Fair Tale by Chanda Hahn. This book starts out fast, Fire, Loss, Moving, School starting again all in a week. The fire was sudden and very unexpected, even though Mina and her family live above a Chinese restaurant. The fire happened while Mina was supposed to be watching her little, speechless brother, Charlie, but instead she was up on top of the building thinking about her confrontation with the Story, Teague, when she decided she had to kill him. She was thinking of killing Teague and if she'd be able to or not and about her summer when she avoided all tales that were thrown her way, she had avoided the Story all summer. It was when she asked for a sign that she finally smelled the burning house under her. She also saw Teague at the funeral. He confronted her about how he didn't like that she ignored him all summer, and threatened her with her next tale. Their first night at the new house, both Mina and her mother fell asleep together right away, not even putting things away. Mina woke up earlier than her mother and explored the house, while doing this she saw a mysterious figure outside looking into her house, she got scared and Jared felt her worrying and came to protect her. Later in the week once Mina went back to school people left her alone and gave her sympathy, except her enemy, Savannah White, she gave Mina trouble and Nan handled Savannah by punching her. Later that day Mina went to gym and they were playing flag football. She was against Savannah's team and Savannah wanted revenge so she did whatever to embarrass Mina. Then the Fae magic came in and helped Mina become super athletic and won the game against Savannah. After the game her nose bled and she went to the locker room and was surprised to see who was waiting for her, Templestiltskin. He made a deal with her, if she gave him the Grimoire he'd give her Charlie back. She ended up doing what she could to get to the Fae Plane so she could save Charlie without giving up the Grimoire. She had Jared take her to a place that'll help her and she ended up finding out many secrets she didn't know, like the fact she had a God mother, and secrets about Fae. She went to the Fae Plane and met Nix, who helped her through her journey to the Fates castle, where Charlie was. Once she got into the Fates' castle Teague found her and took her to a room, where the other half of the Grimoire and Charlie were. She had to fight a battle against Temple and then Jared showed up, even though he knew he would die if he returned to Fae plane. Teague hurt Jared really bad and told Mina the only way to save him was to capture him in the Grimoire, so she did, "He was so sure it was the only way to save Jared, and she didn't have any other choice. Jared had stopped moving on the floor... She could only see one body, and it was lying prone on the floor. The body moaned and groaned, and Mina knew it was Jared... It had Jared's hair, body, but the eyes were wrong. They weren't gray, they were blue- like Teague's... She had destroyed Jared. Yes, he was now alive, but that person, that thing across the room was not her Jared." Hahn 267,268,269-269,270) She got Charlie back and returned to the Human plane with Nix, but what she didn't know was that she had doomed herself and Jared forever.

Blog post 4

My last post explains the series, An Unfortunate Fairy Tale by Chanda Hahn. My first two posts were about the first book, Unenchanted. Today, I'm going to talk to you about the second book, Fairest. This book, rather than the first one, talks more about Mina's only and best friend, Nan Taylor. The book describes everything Nan has that Mina does not. Nan has a beautiful wardrobe, nice big house, and most of all she's got luck on her side. Once Nan finds this new boy band, Dead Prince Society, she starts obsessing over them. Nan's luck comes into play and Brody Charmichael comes into play and just so happens to be cousins with the lead singer of Nan's favorite band, so they all got tickets and backstage passes to their next concert. The concert was a bad experience for Mina because she got in a fight with her best friend and almost completely worried their whole friendship all together. Things went so bad at the party that Nan actually turned on Mina and left her for their worst enemy, Savannah White, "...Nan wasn't sitting in her usual spot next to her, but across the room next to Savannah White.... she never in her lifetime would've thought that her friend would abandon her for the enemy." (Hahn 52). This line from the book just shows how bad things had to be for Nan to leave Mina for Savannah. Eventually, Mina and Nan become friends again and then Mina goes to Nan's lake house party. At that party many bad things happened. Some of those bad things were just embarrassing but the others, because of her jealousy, were really strong and deadly. When something really bad happens to Nan, because of Mina, the Fates (rulers of the Fae Plane) come to the Human Plane and make a deal with Mina. Earlier, Mina had lost the Grimoire somewhere after Jared left her alone in the woods. So the deal with the Fates was that if Mina got the Grimoire back that they'd give Mina a fighting chance to save Nan. That's exactly what Mina did. Mina did everything she could to keep Nan safe, even get a band on tour to stop and help her, fight a dragon, reaper, catch a hospital on fire and save all those patients along with Nan, to get the Grimoire back and get Jared back. She trapped the helpful dragon in the Grimoire along with the reaper that was out to kill her, and then have all 4 band members kiss Nan but fail as Nan's true love's kiss. Brody, Mina's long time crush/ ex boyfriend (that doesn't remember dating her) kissed Nan and broke the spell, "She turned herself away from Nan and Brody, unable to watch true love's kiss." (Hahn 224). Mina lost her love, almost her best friend, lost and found her helper and the Grimoire. A hard night for her, only to get worse over the next weeks to come.

Blog post 3

In the series, An Unfortunate Fairy Tale by Chanda Hahn, there are 4.5 books in counting. The books included in this series are: Unenchanted, Fairest, Fable, Reign, Jared's Quest.  The half book, Jared's Quest, is a short story at the end of the 4th book. only 4 chapters long. This series is about a girl named Mina Grimm who is involved in her family's curse. The curse was brought on by the Grimm Brothers and their love for fairy tales. The brothers go to a different plane, Fae Plane, and make a deal with the Fates, Fae rulers. The deal was if the Grimm Brothers could successfully complete all the fairy tales the story assigns them that no Fae will be able to cross to the Human Plane, and the gates would be closed. What the brothers didn't know was if they died during the process all progress would be erased and the next chosen Grimm would have to start from the beginning. The curse has been going on for centuries now, and all believe that Mina Grimm will be the one to defeat the story and save her family from the Grimm curse. Unfortunately, Mina gets played with like a toy by the Story, ends up falling in out of love multiple times, almost lose everything that means something to her. Although, with the help from the Grimoire she starts getting the hang of things and is completing many tales, until one day when she destroys the Grimore for eternity.

Semester 1 Reflection

          My independent reading this semester consists of a book series, An Unfortunate Fairy Tale by Chanda Hahn , also the start of a new book, Killer Cupcakes by Leighann Dobbs, while I wait for the next book of the series to come out. I started reading this series because my mom found the first book and told me it sounded like a book I'd like. I read the first half of the chapter and then stopped reading it for a few months, I didn't really find it interesting at first, but after I started reading it again and actually getting past the first few chapters I really started to like the book, once I finished I got the next book and so on. I choose Killer Cupcakes by looking for a single book that isn't in a series, even though this one is. I read the description and it didn't really seem like it had very much to do with cupcakes so I wanted to figure out why it was called that, so I began reading, I'm only on chapter 3 right now but so far it is a good book. It has a lot of guessing and kind of foreshadowing in the book and some of the stuff that's happening now makes you wonder what the ending be like.

          The quality of my blogs, I would have to say, are decent, but could use improvement. They could evolve over the next semester by having some more actively engaging the reader and by me finding a way to talk about the book without giving a big summary about it, like I usually do. My posts are usually pretty focused on one thing, rather it's talking about my specific book or about the series to give the reader a better understanding on how all the books come together. I could also improve on the images I use for each blog. I use good pictures that are not always just the book cover but also the fairy tale they are involved in currently in that specific time frame of the book I'm writing about, like how I used a red riding hood picture with a wolf behind her for when I wrote about the Red Riding Hood tale Mina was in. There are quite a few things I hope to improve on with my blog posts, and I'm determined to make them better!

          One goal I have for blogging next semester would be keeping up with the blog posts and finding a way to remember to blog on certain dates needed. I try to remember when I need to blog, just some weekends are crazy for me, so I'm thinking a goal I can set is to have my blogs done before I go out for the weekend. Another goal I have for my blogging would be that I become more specific within each of my blogs and to make them more interesting for the reader so they, too, will want to read the book as much as I do. I've tried adding more detail and more interesting images to my blogs, but I feel that it's just not enough, so now, I need to get my creative mind flowing. Lastly, my reading goal, I've read four and a half (short story that went along with the series) books and I'm currently on my fifth. So for next semester my goal is to read at least five more books before the school year is over, and as long as this new series I'm on is as interesting as the book I'm on now, then I don't think that goal will be a problem!(: