Summary Swarms Of Terror By Lauren Tarshis

My book club book, The Roar by Emma Clayton is about a semi-apocalyptic, semi-dystopian, society where there hasn't been any children born for the past 30 years and this is ‘reasonable move’ as Mal Gorman says, because the Animal Plague has been spread rapidly. Not much is known about the animal plague until the very end of the story.

Egan also describes the physical effects of the Dust Bowl, in which many children and weak adults suffered, from diseases such as dust pneumonia, livestock’s insides were packed with soil, thus blocking their stomachs and so they died of starvation. People couldn’t hug or even hand shake because the static electricity was enough to knock someone down. He also described the way of life they had, in which in order for dust to not leak into houses, they had to seal cracks around the windows and the door with wet sheets, and however the next day they still had to throw away the soil with a shovel. In order to discharge the static electricity in cars, they had to trail chains. Many were affected economically when they started losing their savings; banks, schools, and businesses closed. Black Sunday, on April 14, 1935, became the worst dust storm ever witnessed. Egan describes the story of a man who was lost in this storm; he became blind for the rest of his life. Temperature raised up to 141 degrees, such weather increased the population of rabbits, grasshoppers, tarantulas, and black widows. These insects were killed with boiled water and, “on Sundays, a mob of people with clubs herded rabbits into a corral and smashed their skulls.” Egan shows a similarity between the homesteaders’ thirst for extreme harvest and the grasshoppers devouring the rest of what was left in the plains,

The book is called Warriors: A Dangerous Path, written by Erin Hunter, a peudonym for Cherith Baldry and Kate Cary. I chose this book, because my friend told me it was really a good book to read and I also thought the book cover looked cool. The most interesting thing to me in the whole book was when the cats teamed up with each other. The story takes place in a made-up forest and farmland that is based on New Forest in Southern England. There are four groups of feral cats involved in the story. The four groups called clans are RiverClan, ThunderClan, WindClan and ShadowClan. The four Clans are rivals of each other with each one having their own territory to hunt prey and to protect them from other Clans. The names of the main characters

Racism has become more and more outraged throughout the years, to where it has divided our country. It’s made us fear our authorities, our neighbors, and ‘brothers’. The excerpt in “The Fire This Time”, titled “White Rage” by Carol Anderson, shows the progress that hasn’t been made because of white rage. Racism is not a fresh topic, it has been around since the times of slavery, only now has it been ignited and is now more of a threat than anything else in this country. The new subtle form of racism should not be accepted in society because it is barbarous, immoral, and discriminatory.

In the Time of the Butterflies revolves around the Mirabal sisters, women living in a very patriarchal, “macho” society. Their personal struggles are part of the power of their story, as they stand not only as symbols of rebellion against Trujillo, but at the same time as loving, independent women with husbands and children. Alvarez shows how the resistance against women in politics can even be propagated by the women themselves, as both Mamá and Patria initially express sentiments that women are inferior to men, or else are somehow “purer” and so shouldn’t dirty themselves with politics. In talking to the interview woman in the present day, Dedé says that women “followed their husbands,” but she knows that this is an excuse, as she is the

“Terrorism” was the 5th top searched term on Google from 2001 to 2002. Caroline B. Cooney describes what and how a bioterrorism attack can happen in New York City in her book, Code Orange. A Student at St. Raphael's private school, Mitty Blake is falling behind in his schoolwork, so he has to do his biology paper on the smallpox virus. When Mitty Blake finds an old book on variola major or smallpox, he finds an envelope with 100 year old scabs from the 1904 Boston smallpox epidemic.Accidentally, Mitty gets the dust of them in his system. After realizing that he could have the monster of smallpox, he emails main biological research centers and they get forwarded to the FBI, CDC and maybe a terrorist organization. Susan B. Cooney touches on three main points of terrorism, the fear of terrorism after 9/11, the FBI’s ability to track individuals and bioterrorism.

“The Moths” by Helena Maria Viramontes is a fictional short story about the narrator’s personal hardship of watching her grandmother die slowly because of natural causes. Although, the name of this story is “The Moths” don’t let this fool you. In this story, references to moths are only used twice. Using the moths, the author is able to convey a theme, help create the tone, and resolve the central conflict. I believe that the moths are actually being used in this story to symbolize some sort of healing and relief. In the following paragraphs, I would like to defend my claim and also show you examples of how Mrs. Viramontes utilizes the moths for many different elements in this story.

The Terrible Things is an allegory to the holocaust by Eve Bunting. This allegory is comparable to First they came for the communists, and the excerpt from Elie Wiesel’s Night in the sense of that they all convey a message of how ignoring people who are trying to warn you, or just not doing anything to warn or help other people/creatures, will eventually get you all taken away in the holocaust. Throughout the story, not one animal speaks out, or tries to help another creature when they are being taken away. Little rabbit constantly asks why a certain creature was taken away. Big rabbit simply replies, “The Terrible Things don’t need a reason. Just be glad it wasn't us they wanted” (Bunting 1). Eventually, there are no creatures left in the

We have all heard the saying, “it’s a man’s world”. It appears that our world is governed according to a man’s perspective and thoughts as to how the world should be run, and women gracefully bow down to this perspective and internalize those male supremacist notions of patriarchal dominance. Even with this seemingly innate belief that men have, it is still apparent at times that there is another view that is often glossed over and ignored in the pursuit of extreme power and superiority. In Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones and Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of Butterflies, we are able to dissect society through the eyes of women who have had

Someone’s sacrifices can say a lot about their character. Minerva Mirabal is no exception. In Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, Minerva, the protagonist, sacrifices her family, her freedom and her life for the revolution against the antagonist and dictator, Rafael Trujillo (a.k.a El Jefe) along with her sisters, Patria, Dede, and Mate. In the novel, the four sisters, better known as “Las Mariposas” (“The Butterflies”), explain their journey towards joining the revolution before their influential deaths. The sacrifices that they all make, especially Minerva, are the reasons why their rebellion is so effective.

In The Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, three of four Mirabal sisters are murdered because of their opposition to the government. The surviving sister lives to tell their story. The first four chapters come from the perspective of each sister years before they joined the revolution against Rafael Trujillo's dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. I picked this book to read because I have always been interested in the story of these sisters and what they have contributed to Dominican history. I have only read the first four chapters, but I am already enjoying the book. What impressed me the most is how Alvarez describes how different in personality each of the sisters are. The oldest sister is Patria, who is very religious. She almost

The catastrophe Friend David Sedaris, in his essay "A Plague of Tics” explains how he had been living with obsessive compulsive disorder that afflicted him from elementary school through college in a jesting method with numerous details. He begins his essay by describing his behaviors in elementary school with his teacher Chestnut, and how he was very annoying in her class and his house. He illustrates that he cannot control himself from doing weird things such as pounding the mailbox or press his nose against the doorknob. In addition, he says that the obsessive compulsive disorder also followed him through college that made very afflicted situations with his roommate. Sedaris states that his nervous habits disappeared about the same

In Julia Alvarez’s novel, In the Time of the Butterflies, she uses hyperboles, point of view, and word choice to depict how Minerva’s original caution to help her father’s family later changes after discovering their poverty. When Minerva meets her father’s other family, she is extremely conflicted because she wants to care for her new relatives, but her support is clouded by anger towards her father’s betrayal. When her father is put in jail, she is given the job of delivering a month’s payment to her father’s other family. While delivering the money, she sees the poverty that the family lives in and it “tears [her] own heart to shreds” (Alvarez ln 5). Julia Alvarez, uses this hyperbole to depict Minerva’s change of heart. Alvarez uses the word “tears” to show

In the book The Sixth Extinction written by Elizabeth Kolbert there are a lot of examples that are going on in the world today and also examples of things that started when the first human being was around. This book talks about how we are in the sixth mass extinction, and that is caused by humans. Overall the book goes chapter by chapter and talks about the different mass extinctions there have been, and how they were caused, but also the book talks about different species that have gone extinct and the reasons why. For example the book talks about golden frogs that are located in Panama and how they were seen everywhere located in El Valle de Anton, but they suddenly started disappearing. They were disappearing because of a chytrid fungis cause by humans, when humans travel they were bring this fungis to different places, this ended up killing the frogs (Chapter 1, Kolbert). That is just one example, but throughout the book Kolbert talks about different extinctions like this and what caused them.

1. Lillith in Dawn was picked as the human to lead the other humans that would be reintroduced in order for the planet to hold life again. A strange looking race called the Oankali, want to interbreed with the humans and they want to call it genetic engineering. The humans that are awakened don’t want to interbreed with the Oankali and Liltih is called a traitor because she helps save the Oankali that she has been mated with.