The Shattering Sky By Erin Hunter

There is a superstition in China known as Ke Xing which says that the baby that causes the death of her mother during child birth is considered to have something stronger than the mother's spirit, which is considered bad luck. Adeline's mother died in giving birth to her. Falling leaves is the true story of Adeline Yen Mah. It told of a person that was discriminated and emotionally abused by her family for all her life since her birth, all her life she suffered and was punished by her family from something she was innocent of and didn't do. To understand this, a brief background of her family history should be known.

Two best friends, Chris and Win, decided to do something great their summer of senior year before heading of to collage. Chris and Win are going to bike along the West Coast to Seattle, where Win’s uncle lives. At first Chris’s mom is against them going, while his dad pushes him to go because he had a similar dream that he did not accomplish. Win’s parents seem to not have a care in the world that their son is going to bike across the country. Eventually both sets of parents agree and the boys start their journey. The trip is going great but somewhere along the way things started taking a turn for the worst. The book Shift by Jennifer Bradbury is a great realistic mystery that keeps the pages turning.

“Ashes” by Susan Beth Pfeffer is about a girl who is caught in a situation in which her father attempts to bribe her to do something immoral. One message suggested in this story is how misdirection and trickery can negatively affect relationships between a parent and their child.

The poem “Mothers and Daughters” is written by Pat Mora. Pat Mora is a contemporary award winning writer, who writes for children, youngsters and adults. She was born in El Paso, TX in the year 1942. She attains a title of a Hispanic writer; however, the most of her poems are in English. In her literary work, one can observe the different aspects of the immigrants’ lives such as language issues, family relationships, immigrants’ experiences and cultural differences (1187).

The article Into the Dark Water by Lauren Tarshis is about when the most massive, high in technology, indestructible ship sunk. The Titanic of course. Also when passenger and survivor Jack Thayer shared his journey, through his writing with author Lauren Tarshis. It makes the article more intriguing to use quotes because it makes you feel as if you are on the ship on that night.

Just about everybody knows the story of the Battle of Gettysburg. Michael Shaara puts a little different spin on it in his book The Killer Angels. The book is a work of fiction, but based on facts and experiences from people that were there. Michael Shaara gives us all an inside look at the multiple points of views about the cause of the war. He tells the battle from the perspective of the Union, Confederates, and even a couple of people from other countries.

The Killer Angels is a novel written by Michael Shaara which tells the story of the four day battle of Gettysburg from June 30 and ended July 3, 1863.There were two armies in the novel the Union and the Confederate soliders who eneded up fighting in a town called Gettysburg located in Pennsylvania. In the novel, there are four major characters who were all Generals, General Lee, General Longstreet, General Pickett, and Colonel Chamberlain.The main cause of the war was the confederate wanting to split from the North and be an independent nation. The book allows the reader to see the problems, the decisions, and the reactions of individuals.

All the light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, chronicles the lives and relationship between Marie and Werner, two children who grew up in France and Germany. The society around them forces discriminatory ideals that cloud their perception of the world, but they find its meaning through their own self-definition. In this, they are both guided by a single radio and the message and legacy that it contains. Throughout the book, the author isolated the two characters, but also created subtle connections between the two. The most important of which would be the radio. It created a bond between the two where they learned from each other’s experiences and struggles. All the Light We Cannot See recreates a new picture of the world by contrasting the two separate journeys taken by Marie- Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig to gain that image, which is guided by the power of a radio and the message it contains, ultimately leading to the meeting of the two characters that officially forms an image of the world where one’s actions are valued more than one’s physical features.

The book The Killer Angels was published in 1975 by the Ballatine Booksand was written by Michael Shaara. The Killer Angels is a historic novel about the time of the American Civil War, more specifically The Battle of Gettysburg. Shaara wrote this historical masterpiece with the sole purpose of letting the reader know exactly how the war was for the men actually putting their lives on the line to get this great country of America to the stature it is today. In order to accomplish his goal of creating the ultimate historic journal of The Battle of Gettysburg, he went straight to the source. He went back and retrieved letters and documents written by the men themselves, who were I the war. What better way to tell a story about one of the most significant battles of American history, then getting the information straight from the warriors who were fighting in the tranches? The book is written from the viewpoints of Robert Edward Lee, James Longstreet, and a couple of other men who were in the war. Robert E. Lee was fifty-seven at the time of the war. He was a highly respected general of the Confederate Army. He was an honest, God following man who had great morals which made a great leader (Killer Angles XVI). He didn’t drink or smoke and would stay away from reading novels and plays because he felt it would make him weak minded for battle (Killer Angles XVI). This is what made him such a great leader, the fact that he lead by example of how a true gentleman and general should

In Anne Fadiman’s book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Lia Lee, a Hmong child refugee with severe epilepsy, and her life are caught in the middle of a substantial cultural misunderstanding. Although Lie and her family live in the United States and go to an American hospital, her family believes in Shamanism, thus her family believes that Lee’s epilepsy is sacred. The miscommunications which ensue, both culturally and linguistically, between Neil Ernst and Peggy Philp, Lia’s doctors, and the Lee family cause Lia Lee, before she even turns five years old, to end up in comatose for the rest of her life. However, Lia Lee’s life could have been saved if the Lee’s had a better understanding of the American doctors’ intentions, and the

Ruta Sepetys is the author for Between the Shades of Gray, a novel that captures the truth of Siberian camps and the annexation of the Balkans by Stalin. Ruta Sepetys got the idea to write this fictional story when she visited her family in Lithuania and got the chance to discover more about her heritage. She got very fascinated about her family’s struggle to keep memories of her grandparents because of the annexation of Lithuania to the USSR. This conflict urged her to find out more about the feelings and people’s memoirs during this period in World War II so, she started interviewing the survivors from the Siberian gulags and gathered information to write her novel. The book was also inspired by her father, Jonas Sepetys, who escape

What is success? Society has evolved so drastically that the answer to this question isn’t very simple. Depending on social status or moral beliefs, viewpoints vary. Success is demonstrated in Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, “The Shift” from The Road To Character by David Brooks, “Purpose” from Angela Duckworth’s Grit, and personal interviews with Lynn Harder and Nanci Bush. Unbroken is a biography written by Laura Hillenbrand about Louis Zamperini. Louis Zamperini, known as Louie, was an Olympic runner who enlisted in the Army Air Corps during WWll and ended up enduring many hardships. Similar to Louie’s story, the chapter “Purpose” contains multiple anecdotes, illustrated by Duckworth, of others who have experienced deprivations. In

Wendy Miller is passionate Registered Expressive Art Therapist with the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association, whose story has beauty and tragedy but most of all hope. She is a well-educated woman that has received several awards, taught at various Universities and has written numerous documents and books. Her current book, Sky Above Clouds is a collaboration between her husband, Gene Cohen and herself. Wendy and Gene offer an account of love, illness, wisdom, aging, and death. It is important to note that this book was put together after his passing. Therefore, it is composed with love and sadness “between the living and the dead.” (book) A book about a portion of her life that was extremely heartbreaking but also groundbreaking.

The teacher will introduce a selected nonfiction book called The Moon by Seymour Simon to students by projecting the preselected page on the document camera. She lets students know that although they may know lots about the moon there may be information in the book that is new and hard for them to understand.

When it comes to emotions, there is always a reason to why one experiences them. It can be happiness due to getting a favorite toy, jealousy at another’s position, hatred due to one’s actions, and so on. Even sub-categories are due to an experience bringing it forth. Such as suffering, one doesn’t suffer randomly, it happens because it was the effect of some cause. One of the biggest causes being unfulfilled desire; depending on the significance of the desire the greater the suffering. In the novel Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata there is this intricate web of suffering that occurs between the main characters, Kikuji, his father’s, his father’s mistresses and Fumiko. All as an outcome of unfulfilled desire.