Brandon Mull starts Sky Raiders, the first book in the series Five Kingdoms, with an introduction to the main character Cole. Cole thinks he is a regular sixth grader with a normal life, but that all changes when his friends are captured by slave traders. Cole followed the slave traders into a man hole, and he suddenly found himself in a place in between worlds called the Outskirts. Cole attempts to rescue his friends from the caged wagons, but the attempt ends when Cole is marked as a slave and forced to walk all day tied to the back of the last wagon in the convoy. After a few days of traveling, the convoy came across a man that was looking for a slave. Cole was picked because he wasn’t afraid of heights. Cole was taken to work as a Sky …show more content…
Raider. The Sky Raiders worked at a place called the Brink which is a cliff that has no bottom and it stretches between two walls made of clouds. Out of these cloud walls come floating castles filled with all kinds of treasures and dangers, and the Sky Raiders job is to pillage the castles. While Cole is working with the Sky Raiders, he met a girl named Mira. Mira tells Cole that she is the daughter of the High King of the Outskirts, and her dad stole her shaping abilities. Shaping is the process of rearranging matter into different forms, and it is related to magic. A few weeks later the High King found out where Mira was hiding, and he sent a legion of soldiers to capture her. Cole and Mira barely escaped with their friends Jace and Twitch on a floating lifeboat. The legion of soldiers chased the band of friends into one of the cloud walls. Behind the cloud wall is a spinning vortex that destroys everything that enters into the cloud wall. Just before Cole, Mira, Jace, and Twitch were destroyed in the vortex, metal insects caught them and brought the group of friends to a hidden sanctuary behind the cloud wall.
The host that saved Cole and his friends was the head shaper of Sambria, a kingdom of the Outskirts. The head shaper told of a creature made of Mira’s shaping power that was rampaging across the land, and Mira had to reclaim her power in order to be one step closer to over throwing the High King. The head shaper of Sambira gave Cole and his friends items enhanced by shaping to help on their mission. On the way to the monster Carnag, the group of friends passed through a dangerous part of Sambria called Brady’s wilderness. This wilderness was created by a child that was a very powerful shaper. The wilderness is full of giant pieces of pie, huge cookies, dominos, and plastic dinosaurs. Cole and his friends are attacked by an army of skeletons and by plastic dinosaurs. Finally, the band of friends escaped Brady’s wilderness alive, and they followed the carnage that Carnag left behind. Carnag has a humanoid form created out of trees, brick, and dirt. Mira felt an instant connection to the beast and she stalled for time as her shaping power slowly returned.. Mira tried to convince her own power that they needed each other to succeed. Over time, Mira regained the majority of her power and defeated
Carnag. Overall, Brandon Mull did a great job with this book. The book is full adventure and imagination. The time Cole spent as a Sky Raider and his near death experiences are examples of adventure while Brady’s wilderness with its oversized food items shows the imagination put into the book. Another great aspect of the book is it is easy to read. The book has few big words and the plot is easy to follow. The simplicity of the story makes this book a great book for all ages. This book is especial great for teenagers because the series is fast paced and each book gets better and better, so you don’t want to put it down. Brandon Mull knows how to hook readers on a book. Along with adventure, this book presents themes in the story. One that is present in the book is that friends help each other to achieve goals and to grow. In the Sky Raiders, Mira asks her friends many times if they wanted to continue with her even though the road would be dangerous, but Cole, Jace, and Twitch promised to stay with her. They chose to stay with her even though there was a safer and more comfortable option available. Another theme the book discusses is about what a hero is. The different perspectives of what truly defines a hero are shown when Cole meets Lyrus, a resemblance of a human made from shaping. Lyrus believes a hero picks a fight with no real intentions. When Cole fights for his friends he shows Lyrus that he is a hero by defending his friends from a cyclops. In conclusion, Brandon Mull’s book Sky Raiders is an impressive book. It has a substantial amount of adventure and imagination merged with an easy to read story line. These characteristics make the book Sky Raiders a novel that teenagers should spend their time reading. The book also teaches life lessons. The characters Cole, Twitch, and Jace teach that friends stay together during hard times and aid each other in reaching goals. Another lesson is about heroes and fighting for a cause. Brandon Mull did an outstanding job on the book Sky Raiders, and I would highly recommend reading Sky Raiders and the rest of the Five Kingdoms series.
“Plenty-Coups Chief of the Crows” was authored by Frank Linderman in 1930. This book interested me because it was Plenty-Coups account of his life. Plenty-Coups couldn’t write English. So when Mr. Linderman came by asking for his account of his life, Plenty-Coups couldn’t deny. Also why this book interested me was because we were learning about the Native American’s when I picked this book. Final reason why I picked this book is because I have never read a Native’s auto biography.
Reverend Jeremiah Brown - Hillsboro's minister. He is a hard- hearted man who feels no qualms about convincing the town to condemn Bert Cates and his daughter as incorrigible sinners.
The book that i chose to do this speech on is Cowboy Ghost. Cowboy Ghost is about a boy named Titus who goes on a cattle drive through Florida in the early 1900s. The main character in this story is Titus. Titus Timothy MacRobertson is a small and weak 16 year old boy that wants to impress his father that kind of ignores him. His mother died giving birth to him and his father “blames” Titus for her death. His father (Rob Roy MacRobertson) is a strong, massive and hardworking man. His brother Micah is a 29 year old man that is described as being a second Rob Roy MacRobertson because of his strength and size, at the end of the book you find out that he was more like their mother. The cattle drive was going really good until seminoles (indians)
In today’s world there are millions of people who grow up in situations that make them powerless. Poverty, violence, and drugs surround children from birth and force them to join the cycle. In L.B. Tillit’s Unchained a young boy named TJ grows up in this environment. With both his mother and father struggling with addiction, he is often left alone on the streets to fend for himself. He turns to a local gang for protection and a sense of place in Jr. High, but is quickly taken out of the life he knows when his father overdoses and dies. TJ is sent to live in a foster home where he learns to care for others and meets a girl and falls in love with her. However, when his mother regains custody of him, TJ is forced back into the gang where he uses violence and drug dealing to stay alive. With help from his foster care manager he soon realizes that he can make it out of his life and return to his foster home and the girl he loves. A central theme of Unchained is that people have the power to make decisions to determine their future.
In the short story, “Prospector’s Trail”, the author Cathy Jewison makes the characters seem like real people. This can be illustrated by some conflicts that are evident in the story; similarly in everyday life with everyday people. The characters also look authentic because the characters behave the same way the “average” human would and the reader is able to relate to them in some way.
Sahara Special, by Esme Raji Codell, is a shining piece of adolescent nonfiction that authentically and sensitively captures the Heart-Wrenching Life Story and Amazing Adventures of a two-time inner-city fifth grader. Inspiring and empathy inducing, Sahara Special exemplifies Russel’s guidelines for culturally and socially diverse literature as outlined in our textbook in many ways.
Finally it was time to go home. Cole had dreamed of this day many times, that dreadful day that he would have to fit back in to the world.
I really don’t understand the scene when Cole burnt all the supplies he was given, to stay on the island. Cole was mad in this scene and poured gasoline all over his supplies and lit a match and all the supplies burnt up. I don't understand this because I don't know why you would burn the things that are meant to help you stay alive. When Cole stated “ You don’t get it do you? My parents are divorced and they don’t give a rat is I live or die” (27) It made me feel bad for him because that is the main reason why is the way he is, I hope that later in the story he finds someone who cares about him or realizes how much garvey cares about him. I dislike his parents because they just became drunks and treat Cole poorly, which is unfair and not right for his parents to do. I think if Cole realized that he is doing the same thing his parents are doing to him, to others such as when he beat up the boy from school, Cole had mentioned that his parents had beat him up and no he is beating up kids at school. I noticed a lot in the story so far
Every time he seems to be on top of things, he is knocked off by some. unseen force of the. The book is very difficult to put down because of the The fate of the main character always seems to be hanging on the brink. The sand is This book is an indispensable insight into the history of the era. The era of the.
In Craig Lesley’s novel The Sky Fisherman, he illustrates the full desire of direction and the constant flow of life. A boy experiences a chain of life changing series of events that cause him to mature faster than a boy should. Death is an obstacle that can break down any man, a crucial role in the circle of life. It’s something that builds up your past and no direction for your future. No matter how hard life got, Culver fought through the pain and came out as a different person. Physical pain gives experience, emotional pain makes men.
David W. Blight's book Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory and the American Civil War, is an intriguing look back into the Civil War era which is very heavily studied but misunderstood according to Blight. Blight focuses on how memory shapes history Blight feels, while the Civil War accomplished it goal of abolishing slavery, it fell short of its ultimate potential to pave the way for equality. Blight attempts to prove that the Civil War does little to bring equality to blacks. This book is a composite of twelve essays which are spilt into three parts. The Preludes describe blacks during the era before the Civil War and their struggle to over come slavery and describes the causes, course and consequences of the war. Problems in Civil War memory describes black history and deals with how during and after the war Americans seemed to forget the true meaning of the war which was race. And the postludes describes some for the leaders of black society and how they are attempting to keep the memory and the real meaning of the Civil War alive and explains the purpose of studying historical memory.
J Cole begins to point out how hard he had to work to get where he is. For 11 winters straight he took on New York’s climate (lns. 51) and while climbing the ladder of success, he rose the standards “…so high that you gotta get Obama to fore the air force to find it” (lns. 53). This hyperbole is not only a form of bragging, but by including the metaphor of the ladder to success, he lets his audience know that he is not trying to be just another famous rapper. He is trying to be so good that he changes the standards of what people consider to be a successful
Chapter one takes place in San Francisco. This chapter is about how MoonShadow and WindRider, his father makes a new life in America. MoonShadow is only seven years old and he never saw his father, he fled to go make money before MoonShadow was born. Hand Clap, a distant cousin that works with WindRider in San Francisco, returns to China to tell MoonShadow to go back with him over seas into San Francisco. Hand Clap said that WindRider sent him to go get MoonShadow. As MoonShadow and Hand Clap are walking down the street MoonShadow notices that there aren't any women in the streets. That’s because they don't let their wives go with them out to work with them. MoonShadow finally arrives at the Tang Company, the Tang family works and lives here
In The Promised Land, Nicholas Lehmann follows the stories of black migrants, politicians, and bureaucrats through the Great Migration, and attempts to explain the decline of northern cities, the constant liberty struggle of blacks across America, and government response to the issues surrounding the Great Migration. This work signalled a drastic change from the structured approach of Thomas Sugrue’s, The Origins Of The Urban Crisis, which observes the effects of institutions and human agency on postwar Detroit and its marginalized peoples. Both Sugrue and Lemann had (albeit slightly different) holistic views of the political climate of postwar cities, which helped provide context for prejudices towards blacks and the poor, and subsequently
Glory Days is an inspirational story about basketball coach and Hall of Fame member Don Haskins. After coaching women's high school basketball, Haskins moves south to Texas to coach the men's Division I team at Texas Western. Despite having little funding, Haskins tries to recruit the seven best players he can in order to make the most outstanding team. For his first season, he recruits seven African American men. Since others did not agree with Haksins' actions, Haskins was met with some animosity and threats. Threats on his family and on funding for the team.