Battle of the Books

Battle of the Books is a competition where grade 6's and 7's get 8 books they are supposed to try to read. Each classroom gets 2 or three of each book. Everyone gets the books. While you are reading one of the books you are supposed to write down questions like, "In which book is there an earthquake?" There is a minimum of 10 questions for each book. We are all spit into teams. My team is called the Black Jaguars and I am the co-captain. Then once a week we meet in the library to have a "battle". Every team has large cards with pictures of all the books on them. Mrs. Clark, our librarian, asks one of the questions that someone has written and if we think know the answer, we hold the card with the answer on it up when she says go.  So the point is to read as many of the books as you can, and to write good questions because it is an advantage if your question is picked, because then of course you will know the answer. Each correct answer is worth a point, the team with the lowest amount of points is eliminated. The winning team after all the battles then moves on to compete with winning teams from other schools. Today we had a battle and my team won today with 26 points. 2nd place was a tie with 23 points. There are now only 3 teams left playing and 2 more battles. My team has been doing very well because we have 3 really good and fast readers on it and we are also very good guessers. We have either won or tied for 1st every battle so far.

There are a lot of very good books to read for Battle of the Books, I have read all of them. They try to have a mix of genras. My favourite was actually a graphic novel called Smile by Raina Telgemeier. She kind of draws with a For Better or For Worse style. It tells the true story of the author. Basically, the girl gets her two front teeth knocked out in grade 6, they try to put them back in again but the bone above them was damaged so they move up farther than all the other teeth, so then she gets a retainer with fake teeth attatched, and then she has to have braces which don't help,  then surgery, headgear, braces with rubber bands that stretch diagonally across her mouth, and then finally her teeth look normal. Well, almost normal. It says in the book they still look a little weird and then the dentist says, "We did the best we could considering we basically rearanged your entire mouth!" So while this is all going on we follow her to high school where she has to deal with an earthquake, major embarrasment, and friends that aren't so friendly. It's actually a really good book. 

My least favourite book was Ark Angel. It's a spy book, following a 14 year old spy named Alex Rider. I'm just not interested in those kind of books and it was really quite boring at some parts.

Anyway,  this is what Smile looks like:

Design an Ad Contest

Every year, a contest is held with The Burnaby Now, where classes from many different elemantary schools design an ad for a buisness in Burnaby. Each class that participates gets a different buisness. This year, my class got The Burnaby Fire Department. Every one in the class had to design an individual ad. A photographer from the Burnaby Now comes to each class that is involved and takes pictures of us working on them. Some of them were featured in the newspaper, like I was! Here I am with two of my good friends Maddy and Julia.

Each buisness then picks the one they think is the best and The Burnaby Now also puts it in the newspaper. And guess what? Mine won! Here it is...

The Hunger Games!

I finally saw The Hunger Games movie last Sunday with my mom and my dad. When we got to the movie theater I noticed one of my good friends from school was also there with her mom and her sister, so we all sat together. I thought that the movie was absolutely amazing, of course. They picked exactly the right actor  to play Katniss. She was very very good. I liked the characters who played Gale and Peeta except Josh, who played Peeta didn't really look right for me. I also thought, although the actor who plays Haymitch is a really great actor, he didn't look right. In the book, specifically, it says that he is from the Seam, and it also says that people from the Seam all have the same curly dark brown hair and grey eyes. So why did they decide to give him long straight blond hair! It isn't right. He did do an amazing job of being Haymitch but he didn't look the part. In the movie, District 12 looks sort of like it's from the Depression or something. I like how they made it look very grey and white and hopeless. But I also think that it looked to old fashioned. It is supposed to be in the future, so there should be some futuristic look to it, even in District 12. On the other hand, the Capitol was portrayed perfectly, exactly like I imagined, including how the people in the Capitol dressed and looked. Some of my favourite parts of the movies are when Peeta asks Cesar Flickerman if he smells like roses in his interview, when Katniss shoots the arrow at the apple in her training session and Haymitch's reaction afterwards, and when Rue steals Cato's knife. I thought that Rue looked perfect, but she is supposed to be 12 and I think she acted more like a 6 or 7 year old. Same with Prim. I wish they would of had more of Gale and Katniss hunting in the woods, because you don't get to know Gale in the movie like you do in the book. Also, the mutated wolves in the movie were a little disappointing the way that they looked. They looked the big, fat wolves with the face of a pug. They also didn't show how the wolves are supposed to look like all the dead tributes. The violence in the movie was actually not as bad as I was expecting. Gary Ross, the director of the movie said that they didn't want to try to take away from the violence, because that is basically what the book is all about, how horrible and bad violence is. But when there was a lot of fighting, like at the Cornucopia, the camera shots of the bodies and the fighting moved to fast for you to register what was being shown, which I liked. Speaking of the Cornucopia, again, it says specificaly that is is gold and shaped like, well, a cornucopia. But in the movie, it is silver! And a bit more geometric and blocky than I was expecting, although it is in the future. Even though I thought that some parts in the movie could have been a little better, all in all, I think it was potrayed perfectly. I can't wait for the second one, Catching Fire!

Here are some pictures from the movie!

Katniss hunting in the woods.

Effie Trinket and Katniss at the reaping.

Gale and Katniss in the meadow.

Peeta and Katniss in the Training Center

Rue in the arena.

District 12, where Katniss lives.

Now you have to read the book or watch the movie!

Maplelea Doll Photo Shoot

Me and my sisters all have a Maplelea doll, which are Canadian dolls from each with it's own name, personality, place it comes from in Canada and a journal in which it tells your dolls story and space where you can write your own. You can also order clothes for your doll from a catalogue they send out. Me, Ellie, and Sasha decided to lay out all our clothes and create as many different outfits as we can. We came up with 23.  Each person took turns creating and outfit for their doll and came up with a name for the outfit. Here are the pictures!

This is Brianne, Sasha's doll from Dauphin, Manitoba!

Brianne: A Date with Daddy

This is Saila, pronounced Sigh-la, Ellie's doll from Nunavut.

Saila: Little Miss not so Popular (I don't know why she chose this name)

This is Alexi, my doll from Toronto, Ontario

Alexi: Fall Time

Saila: Ballet Girl

Alexi: Rock Star

Brianne: A Day in Funky Town

Saila: Little Ladybug

Brianne: Baseball Star

Alexi: Pretty Pink

Saila: Kind of Awkward 

Alexi: Sleepyhead

Brianne: Snow Day

Brianne: Purplelicious

Saila: Stupendous Purple

 Alexi: Winter Night

Brianne: Kind of Shy

Alexi: All Dressed Up

Saila: A Rainy Day in Vancouver

Saila: Hip Hoppin

Brianne: Straight A Student

Alexi: Pajama Party

Brianne: Out and About

Alexi: Outside Adventures

Saila: Going to a Party

Pina The Movie

On Friday, I had to take the bus downtown, by myself, to meet my dad there. My mom and dad wouldn't tell me where we were going. When I got there, me and my dad had the best pizza ever at Pacifico Pizza. It really is the best! After we took the bus to Fifth Avenue Festival Cinema. We saw a really interesting, weird, different, really good movie. It is called Pina. It is a documentary about a German choreographer and different dances/"dances" she created. Some things are really cool, some things make you think, "what is the point of this?" Like there was a lady in the woods in a flowery dress and she had a leaf blower and was blowing leaves around. It was weird. Some parts were funny, like this person went on this bus and she had a giant pillow and then she started attacking it. There were actual dances too. I really liked the movie, but it was in German with English subtitles, which was kind of annoying, but I guess it wasn't about the words it was about the dance. What was really different about the movie was that Pina died unexpectedly right before they started filming but they decided to make it anyway. It was a really good movie. You can watch the trailer below:

   

Some Awsome Books and Two Awesome Videos

So, The first thing I'm going to write about is that I have read all three books in the Hunger Games Trilogy and I love love love them! I can't wait to see the movie that is coming out March 23rd! They are set in the future where in a place called Panem, which is part of what once was the U.S., there are The Hunger Games, a contest in which 24 kids from ages 12-18 fight to the death on live TV each year. It is very good and very clever.

Next, I wrote about a book called When You Reach Me a few months ago, if you didn't catch it you can see it here. Anyways, the book club I'm in made a video about the book for a contest. You have to make a 90 second video summarizing the ENTIRE book. And guess what? We won! The video was screened in Portland, Oregon, at a film festival. Here it is!

My school was also involved in another amazing video. For anti-bullying day my school and some other schools put together a project they called Pink 2012. We all learned the same dance to the chorus of Lady Gaga's Born This Way and then we were free to do anything we wanted for the verses. Some people came to each school to film it and then put it all together.
We also made a video just of classes at Confederation Park (my school), except I can't find it anywhere, which is really to bad because it was awesome

Here is the official video:



That's all for now!

A Very Sandy Day!

Today we rented a car and drove to two great beaches. The first one was called Sandy Beach, possibly the best and weirdest name for a beach ever. The thing about this beach was that most of the waves were 15 feet high. You are only supposed to go in the water if you are a very good surfer or body surfer. As soon as we walked onto the beach a lifegaurd stopped us and asked if we were planning to swim. We said no, we just wanted to take some pictures.  As we were driving away, we saw a rescue helicopter carry someone in on a stretcher. There were some pretty crazy big waves out there. After about an hour we drove to Kailua Beach Park. There were lots of waves there too, not as big as Sandy Beach, but bigger than I'd ever seen. It was fun to wait just before the wave crashed over and then hang on to a boogie board and it would carry you super fast all the way to the shore. It was so fun! Me and Ellie had a really great time standing out in the ocean and letting the waves roll through us. Sasha was a bit scared because at the beginning a big wave crashed over her and knocked her under. I got knocked under too and it was pretty scary. It was a really fun day but I got a really bad sunburn on my arms, back, and neck and it hurts a lot. But I did have a really fun time. I'll post again soon!