Teen Review: Samantha Reviews Border Town and Burn For Burn

Samantha – Hi! I’m a 6th grader and really excited to be blogging. I LOVE to read and write so I’m most likely going to have a lot of posts. I’ll give you the most honest reviews possible. I hope you read them!

I read two books that are very similar. The main characters in each story both want the same thing: revenge against different boys in their lives. Their relationships with each of these boys is different — whether it’s a boyfriend, just a friend or someone they barely know.

Border Town: Crossing the Line by Malin Alegria

In Crossing the Line by Malin Alegria, Fabiola is excited about having her little sister join her high school until she makes friends (and a boyfriend) with the wrong people. Fabi’s cousin is accused of robbing her father’s immigrant worker but Fabi knows who really did it, and it’s going to break her sister’s heart. Fabi wants to make things right.

Burn For Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian

In Burn For Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian, three girls were hurt by different people in different ways, and they go through lots of crazy things to get back at them. The three girls, Lillia, Kat and Mary, were strangers to each other at first. They bonded because they all wanted the same thing. Kat wants revenge on her best childhood friend who is now her worst enemy and making her life miserable in high school. Mary wants revenge on the boy who made her so miserable that she had to leave the island she called home. Lillia wants revenge on her best friend for hurting her little sister.

These books were amazing, and Crossing the Line even had some Spanish (which I thought was really cool), and I definitely recommend both books for readers ages 12 and up. The things in both books were so crazy that you can never really imagine them happening in real life. I don’t see things like this in my world, but it’s scary to think there are other kids who do see things like this.

Teen Review: Samantha Reviews 3 Very Different Books

Samantha – Hi! I’m a 6th grader and really excited to be blogging. I LOVE to read and write so I’m most likely going to have a lot of posts. I’ll give you the most honest reviews possible. I hope you read them!

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When I was at overnight camp, I read a lot of books. But there are three that are from three different time periods that I am going to compare and share with you.

The first book is Night by Elie Wiesel. Night is a true story about the Holocaust from a child’s point-of-view. The cool thing about this story is that the author is the main character and it’s really amazing that he remembers everything from so long ago so clearly that he can write it down in great detail. I really liked this book because I am very interested in the Holocaust, however it might be too scary for some people. Also if you like books like Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, The Devils Arithmetic, or Number The Stars you would like this book.

The second book is The List by Siobhan Vivian. The List is realistic fiction and takes place in your average high school. Every chapter is told by a different person on “The List”, a list of the prettiest and the ugliest girls of each grade. Everyone has a different reaction to “The List”. One girl was happy she got ugliest junior, and one girl was sad she got prettiest senior. I loved this book because it made me think about how high school might be for me in 3 years (I hope it’s not like this!). I recommend you keep an eye out for this book. It will be out soon.

The third and final book is Starters by Lissa Price. Starters takes place in the future in a world where you are either young and extremely poor or very old (like 150 years old) and rich. A couple years earlier, a bomb hit a town that killed anyone who wasn’t vaccinated for it (everyone between the ages of 30 and 60) killing the parents of a young girl named Callie. Three years later, Callie and her sick little brother are living on the streets. Callie felt helpless until she found a company that would pay her to lend them her body and put her in a temporary coma while an old person (with the help of technology) would rent out her body and pretend to be her. Everything is going great until something goes wrong on her third body rental which causes her to be awake during certain times in her rental. This causes Callie to get in lots of trouble. Read it to find out more! Like The List, I loved this book.

Now that I have explained the three books, I have a question to ask: Which time period is the best? Why? I think the past is the best because it’s interesting to learn about how things used to be and think about what it would be like if it were still like that now.

Teen review: Hungry by Crystal Renn

My name is Jenna. I go to a high school where I’m part of the marching band and the cheerleading squad. I’m pretty busy, but I always find time to read. I’m also very creative and I like doing little crafts out of random things I find.

Hungry by Crystal Renn

Crystal Renn is one of the most famous plus sized models today. But, she went through a lot to get there.

At just fourteen years old, she was approached by a modeling scout and told her she could be a supermodel living in New York at just one condition; she had to lose weight. This one scout, on that one day, is what caused Crystal to become anorexic.

Being skinny is the only thing Crystal cared about. She once had a brilliant mind with great ideas, but she lost all of her knowledge when she became dangerously skinny. Inevitably, Crystal began to gain weight, despite her frantic workouts and absence of eating. The modeling agency didn’t want a “fat model”.

It was then that Crystal Renn had an epiphany but decided that she loves modeling too much to let it go. So she becomes a plus-sized model. She gained weight and is now at her normal and healthy size, and she couldn’t be healthier.

All throughout this memoir, Renn bestows her knowledge about bodies, models, and society. Everything that she says is so true, and she has a way of making you want to take her advice. This book has to the ability to completely change your outlook on the human body. I absolutely recommend this book if you want an inspirational read.

Teen review: Life Is What You Make It by Peter Buffett

My name is Joshua, I attend Obama 6-12 where I will be a sophomore this year. Me and my afro greatly enjoy playing magicthegathering, reading, playing soccer, fencing, doing my school’s musical and hanging out with my friends. I know how to speak some Spanish (Hola hermosa, come estas?), can pretend to speak some Swedish (jog ticker om du), am learning some American Sign Language (…), and am hoping to learn some Thai.

Life Is What You Make It by Peter Buffett

An exercise in absurdity

As a genre, self-help books don’t tend to be very eye-opening or original. They usually focus the majority of the blame and responsibility for a person’s life on that person, disregarding entirely all social, cultural or economic situations. Peter Buffett’s book Life Is What You Make It is no different. In one simple book, Peter Buffett manages to conclude a whole lot of things of rather mixed value.

Buffett opens the book with some of the values that he sees as important to being a functional human being. These values are trust, a work ethic, tolerance and valuing education. Buffet finds that these are the things that a person needs as a baseline to achieve happiness. The next portion of the book is where Buffett concludes that, at birth, we do not deserve anything. He says that because we have not done anything for the world, we do not deserve anything from it. He says that all we are given must be payed back as if it were a debt.

His next chapter talks about how life really isn’t that fair. The main reason he sees this as necessary to point out is that many people will try to assure us that things are pretty fair. However, he takes this more from the standpoint that everyone’s life is different in that some people come from a better place than other people do. After that, Buffett starts talking about the benefits dangers, and comparative authenticity of choice. He pointed out how sometimes it is useful to have people make a choice for you if you are uneducated in the topic, but how they could also be a little overbearing. He was mainly discussing this in the context of parents, and how some would put too much pressure on their kids career, and how some would know when they had to step in for their kids career.

The next section of the book was were Buffett got down to his serious opinions on choosing a good career. The main thing he said was to choose something that you loved enough to devote huge amounts of time and energy to and still enjoy. In the next section he explained that finding that special thing takes a good amount of time. He also went on to say that it was worth investing good money into taking that time, which is what he did with the $90,000 given to him by his family as his inheritance. Buffett, in the next chapter, shows how he made the work he loved support him financially. The next section of his book shows how Buffett believes mistakes to be unavoidable and rather good lessons as well. In a reference back to a previous chapter, Buffett begins another chapter with the dangers of choice when it is heavily influenced by society.

In a new section, he goes on to discuss the different ways we define success. He points out how if we define success as making money, then many more people are considered successful than if we define success as happiness. In his second to last section, Buffett goes into detail about the problems that face the children of the rich and prosperous.

Finally, Buffett concludes with a chapter on the importance of giving back to the world in any way, using quotes from Andrew Carnegie’s article “Wealth” to support his ideas.

Despite reinforcing time and time again just how in touch he is with he world, Buffett shows that he is not quite up to comprehending certain harsh truths about life. The most obvious way that Buffett shows his lack of realism is in his statements concerning economic disparities. The main opinion he expresses is that everyone has their own problems to deal with, end of story. While it is true that everyone has some type of issue, Buffett neglects to mention that having absolutely nothing to wear in your walk in closet that will work for the party you’re going to is quite different than actually having nothing to wear. This is not to say that the rich don’t have genuine emotional issues (which Buffett discussed in great length), it is merely to illustrate the absurdity of Buffett’s claim.

Next on the list of minor insanities is Buffett’s opinion that no on deserves anything when they are born because they haven’t done anything. While it is true that a baby hasn’t got much under their belt (if they wore belts), they still deserve to be raised with a good education and a healthy environment, emotionally and physically. The most glaring and disturbing of Buffett’s claims is that all we have to do to live a good life is find what we love and make it pay. The main problem with this is that not everything pays that well, by which I mean well enough to live on, and Buffett says that, that isn’t important, as if having a comfortable place to live is negligible.

In his final main absurdity Buffett sees donating as all someone who is rich needs to do to become a good person, ignoring the fact that how they got rich probably did far more damage than they could do good.

Despite the cons of this book it does supply some amount of good advice. For instance, it is extremely important to pick a job because you like it and not because your family is pressuring you to. This is something of extraordinary importance, especially if you actually have many choice for your life, and aren’t forced into flipping burgers to get from paycheck to paycheck. The book also raises a good point about how we should learn from our mistakes. Buffett tells us that we should not hate ourselves for our mistakes but should admit to them, learn, and move on. He says it is unhealthy to be overly concerned with mistakes, or not concerned enough about them.

As we can see, though it does provide certain beneficial ideas, Peter Buffett’s book also brings in a lot of out-of-touch opinions. Due to this ridiculously weird mix of quality, I would not recommend that you read this book. If, however, you have the time and the energy, you can look through this book and evaluate each of these opinions with logic to find good ones, something Peter Buffett obviously didn’t do.