Fantasy League (Summary and Choice)

In the book Fantasy League by Mike Lupica, there is a 12 year old boy named Charlie who is an expert at football. In his area NFL football hasn't been around for 20 years until the recent return of the team. The L.A. Bulldogs, the one and only team L.A. has and they're horrible. Charlie then takes over the team as he is best friends with the owners granddaughter and is just what the team needs. The team then get's back onto track and getting into the hang of things. The team then goes onto press conferences, fame and stardom as the team gets better. Charlie becomes a national star and a lot of curiosity goes around him and how he got so good at the game at the age of 12.

In this book I had seen a conflict starting early in the book. Charlie had been obsessed with Football and he hadn't had a team in his area since 20 years ago. But recently they had gotten a new team, but the team isn't good. Charlie had been proud of football and he wanted to have a good team, but the elder who was the owner wasn't that great at the game anymore and he needed to get some new thinking and ideas. Charlie then senses that they need a new leader and he takes on the spot of owner and pretty much the general manager and he gets the team far and does well.

The Devil's Arithmetic (Summary and Note and Notice)

They story The Devil's Arithmetic is a story about a young girl named Hannah. In the beginning of the story where in the beginning she is going to her family's Passover Seder, which is a Jewish holiday. She wasn't that big on going to it because she never wanted to hear the old stories retold and retold again, until finally when she opens her mind to the stories and ideas and is taken back in tim to the year of 1942 under Nazi rule. She is then very frightened as she is taken out of her home village by Nazi soldiers and Hannah is trying to uncover the mystery of why she is one called Chaya. 

While I had been reading this book I had noticed a memory moment very early and quick in the book. This memory moment was the stories that her family had been telling her which took her back to the past and the horrible memories she can't even start to imagine. She is taken all the way back to the year 1942 by the prophet Elijah, and she is under the horrible rule of the nazi's. I think that this is important because it shows that the story has transferred from this story about  a fun time and celebrating holiday's with family into this deep dark scary story about real events that had happened and horrible things that the Jewish people had went through under the nazi control.

Holocaust Blog

After reading about some of the bystanders as well as the upstanders, explain why you believe many people stood by and watched the Holocaust take place? What inspired others to stand up or resist the Nazis?  What do you think you would have done? Explain your reasoning with details and facts that you have learned throughout our research of the Holocaust. (1 paragraph minimum). 

I believe that people stood by and watched it happen because they were in fear for themselves. Many people wouldn't want to help out the Jewish people due to the danger if they did, most of the time it would be a death sentence if caught. Some people just wouldn't want to take the risk of getting caught and getting killed or sent to work camps. Some people realized that this was a horrible thing and they had decided that it needed to stop so they had helped protect or save Jewish people from being killed by Nazi's. They had heard about all these horrible things and made a change to help the Jewish people, such as Schindler, he had saved eleven hundred Jewish people from being killed by Nazi's, by saying they were working for him. Myself personally, would have done nothing, I would have been a bystander because I would fear for my own life, I wouldn't have wanted to put myself in such danger of Hitler and his army of Nazi's because that could be the end of my own life and the people I was helping as well.

Hope was Here (Summary and Plot)

Hope was Here, by Joan Bauer, is a story about a young, 16 year old waitress named Hope who was abandoned and has been living with her Aunt Addie, her whole life because her mother, who was also a waitress didn't want to have to deal with the responsibility of having a child at the time. Hope also doesn't know her own father, she has never met him during her whole life and she often thinks about how life would be like if she had her father around with her still. Hope had been a waitress, while her aunt Addie was a waitress, so they often had worked together, right before then end of Hope's sophomore year in high school they had decided They decide to move to Mulhoney, Wisconsin to work at a diner called Welcome Stairways, owned by a man by the name of G.T. Stoop who is suffering from the cancer leukemia.

In the story Hope Was Here, the plot was a nice and easy thing to catch on to. The story starts off with her and her Aunt at the diner they worked at in New York, then the rising action starts when Hope has to leave her workplace in New York due to it being closed down. On a wooden board on a window she wrote her message "Hope was here" in small letters. She had then seen a loyal customer who had came in a lot that was a taxi drive. They then had left for Mulhoney, Wisconsin. Hope still had unresolved issues with her mom and dreams of one day meeting her father she never had known.