Speak  by Laurie Halse Anderson

 Quotes

    "this is where you can find your soul, if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you that you've   never dared to look before. Do not ask me to show you how to draw a face. Ask me to help you find the wind."

    "You just choose your destiny, you cant change that."

    "Can the plural possesive express the feelings in your heart? If you dont learn art now, you will never learn to breath!!!"

    "Art without emotion is like chocolate cake without sugar. it makes you gag."

    "...When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at s time."

Vocabulary

• Gelatinous flirt- thick like gelitan
• xenophobic- an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange.
• hypothalamuses-part of the brain that lies below the thalamus, forming the major portion of the ventral region of the diencephalon and functioning to regulate bodily temperature, certain metabolic processes, and other autonomic activities.

  Speak was a great book that keeps you guessing. I would reccomend this it to most teen girls that likes to be kept waiting to find out what will happen untill the very end!!It is fast to finish and easy to read.  

  I dont see why her old friends treat her the way they did when they dont even know the whole truth about what went on the night that Melinda calls the police. They could of at least talked to her to find out what happened.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith 

     I really like how A Tree Grows In Brooklyn has to do with some people in every day life. Peolpe that may have nothing to look forward to can always look up to something like Neeley and Francie look up ta a tree because it symolizes life and that even if there may seem to be no hope left, it still makes it. Francie and Neeley also collect junk to sell for as many pennys as possible because they are so poor. I really like how A Tree Grows In Brooklyn is like in a way an uplifter to others that think they have no chance for a future because Francie in the end becomes very sucsessful. I would recomnd this book to those who are feeling like they have nothing left or to look foward to.

Quates

• "Maybe that decision was her great mistake. She should have waited until some man came along who felt that way about her. Then her children would not have gone hungry; she would not have had to scrub floors for their living and her memory of him would have remained a tender shining thing. But she wanted Johnny Nolan and no one else and she set out to get him."

  - Betty Smith,  Ch. 7

   

• "Those were the Rommely women: Many, the mother, Evy, Sissy, and Katie, her daughters, and Francie, who would grow up to be a Rommely woman even though her name was Nolan. They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices."

  - Betty Smith,  Ch. 7

• "they were made out of thin invisible steel."

  - Betty Smith, Ch. 7

• "Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk."- Betty Smith,  Ch. 8

• "She was all of these things and of something more."

  - Betty Smith, , Ch. 8

• "Oh, God, don't send me any more children or I won't be able to look after Johnny and I've got to look after Johnny. He can't look after himself."

  - Betty Smith,  Ch. 9