c15jg

This poem is about one of the children on the Amistad. Young boy Kali was the only boy on the Amistad. It is about what he is feeling when he is in jail.

Kali
“Your parents are dead.”
They tell me this but it is not true.
I’ve left Africa.
I am in an unformiliar place,
This place they call New England, the place they call home,
it’s not my home.
My home is Africa.
For me it’s not a happy place.
I’m in jail.
Teme, Kagne, and Margru are very worried.
Cinque tells us to think
that the white men are our friends.
Not in my life will they be my friends.
I will escape from this place and go back to Africa.
I will go back to my parents;
I will prove to all of them
that they are alive.
I miss my parents.
I miss my village.
I miss Africa.

The amazing book Framed by Frank Boyce is a great mystery book about a boy named Dillon who is the only young boy in the small town called Mannod, which has the lowest crime rate in the United Kingdom and the highest mountain. The mountain is completely hollow. Great place for a criminal, right? When everyone realizes that Mannod has a really low crime rate, someone new moves into town. Dillon’s family owns a car shop, located in their garage, which they’ve expanded over the years to meet the demand. Dillon has a friend named Tom who is obsessed with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The names of the Turtles are Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo and Raphael.  Tom was nice enough to give Dillon’s family 2 chickens.  Because Tom was so nice, Dillon’s family names the chickens Donatello and Michelangelo. At the same time, Minnie, one of Dillon’s two sisters thinks that the new man in town is an art criminal.  When this new man goes to Dillon’s family’s shop, he finds the chickens on top of his car and Dillon calls to the chickens to come down off the car, saying “Donatello, Michelangelo, get down off the car!”  At that moment, the new man tells Dillon that Donatello and Michelangelo are the names of famous painters and assumes that Dillon is interested in art.

The Amulet of Samarkand is a great book by Jonathon Stroud is the first book in the remarkable trilogy of Bartemaeus and Nathaniel. Bartemaes is a demon under Nathaniel’s comand. Nathaniel is a young wizard who was powerful enough to sumon the great Bartemaeus and almost never lets him go. Demons can shapeshift into anything and wizards can use magic.

When somebody has stole the amulet (of smarkand) it is up to Bartemaeus and Nathaniel to save the amulet and get life back to normal.

Even though it has magic I would recommend it to anyone who likes magic books or, fantasy, or even adventure, this is one of my favorite books of all time.

Africa is My Home by Monica Edinger, my teacher, is a great picture book about Sarah Margru Kinson, one of the children on the Amistad slave ship. “Rarely did they ever come back, but she did.” Margru was her name but it got changed to Sarah Kinson when she went to America. Ms. Edinger uses great descriptions to bring the story into you as if you were Ms. Kinson. Every page has something different to tell you about. It is a great adventure book and at the same time it is a great historical fiction book. Sarah’s emotions go right into you and for you poem fans, Ms. Edinger put in some poems along the way about what Sarah is feeling at that exact moment. I can read this book over and over again until the cows come home. Ms. Edinger is a great teacher and I am so glad that she introduced us to the book. This book is kind of like my oral history book From Poland to America, if you are wondering anything about Sarah’s story you can find out by reading Africa is My Home by Monica Edinger.

This is about my third grade buddy’s relationship with his pen pal.
Our relationship with our New Orleans buddies is from letters. We know them because our teacher knew a teacher at a school called the Lusher School so we started a relationship through letters. We exchanged food and thoughts. We are like pen pals but more because we share almost everything with each other and we are trying to help New Orleans. We have seen photographs of New Orleans at the Met and one time we wrote “I am from” letters. That is when you write where you are from, both fugitively and literally. We want everyone to know about our relationship so we told everyone in our school assembly about it. We are going to continue writing to them.

The Dalton Schools middle school play Half a Six Pence is a great musical based on the book Kipps by H.G. Well is amazing, incredible and more and the special effects are great and the acting sensational this is incredible, and it is kids doing it not adults, anybody who lives in the upper east side of Manhattan should see this play.

Headed for Australia, young Matt Cruz and Kate de Vries have they’re airship sunk because of a pirate attack when thay are in the middle of the ocean! Lucky them, they find a uncharted island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and boy are they releaved that they are safe, but there is no helium to fill the ship up so they are stranded in the middle of a deserted island. The only weird part about that sentence, is the deserted part. They see a ship! Matt and Kate go closer to the ship, and… wait a second, doesn’t that ship look fimilier? It’s the pirates that attacked them, and they’re ship? It is! But how will they escape?

The book How I Became an American by Karin Gundisch and translated from German to English by James Skofield is a great historical fiction book about a family that goes on a remarkable journey from Germany to America. Karin Gundisch wrote a great book while she puts in true facts about her families immigration, such as “In Youngstown there was so much smoke that you couldn’t see the sky.” This book is based on how Karin’s family immigrated and how many other families immigrated. This book is one of the best, if not the best historical fiction books that I have ever read. Karin put the specific date of everything and I like that. I can read How I Became an American over and over again. I would recommend this book to anyone. Read How I Became an American and you will know why I really like this book.

Our fourth grade class at the Dalton School interviewed an immigrant that is currently in the United States. I interviewed my grandmother from Poland. We went through many drafts of writing and rewriting until we were finally ready for our … book dummies! We are done with our book dummies and… we were still not quite done but one more step and then “twenty years later we will be looking at our work” which I doubt that it will happen but oh well, we did our book and I am relieved that we don’t have to do any more performances.