The Borrowers by Mary Norton

          After reading "The Borrowers" by Mary Norton, I was left with a love for the book and a lot of thoughts about the world that the book had made me think about.

          In the story, Borrowers are little people- only a few inches tall- who live in regular human's houses and steal (or "borrow") small items from them to live off of. The Borrowers you meet in the story are Homily and Pod, wife and husband, and their fourteen year old daughter Arrietty. Their lives become a whirlwind of adventure when Arrietty gets antsy and is "seen", (seen by a human being) by a nine year old boy. The story brought up a lot of interesting things to think about- like in the beginning Arrietty thinks the whole world revolves around Borrowers and humans exist solely for Borrowers to take things from. It made me think about how you live your life thinking humans are the center of everything, but they're really not. Sometimes you have to step back and look at the bigger picture. 

          Another thing it made me think about is how people take a lot of things for granted. For example,   a lot of people are dancing about their huge houses in huge clothes and complaining about how they don't have endless trivial items when there are Borrowers (metaphorically- I mean poorer or less fortunate people) who's biggest accomplishment in life is having a nice new rug in their home, or even having a home. People should be grateful (including me) for having what they have.

          All in all, The Borrowers was a beautifully written and thought provoking book that everyone should read.

Character Analysis

Ella Walsh                                                                                                                                            705

         In the book "Pay It Forward" by Catherine Ryan Hyde, the main character- a twelve year old boy named Trevor McKinney- is very optimistic.  His father left him a year prior when his mother, Arlene, found out he had been cheating on his first wife with her. But despite his neglectful father and recovering alcoholic mother, Trevor was a very bright and innovative boy. For example, when his teacher, Reuben St. Claire, gave the class an assignment to think of an idea on how to change the world, Trevor thought of "Pay It Forward." Completely born out of his own mind, Pay It Forward was a fantastic idea that could really make a difference. The idea was that someone does three people a big favor. Then those three people each do three other people big favors. For example, you could give someone a place to live, a job offering, money, or paint their house for free. Then hopefully many people would do it and the world would be a better place. Although Trevor's life had been wrecked in a variety of ways he was able to create an idea that could turn things around for himself and many other people, and it did. 
Trevor also has high hopes for people. Maybe it was that he was young or innocent or naive but he believed that people really would pay it forward, not just take the favor and move on. I think sometimes adults have seen too many failures in life that they're not capable of believing in innocent but possible ideas. In the book, Trevor's idea changed many people's lives and I think the point the author is trying to get across is no matter how crazy or not possible an idea may sound, it's worth trying and believing in. 

4:50 From Paddington by Agatha Christie

Over the summer I read the book "4:50 From Paddington" by Agatha Christie, who is one of my favorite writers. It thought it was an amazing book that I learned a lot about writing from. The book, like most by Agatha Christie, started off with a murder and then seemed to move slowly to the rest of the action, which is not really what I'm used to reading but it was an interesting way to write and all the things you learn in that part of the book become important later on. It was also hard to read because the language can be difficult to understand; there were a lot of words that I had to look up in order to get what was going on. But other than that I really loved it- the main idea of the story is that a woman is riding a train and for a moment another train runs parallel to hers and she witnesses a murder. The story follows as the process of trying to find out who was murdered, where the body was and who committed the crime. 
I learned a lot about writing from "4:50 From Paddington" because throughout the book Agatha Christie describes characters in a way that describes different kinds of people in the world- in this book there was a shady businessman, a lonely but happy old lady, two young energetic teens, and a greedy old man. Her details about the characters didn't just include looks and general personality but odd quirks and things that aren't usually described in books.