Poetry4kids.com

I have fallen in love with cute little kid poems. I love the happy little rhymes that are so simple to understand. That's my biggest pet-peeve with other poetry. Why does it have to be so complicated? They all seem as if they are trying to be something they aren't. Grr poetry to me is just way to deep and fake! 

Favorite poems so far:

(All by Kenn Nesbitt from poetry4kids.com)

Broccoli for Breakfast

Broccoli for breakfast. Broccoli for lunch. Broccoli that's tender. Broccoli with crunch. Broccoli for dinner. Broccoli for snacks. Broccoli in boxes and baskets and sacks. Broccoli for weeks and for months and for years. It's up to my eyeballs. It's up to my ears! I used to like broccoli but now, I'm afraid, its beauty, at best, is beginning to fade. It's lacking in luster. It's lost all its charm. But that's how it goes on a broccoli farm. An Ordinary Day There's a dolphin on my doorstep. It's an ordinary day. He's delivering the paper in his ordinary way. There's a bison in my bathtub singing ordinary songs, and some hippos having ordinary hippo sing-alongs. In the pantry there's a penguin painting ordinary scenes of opposums in their ordinary orange submarines. There's an ordinary rhino racing up and down the stairs, chasing ordinary chimpanzees and ordinary bears. In the living room are llamas dancing ordinary jigs, like a dozen rather ordinary llama whirigigs. It's an ordinary day for me; I promise you it's true. And I hope your day is simply extra ordinary too. Well have a nice day everyone :) -Madalynne "Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did" -Lillian Hellman

I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth The Trip.

Some of my favorite books are the ones I find when I'm bored during my free hour and walk around the library. So on Wednesday I was staring off into space and I saw this book and the cover resembled notebook paper with the title written repeatedly on it. So I opened up the flaps and started to read about the book.

This boy named Davy Ross lives with his Grandma and his dachshund Fred but when his Grandma dies he is sent to live with his alcoholic mother. The blurb went on and it hinted to strange events with another boy and decisions that will change his life. I handed the book to Stephanie and we both knew that it was about a gay guy :)

I finished the book and it wasn't all about Davy "queering around" and those parts weren't to graphic or anything (this book was from the late 1960's). It was actually a really touching story about how Davy adjusts to living in New York with his crazy mother and his friendships with Douglas Altschuler and his adorable dog Fred. It had a sad ending that I wasn't expecting but I am really glad I read it.

-Madalynne

"Cats reagrad people as warmblooded furniture."

-Jacquelyn Mitchard

Final Thoughts

 I very much enjoyed reading Romeo and Juliet. To be honest I knew very little about it before it was assigned. As far as my favorite scenes it would have to be most of Mercutio's or the nurse's parts because they had a great sense of humor. I did notice that there was a tone of scene changes. How in the world did Shakespeare put this on as a play. He was definitely a genius. If I were to rewrite this for teens... I would just hand them Twilight. If you changed it into a modern english it would all seem so cliche, in my opinion. A boy and a girl fall in "love" and die for each other. It would just seem so predictable. But with the play being in old english there's a sense of knowing that it must be original and that all other stories are trying to top it.

Wow I really need to work on making my blog posts flow better :/

-Madalynne

"Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement."

-Barry LePatner

"It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper."

-Jerry Seinfeld

THEY'RE ALL DEAD!!

Before I talk about R+J I have a little story about the last two hours of my life. I was eating dinner and finishing R+J. I knew what I wanted to post on my blog so I came upstairs to type. I had left my copy on the kitchen table so I went back downstairs and my mom was watching design shows so I stopped and watched that for a while then came back upstairs. I had forgotten R+J so I went back to get it but then the Academy Awards were on so I watched that, came upstairs, forgot my copy, went downstairs, watched people walk on the red carpet, came upstairs, forgot my copy, went downstairs, watched more people on the red carpet, came upstairs, forgot my copy, went downstairs, Justin Timberlake, and then I finally made it back up stairs with R+J and am now blogging.

Alright time for what I thought about Romeo and Juliet:

-So everyone's dead now? That's how you end a story :D

-Why is everyone calling everyone else ho's all the time? How rude :P

-Everyone seems to come at the wrong time (Friar John, Romeo, Friar Laurence)

-The ending reminds me of a movie that ran out of money. Just so sudden.

Quotes:

"Peace, ho, for shame!" (Friar Lawrence Act 4, Scene 5)

"Holy Franciscan friar, brother, ho!" (Friar John Act 5, Scene 2)

"Oh, I am slain!" Dies (Paris Act 5, Scene 3)


-Madalynne

"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say"

<Marshal McLuhan>

Romeo and Juliet Act 3

I still am really liking Romeo and Juliet and am glad I haven't lost interest. It's too bad Mercutio(Steph) and Tybalt(Anna) are dead. Mrs. Wierenga are you trying to send them a message? I was trying to watch the movie today on Netflix and I found this other version. It was a cartoon but instead of people they were seals. It said it was a kids movie but they still had a lot of old english in it. It was really bad and quite disturbing, not something I would suggest watching. Well I guess that's all I have to say for today. Hope everyone is having a good snow day :)

-Madalynne

"I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific."

-Jane Wagner

The Night I Disappered

I just realized that the title of this blog might be confusing but don't worry it's just a book I haven't actually disappeared.

Anyway moving on. I found this book in the school library on Wednesday (I think). I haven't read any non-school related reading in a while so it was surprisingly nice to just pick up a book. It's called The Night I disappeared by Julie Reece Deaver. It's about a girl named Jamie and her mom who is a famous attorney. Jamie is forced to live in Chicago with her mom for the summer because of a case her mom is working on.  Jamie has to leave her only friend, Webb, and they haven't been apart since she was nine. When she arrives in Chicago she starts having strange daydreams that she can't control. So we follow Jamie as she gets sucked farther into her inner world which reveals long-forgotten horrifying secrets from her past. I

I'm mostly done with the book so I'm going to leave you now so I can go finish it. :)

-Madalynne

"Gravity. It keeps you rooted to the ground. In space, there's no gravity. You just kind of leave your feet and go floating around. Is that what being in love is like?"

-Josh Brand and John Falsey

Romeo and Juliet Act 2

Well I finished my reading in record time this week. I spent Wednesday night babysitting so once the kids went to bed I had an hour to read. At first it was really quiet and creepy but then their fat cats came out of nowhere and kept me company. I liked the second act but it wasn't anything overly spectacular. I did love that Friar Lawrence was in this act though! My favorite part was when Romeo was telling the friar about Juliet and the friar said "Holly Saint Francis!" I think that the story might have felt a little bland this week because I read over it a lot. I started to stop noticing the little details and really tried to concentrate on the overall story so that I wouldn't get strung up on little words. It wasn't so great when I would read an entire page and not understand what was going on because of all the crazy words. Hopefully next week I can find a happy median between the two.

-Madalynne

"Action is eloquence."

-William Shakespeare