Stegosaurus Rex

 Book Review:  Baby & Solo  by Lisabeth Posthuma by: Luke Fahnestock           For my final book review of 2021, I chose to evaluate Baby & Solo by Lisabeth Posthuma. This is the same book that I read recently for my health class book talk. The story was very enjoyable, so I figured I would also write a blog review covering it.  Baby & Solo focuses on the life of a teenager who is trying to reintegrate himself into society after an extended stay in the hospital caused by psychological problems. Seventeen-year-old Joel Teague has spent the majority of his high school years in the hospital dealing with a severe case of psychosis. His condition causes him to have hallucinations of a girl named Crystal, in a way he has a much more palpable imaginary friend. Joel wants nothing more than to be accepted back into society as a normal person, but the years of hospitalized isolation make this difficult to achieve. So when his therapi...

  A lot of the books that I’ve read over this year have been manga, however, one of the ones that I’ve liked the most of this year was one called Blue Period. Blue Period is an art manga by Tsubasa Yamaguchi about a 16-year-old “delinquent” called Yatora Yaguchi, Yatora starts off the series as someone who goes through life doing this as if “fulfilling a quota” in his own words, and while he does have his friends, he doesn’t have anything that he properly connects to. During an accidental visit to the art room, he sees a painting, and finds a connection to art. He then proceeds to join the art club and try out for an extremely hard college: Tokyo University of the Arts Blue Period is such an amazing manga. The characters are built so well, each of them having their own backgrounds and connections to art. Yatora especially, he might be one of my favorite protagonists ever because of the way he was allowed to struggle and grow in this manga. Yatora starts off in art as a complete n...

  Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco; a Review By Isa H. This week, I'm writing a short, much calmer blog about a book I actually like as a tribute to the short and (hopefully) calm break we have coming up: Stalking Jack the Ripper is a gripping, fast-paced novel written by first-time author Kerri Maniscalco. The novel follows Audrey Rose Wadsworth, a young woman apprenticing with her Uncle in a mortuary deep within the alleyways and public houses in 1800s London. Wadsworth is soon caught up in a dangerous set of mass murderers as a killer—deemed ‘Jack the Ripper’ —  wreaks havoc on women in the dark of the night. Audrey Rose, along with her friend Thomas, steak away into the London night to try and halt Jack the Ripper and imprison him for his crimes. However, as Wadsworth delves deeper into the mysteries that plague darkened corners in the middle of the night, she will realize that the true nature of this barbaric killer might just be closed to her than she ever th...

  The Exciting Adventure in Julie Kagawa’s Shadow of the Fox By Felix Lee               Shadow of the Fox is a fantasy novel by Julie Kagawa and brings the reader into a world in Japan full of samurai, spirits, demons, and magic. The story follows a sixteen-year-old girl named Yumeko whose been living in a temple for her whole life and has had no exposure to the outside world. Not only is Yumeko a human though, but she is also half kitsune, a species of fox known for mischief and trickery. Her life changes when she discovers her temple has been protecting a piece of a scroll; a scroll which can be used to make any wish of the user come true. When her temple is under attack by demons and she is suddenly tasked with protecting this scroll and delivering it to another temple, Yumeko meets Tatsumi, a dangerous samurai from the Shadow Clan, who also came to in search for the piece of the scroll for his clan’s uses a...

Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins by: Luke Fahnestock   I think I could confidently say that everyone in this class has at least heard of The Hunger Games . The whole series is the epitome of iconic. In this blog I will be reviewing it and giving my opinion on whether it lives up to the hype. The Hunger Games takes place in the dystopian future of a doomed North America. All of North America has become one “country” called the nation of Panem. The land has been divided into 12 districts, all controlled by the ruthless Capital. The people of the districts are poor because the Capital has diverted all resources towards itself. Because of the districts’ rebellion 74 years prior, the Capitol punishes them by holding an annual Hunger Games. The name for this morbid occasion is vastly deceptive, for these so-called “games” are nothing but televised bloodshed. Each district must select a male and female contestant between the age of 12 and 18 through a lottery system. ...