Drew

__The Hunger Games__ By Suzanne Collins Drew Carroll



Exciting, mind-blowing and unbelievable, __//The Hunger Games//__ by Suzanne Collins is the best book I have ever read. The book will make you stay on the edge of your seat and excited to turn each page. __The Hunger Games__  is a fictional story about a girl named Katniss and her struggle to survive. The story takes place in a future world called Panem, that used to be North America. The country of Panem is divided into 12 districts and every year each district must send one girl and one boy to play in a nationally televised game that demands each person to fight to the death until there is one winner. Katniss lives with her mother and younger sister and they struggle daily to have enough food. When Katniss finds out that her younger sister is suppose to go the games she decides to enter instead. From the time Katniss trains until the very end you get to know the kind of person Katniss is. She is strong, smart and very good at getting people to help her when she needs it most. The actual killing games are horrifying. The author does a great job of describing where the games take place and how each of the contestants feels. The actual arena where the games take place is set up by the Capital, which is the government of Panem, The Capital along with the Gamemakers control every aspect of the arena and give all the 24 participants the supplies or lack of supplies they need. //The Hunger Games s// howed me how grateful I am to live in a country where you don’t have to kill each other in order to live your life. Where you have the food to eat and clean water to drink. I think that people who are ten or older should read this book, because the book can be sad for some people.You should read this book if you like action, adventure, and a little bit of mystery. I loved the book so much. Some people just say that, but I honestly believe that this is my favorite book ever!There is just something about it that makes it so great to read. Whether it is the horrifying action that is in the book or the fact that there were things that may happen, or could possibly happen made it very real and exciting. I enjoyed every page of the book and highly recommend it.



Always Faithful By Drew Carroll “In these battles, as in their training, the men learned to depend on their dogs and to trust their dogs’ instincts with their lives.” __Always Faithful__ by Captain William W. Putney is a memoir of the marine dogs of World War ll. Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and Camp Pendleton, California is where the dogs trained and began to know their soldiers. Marines gathered the dogs from New York. The soldiers would borrow some of the dogs from their masters. Around three to four dogs were either overly aggressive or cowards. These dogs were then sent back home. After gathering the dogs they would have to train them. When the soldiers trained the dogs they would wear a leather leash. That let the dog know they could not bark or play around. The dog handlers trained their dogs to prepare for war in the jungle. The dogs were either trained to be a messenger dog, a scout dog or a mine dog. The messenger dogs were taught to pass letters from one master to another. The scout dogs had great hearing and were taught to give away positions of the Japanese and alert where the Japanese were hiding. The mine dogs could detect anything that was buried under the ground that could be useful or dangerous. The soldiers would even teach the sit or shake command because you never know when you will need it. The dogs and marines were on a train to go to camp Pendleton, California and from there, to get on a boat to Guam where they were to go into war. Later in the war the dogs saved hundreds of lives. The marines and dogs were never ambushed and could always find the Japanese soldiers. After the war the dogs would have been killed because the marines believed that they could not go back to normal life. Captain Putney believed that they could go back to normal life, so they compromised and said that the marines could keep the dogs if they wanted to.

In my opinion, I thought this was an interesting book. I like how the details of the training of how the dogs became marines were attention grabbers. I was very enthusiastic when I read the story about a dog named Lady becoming a free dog and not needing the support of the marines. I did not like how some of the dogs got hurt or died. The reading style could be boring at some parts but I could not stop reading it at others. People nine years old and up I believe would be interested in this book. If you are older you might understand it or appreciate it more. You also might like it if you like dogs, history, if you are interested in war, or if you were in the war yourself. I enjoyed this book. Now you should, too.

**THOMAS EDISON** **By:Drew Carroll**

Did you know that one of the greatest inventors in history got kicked out of school because he asked too many questions? The biography //Thomas Edison// by the authors of <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">//TIME for Kids// <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> with Lisa DeMauro ,gives you the facts and the life story of a man that worked hard and never gave up trying out his ideas. I would give this book a 4 out of 5 rating. I really liked it because you not only learned about what Thomas Edison accomplished, but you found out that it took him way more failures before he had a success. The only thing that would make the book better would have been to add more details about his personal life and more about who he was as a father, and inventor. He made a lot of money and was very successful in the end but it was not always that way. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The book taught me about how important it is to never give up. Before he invented the first light bulb,Thomas Edison said, “ I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that it won’t work.” Thomas Edison was also the person who invented the phonograph and moving picture shows and cameras. With out Edison many of these ideas would not have come along as fast as they did. Edison had 1,093 patents, the most of any inventor and that is world record for patents. Thomas Edison became deaf and instead of discouraging him he figured that being deaf made it easier for him to concentrate on his work and made him a great inventor. He was a person that found the good in everything.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The book was very easy to read and the way it is set up made it fun to learn about all the things that Thomas Edison did. There were side panels of facts and pictures that made the story more interesting. I would recommend this book to any person who is researching Thomas Edison there are only a couple of hard words so in the age limit of seven and up. I think any person who likes to think about inventions and people who like to try their ideas out but don’t always get the right answer at first would especially like this book. Another quote that I liked is “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. “ He was a man that was not afraid of hard work. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline;">[|__http://www.amazon.com/Time-Kids-Thomas-Brilliant-Inventor/dp/0060576111/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305486725&sr=1-7__]