Polly Hoffman

Rooftoppers is a book about a girl named Sophie and her dad who is not a dad named Charles. Sophie of course is a growing girl so Charles will have to take care of her. Everyone thinks that Charles will not be able to take care of Sophie, especially Miss Eliot, the girl who wants Sophie to be proper, wear pink dresses and get a real dad and mom.

Sophie wants to be unique and her own type of girl so she decides to wear trousers and shirts and not skirts and shirts. She climbs trees and reads and Miss Eliot doesn’t like that at all. “You will have to get a mom and a dad some day,” said Miss Eliot. So Charles and Sophie go to France so Miss Eliot won’t tell Sophie what to wear and what to do.

I loved this book because it sounds like a true story. I think this book is good for people 8 years old to 12 years old I rate this book 3 and ¾ stars. I think you will like this book, because it is awesomely good.

Lost in London by Cindy Callaghan is about a girl named Jordan Jacoby. Jordan lives this normal and boring life until she finds this flyer about doing some studies about London in London. At first her parents won’t let her go but then all of a sudden Jordan is off to London. Jordan is just like a normal girl before London but she gets a London makeover and after she’s a total fashionista and a total girly-girl. The setting is London for the whole book except for the very beginning and the very end.

What happens with Jordan is she gets to London and when she thinks she going for some studies thing, she’s wrong. The girl (Caroline) who’s taking Jordan around makes it very different. Jordan and Caroline start by meeting Caroline’s friends and Jordan make them call her JJ because she wants them to think she’s very cool. JJ and Caroline get locked in Daphne’s (it’s just a very big mall with a fancy name). After they get out JJ left her phone and this really rude boy has video footage of them and JJ and her friends have to do someone’s school work. Right when JJ feels she’s getting along well with Caroline, Caroline says she thinks hanging out with JJ is boring. JJ gets really angry and plans a huge prank on Caroline. A quote from the book that I really like is, “I was going to embark on a journey call the De-bored-ification of Jordan Jacoby. Only I didn’t know how de-bored-ified my life was about to be.”

I really liked the book because it was funny and surprising. The reading level is sort of easy but the concept is for 4th grade girls. I would give this book 4 ****. It is a really good book and I think you should read it too!

My book is called Bridge To Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. The main characters are named Jessie (he is a boy) and Leslie (she is a girl). Jessie is ambitious. He has ambition to be the fastest boy in his grade. Leslie is imaginative. She invented this amazing land called Terabithia. The setting is in a small town in Virginia.

     Leslie is new in town, and as I mentioned, Jessie wants to be the fastest runner in the 5th grade. The first day Leslie is at school she joins the boys for a race. First the boys thought it was wrong for Leslie to be playing with them, because she was a girl but then the boys gave in. When Jessie and Leslie  raced they were both competing for first but Leslie was faster. She won. Jessie was mad but he got over it.

When they become friends they built this magical place called Terabithia. That is where the adventure begins! When she was coming up with the idea for Terabithia Leslie said, “We need a place just for us. It would be so secret that we would never tell anyone in the world about it.”

I loved the book because it was sad and surprising. I can’t tell you why it was sad and surprising without giving away the entire story. I can tell you that the author did a good job building up to the sad moment. I would recommend this book to a person who likes books about friendship. I would rate this book 1,000,000,000 stars if I could but since I have to I will rate it 5 stars.*****

My book review is on A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd . It is this girl named Felicity Pickle. Her Mama has this thing where they are always moving for no reason. This book takes place in the newest place they moved to, Midnight Gulch.

In Midnight Gulch there used to be magic. Two brothers who used to live there were the cause of that, but then a mishap happened and the town lost all of their magic.

Felicity is a word collector, which means she sees words floating around people and she takes them. She had no friends. Until she meets Jonah. Jonah also has a secret, you find it out at the start of the book.

In the book Jonah convinces Felicity to join the duel, which is like a talent show. He wants her to share words. Felicity is nervous because she is very shy. “After two painful minutes of silence, I Managed to mumble, “ My name is Flea…””

I really liked this book because it is very unexpected and there are a lot weird connections. I recommend this book to people who know how to read. It has something for everyone. I rate this book *****!

I recently read a book called The Battle Of The Labyrinth by Rick Riordan. In this book, the main character is Percy Jackson. Percy is a boy, who is a bad student, for example he has ADHD. He also has dyslexia. Also, he is a demigod. A demigod is someone who is half god half human. In order to be a demigod, one of your parents have to be a god and one of your parents have to be mortal, which is also known as regular.

In this book there are a couple of supporting characters. One is named Annabeth, who is really smart and intelligent and is a demigod. Another one is named Grover and he is a satyr. A satyr is someone who is half goat, half boy. Another supporting character is Tyson. He is a very scared, and not very smart Cyclops. A Cyclops is a person who is very strong, and has only one eye.  This book takes place in a labyrinth. The labyrinth keeps on growing, sort of like a living person.

You are probably wondering why they are in a maze that goes forever. It is because they have to find Daedalus-the person who made the labyrinth-and convince him to not let Kronos’s army get through the labyrinth. Kronos’s army is trying to take over Olympus, and is going to use the labyrinth to get there. The labyrinth goes anywhere you want, if you know how to navigate it. That is why Kronos wants to find Daedalus, so he and his army can convince Daedalus to teach them how to navigate the army. Kronos is an evil titan lord. Kronos’s army is so big. On page 202, it said “I almost froze in mid air. Kronos’s army was as big as five football fields.”

This book is one of the best books I have ever read. I really like how Rick Riordan was very descriptive. His description gave you a good feeling, that goes with the type of place it is. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read because this book has just about everything for every type of reader. I would rate this book five stars because it is a really amazing book.

The title of my book is Timmy Failure Now Look What You’ve Done by Stephan Pastis. In the book the main character is Timmy Failure. The main character Timmy is one of those people who thinks only of himself and thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. The problem is – he’s not!  Timmy runs a detective agency with his 1,200 pound imaginary polar bear Total. The setting is in his Aunt Colander’s house because his mom loses their money and they have nowhere else to go.

Timmy is entering a contest to find a stolen globe and if he wins he can get $500 that can “set me up for life” said Timmy. But the only problem is that he is that he thinks he’s smarter than he really is. He runs into a lot of problems figuring out where the globe but his arch enemy does find it and wins the money.

I liked the book because it was funny and had some very interesting parts too. I would recommend this book for seven and up because there are a couple of jokes that might be of biplanes. I would rate this book 4 stars.

by Zachary Cappadocia

The book that I read over the weeks was Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. The main characters in the book are Maggie and her dad. Maggy is a full fledged book reader and she is always very curious about things she is not supposed to know. For example, in the beginning of the book she tries to hear what her dad was saying to the mysterious new person even though she could tell her dad wanted her as far away from their conversation as possible. Maggie’s dad Mo is a book reader also but he is kind of awkward when ever he is lying and he really tries to keep the truth away from maggie. In the beginning of the book the setting is there their aunt’s house which is pretty big and pretty fancy and not for kids to live in because she thinks  if kids live in her house it will get dirty and her precious books will be destroyed. In the whole book Magie and Mo are moving around but that is the first place that we know they traveled. This book could happen right now in the present because the houses have electricity and the houses have a stove that runs off of gas.

Maggie and Mo’s problem is Maggie gets a little too curious and Mo reads out of an unlucky book and the the bad guy in the book magically comes straight into their living room. Maggie has to learn magic to stop this strange villain. One of the important events that happened was when the visitor Dustfinger made fire come out of his mouth because that was the first glimpse of magic. Another important event was when the thugs came to rob the book shortly after Mo read it to maggie.  Thats when the disaster happened. One little quote to prove that the evil guy is bad is “I tried to call the police but the lines are down”,said the aunt. That quote proves if the police had came they would have taken the crook away.

I enjoyed the book a lot. If I were to rate this book on a scale of 1 to 5, it would be a 4 because I really enjoyed how they got you interested into the book really fast. Another reason why I enjoyed the book is because I am a fan of fantasy. If you are a fan of fantasy this book is for you. I recommend this book to people who like fantasy because there are a lot of big adventures that have some really strange things but they are always believable. I also reccomend this book to people who like mystery because it has a lot of mystery. The mystery might come to your liking or they might not.

The book Emmy And The Incredible Shrinking Rat by  Lynne Jonell Illustrated by Jonathan Bean.   The main Character is a girl, Emmy. Emmy’s parents are very rich. Emmy loves them but there are a few problems. The book takes place in Emmy’s town, in her mansion, at her school/school playground and in an alleyway at a store that sells rats.  (They sell rats because every rat in the world has a secret that it can do such as Raston a big character but not the biggest character.  Also the Ender mouse, the Ender mouse has the ability to make people love each other again!)

Emmy has a few big problems, the first one is her nanny.  The reason her nanny is so mean is because she had 2 parents, one nice and one mean, it is obvious who she decided to be like, her mean mother.  Also Emmy has yet another problem, her parents.  Her parents go on vacation all the time at first 2 days and at the time that we are reading about, 7 weeks at a time! Wouldn’t that be nice to go on vacation for all that time well it is not nice because Emmy is not allowed to go on vacation with them.  This book is different than others, it really only follows Emmy around like a camera and does not leave her side, everything that she does is like a record of her life.  “Every minute counts” as Emmy says.  As I say about the book, every minute/page of the book is great and plentiful!

I enjoyed this book a lot because it is funny and it has very unusual parts to it.  A funny part about  the book that I liked was when Emmy goes through all of the different potions made by all of the different rodent powers.  One of the funny parts is, they pick out a potion and the potion works in a really weird way, it can sniff out lies.  That part is about the funniest part in the book and the funniest in any book I have ever read.  I would recommend this book to people who really like different themes because this book has tons of different people and themes to keep track of.  I would rate this book a 5 out of 5 the, first, I add 2 for the amount of detail in the writing, second, I add a 2 for the amazing humor and the way Lynne put it and third, I add a 1 for the characteristics of all the characters!!