Saturday, February 16, 2008

MY LAST BOOKS!

This is probably my last post. The strike is over.

I read some books before the strike was over, but I am posting about them now.

Last Saturday night, I went to the big meeting of the Writers Guild, where over 3000 members of the WGA had a meeting about possibly ending the strike. There I met some of my supporters, named Jeff and Cherie. They are writers on The Young and the Restless, and Cherie is an author as well. They gave me two of her books, and I have finished one of them.

It was cool to be in the auditorium, because it was where they used to hold the Oscars. It had a very big, fancy, expensive, shiny chandelier. And it was especially cool to meet Jeff and Cherie and get the books they gave me. Thank you!

The book by Cherie that I read is called Zink. It was very very good. It is about a girl named Becky who gets leukemia. While she is in the hospital, a trio of singing zebras come to her. Her spirit goes to South Africa, where the zebras live. She makes friends with all the zebras of the herd and one green monkey named Schlep who thinks he's a zebra. This book is happy and sad at the same time. Becky dies of a leukemia relapse, but her spirit continues to live in South Africa with the zebras she has made friends with.

After that, I read Millicent Min, Girl Genius. It is about a girl genius named Millicent Min. (Duh!) Everybody laughs at her and makes fun of her and instead of being called "that smart little girl," she's called "the one who brings up the curve." Some people take advantage of her, including a girl who Millicent meets at college who tricks Millicent into doing her homework. Her mom signs her up for volleyball, where she meets her first real friend, named Emily, who doesn't know that Millicent is a genius. Eventually Emily finds out that Millicent is a genius and gets mad at her. Millicent has to apologize for not telling her. It ends on a happy note, because Millicent is going to get a little sister.

The last book that I read is called Carry On Mr. Bowditch. My whole grade at school read this book a chapter at a time in reading class to get ready for an overnight field trip on "The Spirit of Dana Point" which is a schooner ship from the 1800s. This book is a fictional biography of Nathaniel Bowditch, who was a mathematical genius who discovered a new way of working lunars on a ship and wrote three long books about navigation. This book was very fun and suspenseful to read.

I finished all these books by Wednesday, which was the day the strike ended. So they are the last books I will read for the Readathon.

Here is the page count for these 3 books:

Zink is 256 pages. Millicent Min is also 256 pages. And Carry On, Mr. Bowditch is 251 pages. (Only 5 pages away!) It is weird that I have been reading lots of books that are 256 pages, because Fever 1793 was also 256 pages. I wonder if that is the normal length of books.

That makes a total of 763 pages for these last three books. So that is a total of 2299 pages for the Readathon. And that is my final total.

That means that if you pledged a penny a page, you should send $22.99 to the Writers Guild Foundation or the Actors Fund, at the Writers Guild, at 7000 W. Third St. Los Angeles, CA 90048. You can round up to $23 even if you want! Feel free! And if you pledged more, you can figure out how much with a calculator.

That means my final total for money raised for the Writers Guild Foundation and Actors Fund is $2625.95, which is a lot of money!

Thank you, thank you, thank you, to every single person who has pledged and who has been supporting my Readathon! You are all awesome!

Sunday, February 10, 2008

THREE MORE DAYS!

I got to go to the big Writers Guild meeting last night, which was very cool. I met Jeff, one of my supporters, and he gave me some books written by his wife Cherie, who is another one of my supporters. (I think she's his wife.) And I met some other people.

And what was decided is that the strike will be called off on Wednesday. So I am going to read for three more days (today, which is Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday), and see if we can all get to $2000 (with your help!), which would be awesome!

My last Readathon book that I am reading is Zink, by Cherie Bennett. She is one of my supporters. (My mom doesn't want me to use last names here, but since she wrote the book, you would have to know.) I am partway through the book and really loving it so far, and I will report on it here in a few days.

So you should just know you have helped a lot of people by being part of this Readathon, because $1842 is a lot of money. And even if you read in the paper or online that the strike is over, it isn't over really till Wednesday, and that is when my Readathon will be over.

Thank you!

THREE MORE DAYS!

Saturday, February 9, 2008

MAYBE THE LAST 3 BOOKS

I apologize for not updating sooner, but I have been very, very busy. Part of that has been that I have been doing a lot of reading.

Over the past week or so, I have read three new books. They are called Fever 1793, which I wrote about in my last post when I had just begun to read it, The School Story by Andrew Clements, and The Bookstore Mouse by Peggy Christian.

The School Story is about Natalie Nelson who is a 12-year-old who writes a novel. Her mother is an editor at a publishing company and Natalie really wants to publish her book but she doesn't want her mom to know that she wrote it, or people could say that she was giving her daughter special treatment at the publishing company. So she and her friend Zoe and her English teacher Mrs. Clayton make a "publishing club" and they get pen names (all except for Mrs. Clayton). It ends with Natalie's book being published and the people at the publishing company throw a publishing party. That is when Natalie tells her mom that she was the author.

The Bookstore Mouse is about a mouse that lives in a bookstore (obviously). He lives behind the reference section, protected by the books and a wall of words he took from his dictionary, while hiding from a cat. One day a man walks into the bookstore and takes a book that the mouse is leaning on. The mouse falls down to the bottom shelf. He reads a book which transports him into the book, which is about a scribe named Siegfried who lives in long-ago England. Siegfried and the mouse go on a quest to save the four troubadours of the village from the dragon Sensor. The dragon tries to make the troubadours forget their stories about dragon-slaying, and replace them with stories about dragon invincibility. It ends when the mouse flips through the book and finds the stories that the troubadours were forgetting. Siegfried writes them down, then throws them into the dragon's mouth. They explode inside the dragon, who dies. When The Bookstore Mouse ends, the mouse finds himself back in the bookstore, still trying to hide from the cat. But when the mouse tells him what happened to him, the cat wants to learn to read. So the mouse agrees to read him stories if he has freedom inside the bookstore. Sorry, that was so long, but it was a very eventful book. And I didn't even mention the part about the giant.

But you really want to know how long the books were.

Fever 1793 was 256 pages. The School Story was 196 pages. The Bookstore Mouse was 134 pages. That means I have read a total of 1536 pages so far on this Readathon.

If you are supporting me at a penny a page, you should now send $15.36 to the Writers Guild Foundation at 7000 W. Third St. , Los Angeles, CA 90048. You can make your check to the Writers Guild Foundation or the Actors Fund, and put "Industry Support Fund" on the check. If you have already send in some money, then you can subtract what you have already sent, to know what you should send now.

If you are supporting at more than a penny a page, first, thank you! (And thank you to the penny-a-page people, too!). You can multiply or use a calculator to figure out your total to send.

And if you said you were supporting by sending in a certain amount per month, it is now a new month.

Thank you to my two new supporters, Nancy and Bob. And thank you to my current supporters -- You know who you are!

These might be the last books I read for the readathon, because the strike might be over. I'm going to the Writers Guild meeting tonight with my parents, but I don't know if they will let me in, even though I am an "honorary" member. I might have to go to the child care place instead. But I will wear my WGA button no matter what.

Thank you again for supporting this wonderful readathon and all the people who are out of work because of the strike. If you all send in your pledged money, we will all have raised $1824.80 to help them.

When the strike is officially over, I will stop reading for the readathon. But I will still keep reading.

Thank you!