Winger: Compare and Contrast

Winger is a young adult fiction novel written by American author Andrew Smith. Set in the prestigious boarding school, Pine Mountain, Oregon, the story follows fourteen-year-old Ryan Dean West as he recounts past events that he has experienced in his journey of maturation. It's a great book about the everyday challenges of a boy in high school.

While reading Winger I noticed a lot of similarities between it and Diary of A Wimpy Kid. In both books the main characters aren't very popular among other students, they both have a crush on a popular and pretty girl, and they have an unsteady relationship with their close friends. Some main differences are, Greg from Diary of A Wimpy Kid is extremely confident and selfish where Ryan Dean is modest and very caring towards others. Another really big difference is Greg isn't athletic at all and Ryan Dean is a main player in his schools rugby team. I've found that Ryan Dean is a very likable character because I can sympathize with him and relate, also because he's so honest that you can't really find reason to hate him. Sure he does some dumb stuff but we've all been there and done that. While on the other hand you just want to roll your eyes at Greg's "macho" additude; he behaves as though he is the only normal student at his school and everyone else has a problem not himself. While Ryan feels outcast and small, you just want to reassure him and tell him everything's okay.

One Of My Favorite Poems

Winter Landscape, with Rooks

Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
Plunges headlong into that black pond
Where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
Floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
Which hungers to haul the white reflection down.

The austere sun decends above the fen,
An orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
Longer on this landscape of chagrin ;
Feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
Brooding as the winter night comes on.

Last summers' reeds are all engraved in ice
As is your image in my eye ; dry frost
Glazes the window of my hurt ; what solace
Can be struck from rock to make hearts waste
Grow green again ? Who'd walk in this bleak place ?

- Silvia Plath

Counting By Sevens

While reading the book Counting By Sevens by Holly G. Sloan I saw lots of times where the main character Williow would give advice to the other people around her that would change their lives. The novel Counting By Sevens is about a girls named Willow Chance who has lived a life sheltered from most bad things in life and has never had to fend for herself, her parents have always been there. Her parent get into a car accident and don't make it out of the hospital leaving willow with no relatives or close friends. As Willow copes with her loss she has to also accept the big shifts in her life.

When Willow first meets the taxi driver Jairo Hernandez she had never ridden in a taxi before much less a complete stranger, in the book she says "I would like to see the number of your taxi license..." Then "The drivers name was Jairo Hernandez, and he had been driving for Mexicano taxi for seven years. I was nervous, but he seemed nervous as well." This shows how little she trusted Jairo at first and that she had never done anything without her parents before. As the car ride ends she leaves the taxi and says "Never let someone tell you that you can't do it." When Willow say this she's actually talking about herself but Jairo takes it to heart and it really causes a domino effect in his life, afterwards Jairo really takes a step back and look at his life. In the text it says, "When he started driving a cab, it was only supposed to be a temporary job. And now years had passed." He realizes that he had never done anything to help himself and his life, he believed Willow to be a " ...blinking warning light. And Jairo paid attention to signs." He then drives straight to Bakersfield College and picks up a brochure to continue his education.

All throughout the book this happens to multiple people around Willow, as they look at there own lives they realize the things that they need to change around the same time that Willow does. This helps Willow gain new close friends and new family as well.

Gifts I Want This Christmas

This Christmas I'm super excited to be getting a lot of things that are from an anime that I love called Fairy Tail. Usually I never know what I'm going to get so I'm not as excited as I am this year. I'm getting a scarf that looks like the main character's, a necklace with the anime logo, and a sweater with the logo on it as well. I am absolutely in love with this anime and its characters so I'm really happy to be getting a scarf that looks exactly the same as Natsu's.

My Quote

I really liked and related to this quote because I don't know what I want to do with my life yet. I don't know which road I'm going to take yet but what I do know is that I want to keep all my options open and make sure I have a choice. I think the quote is right, if you don't know where your going then you can't go to the wrong place; you just have to swim with the current instead of against it.

Wildwood Dancing and Enchanted

When I finished reading wild wood dancing I made a connection with another book I had read before that was similar because both books had a lot to do with a frog that was actually a significant character in the book. In both books the main characters find a frog that can speak, in Wildwood Dancing Jena- the second oldest of five sisters finds a small cold frog as a girl and they become best friends. In the novel Enchanted, Sunday the youngest of seven sisters finds a frog named grumble while walking in the woods.

They are lots of differences between the characters but a big simularity is in both stories the girls have a frog as a companion and they eventually fall in love with the frog. In the novel Wildwood Dancing, when Jena is a little girl finds a frog half-frozen by a pond close to her home; she takes care of him and he becomes her best friend. In the book Enchanted, Sunday(as a teen) befriends a frog while walking in an enchanted forest. In both books the frog is actually a cursed boy/man. I think lots of authors use the particularly famous fairytail of the princess and the frog in their works because it adds a nice romantic ending; although some say the tale has been used so many times it's become a bit cleche.

I'll Give You My Opinion

I'll give you the sun was probably one of the best books I've read, ever. The characters had gone through lots of emotions throughout the book, and it gave a great example of how much a person can change over a long course of time. In the beginning of the story Noah is the weird, lonely, artistic twin and Jude is the sporty, cool, popular twin. The couldn't be more different, but as they meet new people and life-changing events happen they make their own choices they change themselves and totally put things upside down. A lot of good things happen, a lot of bad things happen an in the end everyone is connected in a way.

One of my favorite parts of the story is at the end when Noah and Jude realize how much they need and love each other, and they would never be complete without the other. Sometimes when you try to protect someone out of love by lying or keeping something from them, it's best if you just let it all out rather than keep it all inside until everything comes crashing down. The novel I'll Give You The Sun teaches a lot of great lessons, to tell the truth was probably one the most important, and in the end it all comes out fine.