Book review.

First Quarter Outside Reading Book Review
Boy Toy by Barry Lyga. Houghton Mifflin, 2007. Genre: Modern Fiction

Boy Toy, a teen modern fiction drama by Barry Lyga, is a great way to show some of the normal and abnormal events that occur in teenage lives. Josh Mendel, the protagonist of this story, is molested at the age of twelve .Throughout out his adolescence,all; he wants is to be a normal child, like all the rest living in Brookdale. He makes up with old friends along the way and witnesses one of the hardest break ups to ever take place.

"Barry Lyga digs deep into the troubling territory of innocence and manipulation, trust and betrayal," says Tanya Lee Stone, the author of a A Bad Boy Can Be Good for a Girl."Brave and unflinching, Boy Toy will grab hold of your heart and squeeze."

Boy Toy contains some very mature content and is not recommended for children to read. It tells what Josh thinks, feels and does throughout the course of his teen years. It shows the mean, cold-hearted side of Josh and also the sweet, caring side. His best friend Zik Lorenz, is by his side through all of Josh's troubles and problems but Josh does not realize it until he is eighteen, playing the final baseball game of their high school career and purposely misses the ball, finally realizing how he let Zik down.

Barry Lyga uses a lot of description in his writing. When I read Boy Toy, I literally felt like I was in the book, standing on the sidelines as everything takes place. It feels like whenever someone says something, you could just automatically add your two-sense and one of the characters would respond to you.

"Classes are a formality at this point-I know which colleges I'm in, and the odds of my grades deteriorating to the point that anyone would change their minds at this point are precisely zero. But I can't help myself. I can't just slack off and get B's. I've been Iron Man too long-I kill myself for these last A's like I killed myself for the hundred or so that came before" (357).

The theme was probably the most important aspect of this book. The main theme was that you can't do anything on your own. You always need someone by your side, along you to help you with things you can't do yourself. A quote from the book that shows this theme is "In order to hit a home run, someone else has to pitch the ball." I really enjoyed this book. It was the first book that I have read by Barry Lyga but I plan on reading more. I really like the way he related the events in the story to actual events that happen in real life. He even gives the characters the same feelings that people in similar situations would have. One of my friends went through molestation and told me about it. Almost everything that he said he feels today were the same things that Josh said he felt. I think that Barry Lyga is a very good author and I enjoyed every part of his writing. I think it takes a successful author to relate real life situations to a situation in a book and give a character the same feelings.

Pinetrees and Megapixels

Everything has a value. Whether you believe so or not, a value is placed on everything from pens to cell phones to cars and also to things that are not objects such as moments or feelings. How is the value of something chosen? What does the value of something matter towards our everyday lives?

The air is crisp and cool as I jump onto the tractor pulling several families looking to brighten up their homes this Christmas season. I am bundled up in many layers as it is very chilly the day after Thanksgiving. The tractor stops moving and I immediately jump off, take the stairs down and grab the elderly woman's hand. One by one, I help the customers get down the stairs. After everyone is off, I walk over to the small clearing and start handing out saws. I tune in to hear my uncle Victor trailing on about the rules and instructions on how to safely chop down your own evergreen tree for the Christmas season. Every Friday through Sunday from the day after Thanksgiving until the weekend before Christmas, my life is devoted to working on my family's Christmas tree farm.

With a candy cane in my mouth, I jump back onto the tractor for a free ride around the perimeter of the farm! We stop on the opposite side of the farm to pick up more customers-and their trees. As I help the mothers, fathers, children and grandparents back onto the tractor, Uncle Victor lifts all of the trees onto the back. I try to help him, but as I do, I realize that I was picking up a blue spruce tree. Ow! Blue spruce always hurt! The needles were sharp, unlike my favorite type of tree-Frasier fir! Because I just carelessly dropped the tree, my hands became covered in sticky, gooey pine sap! Because of my complaining, Victor sent me into the barn to clean up.

My hands started to shiver after the cold water touched them. I slowly put my gloves back on to try to stop the shivering. After becoming situated and at least somewhat warmer, I opened the door, ran and then stopped abruptly at the front of the store. I turn, figuring I should advertise to the customers and also be a good Samaritan and ask my uncles if they want any fresh hot chocolate or cider. I see an old lady looking clueless at the shelves filled with cemetery boxes. I turn to her and say, "Excuse me, do you need any help?". She was looking for a price on the box, but became oblivious to the sign next to her that read $15. I politely told her that they cost $15 and were each special and original as I had helped to make them! She thanked me and followed me into the shop to make her purchase.

I went behind the counter with my grandma and after ringing her up, poured two hot chocolates, one cider and grabbed three mini candy cane! i took the wrapper off the candy canes and put them in the hot chocolate. My uncle Bob Z and I invented this yummy mint hot chocolate! I carefully picked up all three cups and brought them outside to my uncle Victor and my uncle Bob Z. They said I couldn't have come one second earlier...

"Humm...," I hear the slight purring of my MacBook laptop as i press the start button. Suddenly the screen turns blue for several short seconds and then my background, right now it's a picture from the 30 Seconds to Mars music video, "Beautiful Lie", appears. "Welcome, Hannah!," a pop up box greets me as i turn my computer on for the first time today. I click on the sidebar to open several different applications. First Firefox, second iTunes, third Textedit and finally iChat. Almost every day after school, I do this routine. I set up an away message so I can work on my homework without a distraction. I start playing music from my iTunes library. My favorite song is first, "Half-Truism" by The Offspring. The music helps me to concentrate better. I start researching plant growth so that I can start writing about it for my biology project. One computer, many tasks accomplished.

I value my computer as my most valuable object because you can do almost anything with a computer. I love music more than almost anything. It gives me a way to get away from the real world, and can always change my mood. All of my music is on my computer and if there's a song I want to hear, I can just download it. My laptop also is a very good tool to help me with my homework or any projects that have to do with school. It can also be used to contact my friends and I am very social so I like to talk to my friends whenever I can.

Even though my computer is fun, It's not only used for play. My mother is a web designer and she has "hired" me to help her manage her websites. I help her with her multiple businesses by writing descriptions, adding keywords, changing prices and many other parts of the online business. The invention of the computer is probably one of the best inventions ever invented. It is a very useful object in life to many people for many advances.

I value both my winter weekends working on the farm and my laptop for very different reasons.When I am working on the farm, I just enjoy every minute of what I am doing (besides the occasional getting sprayed with mud from the tractor tires...) and the day before Christmas is always sad even though I should be having fun. I value my computer because it can bring me into different worlds, not just virtual but also through my imagination. I over-analyze everything so I could be thinking about the most simple thing and make it into something extravagant .

My computer allows me to do many tasks that could not be performed otherwise. If I did not have a computer, it would be harder to do homework or work for my mom or anything else. The computer was one of the greatest advances in technology ever created. It made it possible for less manual labor to be needed because now things could be automatic.

My winter wonderland fun which only takes place for a few weekends each year is a great way to have fun and interact with people I've never met and my own family members. I love being on the farm because I know all of the hard work that has taken place throughout the year is now paying off. I enjoy everything even if I have to get down and dirty. These are priceless moments to me.

Both my time working on the farm and my computer are important to me. They allow me to have fun and get some work done. After finishing my work with either of them, I feel accomplished and everything is fine. There's almost nothing more important than these things to my life. After reading what I value, does that make you think any more about the most important things that you value in life? Sometimes it's hard to figure out, but everyone cares about some things more than others and it shows. The things that you value usually play a big part in your life and just like pictures, valued things are worth thousands of words.