And the Story Continues...

James married his best friend Rosaline. He met Rosaline at the park when he was kid in New York.  They live near the park in a beautiful house in New York  that James bought when they got married. He had two kids, a girl & a boy. Their names were John and Emily. John is ten & Emily is eight. John was the type of kid that would listen when told to do something but yet was bad. Emily was a sweetheart she was very well disciplined, she respected her elders and she is very helpful. Rosaline was very beautiful with long wavy brunette hair. She's a very nice, smart woman.

One weekend they all went on a trip to Disney land in Florida. They had a family road trip. It was summer and both Emily & Johns birthday. Emily & John wanted to celebrate their birthday different from all the other years. Emily was turning nine & John eleven. That is why they decided to go to Florida. They spent the whole weekend there. They left New York Friday afternoon & got their Saturday around dawn & left Monday morning. Emily said, "this was the best birthday present ever!” & John agreed. They both made a scrapbook of their special birthday because it was their first time there. "It was a special weekend for me because we hadn't spent family time together in a while” said John.

"Where is John and Emily?" Said James. "Outside in the backyard" replies Rosaline. Emily and John are playing around on a typical day when they hear shuffling noises all the way in the back. Emily goes to check out what it is and sees the strange old man that gave James the glowing crocodile tongues. She calls out to John,  “John come here !" "What is it Emily? Who are you?" John said. “Why hello kids, I knew your father when he was just a tiny little thing” said the old man. The old man gave them the same glowing crocodile tongues like he did to James. He told them that their lives may be good but after taking this their lives with be great! The kids were scared to take them from the strange man but they went home and asked their father James and he agreed to everything he didn't deny his meeting with the strange man. So they did as the old man asked them to.

Later that day they experienced an adventure. They noticed that they weren't the only ones that took the crocodile tongues. The dog could fly and bark fire. So they took advantage of what had happened to them and went on an adventure. It started to get dark out and headed home. They told James and Rosaline all about their adventure. How they raced to the statue of liberty and how they could run on water. They were so exhausted from all the fun they had. Emily admitted how much fun she had just like when she was at Disneyland.

John explained to Rosaline how everything happened. He told her about the strange old man and how he knew dad. James told his wife and kids all about his childhood and how he met the strange old man. He explained to them why the strange man gave him the glowing crocodile tongues. Rosaline was shocked because she didn't know all about that. James also told them about his insects, how they were his only friends. Rosaline thought he was lying. So James decided to present his wife and his kids to them. They were all in shock because they couldn't believe it. After a meeting them they felt like they were a real family because there were no secrets. Rosaline invited James friends to dinner. She felt comfortable about being friends. She even accepted them as part of the family. She said, “a family is better when there's more to it." Emily liked the spider and John got along very well with the earthworm. The dinner that night was more like a feast. They all had a great time. There was food music snacks drinks and everything.

A couple of month’s later James birthday came around. Rosaline decided to throw him a surprise party. While she was preparing for the party she asked James to take the kids out to eat without her. The funny thing is that he already knew all about it. Emily told him everything, daddy’s little girl. When they got home Kames acted all surprised and had a great time. Everyone was there, all his friends and his new family. That was one of his best birthdays yet because he had his family and friends all together in one day.  He admitted how much he loved that day. He had lots of food and his cake was huge made out of chocolate with strawberries on top covered in more chocolate.  It was a pretty fun time for him.

A few days later school came around for the kids. Emily was excited to go back but not as excited as she was to go on vacation. She was ready the night before to go to school. John was not so excited. He would prefer to be at home with his family. He didn’t want summer to end because he had so much in the summer that he wished it would never end. In the end they both ended up having fun in the summer and at school. They were happy to be entering a new year in school and have the fun memories in their hearts.

James and the Giant Peach

        When my parents got eaten by an escaped rhino from the London Zoo, while shopping I had to move in with my two horrible aunts, Spiker and Sponge.  They are the worst, I wouldn’t want to live with them but I had no choice. They live on top of a hill in a little old house. Spiker and Sponge weren’t the happiest to see. Spiker and Sponge were selfish, lazy, cruel, and right in the beginning they started to beat me and the worst part is that they didn’t call me by my name. They called me either “you disgusting little beast” or “you filthy nuisance.” I didn’t like living with them because they weren’t nice at all. After three years of living with them I hadn’t gone off the hill or been able to have friends.

On a day that seemed like all the others, I ran out into the bushes and was crying miserably out of my aunts sights. I was surprised, I wasn’t alone. An old man stands nearby and observes me plight and reveals to me that he is in actuality a wizard passing through the area. He gave me a bag of tiny, glowing green alligator tongues which he reveals have magical life altering powers and instructs ma to dissolve them in water and injest them to turn my life around. The old man is gone as soon as he appeared and I speed off to get the tongues home to drink. As I run I trip over the root of a dried up old peach tree and the tongues scatter into the mud below it. It was dissolving out of my poor reach. Wretched with despair I return to my aunt’s house to continue with my miserable existence.

The next day my aunts and I discovered a giant house sized peach has magically grown on their old peach tree. My aunts cooked up a scheme to promote their giant peach for profit and soon their home becomes a popular overpriced tourist trap. I kept cooped up in my attic during the day watching children and their families file in to see the peach. I wish that I could play with them. But I am only allowed outside after the crowds are gone at night to clean up rubbish. One night I noticed an opening in the peach and decide to see where it leads me. I crawled all the way into the peaches center where the hollowed out pit serves as a house to human sized talking anthropomorphic bugs.

The bugs recognize their friend which is me and explain to me that they have been hiding in the giant peach to escape the wrath of Aunt Sponge. One of the bugs, the loud mouthed and sharp toothed Centipede bites through the peach stem connecting it to the tree. The giant peach rolls down the hill with me and the bugs safely inside. Sponge and Spiker notice that the peach is getting away and hurry down the hill in a vain attempt to stop its descent. Instead the much larger peach rolls over them and crushes them to death, then rolls over a cliff and into the English Channel below.

The peach floats along the Channel and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean where I and my bug friends encounter their next obstacle in the form of a swarm of sharks circling the peach and preparing to attack. I concoct a plan to use one of the bugs the wailing earthworm as bait to lure all the seagulls from the islands nearby and the spider and silkworm provide netting for me to lasso the gulls together to pull the peach out of the water and into flight. They succeed with earthworm both earthworm and the peach saved from being eaten and we float eastward and upward into the air. Rascally Centipede entertains them midflight with his egocentric tales and he gets so involved in acting them out that he dances right off the side of the peach and falls back into the ocean below. I again utilize silkworm’s makeshift ropes to go in after Centipede rescue my friend and pull us both back up safely of their flying peach. Already the bugs and I feel like a family unit for whom we would do anything.

The next adventure that we the inhabitants of the flying peach encounter are the Cloud-Men. The Cloud- Men create the weather for the earth below and when Centipede criticizes them for making snow and army of Cloud-Men attack us the peach with hail pellets. The hail shatters holes in the peach and causes it to spring leaks of peach juice, the peach to shrink smaller in size and the frightened seagulls pull their lightened load straight into the path of a rainbow shattering the Cloud-Men masterpiece. Cloud- Men artist launches himself onto a string holding the peach to the seagulls and I think quick and cut loose that string just in time to prevent the Cloud-Men from coming aboard. The peach finally floats out of the clouds making visible to me and the bugs that we are approaching the Manhattan skyline.

The bugs and I rejoice at seeing New York City in their midst of giant peach and believing it to either be a flying saucer or a nuclear bomb approaching, run to find safely in the subways and bomb shelters below as police and firemen storm the streets. The peach is no longer the only flying vehicle in the sky and a plane cuts so close to the peach that is severs the strings fro seagulls and the peach plummets down to earth. The peach is miraculously saved though when it becomes impaled on the top of the empire state building. The people on the observation deck demand to know what’s inside and I and the insect friends reveal themselves and tell their story of taking the giant peach across the ocean they became a press sensation and instant celebrities and New York City is so enchanted by them that they decide to throw a welcoming tickertape parade for the adventures and adopt me and the bugs as citizens of honor.

I encourage the children of the city to enjoy and eat the giant peach down on the pit. The hollowed out pit is turned into a house for me in Central Park. There I entertain the residents of the city and the tourist for generations to come, telling all my new friends my legendary adventure and I have everything I ever wanted. Friends, a home and my own adopted family of insects who visit me in my home frequently. The insects all find fame and fortune in New York in their own right. Old Green Grasshopper becomes a violin with the New York Symphony. Centipede becomes Vice President of Sales for a boot company. Earthworm becomes a face cream model with his soft skin. Spider and silkworm join forces to run a successful tightrope manufacturing company. Ladybug marries the head of the New York Fire Department. Glowworm lights up the torch of the Statue of Liberty and casts such a bright light that she illuminates the whole city at night.

(1,207)

Images Tell a Story

The rhino that escapes from the Zoo eats the parents in the beginning, while they are shopping

James(:

James moves in with his two horrible aunts, Spiker & Sponge

 His aunts dont let him go out the hill for three & they dont let him have any friends

James meets this myterious guy while picking rubish and he gives james glowing green crocodile tounges

The tree that hasnt grown anything for a while...

This is the tree while growing afte the crocodile tongues fall on the roots of the tree

The Peach when it grew

Those are the insect friends that James meets in the peach

The peach rolls down the hill and they all go on an adventure in the peach

 The peach fell in the ocean

James fell in the ocean and they tried to rescue him

 They couldnt reescue him because there was strong waves

As the sun rises they see the city ahead

When they got stuck on top of the building James explains everything after they are rescued

The end

Dear...

Dear Ms.Vallejo,

I’m recommending this book because it’s very entertaining for little kids. This is a kid’s book but I still recommend this book to you because I enjoyed it. It’s sad in way but still a funny and good book. It will make you sad because the way James gets treated by his two aunts, Spiker and Sponge. It’s a good book because it shows the friendship and the value between the creatures and James. Basically this book is about James having to move with his two horrid aunts Spiker and Sponge after the death of his parents. His parents died eaten by an escaped rhino from the London Zoo. When he tries to save a spider and he comes to the possession of magic boiled crocodile tongues that a strange man gave to him. When the crocodile tongues fall on the old peach tree an enormous peach starts to grow in the garden. Venturing inside he meets not only the spider but a number of new friends including a ladybug and a centipede who helped him with his plan to try to get to New York. This is a good book because it’s one of Roald Dahl’s books. Not just one of his books the first one. He was a very good children’s book writer. This book is pretty interesting because it shows how living with terrible people can bring you to something called an adventure. Compared to other stories this one is faithful and it has its own wonderful adaption. It’s sad how he had to live about three years on that hill with no friends. It is pretty imaginative because who could have ever thought of a peach flying in the air with a boy and creatures.  One example from the book, a passage of how the parents died, “then one day, James’s mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up(in full daylight, mind you, and in a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo.” Another example from the book is describing his two aunts, “Their names were Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, and I am sorry to say that they were both really horrible people. They were selfish and lazy and cruel and right from the beginning they started beating poor James for almost no reason at all. They never called him by his real name, but always referred to him as, “you disgusting little beast’ or “you filthy nuisance” or “ you miserable creature” and they certainly never gave him any toys to play with or any picture books to look at. His room was a bare as a prison cell.”

Another example would be what the old man tells James what to do with the crocodile tongues. “Take a large jug of water and pour all the little green things into it. Then very slowly one by one add ten hairs from your own head. That set them off! It gets them going! In a couple of minutes the water will begin to froth and bubble furiously, and as soon as that happens you must quickly drink it all down, the whole jugful in one gulp. And then my dear you will feel it churning and boiling in your stomach and steam will start coming out of your mouth and immediately after that marvelous things will start happening to you.”

Sincerely,

Vanessa

Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was born in Llandaff, Wales on September 13th 1916. He was son of second marriage. His father and elder sister died when Roald was three. His mother was left to raise two stepchildren and four of her own. He remembered his mother as a rock, a real rock, always on your side whatever you’d done. He said that with his mom he felt tremendous security. He had a diary about the age of eight just like his father did. He would write entries on the top of a conker tree in their garden everyday because that’s where he would hide his diary from his sisters. That was how his childhood was.

 Roald had an unhappy time at school. From the age seven to nine he attended Llandaff Cathedral School. When he was thirteen he started at Repton, a famous public school in Derbyshire. He was a boxer and was deemed by his English master. His unhappy time in school was to greatly influence his writing. Roalds childhood and schooldays is the subject of his life.

He was a fighter pilot for the RAF during World War two. It was while writing about his experiences during this time that he started his career as an author. His fabulously popular children's books are read by children all over the world. Some of his better-known works include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Matilda, The Witches, and The BFG.

In 1942 is when he got inspired to write by C S Forester, author of Captain Horriblower took Roald to lunch. Roald talked to him about his version of the war which Forester would write up for the Saturday Evening Post. Roald decided to write down his experiences. His career as a writer was underway. His first book for children was not as many suppose, James and the Giant Peach. Roald’s career as a children’s book author did not begin in earnest until the 19602 after he had become a father himself. In the meantime he devoted himself to writing short stories for adults with devilish twists in the tale.

Roald Dahl was more pleased with my children’s books than with my adult short stories. Children’s books are harder to write. It’s tougher to keep a child interested because a child doesn’t have the concentration of an adult. It’s tough to hold a child but it’s a lovely thing to try to do. He first became interested in writing children’s books by making up bedtime stories for his daughters Olivia and Tessa. That was how James and the Giant Peach came into being. His second book was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

His passions, he had many.  Orchids, he liked to watch them flower and then breed them, crossing one with another, selecting the best and producing finer hybrids. Some people like tomatoes but he liked orchids.  Painting was another passion.  He loved them. He had his walls covered in paintings. Chocolate was another passion he had.  Conkers was his other passion he had. Sense a kid he liked them.

His oldest daughter Olivia died after a bout of measles developed into encephalitis. His four month old son Theo was brain damaged after a road accident. His like from there was full of tragedies. Two months before his death his stepdaughter Lorina died of a brain tumour. Roald Dahl suffered from a blood disorder for many years and became very interested in this particular field of medicine. In the end Roald Dahl died in November 1990.

Testing Strategies

• Eliminate the wrong answers
• When doing the English test read the questions, then read the passage
• Ask teachers for clarity on words that you don't understand
• Make sure to double check your answers
• Ask the teacher to go over the test with you 

        The thing that i am going to do to prepare for the CST is to study old test and quizzes to go over standards that we learned before. Have a classmate quiz or go over the test with you to go over the wrong answers and correct them. Ask a teacher to retake any test r quizzes that you did bad on so you can get better at those standards. Also complete any missing assignments that go over the standards on CST to help you. Another way that i am going to prepare for the CST is that i am going to review old notes and homework that go over the standards that are going to be on the CST. 

        Reviewing old notes will help understand the standards a little bit better, than i did before. Also have an study partner to help you study when you needed the most because if you don't have the notes that they took because you weren't there that day, you can ask your study partner for the notes. Having these tips for you to prepare for the CST will help you get Advanced or Proficient on the CST.

Ballad Poem

This war is the deadliest that has ever happened of them all

These poor people didn’t have contact with their family

All the blood, sweat, and tears were set in the battlefield

Poor black soldiers didn’t even have a shield

Abraham Lincoln was the president during the war

The economy during the war was very poor

There were battles that were in land, also in shore

South Carolina seceded

Slavery was the issue

That kept on being repeated

The North was being surprised with some Bull Runs

All was risky with all those shot guns

It was a frustrating time, reloading bullets

This war was very difficult, but the North won

They fought a lot from night to dawn

The won even though they got bombed