Book Report: LITTLE WOMEN

This book is called, ‘LITTLE WOMEN’ written by Louisa May Alcott. It is about the lives of four girls living in poverty and how they grow up. Their names are Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy. Each with their own different personality, they lead a very hard life. Their mum (Marmie) and housekeeper (Hannah) both live with the four girls while their father is away at war. Amy is the youngest and the sassiest one, Beth is the second youngest and the quietest, Jo is the second oldest and sportiest and Meg is the oldest and most romantic. They each encounter many experiences, which better their personalities. First, Beth who is the best in music, impresses their neighbour by playing on their Grand Piano for him. Laurie’s (the neighbour) grandfather, Mr. Laurence, hears the first few notes and is impressed. Beth’s sisters urge her to play to Mr. Laurence and she finally does. From then onwards, Beth and Laurie’s grandfather are great friends. After this, Amy enters the Valley of Humiliation. She buys limes to gain attention and show off in school. She feels very proud of herself. Amy’s enemy tattles on Amy and Amy’s teacher, Mr. Davis, then humiliates Amy, makes her throw the pickled limes into the backyard and delivers many blows with a stick on Amy’s little palm. Amy is outraged and leaves her school ‘forever’ at recess. Her family take her side but Marmie tells Amy calmly that she shouldn’t be conceited. However, not everything is solved. One day, Jo gets angry with Amy for being nosy and Amy gets quite upset. The next day, Jo is looking for her manuscript which she has taken ages to write but realises that Amy has burnt it up. Jo consults Marmie about her hot-temper and takes some advice. Amy and Jo then forgive each other and move on.  Lastly, Meg is embarrassed by going to her rich friend, Anne’s, house where they try to make a fool of her because they give her their clothes and tell lies about her. Meg is in a rage when she realises that Anne’s friends only like her because they believe Anne’s lies. She goes home in embarrassment and confesses what she had experienced. Marmie and Jo tell her to think twice about luxury and not to take chase it. Just then, they get to know that their father is very ill and so Marmie has to go to support him. Later, when father and Marmie come home, all the girls are much more matured and are now, little women.

What I like about the book is:

• My favorite character was Jo because she had a strong personality and was a tomboy. Jo’s life- infact all of the sisters’ lives- consist of experiences from which lessons are learnt and they try their best to fix it. This was one of the things I really liked about the book.
• Louisa May Alcott was trying to show us how life was back in the nineteenth century. One of the main topics depicted in the book was how unfair and differently they treated men and women. Men were allowed to go outside and work but women weren’t and they had to sit at home and sew. They weren’t allowed to be boyish like Jo but they had to do all the housework like how they were expected to do. I feel quite strongly about this so when anyone nowadays is being a bit unfair towards women, I fight back to tell them that it’s not right.
• There were many different lessons I learnt while reading this book. One of the biggest lessons were: out of every bad, comes a good. Some other side lessons were: not to be conceited, which is portrayed best in Amy when she tries to show her limes off. The second one was to try and control your feelings, which is portrayed best in Jo when she consults Marmie about her hot-temper. The third one was not to be too shy because if you are, you may miss out on many opportunities in life. This is portrayed best in Beth and Mr. Laurence as Beth was shy at first but then she overcomes her shyness and builds a strong relationship with Mr. Laurence. And last but not least, you shouldn’t take anything for granted. This is portrayed best in Meg when she wants to live a luxurious life and takes it for granted but then figures out that her friends like her because of false lies.
• Finally.. FUN TIME! Read the book and answer the questions:

1. Laurie and Jo are good friends. True or False?
2. Does Meg marry at the end of the book?
3. Who does Meg marry?
4. What is a little strange about their marriage?
5. What is father’s occupation?

I WOULD RATE THIS BOOK A 9 OUT OF 10 RATING!

FIND OUT WHAT I MEAN BY READING LITTLE WOMEN!

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE ON AMAZON FOR $3.00!

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Book Report: A WRINKLE IN TIME

This book is called, 'A WRINKLE IN TIME’, written by Madeleine L’engle. It is about a girl named Meg Murry who is not considered very bright at school but is in fact very clever at Math. Her father and mother are scientists. However, Meg’s father has been away for many years now. Meg has a younger brother who is also considered to be dumb by other people but is actually quite a smart person at home. He is mentally extraordinary as he can read Meg and her mother’s mind. His name is Charles Wallace. One day, Charles Wallace makes friends with a group of three ladies who are magical creatures. Their names are Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. They have all once given the world light at night. Whatsit is the youngest of the three. The three old ladies take Meg, Charles Wallace and their acquaintance, Calvin O’Keefe, on a perilous journey through space. Miraculously, they get to places very quickly because they wrinkle or in other words, tesseract. A tesseract is the fifth dimension and makes it easier to travel in space as you don’t need to go the long way around. Meg figures this out easily as she is a Maths Wizard and also figures out that this tesseract is somehow connected to the cause for her father going missing. The three old ladies take Meg and her friends to try and save her father. They reach a place called Camazotz where the three old ladies leave Meg, Calvin and Charles on their own with some special blessings. Camazotz is a place where everything is in perfect order and everyone is doing things in unison. Meg, Calvin and Charles figure out that Meg and Charles’ father is here somewhere. In the Central building, a very dangerous person or brain sits who controls everything but is evil. His name is IT. Charles is so over-confident that he is drawn into a person controlled by IT and becomes part of IT. Meg and Calvin use their talents to follow Charles and find Meg’s father. Meg frees him with the use of Mrs. Who’s blessings and Meg, Calvin and father tesseract to another place. In the process of tesseracting, Meg falls a little bit ill and starts to argue with her father’s good intentions. The three get rescued by some beasts who are kind (thankfully) and a beast named Aunt Beast cures Meg. The three old ladies come back and tell Meg that she is the one who has to go and rescue Charles Wallace from the power of IT. She is told that she has something that IT doesn’t. But, Meg doesn’t know what it is. When she reaches Charles, there is a big change in Charles as he is no longer sweet- he is now rude, cold-hearted and selfish. Meg thinks hard and finally, after a lot of thinking, figures out that she has love for Charles while IT doesn’t; IT wants to rule over people in order to gain power and not to help them. Meg loves Charles and Charles breaks the trance he is in. Meg and Charles get tesseracted back to where their father and Calvin are. Meg, Charles, Calvin and father all go home finally and the Murry family reunite. Everything goes well!

What I like about the book:

·    Madeleine L’engle had an interview that appears at the end of the book. When I read through it, I realised that the subjects she was bad in were Maths and Science. She was good at English. So now, I think that she has made Meg quite the opposite of herself because Meg is no good at English and excellent at Maths and Science.

·  This book’s genre is sci-fi. Recently, I have started liking sci-fi more and more. It is a great book and I recommend it to people who love sci-fi or just simply love to write and describe a lot. A Wrinkle In Time had many fabulous descriptions and I really liked watching the movie- I mean reading the book J

·  One word that Madeleine L’engle used quite a lot in the book was tangible. When I was reading this book, I didn’t know what it meant so I searched up the meaning and found out what it meant. It means: able to be seen or noticed when touched- having a physical existence. Here is ‘tangible’ in a sentence: She touched the mirror again to see whether the image would fade but the image was very much tangible and Anna could feel a body shaping in her hands.

·      In this book, there were two lessons that I learnt. The first one was to not be too proud of yourself, as Charles was, but to persevere and set a target to do better everytime. The second one was to not let other people get in the way of what you want to do. This is best portrayed in Meg when she’s thinking about her deep love for Charles but she doubts it after IT takes over Charles and Charles, her own little brother, has been so rude to her.

·  One last thing before I leave you to read the book and answer the questions in my little quiz. Madeleine L’engle had a very vivid imagination. ‘A Wrinkle In Time’ was published in 1963. She must have had a lot of imagination to dream up how to describe space and how far away places & galaxies looked. The book was published in 1963, as I mentioned, and Neil Armstrong only landed on the moon in 1969. She may have had a little bit of inspiration from John F. Kennedy’s speech in 1961 but other than that, she had to literally dream up a galaxy in the sky. Star Wars only came a few years later, possibly with some inspiration from Madeleine L'engle.

·  Finally... Fun time! Read the book and answer the following questions:

1. Who was the chirpy person in the cave?
2. What was the cold thing that made Meg sick called?
3. Meg’s father’s name is...?
4. Where did Meg, Charles, Calvin and father land?
5. Meg and Calvin support and show their love for each other by?
6. Charles has to conquer being over-confident and having a lot of pride when praised. True or False?
7. Meg has a Bunny named Carrots. True or False?

I WOULD RATE THIS BOOK A 8 OUT OF 10 RATING!

FIND OUT WHAT I MEAN BY READING A WRINKLE IN TIME!

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE ON AMAZON FOR $6.07!

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