Julia's Blog

Grace: Reading Response Katie: My Summer

        This summer when I was at camp in Washington I went kayaking in the San Juan Islands. On the last day, there was a huge channel we had to cross. It was 6 miles long. On the channel, there were ferries, boats, and sailboats all crossing. Also, it was the most popular time of year for boats. To top it off, it was about to rain so the currents were even stronger. Aside from the currents and traffic, the water was crystal blue and the wind was blowing off the chilly water so the weather was perfect.        My group and I started on shore on the other side of our destination. We took a long break and then decided to cross the channel. The kayaking guides instructed us where to point our kayaks to break the currents. Once we started the adrenaline kicked in and we started to paddle through. At points, it felt as if we were getting pulled backwards but we kept having to paddle strongly. The best feeling was when we made it back to the harbor and everyone felt so accomplished because

                Don't Close Your Eyes was my second book I read over the summer. This book is about a girl named Janie Hannagan and her unique quality. Janie can see into other people's dreams. She has always kept this a secret until she meets a boy named Cabel. They bond over their own personal problems and go through life helping each other overcome them. Janie has an alcoholic mom and her dad left when she was little, so she has learned to deal with most things by herself.                This book explores the differing problems of both Janie and Cabel. This was a really good book because you never knew what was going to happen next. The author did a good job explaining the dreams Janie got caught into. I always could picture what was going on in the book in my head because of the authors use of details and adjectives. She never failed to leave a detail or important part out. Overall, Don't Close Your Eyes was a very lengthy book, but very interesting and exciting to

        Summer is by far my favorite season. I love everything about. This past summer the first thing I did was go to the beach. I went to Destin with a couple of friends. Destin is by far my favorite place to go because my family has always gone there. One of my favorite things to do is drive into Seaside or Rosemary and eat and shop there. The rest of June I hung out with friends in Baton Rouge, went to cheer camp in Monroe for school, and went to the beach once more.          July was definitely the most exciting. The first few days I spent packing for a family trip and camp. I was going to a camp in Washington and Oregon, so before my family dropped me off we went to Seattle for a couple of days. It was super fun, we did city stuff and went to see one of the mountains near Seattle. On July 8th, they dropped me off at the Seattle airport where my group for camp was meeting and we said our good-byes. The camp is not really a traditional camp, but an outdoors/adventure one. Over the

          One of the books I read over the summer was Violent Ends, by Shaun Hutchinson. Along with Shaun Hutchinson, 17 other authors wrote this. I really liked this book for this reason because each chapter was a short story of a character by a new author. Violent Ends is about a boy named Kirby Mathanson who brought a gun to his high school. He killed 6 kids and injured 5 during a school pep rally. Each chapter shows the perspective of a victim, Kirby's family, or friends of the victim.           This book was kind of weird in ways just because it was about a school shooting, but it was cool to read about the insight of the characters and their emotions through the trauma. For example, one of the chapters was about a boy named Teddy who used to be best friends with Kirby. They met at summer camp and Kirby always stuck up for him and helped him out. He never knew he would turn out to be a murderer, but Teddy still felt regretful because he could've been nicer to Kirby. Over