"Why Does Nail Polish Turn Your Nails Yellow?" by Stephanie Crawford

     I am the type of person that is obsessed with nail polish. I do my nails every 4-5 days, a different design every time. These vary from galaxy designs, vintage roses, daisies, tribal, gradient, tiny tuxedos, saran wrap tie dye, water marbling, and about a million other designs. I own 209 bottles of nail polish, two detail pens, five and a half bottles of acetone, and four detail brushes. Altogether, this takes up an entire two shelves in my room. My desk is bleached and stained from spilled polish and acetone, and so are my pajamas and some of my clothes. I love doing my nails. However, one of the reasons I always have them covered is that underneath, they are a nasty yellow color. The acetone and polish have stained my nails, and for the longest time I didn't know why.
     I recently read the article "Why Does Nail Polish Turn Your Nails Yellow?" by Stephanie Crawford (http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/nail-care/health/nails-turn-yellow.htm). The article summarizes briefly why one's nails might be yellowed by polish. The answer is that nails need oxygen to stay healthy, and being covered 24/7 by polish deprives them from this.
      It is primarily caused, however, from the pigment staining from the polish. Deep reds are known to stain the most. Some of the chemicals used for pigmenting are titanium dioxide and iron oxides, two chemicals often used in making wall paints. A tip for keeping your nails healthy is using a base coat of clear polish before painting.
      I have concluded that if I want normal nails again, I should either reduce painting my nails, or start painting a base coat, which I have not been doing.

Perfect Match By Jodi Picoult

     Yesterday, I finished Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult. I really loved this book, though it was scary, sad, and disturbing. I definitely felt resistance like we talked about in class while reading it. Perfect Match is about a young prosecutor, Nina, who fights against molesters and Pedophiles. When her young son is raped by a priest, however, she goes insane and shoots the defendant. This tears apart her family.
     I have noticed a pattern in Picoult's books, of which I have read three and a half in the past three weeks. Most follow a young person, a murder or crime, a connection with the law, and how their choices ruin their relationships. This book is a perfect example.
     I am not a mother, and do not plan to be one any time soon. However, I do know what it feels like to love someone so much that you would do just about anything for them. Nina feels this way with her son Nathaniel, portrayed as an adorable, five year old, innocent little boy, used and violated by his own priest. Picoult uses the tactic of describing the rape scene between Father Gwynne and Nathaniel to invoke disturbance and terror within the reader. I felt like I wanted to reach into the pages of the book and shoot the priest myself.
    I do not know If I would go as far as actually murdering the preist myself, however. Murder is a very risky and wrong thing to do, especially considering the law system that exists today. Nina could have been killed, all for protecting her son from being scared when he stood on the podium. Although I like Nina, I think she made a bad choice.

The Pact by Jodi Picoult

     I am currently reading The Pact by Jodi Picoult. Frankly, I find it one of the most terrifying pieces of literature I have ever read. It is about a boyfriend and girlfriend, Chris and Emily, who have known each other for forever. One night, their parents get a call from the police saying that Emily is dead, killed by a bullet to the head, and Chris found passed out next to her. When he wakes up, he tells police that he and Emily had a suicide pact, that they were each going to kill themselves in order to stay young together forever, but Chris got scared, couldn't finish the job, and fainted. The book follows Chris as he is convicted of Homicide, and you, as the reader are not sure if he committed the crime or not.
     The social action question I am answering today is "How does the text make you think about justice in the world?" There is not a lot of evidence to say that Chris killed Emily, yet they lock Chris, 18, in jail for nine months. They aren't sure if he killed anyone, yet they are forcing a young, possibly innocent person to stay in a jail full of proven rapists, pedophiles, murderers, and other criminals. Chris seems to live for Emily, to love her endlessly. He never shows any mental evidence of wanting to hurt or kill her. It was also proven that Emily was suicidal.                                
     However, it is hard to know what exactly to think about Chris. When Emily was six, she was raped by the custodian at Seven-Eleven. She never told anyone, not her parents, friends, or Chris. When she and Chris were older and dating, Chris kept touching Emily and trying to have sex with her, even when  Emily screamed at Chris to stop. So, even though we know that Chris loved his girlfriend more than anything, we are angry at him, because he, in a way, raped her.
     Justice has not yet been served permanently in the book yet, as I am only halfway through it, and it is hard to tell whether it is just or not for Chris being in jail, as we do not know if he killed Emily or not at this point in the book.

Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo

     This week, I read the book Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo. Blonde Roots is basically pursuing the question, "what would happen if slavery was the other way around, if white people were enslaved by black people?" In the book, the main character, Doris, was enslaved when she was eleven years old, and brought to Africa, or as they call it, Aphrika. She is given a slave name, Omorenomwara, and when she is in her mid-thirties, she attempts escape. The story follows her as she attempts to get back to England, where she was born.

      Blonde Roots completely reverses the stereotypes and labels that black slaves were given in the 1700s and 1800s. White (or 'whyte') people are called 'wiggers,' and the white women compare themselves to the black (or 'blak') women, who call the whyte women ugly for being skinny and pale. While on her journey to Aphrika, Doris is placed on a ship in the middle passage, where women are raped and men are killed. Once she arrives, she is auctioned off and placed in a home where she is told to the companion of a blak little girl, who treats her like she is lesser because she is whyte.

     If you switch around the names 'black' and 'white', the result is exactly the same despite skin color: racism. I think Evaristo was trying to show this when she wrote the novel; it would be very easy to switch around the race roles and have white people be enslaved.

Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

     I have read this book four times.
     14 year old Chloe and her 18 year old sister Ruby live next to a reservoir in upstate New York, where Ruby is queen. Everyone adores her. She gets what she wants and gets away with anything. One day, while at a party at the reservoir, Ruby brags about how amazing Chloe is at swimming, how she could swim across without coming up for breath and not drown. And because Ruby is Ruby, everyone believes her, even Chloe. So she tries, and when she is halfway across, she finds the drowned body of her classmate London. Shocked with what she's found, Chloe moves away from Ruby, to Pennsylvania, to live with her Father. Two years later, Ruby comes back for her, pleading for her to return. She does, and is shocked to find London alive, well, and with no memory of her death. As the story unfolds, Chloe realizes just how influential Ruby is, having brought London back from the dead to make everything back to normal.
     I think that though Chloe loves Ruby, part of this love is fear. She knows how powerful she is, what she can do to get what she wants. She will always get what she wants, whether it is an object, love, life, beauty- even the death of of anther person. In one part of the book, Ruby gets a whole bunch of balloons, and writes wishes on each of them, such as "bake me a homemade lasagne." One is "ask me to dance and let me say no." When Chloe asks her why she would want that, Ruby says "so I can feel powerful." Chloe is frightened out of her mind. Another, "make me cry," is explained with "I want to know that I CAN cry, that someone can reject me." Chloe is scared even more. After Ruby's death, Chloe can't believe she's gone, because Ruby gets what she wants, and why would she want to die?
    Even though Chloe loves Ruby more than she loves anybody, she is still frightened by her power.

The Girl With Borrowed Wings by Rinsi Rossetti

     The Girl With Borrowed Wings, by Rinsi Rossetti, is about a girl named Frenenquer Paje, who lives in the desert with her timid mother and oppressive father. Her father doesn't allow her to do anything- express herself, fall in love, be a normal person- if she does not shut the door "politely," then she will have to stand there for hours, opening and closing the door until her father feels that she is "disciplined." Frenenquer claims that she was not conceived in the belly of her mother, but in the mind of her father, in a sunflower field in Italy. He has already planned who he wants her to be- perfect- and he will not stop at anything to fulfill his dream. This is not a culture- although they live in the middle east and their culture is arguably similar to the culture there, they have only lived there for four years, and they are Canadian, Italian, and Thai, and their culture is their own. Her father has affected Frenenquer's life so much that she feels she is unworthy and does not question him. So when a shape-shifter, or a "free person," comes to her house in the form of Sangris, a boy with wings, Frenenquer is wary about flying away each night to have a break from her parents' torture. 
    Frenenquer's father omits any contact with men, even though Frenenquer is sixteen. She feels like she is practically incapable of falling in love, simply because her father thought she should not. When talking about how in her books there is always a boyfriend, she says "He. Does there always have to be a he? It seems weak and unoriginal, doesn’t it, for stories told by girls to always have a he? Well, not in my life, nor in the lives of my friends. …So you see, for there to be a he in my story is a very unusual thing indeed, but then, the circumstances were unusual too, and the boy himself, if you can call him that, even more so." She feels violated when Sangris walks in on her when she is wearing "only a t-shirt and jeans," while this is the normal outfit for someone in a normal family. Her father makes her wear a long sleeved, tan, baggy shirt every day, and a long skirt or pants. When Sangris confesses his love to her and kisses her, she feels sick, and like she is wrongdoing her father by being loved. She then says that she "knows what you're (the reader) thinking," that she really does love Sangris, and doesn't realize it or denies it because of her father's oppression, but that is "not the case." She didn't love him because of the oppression. If her father weren't so strict, she "probably would be in love with him." 
      Frenenquer is trapped in every way, and Sangris is as free as he wants to be, and in that way, they are completely different and similar.  Frenenquer feels she lacks identity because of her father's discipline, and Sangris feels he lacks identity because he is so free that he can never settle in one place. In the end, when Frenenquer finally breaks free of her father, she falls in love with Sangris, and the union of two identity-less adolescents creates an identity: Love.

Swirlies by Roman Dirge

     This week, for the seventh time, I read Swirlies by Roman Dirge. Swirlies is the fourth book in the Lenore series. In the books, Lenore Lynchfast, who died in the late 1800s, "lives" (she accidentally was over-embalmed and came back to life) with her best friend Ragamuffin, who is a vampire trapped in a doll's body, and her other friend Pooty, who is a demon from Hell who has a bucket for a head.
     This all sounds very childish.
      Oh God, no. Lenore is a foulmouthed, slightly-stupid mass-murderer, she is stalked by her kind suitor Mr. Gosh, a dead guy (killed by her) who covers his gory face with a sack and two buttons for eyes, she crashes a poor girl's birthday party and accidentally scars her for life by killing all of her friends and leaving, and has many more strange (mis)adventures.

     Ragamuffin can be called the "voice of reason" in this series. He scolds her kindly when he needs to, stopping her more often than not. He definitely cares about Lenore a lot, putting up with her treating him like a baby, ("You're not calling me a baby, are you? I'm over 400 years old." "Shh, baby. Shhhhhhhhh.") her planting him in the ground in the middle of the night while he sleeps because she wanted to create 'baby Ragamuffins,' and dealing with her general weirdness. When a mortician kept alive on steampunk machinery and overdoses of embalming fluids wanted to finish embalming her, he stole a giant robot to kill him and save her. In the third book, the Dark Overlord of Hell wanted to bring Lenore back after she escaped, so Pooty turned Ragamuffin into his old self so he could kill the Nazi Soldiers sent to retrieve her. When Lenore found out that Mr. Gosh owned a castle and was quite rich, Ragamuffin supported her when she asked Mr. Gosh out, even though Ragamuffin was in love with her. (When Mr. Gosh blew up the castle, she left him.)
     Why does Ragamuffin care about her so much? She is cruel, stupid, abusive, mean, a murderer, and a terrible friend. It would be so easy for him to get Pooty to turn him into his vampire form, kill Lenore for good, and leave. But he doesn't, and he even likes her. I think that this may be because when she is nice to him, it shows. She often calls him adorable, eats breakfast with him, goes to the park with him, and plays horseshoes with him when he asks. She obviously enjoys his company, however teasing she may be. Also, she saved him. Her blood brought him to life, and he now owes her his protection.
     Lenore is my favorite book. It's hilarious, dark, and is REALLY fun to write fanfictions for. (I have the most popular Ragamuffin/Lenore, or Raganore, fanfic on the Internet. It's called Hardest Of Hearts.) I can't wait for the fifth book to come out, but unfortunately, this might not be for a year. This seems like a long time for a die-hard fan like me- Swirlies came out in August.

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia- by Marya Hornbacher

     Imagine having your first two fingers shoved down your throat, sharp nails scraping at your flesh, holding your hair back with a ponytail or your free hand, or perhaps letting it fall over your face, letting it get stuck in vomit and mascara-tears. Imagine the roar of the bathwater drowning out your retches and gags so your mother and father can't hear you. Bulimia is terrifying. It leaves scars on your knuckles, a stench on your breath, and a pale and miserable face. Marya Hornbacher describes bulimia like this in her book Wasted, horrifying and something out of a nightmare. She says that having anorexia or bulimia is like having this "evil skinny bitch" inside of you, saying that the pain will stop when you're thin, only when you're thin, except in your eyes you can never get thin. These terrible feelings change Marya so much throughout the course of her memoir, she is like a different person.
     Marya's feelings of self-hatred grow in her like a cancer, starting out small when she was young, telling her friends at five years old that she wouldn't eat and needed to be skinny, to getting into drugs and sex and bulimia and anorexia by the age of thirteen. She talks back, curses, and acts rebellious towards everyone. Her eating disorders cause her to become someone who is quite unlike the Marya we met in the beginning, innocent, happy, eating Fritos on the couch, watching TV, and cuddling with her dog. She now writes depressing poetry, cries herself to sleep, and pukes after everything that she eats.
     I knew a girl at summer camp with bulimia. I'm not saying who, but it has changed them, much as it has changed Marya. She makes frequent bad decisions, some of which make me not want to hang out with her. She had gotten piercings, arguably tried drugs (she denies it), and spends time with people who are bad influences on her. She described her first purge to me, and was open about it. I remember her saying something along the lines of this: "It was really scary, and I didn't really know what I was doing. I turned on the bathwater, pulled my hair back, and shoved my fingers down my throat. I hacked for like ten minutes, but nothing came up. Finally, I stuck my whole hand into my mouth, and my entire dinner came up. It was terrifying, and it hurt, but I'm used to it now. It stings to drink lemonade now because I have a raw patch on the back of my throat." This is very similar to what Marya describes in her book.

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

     The book A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is a very powerful, almost depressing memoir about Beah's childhood as a boy soldier. He was separated from his parents at twelve, and became a child soldier until he was rescued by UNICEF at age sixteen. Throughout the book, Beah lets the reader see how his childhood was stolen from him through descriptions and language.
     In the beginning, Beah states how his life was good, he had a rap group with his friends in school, a family, and overall a good life. But when the Rebels invaded his town, he saw dying families, people being shot, and a messy, bloody scene of gore and terror. "Each gunshot seemed to cling to the beat of my heart."
     Beah and his friends traveled across brutal deserts and beaches, encountering savage villagers who let him pass only for his rap skills. It is so absurd that it almost sounds fictional. The seven boys had the bottoms of their feet literally burned off from the 120 degree sand; listened to their friends tell the stories of how the rebels raped their sisters and killed their parents, and starved in the sweltering Africa heat.
     Death is something nobody, let alone a child, should have to see. However, for almost five years of his life, Beah does, and some of those deaths he caused. Once he joined the army, they drugged him, gave him weapons, and trained him to be a ruthless, violent killer. "Killing became as easy as drinking water," he says. After a day of brutal murder and war, he would go back to the base with his troops, sniff cocaine, smoke marijuana, and watch war movies in a tent with other young soldiers.
     When he was rescued by UNICEF, he behaved like the changed person he was, cruel and mean to those who want to help him, starting fights with other refugees, bullying staff, and overall behaving badly. He behaved like someone who has been badly damaged, and needs fixing. I have not finished the book yet, but I am sure that he will change once again, shaking off the demonic personality that the war has forced on him.
     I think that Beah wrote this memoir to show people not just how unbelievably terrifying being a child soldier could be, but also how it can change a person, and rob their childhood away from them. Beah moved to New York and graduated from college because he was changed from the person war turned him into, with help from UNICEF.

"Am I Blue?" By Bruce Coville

     Finding your true identity is one of the important themes in the short story "Am I Blue? " by Bruce Coville. The main character, Vincent, is confused with his sexuality, and often gets teased for it. For example, Butch Corrigan, a bully, pushes him into a dirty puddle at the beginning because he is convinced that Vincent wants to "jump his bones." That's when Melvin comes into the story. Melvin helps Vincent out of the puddle and tells him that he is his fairy godfather; that he has come to grant him three wishes and help him find out who he really is.
     Accepting your identity and not deceiving yourself and others is very important in life. Vincent is not sure whether he is gay or not. When he is in the coffee shop with Melvin, he thinks to himself, "I didn't mention that I had been trying to figure out the same thing for about a year now," after asking Melvin if him being Melvin's "first case" meant he was gay. This shows that Vincent is confused about his identity and insecure about himself.
     One thing I noticed was that if there is a boy who bullies gay people, such as Butch Corrigan, they usually turn out to be gay themselves. In The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, a boy who bullies the main character's best friend Patrick for being gay turns out to be in love with him. I think that authors usually add this element to their books to show that the bully has a reason for being homophobic: he is afraid of his feelings and himself.
     I think that "Blue Day" not only helped Vincent, but a lot of other people, too. For example, it helped Butch Corrigan. Overall, it helped the world accept gay people more, now there is no more hiding from yourself.

Drummer Boy Of Shiloh By Ray Bradbury

     One of the themes of "The Drummer Boy Of Shiloh" by Ray Bradbury is have self-confidence. The theme of confidence is referenced many times in the story,  mainly involving the General encouraging the main character, Joby, to believe in himself because he is the "heart of the army." The General persuades Joby to love  the position he was given, to not fear or hate it. The General tells him that by beating the drum at a fast pace, the hearts of the soldiers would beat fast, and they would fight harder and not die. He also tells Joby that he is the "General when the general is left behind." Hearing the General's speech, Joby grows more confident in himself, and he learns to respect his position. Self-confidence can be very important. For example, the General tells Joby that if he has confidence, so will the army. Joby's confidence can save thousands of soldiers from dying.

     I don't have loads of self-confidence. Sometimes I wonder why I'm even here, and frequently wish that I was someone else. But I have friends who tell me to be more confident in myself, who reassure me, and this reassurance, much like the General's, can make a person feel strong.

Review: Wither By Lauren DeStefano

     Over the summer, I read the book Wither By Lauren DeStefano. Wither takes place in the future, a world where the cure for cancer goes horribly wrong and causes males to only live to age twenty-five and females to the age of twenty. Rhine Ellery is a sixteen year old girl living in New York, when she is kidnapped and brought to Florida to be put into a polygamous marriage. Rhine, together with her sister wives Cecily, Jenna, and a servant boy named Gabriel, must escape their wretchedly beautiful prison, back into the real world, before their time runs out. 
     Rhine's relationships with other characters are intricate and interesting. Her youngest sister wife, Cecily, who is only thirteen, has a bubbly stubbornness to her that makes her seem like an antagonist at times, but her intentions are always good. Linden, Rhine's husband, is sweet, innocent, and charming. He has no idea that the wives he didn't select to marry were shot to death in the back of a truck. Rhine loves and despises Linden at the same time. I think that her despise for him is sorely based on her hatred for his father, Housemaster Vaughn. The only thing I can really say about Housemaster Vaughn is that he is creepy. He takes corpses of the people claimed by the virus, and dissects them in his basement, hoping to find a cure. Housemaster Vaughn is the real antagonist in this story.
      In Wither, some of the themes can be quite disturbing and mature. For instance, Cecily gives birth when she is only thirteen, my age. The father is twenty-one, which is strange and unacceptable. Also, Jenna, another sister wife, was forced to live as a prostitute before she was abducted for marriage by Housemaster Vaughn. 
      I recommend this book to eighth graders and high-schoolers. It is an exciting, riveting read that will leave you on the edge of your seat waiting for the next book.