The Giraffe Blog

               I recently started to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the biography of Henrietta Lacks. It is a dense, information-packed book. It tells the story not only of the woman with the first immortal cells, but also one of the stories of a long line of shocking, race-based medical malpractices. Reading this book is not only interesting but it also helped me learn more about the injustice that some people in this country faced a while ago.  Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1st, 1920. She was one out of 10 children to her young mother and eventually went to live with her grandfather, while her other siblings went to live with relatives close by. Along with her grandfather, she lived with her cousin, David. She would later marry him and have five children.  She had her first child at the age of 14 and soon became a full time mother. Her family moved to Baltimore, where she had three of her other children. Her husba...

  ““Jonas,” she said, speaking not to him alone but to the entire community of which he was a part, “you will be trained to be our next Receiver of Memory. We thank you for your childhood,”” grandly declares the narrator, signifying a turning point in Jonas’s life as she alludes to a commencement in his journey towards escaping the mechanic and conformed life (Lowry 61). Published in 1993 and winning the Newbery Medal the following year, Lois Lowry’s The Giver unravels the story of Jonas, who is selected to receive all memory of the past from the Giver. Through the eyes of Jonas in his journey as a Receiver of Memory, the novel offers new perspectives towards the cultural and social factors surrounding us.  The author meticulously paints the concept of contentment through the setting of the story. The book depicts a community with utter conformity, outlined with strict rules, regularity, and interpersonal indifference. The fragile community depends on the protection of the go...

“There was a sudden rush of wind, and she looked up in the sky and was horrified to see that the group of crows had grown twentyfold,” (Meloy 7). The action in this book begins on page six, and the whole story is filled with suspense. An overview of the beginning of the story would go something like this: Prue, a twelve-year-old, travels to Wildwood to save her brother who has been abducted by crows working for an evil woman. Even the plot of this book sounds outlandish, which is a good taste of the story to come. The book is aimed at a slightly younger audience, with the main character being a twelve year old, but I still immensely enjoyed it. The journey of Prue and Curtis from their hometown to the mysterious wood around it was a fitting metaphor for the escape from reality that occurred while I was reading the book. The story was told with an engaging third person narrative. I found the two main characters, Prue and Curtis to be relatable and honest. At one point, Prue is thinking ...

While reading A Woman of No Significance , I checked 4 different times to see if it was fiction. Every time, though, I saw that it was, in fact, completely true. It’s written like a story, a tale of a young woman who, despite being told to get married and settle down, became a spy for the allies and helped win WWII. The story of Virginia Hall is like a treasure chest of twists and turns. As soon as I opened it, I knew I had found something I’d never be able to put down. Sonia Purnell’s A Woman of No Significance is a thrilling biography of American officer Virginia Hall. Virginia Hall is an American hero. I say this because, although she faced countless struggles, including unimaginable sexism and losing her foot, she stayed patriotic and still managed to become a major spy during WWII. She first earned a job driving ambulances in France for the war effort, but she always wanted to help more. After the Nazis invaded France, most of her colleagues left. She continued driving through ...