The Giraffe Blog

      I read about a book called Rascal for my Independent Reading. This book is a heartwarming, and very fun story to read. This book talks about a boy, Sterling North, which finds a baby raccoon and decides to raise it. The book is a true story of the author's past life, and the book is very interesting because we can see the major differences between the childhood of Sterling, versus the childhood of our own. This book moves us into the world of Sterling, and describes the bond between boy and raccoon very well.     The book starts when Sterling is just a child. During that time, he was playing with his friend, when suddenly, they stumbled upon a raccoon den. All the other baby raccoons fled along with their mother, but one was too weak to walk. Sterling decides to keep the raccoon and name it Rascal. The beginning of the book starts with learning how to care for the raccoon. Sterling soon finds out that Rascal, the raccoon, is extremely intelligent. Thi...

  I read Cece Bell’s El Deafo for my independent reading, an honest and inspiring story that showcases the difficulties of growing up deaf. In this autobiographical graphic novel, Bell describes experiences at school and with friends in her early childhood surrounding her hearing aids and deafness in general. This book shows the reader what it was like for Cece and how her disability impairs her friendships and school life. This book transports the reader into Cece’s world. The book does such a good job explaining her struggles that by the end of it I was annoyed by the other characters and felt lots of empathy for Cece.  The graphic novel starts when Cece loses her hearing due to meningitis at the age of four. She has to start wearing hearing aids, and although they are helpful they are visible and the kids in her class notice them. Then, Cece goes to a class with other deaf kids and is taught how to read lips and other skills. She doesn’t make many friends, and the next yea...

                 Although we may not wish to believe our selfishness, this does not make selfishness any less true or unimportant. Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene (1976) discusses multiple ways that selfishness manifests at discrete levels of life, from genes to organisms, and in different relationships. The author expounds on how the balance between the two biological authorities of an organism-- the genes’ self-centered ideals and the individual’s conscience--drives its actions and formulates the different behaviors that affect one’s chances of survival and reproduction. The interplay between many individuals under the constant pressure for survival stimulates competition between the organisms and drives the evolution.  From the beginning of the book, the author thoroughly explains how selfishness is embedded into the life of living organisms, with everything starting from a gene. He begins by providing a unique insight into th...