The Giraffe Blog

By Tessa  Hello!  My name’s Rack and if you’re reading this, it means that guy Jeff VanderMeer really did write that book about me. He’s calling it A Peculiar Peril , but really that doesn’t even begin to summarize what I’ve been through. Calling what happened peculiar is like calling Lake Michigan a puddle.  Anyways, he’s asked me to create a foreword to convince people to read his book. To be honest, it’s a totally bizarre story. You’ve probably never read anything like it. The way the whole thing played out was that my friend Jonathon asked my sister and I to help him organize his batty old grandfather’s mansion that he inherited. Sounds fun right - just being surrounded by cool old stuff for a couple weeks? So Danny (my sister) and I decided to assist him. And we go, and we’re having a jolly old time until one night we come downstairs to find a ghost in the basement. Jonathan calls them Emissaries but really who cares. They’re ghosts, plain and simple. But anyway this...

  Imagine what would happen if you took a series of million-view TED talks and integrated them into a national bestseller nonfiction. The product? David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell, which I will simply refer to as David and Goliath . Although not necessarily capturing stories straight from famous TED talks, David and Goliath rings the readers’ minds with the same level of impact and excitement. This book teaches the readers why David was able to easily beat Goliath and how Monet, along with other artists initially criticized as amateur painters, could become successful. Despite the plain white cover, the book’s engaging content kept me turning its pages and gave me the hope that maybe I, too, can beat my Goliath.  Through the course of the book, the author brings in many immersive and relatable examples from around the world where people overcame their disadvantages and used them as their motivation towards success. Ra...

               BY Mason. I decided to read another book by William Sleator. This book is called The duplicate. It starts when a boy finds a device that can duplicate himself, and creates a twin. To some people, this could sound like a dream because your twin can do all your homework, go to school, and do chores. However, the twin thinks exactly the same thing. This becomes a problem when he has to share things like clothes to the twin. The duplicate gets into many fights with the real person, and there are many disputes and arguments. The duplicate then finds a way to seemingly get rid of all of his problems, but it does not turn out well.  What was funny about the book was that the main character thought that all his problems would be over because he could literally be two places at a time, but it does not turn out the way he thought of. I would recommend this book to other people, but the book does get boring at times....

Analysis of Spinning On Christmas of 2017, I was given Spinning by Tillie Walden. Being more interested in my other toys and shorter books, I put the 400-page graphic novel on my bookshelf. I tried reading the first few pages, but it was boring and the plot moved too slowly for me when I was younger. Last month, though, I found it and picked it up. Tillie Walden’s raw emotions and inner thoughts were wedged between A Traveler's Guide to Cuba 2007 and a box of unsent holiday cards from years ago. Tillie Walden’s Spinning is an honest and eloquent autobiography about how it feels to grow up.  The novel centers around her experiences as a competitive figure skater. It starts with Tillie’s family suddenly moving from New Jersey to Texas. It’s unclear how old she was at the time of the move, but she seems to be about eight or nine. She starts at a new school where she is targeted and bullied by her classmate, Grace. She manages to make a few friends, including Rae, another girl at her...