The Man Behind the Big Red Dog

Growing up in Kokomo, Indiana, Norman Bridwell, the author of the great children book Clifford the Big Red Dog, was always drawing dogs.  He said he wasn't a very good artist in his opinions but loved to express his passion for art and love for dogs.  He did not even imagine that his drawings would become a children's  best seller.  One day one of his high school teachers took away his school supplies because he wasn't paying attention and gave him a note pad and two pencils and said, "Here, you seem to like to draw, so stick to that."  He said, "He was never considered very good at drawing, someone was always better than me throughout junior high."  After high school, Bridwell wanted to take his drawing and turn it into career.  He studied first at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis and then moved to New York, where he took classes at another art school, Cooper Union, for two years.  A few years later, Bridwell had published 15 children books.  Soon after his classic best sellers were turned into a show and some movies.http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-bridwell-norman.asp
https://www.google.com/search?q=clifford+the+big+red+dog&hl=en&prmd=imvnsb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=EXMET9aTL8HL0QGlwt2bAg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CBoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1280&bih=685

A Lesson to Be Learned in The Animal Farm

To finish up the 1st semester of ninth grade English, we read the novel, Animal Farm.  It was written by George Orwell in 1950.  He was from England and decided to write about the Russian Revolution and the main people and conflicts in that time.  All of his characters matched perfectly with the people of that event.  I enjoyed reading this book and I am going to write about a lesson that is to be learned from this book.  I thought since it fits both the book and the event of the Russian Revolution, i should write about being equal.  In the story the animals get tired of being slaves for their master, Mr. Jones, and revolt very early in the book.  They end up doing well on their own after some time.  Eventually there are two pigs who want to run a campaign and have votes on who should rule the farm.  One pig gets blamed for something he didn't do and gets chased out of the farm.  The other pig turns out to be a very bad ruler and ruthless towards his fellow animals.  The reason i chose to write about being equal is because the animals started off hating humans and said they would never hurt other animals, but in the end a few animals have 5X the power of others and claim to be more important and even start taking up habits that the humans did earlier in the story such as, trade, drinking alcohol, wearing clothes, and even walking on two legs!  The lesson of this story is to treat each other equal and make others feel important so you can have a good society and stay happy.

The Best Times of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is always great because i get to see all of my family in one house and have great food.  I'd say that my favorite part of thanksgiving is eating a great meal and then shortly after, going to watch football and eat desert.  This year will be great because a break from school is good but a few extra days of good eating is just perfect.  We don't really have many traditions at my thanksgiving, but one year on accident, my grandma got chicken instead of turkey for some reason so we always have chicken and turkey now.  I love Thanksgiving because of the fun we have with our family all on one day.

Career Day is NOT Boring

There were 4 sessions we had to go to and the careers i chose to go to were medicine, business, law, and engineering.  Medicine and engineering were just to fill out the sheet and to complete the session requirements.  But law and business really stood out to me.  Mostly law.  I thought that law was going to be boring when i arrived, but i actually ended up learning a lot from the speaker and the slide show presentation.  A few things i learned from the sessions was how much money those careers make on average, how much schooling you need, and what exactly you do on a typical day of those careers.  Out of all of them i think law appealed to me more because it is fascinating and gives you more of an understanding of the world by learning about law and attorneys.

My Julius Caesar Project

Making my project for Julius Caesar was a challenge but also very fun to do.  I like to have hands-on projects instead of power points and papers.  It is just more interesting to me.  The way i made my project was drawing 3 characteristics of the antagonist, Cassius.  I depicted them by drawing out what they meant with a picture and then filling it in with colored pencils.   It took me a while to color and to think of the ideas for my drawings.  I'm not the best drawer in the world but i do enjoy making those kind of projects.  I feel like sharing it with my class was easy and i  enjoyed that because they all got to see my drawings.  I hope I did good on it and I'm looking forward to being able to do another project similar to this one.

My Response to Spiritual Emphasis Week

I think our speaker, Brent, is a great speaker.  He is hilarious and knows what to say to get through to high school students.  He makes great jokes, and can relate to whats going on in our lives and really connect with us. He really turns us to Jesus.  I'm very glad that he is our speaker because he makes me want to go to chapel everyday.

Too Much Pride is a Bad Thing

In this blog post I'm going to be writing about pride being portrayed in the story Julius Caesar.  In the story Caesar probably gets killed because of 2 reasons, being too ambitious and having too much pride.  Pride is always a problem in stories like this because it can really get in the way of your goals and plans.  Too much pride is dangerous because people will dis-like you and know that you think way to highly of yourself.  In this story too much pride is being portrayed when the soothsayer tries to warn Caesar about his dark future and he just ignores him and tells him to go away.  That is a big reason why he dies.  Caesar also refuses to listen to his wife Calphurnia when she has dreams about him being killed.  His pride also gets in the way when Artemidorus tries to warn him about the conspirators plans to kill him in a letter form and he just ignores it and asks why his is so important.  This story applies to real life because if you have too much pride in yourself or are "big headed", no one will truly like you and you will end up like Caesar but emotionally.