Remediations

I made a sketch.  :)

I also wrote a flash fiction.-----





            My heart pounded in my chest.  With every beat, it felt like it would crash through my sternum and burst out of me.  The ticking of the clock was nearly drowned out by my heart.  I was sure the doctor could hear it, knew that I was terrified.  He sat on a swivel chair in front of me, one hand placed gently on my knee.  I was sure that the touch was a sign of compassion, something to let me know that I wasn’t alone in this.

           The paper I was sitting on crunched as I shifted, removing his hand from my knee.  “Is it terminal?”

            The doctor’s eyes gave me the story.  Tears threatened to erupt from my eyes and I swiped them with the back of my hand.  Dr. Mancheld held back his own tears, “I know that it will be tough to get through this.  I can recommend a good therapist.”

            My body convulsed as I thought about expressing my feeling about this death sentence.  “I don’t know how you could ever know anything about what I’m going through, but you’re right, it will be tough.  Especially on Marie.”

            The doctor shrank in his seat a little.  Marie was my wife.  And she was carrying our first child, due in a month.  I covered my face with my hands when I realized I would not be around for Lilly to grow up.  I would not be there when she took her first steps, went to her first day of school, had her heart broken for the first time.  Nor would I be there when she graduated high school or college.  I wouldn’t be there to walk her down the aisle, or hold my first grandchild.  I wouldn’t be there to- to be there for her.

            Marie wouldn’t be able to handle the news.  Her brother, my best friend, had passed away a few years ago due to cancer.  I don’t think she’d be able to handle another death so soon.

            “Doc?”  I eyed the man, as he stood and placed his hand on my shoulder, trying to offer more condolences.  “How long do I have?”

            The doc sagged.  I’m assuming he was hoping for a different question.  He looked away when he finally answered, “A few years at best.”

Lilly had been born two weeks after I had been diagnosed.  She was the love of my life, and while Marie went to work every day, in order to pay for my medical bills, I spent the entire day caring for my baby.

            Every night, after laying Lilly down for bed, I would watch as the sunset over the horizon, and waited for the first of the stars to appear.  As soon as the first one appeared, I’d wish with all my heart.  Every day my wish was different.  Sometimes I wished to live, to be able to watch Lilly grow up.  Others, I would simply wish that Lilly had the best life she could, and remember that I always loved her.  When I was angry, though, I would wish that I had never met Marie, that she would be happily married with another man and Lilly would never have to suffer the pain of not having a father.  I didn’t usually wish for that, though.

I thought a lot about death over the time leading to my own.  Jesse, Marie’s brother, had been diagnosed much too late.  He went to the doctor due to a cough.  All he wanted was a prescription for medicine and, instead, he got a death sentence.  He passed away within a few months of his diagnosis.

            Of course, my story wasn’t too much different.  I went in to make sure I was fit to play on a bar league softball team.  Needless to say, I wasn’t cut out for playing.

            Jesse only had a few months to live, whereas I had a couple years.  Jesse had the most to live for.  He had two kids at home and his wife didn’t work.  It was heartbreaking to see the family fall apart.  We took the family in shortly before Jesse’s death.  The kids were so innocent and a huge part of their lives had been wrenched away from them.  I will never forget the looks on their faces when they watched their father fade away.  It haunts me in my dreams and I never want Lilly to feel that way.

Exactly two years after my diagnosis, I lay alone in a hospital room.  A clock hung on the wall, ticking away the time that I had left.  A TV was mounted in the corner but I hadn’t watched a thing since the day that I was diagnosed.  TV seemed like such trivial thing compared to my imposing death, as did my job.  I had opted to spend every moment of my time left to be with my family.

            The door opened and I turned to see my visitor.

            Howie’s face was pale as a ghost but his eyes lit up when I walked in the room, holding our little girl in my arms.

            “Daddy!” she exclaimed.  She reached her hands out at him and I set her in his arms.

            “Hello, Lilly-bug!”  His face seemed to gain color with every laugh from her as he tickled her endlessly.

            The evening went on like this.  I rarely spoke, only absorbed the sheer joy experienced by Howie and Lilly.  When the evening was over, my mother came to collect Lilly.

            Howie was exhausted.  He sighed loudly and shuddered with the pain from it.  I walked to his side and clutched his hand to my chest.  “Howie?”

            After a second, he turned his head to gaze.  My breath caught in my throat when I saw his eyes, glazed over in pain.  He forced a smile to his face, “I’m fine, Marie.  Go home.”

            “Are you sure?”

            He nodded, so I hugged him and told him I loved him.  Then I left.

            Howie lay alone in the hospital room, his breathing slow and steady, heart monitor beeping quietly.  A candle flickered on the night stand. Wind rattled Howie’s window causing the shadows around the room to dance violently with the candle’s flame.  Suddenly, Howie gasped, his eyes wide.  His heart rate increased dramatically and the window flew open, blowing out the candle.  A low continuous beep filled the room.

A Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer

A Child Called “It”: One Child’s Courage to Survive by Dave Pelzer

            “Smack! Mother hits me in the face and I topple to the floor.  I know better than to stand there and take the hit.  I learned the hard way that she takes that as an act of defiance, which means more hits, or worst of all, no food.”

                                                                               -Pg. 1 of A Child Called “It” by Dave Pelzer

            Do you ever feel that you have a tough life?  Try living the life of a young Dave Pelzer.  His life started as normal, a loving mother, father, and two brothers.  However, his mother underwent a sudden transformation.  She started yelling at him constantly.  David would receive punishments for different things while his brothers sat idly by, in order to stay clear of their mother’s wrath.

            Then worse came to worst.  David’s mother upped the ante when she would stop giving meals to David.  She even beat him at times.  When at home alone with David, she would give him unbearable tasks.  It’s a wonder that David managed to survive his mother’s constant rage.  The question is will David ever be delivered from his horrid life?

            A Child Called “It” brought tears to my eyes a countless number of times in the book.  It’s written in first person so you can really connect to it.  David describes all his feelings throughout his trials and succeeded at making the reader feel exactly what he felt while going through his childhood.

           I’ve read this book quite a few times, ranging from when I was in third grade to just a few weeks ago, so you can tell that it is both really good and okay to read for all ages.  You should definitely put this book on your reading list because I give it five out of five stars.

Famous Remediation



The Expulsion From Paradise is a painting created by Charles Joseph Natoire. It portrays God coming down from Heaven to scold and banish Eve and Adam from the Garden of Eden because they ate the fruit of the Knowledge Tree.  This painting is a remediation from text in the book of Genesis.  The painting hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/masterscans/natoire-the-expulsion-from-paradise.html

Iron King by Julie Kagawa

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

            Meghan Chase was a swamp girl.  Not literally, of course, but that’s how most of her classmates viewed her.  The only excepting person was her best friend, Robbie Goodfell.  However, Meghan did not seem to know Robbie as well as she should have for as much time as they spent together.  Robbie lived only a few miles from Meghan but she had never been to his house.  Nor had she met his parents.  Plus, wherever Robbie went, mischief seemed to follow, yet he was never blamed.

            On her 16^th birthday, Meghan returns home from school to discover that her dog, Beau, attacked her little brother, Ethan, and her parents have banished the dog to the pound.

            However, Ethan tells a different story.  He says that Beau was trying to save him from the man in his closet.

            When Ethan starts acting really strange, like, biting-Meghan’s-leg strange, Robbie comes over, scaring Ethan dramatically.  And Robbie tells Meghan something unbelievable.  Ethan has been kidnapped and the thing that bit Meghan is a Changeling.

            Robbie brings Meghan into the world of Faery, where all fairytales seem to come to life, and he reveals that he is not who he seems.

            Throughout the story, Meghan, narrating in first person, searches for her brother with the help of her friend Robbie, a mysterious cat, and a surprising member to the group.

            I just found the Iron Fey series while looking for something new to read.  It is a really good series and I’m glad I decided to read it.  I recommend it to everybody.  It has plenty of action for boys to read and plenty of romance to please the girls.  I give The Iron King by Julie Kagawa four and a half out of five stars. 

            On a side note, I’m currently reading the rest of the series; I just finished the second book.  If you want to read little sub-stories, however, you can only get them on ereaders, which are a good investment, anyway.  Christmas is coming, put an Amazon Kindle on your list!!!!

Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix

            Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix

            What happens when the law states that a family may only have two children?  You hide the third child, of course.  Luke Garner is an illegal third child.  He grew up on his family farm with his two older brothers, Matthew and Mark.  They would play outside all day, as nobody was around to see Luke.  That is, until the bulldozers came.

            The government decided that the Barons, the richest of the rich, needed new homes.  People came with equipment to knock down Luke’s beloved woods.  Due to this, Luke was forced to hide out in his own house, buried away in the attic as his father grew more and more paranoid about the government finding Luke.

            Luke reluctantly complied with his family’s wishes.  He sat up in the attic all day by himself, his brothers at school and his parents at work.  He would sit and play solo card games while he awaited his family to return home.  Then the day came when he saw a face in his new neighbors’ window.

            Luke had been observing his new Baron neighbors and noticed that one particular house, the one directly behind his, contained a family of four: the parents and two teenage boys.  While observing the house one day, he noticed a girls face in a window.

            Luke had a new mission in life: to go and see the girl, meet her and discover if there are other children like him.

            When I was young, my library teacher had started reading this book to us.  We never got all the way through it, as the year had come to an end.  Recently, I had decided to pick the book up for myself and read it.  Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix became one of my favorites.  I suggest you read it and its sequels.  I gave this book four out of five stars.

Deadline by Chris Crutcher

Deadline by Chris Crutcher Review

            Let me start out with this: Deadline is about a kid with a terminal illness.  It can only end in one way so if you don’t want to cry, don’t bother picking it up. 

Ben Wolf is diagnosed with a very aggressive blood disease at the beginning of his senior year of high school.  He opts not to tell his family about his problem so that he can have his final year, and I mean final, as “normal” as possible.  Wolf joins football so that he can experience being a hero.  He causes problems in his history class with the teacher every day in the class.  And he finally gets the courage to ask out the girl of his dreams.  All the while, Ben is holding onto the deep secret of his slowly ending time line.

Throughout the book, Ben learns of many other people’s secrets, including one that involves him in a major way.  He tries to juggle everything in his life; his crazy mother, struggling father, football star brother, girlfriend, town drunk, and of course, his terminal illness.

I really enjoyed reading this book.  It was well done and very interesting.  It offered a new point of view on life.  If I had only a year to live, I wouldn’t even bother going to school.  I would travel the world and experience everything that I could.   To think that this kid, who only had a year to live, decided to live it out in school, baffles me.  He lived his life to the fullest and never left his small town of Trout, Idaho.  This was the first book that I’ve read by Chris Crutcher.  I am going to continue reading his books and I suggest that you do the same.

As for the book, I give Deadline by Chris Crutcher four and a half stars out of five (even though I balled like a baby at the end).

A View On Twilight

            Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

So I read this book recently that everyone’s been talking about for the past few years.  Twilight by Stephanie Meyer was, in my opinion, a pretty good book.  If you look to the right on this screen, you can see that one of my favorite series is the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling, so maybe that means my views on Twilight are a little biased (judging by the whole Harry Potter vs. Twilight quarrels).  However, I’ll put all that aside and focus on how well I thought the book was done. 

Twilight is about an angsty teenage girl named Bella whose father babies her too much falling for a sparkly skinned vampire named Edward who looks seventeenish but is, in fact, a crap load older than that.  They fall madly in love but their love is “forbidden,” taking a Romeo and Juliet turn, to Edward.  Edward feels that, because he’s a vampire, he has no soul and therefore cannot love Bella and be with her.  Plus, it’d just be weird for her to be growing older constantly while he stays the same age.  Even with these problems, Bella reaches out to Edward and the story progresses with other members of Edward’s “family” are introduced, including Bella’s new best friend, Alice.

            Edward’s family really warms to Bella.  However, other vampires come into play and start targeting Edward Cullen and his family.

I liked Twilight.  It was a pretty interesting book.  If you have time to spare, you should definitely pick up a copy to read.   Stephanie Meyer is a pretty good author and there’s a good chance that I would pick up a copy of other she’s written or will write.  As for Twilight in particular, I give the book three and a half out of five stars.

An Introduciton...

            Ever have trouble finding a good book to read?  Visit my blog when you have problems with this.  I’ll give you excellent ideas for books to read and review the books so you know if you’ll like them.  You can also see how others (being me since it’s my blog) enjoyed a book.  Don’t worry, I’ll try not to put spoilers in my post and if I do, I will give you fair warning.  I’ll be writing for New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html).  I'll be writing my opinion on the book and may include other's views on the book from people in my English 101 class.  Hopefully, my followers will find my blog helpful!!