Final Draft of Author's Note

My picture book is about Prostitution. I'm doing an allegory so that the little kid picture isn't about giving sex for money. That would be wrong.

Prostitution is called "The Game" by people who are in the business. People are in prostitution for different reasons. Most people are people who get kidnapped and forced into it. And some do it for the extra money.  Prostitution is very much harder than people might think. They get up at 5 am, and have to be out on the streets by 5:30. They stay out there the whole day, and at the time they are scheduled to come back, if they don't get the amount of money and the amount of people that their pimp told them to they get punished. After that whole day of "working" they, if they accomplish their job, would probably get a cheeseburger from McDonalds or something like that. They only get about 2 hours sleep.( "Trafficked Teen Girls Describe Life in 'The Game' ") And to think that some places are trying to legalize it. (" Sex Work is Part of The Community.' ")

I've never actually witnessed prostitution in the act, but I have watched movies and read articles, and from what I saw and read these prostitutes have no win in this situation. They don't even get all the money they raise, they have to give it to their pimps. They get treated horribly, they don't get fed enough, and they don't get a lot of money (from what I've read). ("Trafficked Teen Girls Describe Life in 'The Game' ") I personally think that the way people react to prostitution now is bad. They think that it is not bad and that it is a way to raise money and they should legalize it. ( "Sex Work is Part of The Community."). I got the idea for this story form Gabriel S. He helped come up with a story line and turning it into an allegory.

Really what I'm trying to get out is: don't give yourself away for something you think you need. If the the thing you need is making you lose yourself and making you feel trashy, what's the point?

Works Cited:

"Trafficked Teen Girls Describe Life in "The Game"." NPR 6 December 2010: 7. Print.

"They Need Rescue, Not Regulation."  National Post  6 October 2010: A16. Print.

"Sex Work is Part of The Community." Metroland Media Group 8 October 2110: A11. Print.

2nd Draft of Picture Book

1.  In a land that is big and colorful, there lived a gnobble named Alby. Alby was a purple gnobble and she didn't like her purple color.
2. She wanted something better like green, blue, red, or even rainbow. Her purple was dull. Or so she thought.
3. Walking one day she came across a green gnobble. She liked the way the color looked on him and she decided she wanted to be green.
4. She walked over to him and asked if he would exchange a patch of his green color for a patch of her purple color. He happily agreed and she took the green and placed in on her body.
5. She continued walking and came across 2 green gnobbles talking to each other. She went over to them and asked if she could get a patch of each of their green for a patch of her purple each. They happily agreed and she placed the two patches of green on her body.
6. As she began walking again she started feeling wierd , but she ignored it and kept walking on. As she walked she came across three other green gnobbles and asked once again if she could trade a patch of purple for a patch of green each. They happily agreed. And she put the three patches of purple on her body.
7. After a while of walking around she realized that she was going slower, her back was bending forward, her heart was feeling empty and she was feeling horrible. She didn't feel like herself. She looked down at herself and saw that she was all green except for a little speck of purple in the middle of her body.
8. She realized only then that it was because she wasn't herself, she was filled with green and she didn't feel lively like she imagined, but felt even more horrible than before.
9. She wanted her purple back. It was what made her happy, what made her heart feel full, what made her , her.
10. She moved sluggishly around gnobbles and tried to find the green gnobbles that she gave her purple to, to get her purple back, but she couldn't find them and she was feeling more awful every minute she was without her purple.
11. She couldn't find the green gnobbles, but she did come across something she was not expecting at all. . .
12. A GOLD GNOBBLE!!!!!
13. She had never seen a gold gnobble before. It was so shiny, so bright, so beautiful. Something she knew she was not anymore.
14. "Can you help me?" She asked the gold gnobble. "What do you think I am here for?" He said. "Just tell me what you need help with."
15. "I need my purple color back, I don't like this green color; it makes me feel ugly, empty, and just not myself." She cried.
16. " I will help you but you have to promise not to give your color away again. You have to be happy with who you are, even if you may want something else, stick with what you have, it's best for youu." The Gold Gnobble said.
17. "Okay I won't, just please hurry, I don't like feeling this way at all." She begged.
18. "Okay, since you can't get the purples from the green gnobbles you gave your purple to, you have to find something good inside yourself and build on that. That little speck of purple still in you, you have to build on that." He explained.
19. "Is that is?" She asked quickly eager to go get the purple.
20. "That's it," the Gold Gnobble said, and with that he floated away.
21. As he floated, Alby turned around and ran. She ran to get her personality back, she ran to get her feeling back. she ran to get her heart back, she ran to get herself back.

1st Draft of Author's Note

My picture book is about Prostitution. I'm doing an allegory so that the little kid picture is all about giving sex for money. That would be wrong.

Prostitution is called "The Game" by people who are in the business.

People are in prostitution for different reasons. Most people are people who get kidnapped and forced into it. And some do it for the extra money.  Prostitution is very much harder than people might think. They get up at 5 am, and have to be out on the streets by 5:30. They stay out there the whole day, and at the time they are scheduled to come back, if they don't get the amount of money and the amount of people that their pimp told them to they get punished. After that whole day of "working" they, if they accomplish their job, would probably get a cheeseburger from McDonalds or something like that. They only get about 2 hours sleep. And to think that some places are trying to legalize it.

I've never actually witnessed prostitution in the act, but I have watched movies and read articles, and from what i saw and read these prostitutes have no win in this situation. They don't even get all the money they raise, they have to give it to their pimps. They get treated horribly, they don't get fed enough, and they don't get a lot of money (from what I've read). I personally think that the way people react to prostitution now is good and it should keep going like that.

Really what I'm trying to get out is don't give yourself away for something you think you need. If the the thing you need is making you lose yourself and making you feel trashy, what's the point.

Works Cited:

"Trafficked Teen Girls Describe Life in "The Game"." NPR 6 December 2010: 7. Print.

"They Need Rescue, Not Regulation."  National Post  6 October 2010: A16. Print.

"Sex Work is Part of The Community." Metroland Media Group 8 October 2110: A11. Print.

Picture Book Research # 2

http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=S44-4241-0-3981&artno=0000308225&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Prostitution&title=Sex%20Work%20Is%20Part%20of%20the%20Community&res=Y&ren=N&gov=N&lnk=N&ic=N

http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=S44-4241-0-3981&artno=0000308228&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Prostitution&title=They%20Need%20Rescue%2C%20Not%20Regulation&res=Y&ren=N&gov=N&lnk=N&ic=N

       I think prostitution is a bad thing. No matter how poor you might think you are or how drunk or whatever, it's bad. I mean other than money that you probably are going to spend on drugs, since you're stupid enough to go into the prostitution "business", what are you going to get from ahving sex with random people for money.

       I also think that people who do these things are people who don't have respect for themselves and they think they are nothing. Personally I don't think that people should ever feel like that unless they're really trashy. And people aren't trashy. People make themselves seem trashy by doing these things among others.

       A lot people might not think that prostitution is a big important matter but it really is.

Picture Book Idea # 1

http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=S44-4241-0-360&artno=0000308227&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Racism&title=Controversial%20Mascot%20Ejected&res=Y&ren=N&gov=N&lnk=N&ic=N

http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-article-display?id=S44-4241-0-3981&artno=0000306185&type=ART&shfilter=U&key=Racism&title=Lebanon%3A%20Discrimination%20Against%20People%20of%20Color%20Is%20Widespread&res=Y&ren=N&gov=N&lnk=N&ic=N

       Racial Discrimination is not a big thing for some people. Some people make fun of it, some people are really big on it, some people just ignore it. I'm in the ignore it column.
       This article is just ridiculous. How all of sudden names for teams can be racial. Like the name given, The Indians, how is that racist at all? It's not like saying, "The Black People". I don't really get how ,The Indians, is racist. I guess the name, The Denver Nuggets, is foodist.
       I just think it is ridiculus.

Social Awareness # 4

       In the book that I am reading now, The Water Dancers by Terry Gamble, there is the issue of forbidden love, and I don't know what you would call it but the guy is haunted by battlefield memories.
       There is the rich family in the book, The Marches, and then there is the servant. The marches son is the kind of sun that has his whole life planned out for him by his parents. He's supposed to marry this one girl and inherit his family busisness. But after a plane crashes into a boat he was on he can't walk, he is hollow. The nurse his family has to take care of him, is a bad drunk and is never looking out for him, always drinking. So they let the maid, Rachel Winnapee, look after him. He is unexplainably dran to her and the story goes on.
       This boy is supposed to marry this one girl, but she breaks it off with him after he get's injured, and it is not allowed for him to fall in love with the help. So that is the one issue.
        The other is that since this guy is in the marines he is always having dreams and daydreams about his marine memories. All the bad ones. I think that this comes up in a lot of books, and in life to where it leads to issue of social pressure, which leads to possible suicide. This also a big issue because it's not really something that people can stop and it will keep going on because that is the way the world is, it's a cruel world, and messed up with all the problems that come with it.

Social Awarness #2- Observe Your Surroundings (school, home, neighborhood, media)

People smoking right in front of you
People cussing in front of you when you have kids around
People pushing out of the way on the street
People talking really loud on the train, street, telling all their business
Saggin'

       I think that pne that really maddens me is when people cuss in front of you and your children (if you have any). Because I know we hear it all the time in school and stuff, but then when teenagers or somebody else comes and is screaming it in front of you, it kind of makes you fell like your parents think that is how you are going to grow, and that is what you are you are going to do when you grow up, and you really don't want to hear all of that. Your parents know you don't do, but I think they try to make sure it is engraved into your brain so that you don't do it.
       When my parents see that kind of stuff, especially my mom, she always llectures us about it, then off of that she'll go off into other stuff she doesn't want us doing then the lecture turns into an hour long conversation. My dad just simply says if I hear those words come out of your mouth, there will definitely be consequences.

Mother To Son By Langston Hughes

       In class we went over this poem a whole lot, especiall part with the line:

                 "Life for me ain't been no crystal stair."

       We went over how it means that the crystal stair is a kind of a metaphor for the white peoples' life back then, how they had it nice and polished. And life for this woman has not been polished or nice it was more like a broken down, worn in staircase that has splinters and no carpet.

       In the first part she is describing her life and how it was so bad. In the second part it was a kind of advice from the mother to the son, saying if your life is like mine, you can't give up, you'ce got to keep pushing, keep climbing, don't stop. Then she says that even after all that time she is still climbing still trying to reach her goal. And that is what the son will do.

Social Awareness Project. Media and News Immersion

Day 1: Shoot Out at Bedford- Stuyvesant salon: Off duty cop shot gun out of crook's hand to thwart robbery. By Oren Yaniv,John Lauinger and Helen Kennedy.

       This article is about a cop who stopped a robber from robbing the salon by shootingthe gun out of his hand. They also say that one of Officer Ferris Jones's bullet hit the the lock on the door and locked the door. It was the first time the officer had shot her gun in 20 years. The officer was about to get her hair done in the salon when the robber burst in. I think that this kind of shows how the world is just evil in a way. This is showing how it is just natural for a person to think of or doing a bad thing before they think of doing a good thing. Crime is just  natural part of the world.

Day 2: Time is runing out for U.S troops in Afghanistan, countdown to Obama's July 2011 withdrawl begins. By James Gordon Meek

       This article is about how the troops in Afghanistan are kind of going down. They don't have much time left. What kind of stuck out to me in this article was how they said time is running out. What struck me about this was how important this time is compared to other times. Time could be running out while your taking a quiz in math class and your like oh that's not that big. Then there is the time on a bomb where you'll see time is running out and you panic. Panic is also something that came to my mind when I read this. Everybody panics some for different reasons. But the panic of one could affect a whole block, and city.

Day 3Canadian Omar Khadr, held at Guantanamo Bay, pleads guilty to avoid war crime trials. By The associated press.

       This article is about a boy accused of killing an american soldier, pleaded guilty to killing the officer to avoid war crime trials. What came to me when I read this was how kids are kind of naieve. I know that sounds weird but I think they're kind of taking advantage of him bein a child, and thinking he is so unedcated to know anythihing and they are trying to take over.

Day 4 Ice Cream ad in Britain pulled for two male priests about to "Kiss Passionately". By Philp Caulfield
  
       I think that this shows the issue of Acceptance vs. Tolerance. Because just because the people are gay they pulle the ad from going on air. This also shows social pressure because it's kind of saying that priests aren't supposed to be doing that. So it shows both of them.

Day 5 Worst tattoo ever?  Amateur pranks friend by giving him obscene ink instead of Yin- Yang he asked for. By Meena Hartenstein

        This article is about a an australian guy who is a tattoo artist that played a prank on his friend by tattooing a "male body part" onto his back instead of the thing he asked for. At first the guy didn't want to get a tattoo but then said yes after the australian friend persisted. I think this shows Social Pressure because the guy was under pressure to do something he didn't want to do, but then caved to please his friend.

       During this whole proccess, I found out how to use the "socials" better and actually understand them. I thought that doing this blog thing every night for this assignment was hard and it was kind of tedious. Only because every night of this  whole week, me and my siblings had track from 5 to 7, then right after that without going home we went to church. We came home everynight at about 11. After coming home that time then having to eat and shower then do this homework had affects on me during school.

Final Appreciation

      In the eighth grade when  my group was assigned to read The Phantom Tollbooth, that was the first time that I had ever read the book. The assignment was to read the book and annotate throughout the whole book. That was so that we could understand the deeper meanings and ideas of the book. I liked the book and the authors veiws on the things he wrote about. And that is the kind of books that readers like, ones that they can connect their lives to and things they can think about throughout the book.
       One thing that I would have definitely done if I had had the chance, was to go back to a time before the book was assigned and read it.

      The book is about this boy named Milo, who thinks that there is nothing to life and there is nothing exciting in life at all. Then one day a mysterious package arrives and it is a Phantom Tollbooth. He goes into the Tollbooth an at first he doesn't know what he's doing or exactly what he is looking for. But after a while he finds people in the different worlds of the book like, Dictionopolis, Digitopolis, and he finds out that they are all in desperate need to get back Rhyme and Reason, the two peacemaking princesses. As he goes through these lands he finds out all kinds of different things, and sees how different people have way different points of views on things. Really he foun out a lot about the stuff that he didn't think was important, and saw how just the slightest things are in important.
      I think this book leapt out at me when I first read it because first, I didn't have a lot of group books and seond the language and views of theis book is so unique and cool that it makes the book cool.
      Phantom Tollbooth is a mixture of a lot of genres like, fantasy, fiction, science fiction, sort of fairytale, and I think the book grew on me so much because I like all of those genres except for fairytale. I think that Norton Juster is a really talented writer for not only being able to incorporate all of those genres into the book and make it work so well, but also to put his veiws into the book while doing all of that. The book is also like a childrens book in chapters and I think that its really cool that he could make the book have an impact on little kids, teenagers, and adults.

      I think that Norton Juster wanted to tell people something when he wrote this book. Actually a lot things. One of them is displayed in the beginning of the book and the at the end of the book. At first Milo doesn't think that there is anything in the world that is interesting and nothing holds his attention, but after he goes through his adventure/ journey through the worlds of the phantom tollbooth he learns that all things or words I should say are important and you should pay attention to them. That was one thing he is saying in his book. And that idea connects to other big ideas and they kind of branch off of that.

      In this book about words and life and views and just everything Norton Juster put a lot in it. And can't stress enough on his unique ways of exploring words and how to use them , and just how valuable they are. I mean as I said before this book is for everyone who can read and up, it doesn't really matter how old you are you can still enjoy the book eveytime you read it.

Reseach Entry on The Phantom Tollbooth

     Since I have just read this book for the first time in this group project , I don't really as much understanding of the book as the other people in my group.

       In my research I found that I was really impressed with the range of vocabulary in the book. And how Norton Juster knows how to apply the dictionary to a certain level of text that kids our age can understand. I also like how he makes up really long words from real words that people use, like the word " Lethargarians." Ms. Galang told me that the root of that word is Lethargary, and that words mean that you have an extreme case of laziness. And the place that the Lethargarians are in all they do is waste time and dilly dally, and sleep. So he applies the word into the book where it is supposed to be and somewhere where you figure out the meaning of it as you go along.

      The way he uses play on words in this book is crazy cool. He uses them to show the readers that just changing one or two letters in a word can just change the whole word. On page 19 and I think that I have used this example before but it says that there is a wether man, and then he goes and asks Milo how the weather is going to be that day, and Milo is all like, I thought you said you were the weather man. Then the little man says back,  oh no I said I was the "wether" man, not the "weather" man. And I thought he used the play to show what I explained before.

      So I think that I certainly learned a lot more about words that I dodn't know before. How to use them and how tho define them.

     

Expanding on A Note

      In the Phantom Tollbooth, there is a lot of examples on play of words in this book. All through the parts of the book that I have read so far, I've been commenting on this same thing. Like almost in the beginning of the book on page eighteen, where there is a wether man, and he is talking to Milo and he asks him, "Do you think it will rain?" And  Milo says back, " I thought you were the wether man." and the wether man says back "Oh no," said the little man, "I'm the wether man, not the weather man." I thought that was pretty cool how he switched up the words like that.

     I think that this whole book is about words and the importance of knowing what they mean. And using that play on words gives the author, Norton Juster, a chance to tell you the difference between two words that sound the same. It also gives him a chance to give the definition and examples of the word.

     In the book there is a place called Dictionopolis, and everything there is about words. There is a word market, and guards of the gate who shout out words and there definitions. One time while Milo is in the palace having dinner with the king, and that part shows how words mean exactly what they say. Because Milo asks for something light for dinner and the butlers give him  actually lightbulb kind of light, while everybody else asks for regular food.

     I really like how Norton Juster uses word in this book. Except he makes words kind of look a lot more important than they really are in real life, that I don't like. Ohter than that I like the words and how he uses them in this book.

Themes of Charlotte's Web

     One of the big themes in Charlotte's Web by E. B. White is freindship/family. That applies to a lot if not all the characters in the book. I think the biggest relationships there are in the book are, Charlotte and Wilbur's relationship, and Fern and Wilbur's relationship. Charlotte and Wilbur  has a mom- son relationship as do Wilbur and Fern. But Charlotte and Wilbur's  relationship is way more intense. As all mom- child relationships go, usually the relationship is more intense and important as a toddler, because you get taught how to do stuff and you get good or bad broughtupsy. So that kind of explains the difference between the two relationships. Fern raised him until he was like 1 in human years and Charlotte had him until he was grown up and could fend for himself.
    
 In the first two chapters of the book it shows Fern and Wilbur's relationship. How Fern saved him from being killed for being a little runt. How she cared for him like a real mother would a child. She loved him so much that even in school she was thinking about him. On page 7 it says " ' Fern what is the capitol of Pennsylvania?' Her teacher asked. ' Wilbur,' Fern replied dreamily."
    
 After the first two chapters the setting changes to where Wilbur gets moved to Mr. Zuckerman's barn. In the barn at first he is really lonely and bored. None of the other animals aren't really nice to him except the goose. Then one night he hears Charlotte and as soon as they start talking you can see the connection between them. She is not mean like the others, she was more caring and answer his questions. Then throughout the book you can see their relationship growing more intense and strong. Then the thought that Charllotte had, to save Wilbur's life was brilliant. Everybody else was telling him that he was getting fattened up to be bacon and ham. Not Charlotte. She sacrificed everynight of sleep to save his life, just like what a real mother would do for his son.

Then by the end of the book Charlotte dies and leaves behind her egg sac with her real children and Wilbur takes care of them like a father would his child, jjust like Charlotte did for him.