Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_Book Review

This entertaining book, written by Roald Dahl, is about a boy named Charlie Bucket who really loves chocolate. There’s a factory boss, whose name is Mr. Willy Wonka, who is going to open his factory to five lucky children who have golden ticket, and the last person of the competition can have the factory. Will Charlie be the winner of this competition?

 The story begins with introducing Charlie’s family background, and it starts telling how much does Charlie want to visit the chocolate factory. In the factory, the competition has been divide into different stage, the last person who survive from the competition, will be the winner. Each stage there would have one children been stage out, because in each stage, there’s something that in those five children’s favourite thing. If you couldn't control your temptation and patience, then you would have lost the competition.

 The book is very amusing and fascinating, the author made the description in a very funny way. He made his character very dramatic and exaggerate their body movements, which make the story very humouring.

 I strongly recommend this book to the readers who like to read humourous books, even primary students can understand the words quite easily. The book tells the readers that do not insist until the last second, must not easily give up your choice.

Review of CHERUB - THE RECRUIT

The CHERUB series, by Robert Muchamore, is about a teenager called James Choke, who becomes a special agent of a group called CHERUB. CHERUB is a special group that gathers all talented teenagers without home or people to look after them, and trains them to become spies.

It all begins when James Choke’s mother been murdered by his step father, Ron, and Ron doesn't want James to stay in the family, so James is then send to a school that takes care of kids like James. And that is when everything begins.

James meet a boy called Kyle Blueman, and Kyle brings James to a audition for the Recruitment of CHERUB. James passes the audition and began to face all the trainings and tests that he has to go through to become an agent of CHERUB.

This book includes lots of excitements and moments which is really thrilling. The author of this book, Robert Muchamore creates some very tension and vivid words and description into this book, which makes the atmosphere of this book really fascinating and entertaining.

I strongly recommend THE RECRUIT by Robert Muchamore. I think who ever reads this book, for all ages, will be attract by the tension of this book. This book have a sort of magical power, once you pick up the book, you will never want to put the book back down.

The Eye of Ulam by Terry Denton

Terry Denton was born in Melbourne in 1950. He is one of Australia's busiest literacy writers. The eye of Ulam was published in 2001. It is a fiction comic adventure book. There are 130 pages in this book but it is mostly comics with pictures. This book is about a guy who lost his eye and needs to put an eye on the statue of Ulam to get his it back.

The first part of the plot is easy to understand. First, there is a guy called Nico who likes to surf and he’s been participating in a surfing championship. He has been practicing but then his friend says that his other friend has lost so Nico to decide to save his friend and give up the surfing championship. The story is at the statue of Ulam. The pace of the story is quite slow. It’s not that fast and it’s not straightforward. It’s not straightforward because it doesn’t tell you straight away that his friend is lost. It tells you one thing at a time. This is a good thing because it makes you more interested.

The parts that I enjoy are the parts where there is comedy I think these parts are funny. I don’t like the part where there are too many writings. The plot was ok- not too boring and not too interesting. The character was not believable because there is a character with only one eye in the middle. I think the novel is suitable for a year 6-7 kid. I would recommend this to some people because it is a bit funny so I think it’s not a really bad book.

Review by Evan Weng

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Leviathan is a war fantasy by the American author, Scott Westerfeld. He’s quite famous for having written science fiction novels. This book is quite related to Science even though it’s a war fiction. It was first published in 2009, and became one of best sellers in the US. Leviathan continues its adventures in the book, Behemoth, and is a historical fiction about World War 1, adding some science developments to it.

The plot is simple. In 1914, the war seems inevitable. Alek is the prince of Austrian Hungary and he hears that his father has been killed by Germans who want war. So he flees for his life with his faithful servants. In Britain, a girl named Deryn, who wants to be a boy joins the military, hiding her gender. She changes her name to Dylan and rides in a big airship, Leviathan. Then, days later, the war breaks out and the whole of Europe goes into war mode.

The story is told in third person, which allows the settings to keep changing between Alek and Deryn every 2 chapters till chapter 23. This is a quite well paced story written in a thought provoking way. You have to think about why; the characters acted in such weird way. For example, Deryn bets her life to save a high ranking military solider. Why?

To me, Leviathan is a very exciting novel. It’s mixed of the past & the future. The warships and the beasts are all science fiction like, but the story itself is based on events from World War 1. Characters do have emotions. It’s got a message of how war can affect others, even a prince. The author and highly recommend this book for teenagers and I agree, because this book looks to me that it’s suitable for teenagers.

Dear Dumb Diary is a fun book written by Jim Benton. This book isn’t really old, it was published at 2009 and it is still popular now. Dear Dumb Diary is all about a girl’s life. It is mainly about a girl overcoming her problem and at last she becomes friends with her enemy.

The plot is like this. The girl who writes the diary is Jamie. Recently her aunt’s dog is married to her enemy, Angeline. She is really happy. She has a friend called Isabella; she also loves puppies so Jamie promises to give her one of the puppies after the puppies are born. Isabella is so excited. Jamie goes to Angeline’s house and sees the puppies, but the puppies are still too small to give away. This situation is driving Isabella crazy. Jamie still hates Angeline, but not as much. When the puppies are old enough, Isabella and Jamie go to Angeline’s house to pick a puppy. Then they become best friends.

Dear Dumb Diary may seem like a fun book, but it actually contains more then just fun. It is a story that contains friend ship. It might be hard to believe they became friends at last because Jamie wrote a lot bad things about Angeline at first. You can get lot of entertainment out of this book. I think this book is a really fun book. Do you like fun books? If you like fun books this can be one of your choices. This book is suitable for everyone because every one likes fun stuff and learns something at the same time.

Passion Flower

Passion Flower is a very interesting, cool, and, funny book written by Jean Ure. It was first published in Great Britain by Collins 2003. Passion Flower is realistic fiction that explores love between a dad and his daughters, and how a couple can be separated.

The plot is this. Passion and Afterthought are sisters; their parents are always fighting and arguing until one day they divorced. They didn’t live together anymore. Their dad went to live in Brighton. Later Passion and Afterthought had vacations, so they went to visit their dad. Their dad was living very poorly in a very small apartment and sometimes he had very little money and sometimes he had a lot of money. The girls started to think that their dad was a thief! They noticed that their dad didn’t pay much stuff such as, the apartment, clothes, food and many other expenses. He also lied to his daughters telling them that they will never see their mum again. This story is told in the first person. Passion Flower is also a well paced story.

Passion Flower is a very interesting story which includes believable characters and a plot that keeps the reader’s interest. When you read the story you’ll understand how Afterthought and Passion had been in a very hard situation. The message of the story is that you can’t trust anybody that you don’t know very well. I recommend this book to teenage readers.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (The Ugly Truth) By Jeff Kinney

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a book about Greg’s Middle School life. Greg has a family with four other members. They are: Rodrick (Older Brother), Mom, Dad and Manny (Baby Brother). It was first published at November 9th, 2010. Each book in the series book is 224 pages long. The book is basically about Greg’s school life.

The plot of this book is Greg horsing around in school and what he does in his school. It has been about 4~5 weeks since he had an argument with his ex-best friend Rowley Jefferson. The novel is set in Greg’s town and school. The time set is the middle school time. Greg has almost reached teenage years. The main character is Greg and minor characters are his friends and his family. He’s always doing fun things and witnessing weird things like Rowley having a peer helper. Rowley never noticed any differences he had seen.

Greg was meant to go to Jordan Jury’s party one day, but Greg couldn’t go because of Uncle Gary’s wedding. Afterwards, Greg felt happy because Jordan used people he invited in his grade to be his servant. The story is connected with The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days when Greg had the argument with Rowley. The summary of this book is his future and his trouble in school and in his house.

It is a very fun book with fun characters and a fun story. It is a quite well-paced and straightforward story. I strongly recommend this book because it is very fun and you can also learn English with this book.