Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Sometimes the book is very sad but I am happy that the end is happy. A few people die in it and horses die in it but you don't really feel sorry for them. I am sad about how they treat horses and just the person who wrote the foreword said, from now on after you've read the book, and you see a house at the top of a hill, you might imagine how the horses had to carry heavy bricks to the top of the hill. And maybe they weren't driven very well.


The part I liked most in the book was when Black Beauty had to drive his master to the doctors because his mistress was ill and he saved her life. I also liked another part from one of the people died but I won't go into detail about that. The other part that I liked was when Black Beauty senses that the bridge is broken and doesn't go any further in the dark.


One of my favourite characters in the book is a horse called Merry Legs. He was so cheerful and happy. I also liked one of Black Beauty's masters called Jerry because he was very kind to horses.


I think Anna Sewell was very honest about how they treated horses. She told the truth about how badly horses were treated.

A Story for Carmella Alonso G

Once upon a time Jenny went to have a swim in a Rockpool river. When she was almost on the bank she saw some other people in it so she changed into a black swimming cossy behind a tree. She didn't jump into the deep part as most of the boys did but slowly walked in. When she was fully in and swimming she saw that the people were some big bullies and they were teasing a little kitten who was almost drowned. She quickly swam to the boys and punched one in the back. He dropped the kitten and she quickly swam away with it. When she got on to land she picked up her dry clothes and towel and ran back home still in her cossy. Her parents knew the cat was a stray because every body near them immediately gave their pets collars. Jenny was allowed to keep the kitten whom she named Olive and she still has her to this day.

Making Wizard Coins

Yesterday I was looking into my book of Wizardcraft and there's this page in it which says "Wizard Coins". Basically Wizard Coins are made of clay and you can put special magical signs on the coins and paint them and I was thinking maybe me and some of my friends can make other wizard things and dress up as wizards and we could sell some of the things like dragon's blood and magic carpets because there are many insructions for things like that in my book.

You can make these coins in any shape you want but in Harry Potter their wizard coins were just like normal coins with names like sickles, Knuts and Galleons. The coins that I made I did by rolling some clay out like whne youa re making cookines and then I cut the coins out using a bottle top. I also cut out some coins that were square by using a knife. The best part is decorating and deciding what patterns to make on them. Sometimes I make ridges on their sides.

Me and my sister made quite a lot of coins. Today when they will be properly dry we are going to paint them. Maybe we will use runic letters to write on them.

A Hospital Visit

I have had a cold for a couple of days this week and that has affected my asthma. On Thursday morning I was coughing a lot and spitting up a lot and we decided to go to the doctor. Because my dad was not home and my mum couldn't drive, we had to ask our upstairs neighbour to take us. Her name is Caroline.

We got to the doctor's and he said it was just a really bad cold and he would not give me the nebuliser. The nebuliser usually helps me because it has both the medicine and oxigen. So we went home and I was a bit ok for a while and I had a lot of my blue inhaler.

When my dad came back he made delicious roast chicken for supper. Then Mama asked Dad to take us to the hospital just to check with them because she felt that it wasn't good. 

At the hospital I was given the nebuliser three or four times. My Dad took my sister home and my mum read some books to me and we waited for the Doctor to come to see when we could go home.

When the Doctor came that we needed to stay overnight and that they would get a bed ready. So about two o'clock in the morning some people showed us where we were to sleep. I was excited to see my bed in the children's ward. My mum had a bed next to me and the bottom of my mum's bed looked like a cupboard door and it was pushed up into a cupboard so that in the morning people could clean underneath and there would be space there.

We stayed two nights. 

Film Review: Skelig

The film Skelig is about a boy called Michael. His mother has a baby who’s a girl and the baby has to stay in hospital because her heart is not that good. When Michael is exploring the shed he finds an old man. The old man looks really ill and his breath was very stinky and Michael gets disgusted that the man eats insects and slugs and snails.

There is this girl called Mina and she’s the neighbour and she’s a bit weird and funny. One day he takes Mina to the old man.

The story goes from place to place –from Michael’s house, Mina’s house, the swimming pool, the forest, the shed , the hospital and the ruin.

There is an old woman in the hospital and her name is Gracie and she has to walk around the hospital and keep on moving because she has got arthritis. She is always giving Michael grapes which he never eats.

Michael’s father is very angry because the baby is ill. One time when Michael comes back from seeing the old man, he sees his mother shouting at his father and saying  “it’s your fault that the baby is home and it made her worse.” The baby has to go back to hospital. 

Gracie always tells Michael never to give up hope and that one day she will dance like she had before.

Michael is upset about the baby then Mina comes and wants to shows him a place about two metres wide and quite high with stairs spiralling upwards. And it’s  a ruin.

Michael’s dad burns down the shed and Michael rescues the old man in time and in doing so burns his hand.

Michael and Mina take him to the woods and into the ruin and they make him comfortable. While taking the old man’s coat off they find out that he’s got WINGS!

The angel holds Michael’s and Mina’s hands and floats round inside the ruin and when they went out of the ruin, he said “Did that just happen?” and after it he noticed that his hand got healed from the burn.

The baby gets worse and she has to have an operation and people think that she is going to die. Michael goes to the angel old man person bird called Skelig and asks him to save the baby. The angel says no because he has given up hope on life.

Michael goes to hospital before the operation on the baby, he goes to visit Grace. He finds out that she died, and he remembers what she said about hope. He runs to the ruin and up to the top where Skelig is. He wants to try and make Skelig fly so he jumps down and Skelig catches him and takes him flying. Then Skelig makes him sleep with his magic and flies to the hospital and saves the baby.

Mina and Michael say goodbye to Skelig, and when Michael asks him what he is, he says, “A bit like you” looking at Michael and Mina, and while he looks at these beautiful birds, making patterns in the sky, he says “a bit like a bird” and when Michael asks, “ A bit like an angel?” he says “Yes”.

The last scene was Michael’s baby sister back at home and Michael’s mother talking about how she dreamt about Skelig, though she didn’t know he’s real, and then Michael says “Isn’t it time we named her?” and his mother says “yes”.

Michael thinks a little and then says, “How about Grace” and so they named her that after the old woman.

I thought that the film was sometimes very sad because the baby was ill and the old woman died.  It was also a bit scary for me like when the parents were shouting and when the father burnt down the shed. I was scared and sad when Skelig walked through the hospital to save the baby and I was happy and sad at the same time at the end.

I think it was very good acting especially by the actor who acted as Michael.

Tate Britain

Yesterday I went to Tate Britain.
The first exhibition was John Martin's. His paintings were dark and big. They were interesting because they were very detailed. It must have taken him ages just to pain one corner of a picture. The most interesting room was where there were three paintings about the end of the world. There were these projections on the paintings and it made the paitings look real because it projected  the thunderbolt and it had a sound and there was a person talking and telling what was happening in the paintings.

In to second exhibition, whose name was Barry Flanagan there were sculptures. I drew two of them. One fo them was  astring hanging on two walls and stuck on by sticky tapes and they had hung up colourful pieces of cloths. And then I drew this heap of long sacks filled with something. Outside I drew my own elephant.

There was one room where there was a movie and there were black artists talking about their art and how people think that black artists are different. One of the works was a cut-out picture of a man and he was on a bicycle with no handles and he was holding a stick that had a string on it with a carrot dangling.

Couchsurfing American Family

They arrived on Sunday and left today. I just want to tell you what couchsurfing is in case you don't know but most people do know I would think. What it is is a place you can write to other people on the website if you think they are nice from their profile if you want to stay at their house for a few nights because you are visiting the place or country that they live in. You can also meet people at cafes through couchsurfing. I am writing about an American family from Couchsurfing who stayed at our place. The father of the two children is Keith and the mother is Georgeta and the daughter who is about my age is Amelia and her big brother who is my sister's age is Owen. Owen was nearly always on his iPod.

Well, I liked playing with Amelia. When I went out I left my Barbie and I don't like the fact that she played with it when I left the house. I played pretending to be games when we pretended to be animals, at first cats and then monkeys . Anyway, I enjoyed their visit. Today I did my last punching fight with Owen which he called a Karate fight which involved punching each other and blocking and me trying to kick him between the legs. Today I went to a museum with them but because I hadn't had breakfast and I had these crackers on the train which made me thirsty, and I was hungry and tired, it didn't turn out to be the best thing.

On their third day they spent a couple of hours at my sister's school and I went with them. I didn't do much at the school. Me and Amelia watched them play rounders during PE.

We went to the green area near where we lived a few times which my Dad called the Alien Field. We climbed the tree and walked on the big log, and Owen kicked a football around.  My sister played football with Owen and her tooth came out while we were there. Amelia taught my big sister Jamila the hip-hop dance.

Keith made some burgers from scratch and they just tasted so real, I mean like were delicious like my siser said.  Georgeta put some nice salty Turkish cheese in the salad.

Camping

We went to a campsite which was a farm called Bouncer's Farm. On the first day there, we met Charlotte and she is five years old. She came into our tent. It was not full that day because we just arrived and had not unpacked. There are two pigs called Wagtail and Wilbur. We can feed them our leftovers as long as we didn't feed them potatoes, oranges and meat. There was a pony called Goldie at the farm, two horses called Pearl and Pebbless. We made fires every night and ate marshmallows from sticks, I made friends with girls called Suki, Amelie and Emma, with a big dog called Connie and small dogs called Monty & Alex. My sister Jamila gave me some math questions. My sister is really good at making fires because she is a scout and she made lots of them.

One day we made a trip to Mersea and had fish and chips. My sister said it was strange, because Mer means sea so Mersea means Sea-Sea. We ate some samphire. Later  we went to pick out own strawberries from a farm and picked too many which was good because we could share them. We tried to roast them with the marshmallows and it wasn't very nice. My sister made Smores. Do you know what they are? If you don't they are roasted marshmallows sandwiched in between two chocolate biscuits. In one night the most I had was two.

I got a small electric shock from the fences. There was a swing on a willow tree and we played on it every day. Our parents let us stay up really late and some nights we put ourselves to bed while they satyed up and chatted with the other adults who were friendly. The day before we left there were some mean boys and when we were going to make a fire in the shared fire pit they came and told us we were too young and asked for our lighter and they made their own fire there so we moved and made another fire near our tent.

On our last day Jamila was really tired because it was really hot. We had to take our things back to the car in the wheelbarrows. Jamila took one too. I want to go back to that farm

Garden haiku

Sweet honey in spring
playing on the tire swing
I love my garden

Sit in our garden
wishing a happy day today
me on the swing

Toulouse

I went to Toulouse to visit my cousin and her friend last week. When we had to go to France I woke up at three in the morning and when we arrived I was very tired, really tired.  On the first day I liked the crepe with banana and chocolate sauce. We went to the Sunday Market at Jean D'arc (it was called Marche Cristal) and bought delicious strawberries. On the second day, we went to a Japanese garden and there was a cute cat there. It buried its face in my mummy's cardigan. I bought a fountain pen and  a magnifying glass from a supermarket called Auchan. And I watched a movie called Wendy Wu (It was really goooooooooood!!!)( :  U :)

We went to the Natural History Museum there. There were wonderful peacocks in the garden. And peahens that were brown and white. I saw a lizard too; it was brownish gray and green.

On the day we left we had granita which was lemon flavoured, and I walked around.  I ate two pain au chocolates in one hour. My invisible friends from my sister's world joined us while we were in Toulouse. I had chicken nuggets in KFC and me and my sister played a detective game with my magnifying glass.

There were a lot of homeless people in Toulouse. My sister showed me them making a little shelter out cardboards. I saw them queueing for food or soup. Most of them had big dogs. They used brick walls as toilets. My mum said not just homeless people used them. They are called pissoirs.

A Woodpecker

I saw a woodpecker in the garden, on a birch tree. It's tail was white with black spots on it and it had some red feathers on its tail and on its head there was a little bit of red too. I got my camera and it was gone. My Dad showed me its picture from the computer so I took a photo of the photo in the computer. It was a Great Spotted Woodpecker.

This is a haiku:

birds in my garden
they are in the trees today
my golden feelings

Citylit Foundation Show 2011

Last night I went to an art exhibition at the Citylit where my mother studies. I liked one with paper clouds. It's paper which has bben cut around with little curvy bits and there were big ones cut up. They were hanging down in a roomish space and at the back there were two videos. One was of rain and the other was of clouds blowing by.

 And there was another art work with tiny buildings on the floor and there were white lightbulbs which were not on hanging down from the ceiling and also there was a surface on the wall with wires that were lit up to spell electri city.

There were mints served by one of the artists and I liked that very much.

Here is a haiku -- guess what it's about:

I climbed it today
swishing swaying in the wind
staying standing strong

I have been busy doing art, in journal pages. The best thing about doing them is that I can get my sleeves messy with paint and not get told off for that because normally like when I have food and I get my clothes messy I get told off.

My First Haiku

Yesterday, while waiting for my sister at Circus Space I wrote a haiku. I know it's spring and the clock just went forward, but I wrote about...guess what?

cold, glittering soft
sugar dust drifting frozen
sparkling in the light

Then I wrote another one. It wasn't as good:

wrinkled grey heavy
picking trees in the jungle
I long to ride it

It is very hard for me to count syllables so I have to ask for help. Today I asked my sister's friend for help. We were sitting on the shed in the garden, and I wanted to write about my sister. I'm going to name it 'love' even though my mother says that haikus don't have titles:

my sister loves cats
she loves to play hide and seek
I love her today