In class we have been researching and looking into different perspectives of World War ll. We started of this new unit with watching videos and reading articles about WWll, unfortunately I was sick during the beginning of this unit so I had no idea what was happening. Luckily I had plenty of time do do one aspect of what was needed for this new unit. We needed to read a book  that involved perspectives in WWll. Out of the choices we had I chose Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein after reading our book we had to write a review and base the review to look like a review from “New York Times”. We had several examples of different book review from New York Times,  down below is the review I wrote.

 

Code Name Verity
By: Reid Witham

 

Code Name Verity is written by is written by Elizabeth Wein, who has also written Rose Under Fire, The Pearl Theif, and Black Dove White Raven. Wein is an American-born writer best known for her young adult historical fiction, her main inspiration for writing is JRR Tolkien who has written some of my favourite books.

In a Code Name Verity, we learn the importance of friendship and just how dark and gloomy War War Two actually was. It tells the story of a female pilot who crash landed in the Nazi occupied France as well as the story of a female spy who has been captured by the Gestapo. These two story lines intertwine and create the grand story that is a Code Name Verity.

This book deals with the topics of the horror of torture, it goes in depth with the sources of torture that the Nazis would use on their enemy’s. It shows the bravery of the French resistance and the joy of high speed flying, the book isn’t all depressing. It had real moments, with characters stories and the true friendship between the two main characters Queenie and Maddie. This book is graphic at times and shows the true horror of story, the imagery is powerful and creates these vivid experiences that stick in your mind “tortured and sent off to be used as a lab specimen”.

The story starts off from the perspective of Queenie, she’s captive and and we figure out that shes a spy. One small problem, she’s been held captured in the Château de Bordeaux hotel. We then strangely figure out that she has no identification papers. Through the excellent writing we know that she’s charming and a funny character. Her captors tell her to write her confession so she writes her story of the pilots who’s plane she was in that crashed. During this section torture is frequently used and like I’ve said it’s brutal. Through Queenie’s writing we discover more about her story and why she’s there, her captor commander Vin Linden gets captured into her story. Within her story we learn that Queenie is an excellent pilot and a loyal companion. Her friendship with Maddie is very strong and they are un seperable“We’re still alive and we make a sensational team,”.

Code Name Verity is a interesting read, at times it was a little confusing as there is lots of dialogue about different engine parts. This can get a little boring at times but I would never generally read a book like this. I found it to be a nice change to read a more “adult book”, I would generally think that this book would appeal to adults more but I definitely do recommend it to anyone who is interested in the topic of War. As I’m a young adult I would more recommend this book to adults and the elderly as it gets quite slow at times. The friendship between Maddie and Queenie is genuine and I could compare it to the relationship of different soldiers in Hollywood war films. My only gripes with the book would be again the excessive use of talk about the equipment they use but I understand why it’s there, and the random sections where the characters will talk about “cute boys” it felt out of place in the book and I feel it was unneeded. Overall I think Code Name Verity is a good read and I don’t think it overstayed it’s welcome, I was mostly engaged the whole read and I’m glad I’ve read it as I do love a good war story. It doesn’t quite meet the “action packed” war story I am used to seeing in movies, but it’s a nice change and in the end looking back on it I’m glad I read it.

DI is back and I’m as stressed as ever, if you didn’t know we already past Regionals for DI and I wasn’t able to join my team in competing as I was very sick. I’ll link back to my team members Aiden, Will, Simon and Alex so that you can read a bit more about our actual project and how they did at regionals. I wasn’t happy at all about not being able to compete in regionals as I felt that we actually had a really good story and overall we were working really well as a team. I have seen videos of how they did in regionals and I am very proud of how well they placed, they got first place in our challenge category. While I was sick I didn’t have much contact with anyone and kept practising my lines for my character and when I got back to school to my surprise Alex was not going to be at provincials. My groups plan was for me to do Alex’s part, I had no problem with that as I still had a week to learn Alex’s lines. During this week before provincials we made several changes to our “atttraction” and some props, as I am much taller than Alex I had to test if I would fit in the boat and surprisingly I did. Simon did make some extra supports to the bottom of the boat as it had broken form previous use, we also re made some of our group signs and some of our lava fish.

If none of this is making sense to you I’ll give you a brief description of what our story is about. The story for our challenge is that somewhere in Hawaii there is a volcano, in this volcano there is a special type of fish that is eating away at the volcano walls. If these lava fish eat any more of the volcano the lava will flow into the local town located under the volcano. Aiden s charceter Dr. With Ham gets a mechanic to build him a carnival ride so that the villagers can fish the lava fish out of the volcano.

So morning of provincials, I was very nervous but excited. I hadn’t experienced DI since the previous year, DI isn’t the greatest thing in the world but it’s not the worst. We practised over our lines and script, our main challenge was at 10 in the morning so we didn’t have much time to practice. We did really well in our presentation with no mess ups, the audience really seemed to like my “dancing” and comedic affects. Down below I’ll, show you our feedback we got. We also did pretty well in our instant challenge. I’m very proud of how we did, we worked really well as a team and this has definitely been my favourite year of DI.

 

 

This is a study that DI advertises, its basically about all the benefits that kids get from doing DI, do I agree with it? Yes and No. I do believe that there are benefits from doing DI but it does t show any of the negative sides, this is my last year of DI and I’m not sure what I think of that. I’m glad that I won’t have the stress of DI but I do really like working in this larger group. I’m glad I’ve had these experiences but also excited for future group collaboration projects. I’ve learned a lot about myself for doing group work, I’ve become more social and outgoing as I’m quiet a shy person and I’ve learned to generally be more thoughtful for others thoughts.