Josh+Reading

Author: Alison Robertson Publisher: Scholastic New Zealand Limited Genre: fiction Day Started To Read: 25th October Finished: 12th November No. Of Pages: 210

Knocked for six is a book about a child named Tony Vivian Green trying to make it into the Palmerston North cricket representative team but there are a lot of obstacles in the way. Tony wants to be in the cricket team but his first cricket trial didn’t go well at all, and his grandma is dying so he will miss the second trail. He ends up as a reserve and luckily Cherie (a person in the team) falls over and breaks her arm but she blames tony and she tries to get him expelled but Tony finds her diary and gets proof that he didn’t do it so Tony makes the team and will go to Palmerston North. On top of all this his friend Scooter is moving away because his sister is pregnant. The strengths of this book are it is very detailed and it is based in real places in New Zealand and you can visualise were they are and what’s happening. The weaknesses of this book are. Lots and lots of spelling and grammar mistakes. They talk about the Super 12 in the book so they obviously didn’t plan ahead and think if a kid in a few years time reads this it will be different; instead they could have changed what they were talking about in the book so that this mistake wouldn’t have happened for e.g. they could of said Air New Zealand Cup. They had side plots to the book witch was good but they fizzled out and didn’t lead any were they just make you wonder what’s going to happen. In conclusion I wouldn’t rate this book with high marks because it wasn’t that interesting and it did not have much exciting parts to the book. I would only rate this book a 2/10 for poor grammar they obviously didn’t go back and check for spelling and grammar mistakes. The book was really dull and I wouldn’t recommend reading this book. I won’t read any other book from this author because of this disappointment. They advertise this to be a good book by the back and cover and put all the exciting bits on the back but that’s about it in the whole story By Josh

Reading Task 2 Term 3 2009
Author: Emily Rodda Publisher: Scholastic Genre: Fantasy/Adventure Duration to read: 2 days No pages: 120
 * __DELTORA QUEST__**

It is a young boy named Lief who sets out on a quest with a beggar named Barda who to retrieve the stolen gems from the famous belt Deltora. The gems were stolen from the belt and scattered all over the lands and hidden in dangerous places were no one can live to tell the tale. In This book Lief and Barda must travel through the forests of silence to retrieve the golden topaz. At the edge of the first forest they meet a young girl name jasmine who has lived all her life alone and she offers to help them on their quest.

The strengths of this book were the fact that it was well described and kept the reader wanting to read more. It grabbed the reader’s attention. You could imagine the scene were ever they were. It had good content the author obviously researched what kids like in books and how to make a good fiction book.

Weaknesses it did not have a good story line you didn’t no what was happening some of the times. The Forests Of Silence lacked thrills half of what she wrote was really good but the other half was rubbish she needed to sustain the thrills throughout the story.

My favourite character in this story is Lief because he is not afraid to go in dangerous places and maybe even die for his kingdom. Overall I would rate this book a seven out of ten because it was great but sometimes it just lacked excitement.

In conclusion I think that this is a good children’s book and should go on to sell a lot of copies. It had a great conclusion and was a good finishing product.

Reading Task 1 Term 3 2009
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