Dance

Dance is my absolute favorite thing to do in the world! In my case, to dance is to live. Dance is my sport and I have always loved it! Ever since I was three years old, dance has been my dearest past time. I do most every type of dance. Such as jazz, tap, modern, theater, ballet and pointe. I mainly focus on ballet and pointe. I just recently overcame a knee injury. I dislocated my kneecap. It was a very painful experience but surprisingly enough, the most agonizing part was not being able to dance for almost five months, which felt like forever. I am slowly working my way back and hopefully next week I will be ready to go and bust a move with everyone else! When I dance, all my worries go away and I am happier than ever. It feels so right and I never want to stop! I hope next week is as great as I am expecting it to be. Hopefully I haven't lost ALL my abilities! To sum it all up, I love to dance!

This is a picture of one my favorite amazing ballerinas, Svetlana Zakharova.

Hunger Games and Critiques

Hunger Games is the first of book of the three of the Hunger Games trilogy written by Suzanne Collins. The book takes place in the near future in the country of Panem, which consists of twelve districts surrounding the Capitol. The districts are labelled one through twelve, one being the most wealthy and twelve being the least. The Capitol acts as the powerhouse for the districts. It is the home of the government. Each year the Capitol hosts an event called the Hunger Games to show how powerful the government is. The Hunger Games is when each district nominates one boy and one girl to go fight till death in an arena with two "tributes" or participants from every district. They stay in the arena until there is only one tribute left standing and breathing. Also, the whole country is forced to watch the games since they are televised and so everyone will witness what they can make you do. The book is mainly focused on the tributes from DIstrict 12, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, but specifically Katniss. After they are chosen to represent District 12, they are taken to the Capitol. This is where they meet their opponents and also are introduced to the public and try to win over the crowd to receive sponsors. Peeta publicly announces his unspoken love for Katniss and as you read on you experience the adventures in the arena along side of Katniss and see some of the love affair between herself and Peeta.

Personally I would give this book an A+. I thoroughly enjoyed it and thought it was a great read. It was the type of book you never want to put down or a page turner. I would most definately recommend it to anyone above twelve years old who likes a great adventure book with a little bit of young love in it.
On commonsensemedia.org they gave the book four stars. They also recommend for twelve year old kids and up. Their opinion is that there is too much violence involved in the book along with too much drinking. On the flip side, they like the books message, the language in the book is good and there is some kissing which they consider to be acceptable. http://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/hunger-games.html

Hunger Games: The Movie

Since the Hunger Games was so overwhelmingly popular, they decided to make a movie based on it. It will be released to theaters sometime in 2013. Suzanne Collins, the author of the book, is also the writer for the movie. The director of the Hunger Games is Gary Ross. It will be a Lionsgate production and they have high hopes for it. They claimed the movie March 19, 2009, which was very early considering they have just recently chosen the director. The cast for the movie is still undecided for now, but soon they will have the whole cast list and will begin filming as soon as possible! They have a few options for all the characters but most importantly Katniss. Many girls are dying to play her role but only one will be lucky enough to get to. They aren't necessarily looking for someone who is already famous, just a great actress and someone who looks like Katniss. For example, Jodelle Ferland, Kristen Stewart, and Dakota Fanning are three of the many girls who are dying for the part. Since the cast is still undecided, there is no official trailer. Here are a few that I found...

About the Author: Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins is a writer for both children's television shows and books. She worked on many Nickelodeon shows including Oswald, Little Bear and many more. She was nominated for the Writers Guild of America in animation for one of her many masterpieces Santa, Baby which she co-wrote. She began writing books after she met James Proimos who was a children's author. She was declared as one of Time Magazine's most influential people of 2010. All of her books have some sort of inspiration for either her personal experiences or other stories she was familiar with like most other authors. Her first series, The Underland Chronicles, consists of five books that she wrote in a four year time span. This series was a New York Times Best Selling series which is very impressive and inspiring. The first book being, Gregor the Overlander, was inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Soon after she finished The Underland Chronicles, she published The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games has been. This book was inspired from her experiences when she was younger. SInce her father was in the Air Force, she personally experienced all the things she wrote about such as the lack of money and food in one's life. Following The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins published Cathcing Fire and then Mockingjay to finish the series. Also, a movie is coming out featuring The Hunger Games. The video below displays Suzanne Collins answering questions about her first two books of the trilogy, Hunger Games and Catching Fire. She speaks about how she became inspired as she was channel surfing and couldn't decide between reality TV and scenes of the Iraq War. To find out what else she talks about, just watch the video below.



You can find out more about Suzanne Collins on her Web site.
Also, you can find more information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Collins which has links that contain very useful information.

Introducing My Blog and I

My name is Carly Greenbaum and I attend the Kinkaid School. I am currently in the middle of my freshman year. My school has a very special time each school year that we are very privileged and we are all grateful for. It is called Interim Term. Interim term is three weeks in January right after we return from Winter Break. We have different fun classes that differ from typical academic courses that we have throughout the rest of the year. Teachers get to choose something that interests them that they want to teach their interim term class about. Trips are also available for those that want to travel. The trips that were offered this year was the China Trip and home stays in Peru and France. Some of the classes that are offered to us are courses over detective cinema, meditation, forensic science, chinese culture and many more! As you can see there is a huge variety for us to choose from. One of the classes I selected for Interim Term is Reading for the Fun of it! I am not the biggest fan of reading and it doesn't help that I am a really slow reader but I am so glad I have the opportunity to read now each day for the next three weeks. I am reading a book called the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I chose to read this book because I have heard only good things about it and all my friends have been talking about it and begging me to read it, but I haven't have time to read. And now that I do I am excited about reading it. I am not very far into it but so far it's a good book.