Book Report 4

Candy is a book by Kevin Brooks. It’s not the type of candy that you eat, it’s the name of one of the main characters; Candice, also known as Candy.  Candy isn’t the average girl who lives in London. She has things going on in her life that most people hopefully will never have to deal with. Although, Joe, the person who’s perspective the book is based on, falls in love with this girl. Joe describes Candy as a perfect girl. He ignores any of her flaws that other people might be able to see. Joe and Candy met at a bus station in the middle of London. Joe sees this girl from a distance. She has perfect skin, pale white. Her eyes were a dark almond color and she had her chestnut hair tied back into a perfect ponytail. When Joe first looked at her he was amazed he had no clue what to do. This girl who he thought was beautiful was standing right in front of him.  Candy had given Joe her number. Joe called her a week later because he didn’t want to sound like a complete idiot on the phone with this girl. Little did Joe know that once he called her his life was going to change forever.

Candy had a dark side. She was involved with things that no ordinary 15 year old boy should endure with an 18 year old. Candy was a prostitute. There was no easy way for her to tell Joe the truth about her. She lived in a house filled with other girls just like her. She was also addicted to heroin. The reason Candy got into this mess was because one night she was feeling a little rebellious and ran away from home. She met this guy Iggy, who is now her pimp. Iggy is Candy’s source for getting her heroin. Candy never tired to become the way she is now. Candy has tried a few times to get out. Every time Iggy caught her and beat her up for it. Candy had a hard life until Joe came around to helping her out. Joe had an enormous amount of determination. He would do anything to help out Candy. One time Joe followed Iggy from the train station to the house where Candy lived. He was able to sneak in to go see Candy while Iggy had left for a while, that is until Iggy had returned…

The book Candy uses foreshadowing. Foreshadowing was used on the first two paragraphs of the entire book. I think Kevin Brooks used foreshadowing in this part of the book because it opened up your mind to many different thoughts that would happen. If anyone had read the first two paragraphs they would realize that something bad was about to happen. The first two paragraphs made you want to keep on reading to find out what was going to happen next.  Through about the first hundred pages Kevin Books made you wonder what was really going on in Candy’s life, why she hadn’t changed and why she does what she does. When Kevin Books was making you wonder he was giving out small hints so that you could figure it out what is truly happening in Candy’s life. You figure out soon enough that her life isn’t as normal as most people. To some other people Candy’s life might be as normal as it gets.

Another part of this book when Kevin Brooks used foreshadowing was on Joe and Candy’s first date. Joe had skipped school to meet up with Candy at the London Zoo. At this point in the book Kevin Brooks had already made it clear that something was wrong with Candy. Joe knew there was something she was hiding. Joe and Candy had been eating lunch then; Candy got up and went right to the bathroom in a hurry. You could tell that she was on a mission, and whatever needed to be done had to happen right away. When she returned from the bathroom she was a little loopy. She was all of a sudden all over Joe. She decided to take Joe to her favorite part of the London Zoo. When they got there, Candy’s emotions were everywhere. She started pulling Joe into a corner and started making out. The way Kevin Brooks explained their kiss, it wasn’t hard to know that what Joe was doing was going to get him in trouble, and quickly. With the author adding this part of the book in it makes an impact on the rest of the story also.

Book Report 3

The book Side Effects is about an eighth grade girl named Isabelle or Izzy as everyone else calls her. Izzy is sarcastic when she doesn’t want to hear or face the truth. Izzy shows a lot of sacrasism the most when she finds out that she has Lymphoma. She tries to make jokes about it probably to help her feel better. Throughout the whole entire book Izzy usually has some type of smart remark when she’s in the hospital or at home sick.  Izzy is also extremely stubborn. When Izzy first found out that she had Lymphoma she needed to have some way of getting the medication and chemo through her body. She refused to get a PICC line which would be like a port for the chemo to go through. Instead, she said no to putting the PICC line in.  She just wanted them to take blood through a vein in her arm and put the chemo through her vein. In the end, Izzy’s veins in her arm were about shot because of the number of times they had to poke her arm to get blood. Since Izzy was scared and refused to get a PICC line, her punishment was her veins getting shot.  

I pictured Izzy as a girl who doesn’t really care about her appearance. Most girls who are in 8^th grade just like Izzy would probably have to disagree about that statement because they care about what they look like. Izzy seems like the type of girl who would wake up in the morning, throw on some type of outfit that looks like it works, and call it good for the day. Izzy is also not into drama, unlike her best friend Kate. When Izzy was home sick or in the hospital getting chemo, Kate would always come by to visit with her and tell her all about the drama Izzy was missing out on. She is also pretty outgoing too. Most people are shy and don’t like going out in public when they have the side effect of hair loss from the chemo. Whenever Izzy felt like getting up and doing something, she did. She even worked up the courage to talk to the guy she really liked when she was out with her friend Kate one time. All in all, Izzy is a pretty laid back girl.

                Side Effects by Amy Goldman Koss are a pretty good book. The author did a really good job explaining how cancer can affect teenagers- not just for the older people. Amy Goldman Koss also make a thorough job of telling how the whole process works without giving you a research paper explanation. This book was also funny too because she made the main character Izzy, a sarcastic 8^th grader who doesn’t really take all of this really seriously. She makes Izzy come up with a joke to make the whole cancer thing not seem as sad. This book is also pretty easy to relate to if you have or had cancer or if you know someone with it or who had it too. It also gives people hope that the character Izzy will survive and be able to continue with her life after the cancer goes away. I would recommend this book to anyone especially people who are teenagers because I think they can relate to how things happen in those years of life. I’m not sure if a guy would want to read this book because it didn’t really seem like a type of book a guy would like or want to read. This book also doesn’t have very many pages that are what made me want to read this book. This book has larger print and it is only about 143 pages. You can finish it very easily and quickly.