The Black Cat

In the text we see that the black cat is kind of rude. Not only does he treat Coraline like he is better then her, but he also makes a lot of fun of her. he shows how snobby and rude he is a bunch of time (when he speaks) through out the text. For example, "We could be a rare specimen of an exotic breed of African dancing elephants," said the cat. "But we're not. At least," it added cattily, after darting a brief look at Coraline, "I'm not." (4.19-20)

Over time, though, the cat learns to respect Coraline; he even teams up with her and helps her escape from the other world. In fact, he even catches one of the children's souls from a runaway rat!

The cat may act superior and be very brave, but even he can have his moments of fear: put down a hand to stroke it, and could feel how hard its heart was beating. It was trembling like a dead leaf in a storm (10.57)." Don't call him a scaredy cat though: he has good reason for being afraid, and he pulls himself together when it counts. Plus, he could probably eat you. In the end, the Black Cat really becomes Coraline's friend and companion.

reading list march

"the fault in our stars" john green april 1st 
 "it" alexa chung finished march 10 
"Twilight" stephenie Meyer finished march 15
 Twilight the graphic novel finshed march 17

reading list march 

"it" alexa chung finished march 10 

"Twilight" stephenie Meyer finished march 15 

Twilight the graphic no

Niya Williams

Is it fair that so much is riding on a single test for millions of Chinese students? Write and argument essay that uses evidence to support your claim.

In china many students are put into cram schools where they work every single day from 6:40am to 11:30pm. They all work very hard and study to pass a test called the gaokao. This test can literally make or break you in the world of work. Many students who are poor and cannot afford much take these tests in hopes of passing to get a good education. Many students commit suicide from the pressure and harsh security. The students who pass are not guaranteed a good paying job but they have a good education that can take them far. Some people say that these harsh studying habits can ruin the students and make them feel so pressured that they can’t take it anymore, and some people say that people who take the test (the students) will benefit more from these studying habits because they will help them learn how to push themselves and try to pursue a life of working hard. Both of these things are true, but if the students feel so pressured that they take it upon themselves to die, maybe the pressure is a little bit to hard. No learning experience should make you feel like death is an option.

Many students, who take the gaokao test in china, only take it so they can have a better life (by getting a better job). This will take them quite far. Having a good job leads to making a good amount of money and having a good life by being able to access the necessities you need. One of the students even said “It’s a lot of pressure” showing the readers he confirms that the test do put a lot of pressure on the students. The article also comes to say “Teenage suicide rates tend to rise as the gaokao nears.” This shows how terrible the tests are for the students. I’m guessing as the time for the test approaches the students really start to feel the pressure and understand the consequences of not passing the test. If you don’t pass you will end up with a terrible job. The students start studying even harder, and with nothing to ease the stress because they don’t allow any games or dating, you must try to relax. But the test can really determine your future. The test is way too much pressure and I feel like no one should feel like they should take their own life because of the fact they have to pass a test.

Many parents feel like if their kid stops this harsh process they will drop. Some parents feel as if this harsh working will make their kids dedicated to learn and work hard. They think that having their kids being pushed will make them work harder. I think have pushing your kids a little is one thing but pushing them to the point of suicide is a different thing. Parents don’t exactly understand how hard it is for the students to go through this kind of thing. “My mother constantly reminds me to work hard,” says one student. This shows that parents really want their kids to have a better/ good life. They want them to have a wide variety of schools to choose from and jobs. “Harsh rules and long hours” is what they call the cram schools. “Many parents, who fear that easing the pressure could hurt their children’s futures”

Both sides show that these test are the biggest things in these people’s lives. They take them so seriously because they can make or break you. Your entire life depends on this one test. This also means “teenage suicide rates tend to rise as the gaokao nears”. Personally I find that if a teenager thinks that because this test can literally make you or break you they can’t handle the pressure and must kill themselves is crazy. They honestly let the kids have no fun to ease the stress and ban many things. This leads them to feeling so pressured they turn to killing themselves, feeling like if you don’t pass one test, your entire life will mean nothing and you will have to work building houses is depressing.

In conclusion no one should feel like their entire lives depend on one test and nothing else because it can lead to depression and suicide. Pressuring yourself to the ledge of live and death is a terrible thing and feeling so stressed is terrible.

Niya Williams

March 10, 2015

Poems essay





“Those winter Sundays”- Robert Hayden

“My papa’s Waltz”- Theodore Roethke





Most parents’ work very hard to make sure they keep you secure and healthy. In “those winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden and “My Papa’s Waltz” by Theodore Roethke, we see two different perspectives, from two different boys on their fathers. We see how they really feel about their fathers. We see how they feel, think, and act around their dads, but most importantly we see how the boys fathers treat them.



In “Those winter Sundays”, we watch a boy remember his father, and understand how much work he did, and how difficult it was fir him, but how his father always pulled through. On one stanza we hear the poet say “Sundays too my father got up too early and put his clothes on in the black blue cold. Then with cracked hands that ached from labor and the weekday weather, made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him”. We learn that even though the father did many things, in the harsh cold, and, and the bad weather. He never got a thank you. No one ever acknowledged what he did or take into account how much hard work he did to make sure his entre family had everything they needed.



Most parents are the people whom you rarely see if they tend to work a lot. In “my Papa’s Waltz” we hear of a young boy whose father comes home from really long shift. It isn’t very clear if the father is a little drunk from drinking slightly or just very clumsy, but we hear a young boys excitement from his father finally returning home from a long day at work. Four stanzas read, “The hand that held my wrist was battered on one knuckle; with every step you miss my right ear scrapes a buckle.” This shows how the father is a little doozy but still makes time to spend with his son that includes walking with him and having a good time. You can see the dad works very hard because the text talks about how his hand was battered on one knuckle from hard work and how his belt was kind of un loose and dangling scraping him as they walked up the stairs. This piece of text really shows how close the son is to his father walking close enough to him to actually feel his belt buckle scrape against him as he walks.





In conclusion we see that as kids we don’t know how much our parents really do for us until we have to do the same for our own. We never really understand how much effort they put in to make us happy and make sure we have everything we need and are ok.

books finished in the past two weeks include,

"It" by Alexa Chung

"Alice's Adventures In Wonderland" By Lewis Carroll

And "Coraline" by Neil Gaiman

Niya Williams

Alice In Wonderland

When you think of Alice In Wonderland you immediately think of the red queen. I mean she is a very important character in the text (if not the craziest) that has the most power. You can tell from the beginning that she is the only one in charge and knows she is the ruler. If Carroll hasn’t made it clear enough from the illustrations of the queen of hearts gigantic head, you know she is taking all of the power she has and controlling wonderland with just one word. She is most defiantly in power, and she knows it.

The queen of hearts is the bloodthirsty ruler of Wonderland. Her solution to every problem is to order a beheading before the day is out. Fortunately, as the Gryphon explains, her orders never seem to get carried out, because her husband, the King of Hearts, is right behind her, quietly canceling her orders. Though she doesn’t know it (Like everyone else around her does) her beheadings are totally ridiculous and have no meaning. I am not sure if she thinks killing off people can just solve and problem, or if she thinks that just because she can do it, she should be able to, it is still the most terrible thing I have ever read in the book. Thank goodness her husband is there to call off every single one of the beheadings.

 Like the belligerent Red Queen in the chess game in Looking-Glass World, the Queen of Hearts is an aggressive woman who tries to dominate everything around her. Critics sometimes try to connect these two overbearing Queens to the historical Queen Victoria, implying that Carroll was satirizing his country's ruler. However, this interpretation doesn't get us very far, since there are few points of resemblance between the Wonderland queens and their real-life cousin. Queen Victoria was strong-willed, to be sure, but she was also extremely proper and dignified. If anything, the queens that Carroll imagines are the opposite of Victoria – an example of what could happen if a Queen were rude and quirky instead of straitlaced. 



What's not usually dismissed is the observation that Carroll's fantasy villains tend to be women, whose power has made them shrill and aggressive. Their husbands are passive: the King of Hearts quietly countermands his Queen's orders, the White King simply watches his wife rush around the game board, and the Red King just sleeps. Meanwhile, the Queens have to do everything themselves – they're forces to be reckoned with, but alarming ones. It's not hard to see that Carroll, who never married and preferred the company of little girls to that of adult women seems to have, well, issues with women.

Niya Williams         711     “Building Bridges” by Andrea Pinkney

           Letting go of your child or grandchild, and letting them grow up is one of the hardest things any parent or guardian will do in their life. Knowing that when they are gone they are learning how to live without you.

In the beginning of the passage we see the main character Bebe ask her grandmother to sign the permission slip allowing her to join a youth renovation team, a group of kids that had been chosen by city officials to work with a squad of contract engineers to help repair the Brooklyn bridge. Bebe wanted to take part in this activity over the summer because it paid good money and would help her get to college where she wanted to study engineering. When Bebe asks Mama Lil to sign her permission slip, Mama Lil says “I ain’t gonna be the one who allows you to take part in such foolishness”. This shows that Mama Lil thinks that getting a job as a engineer for Bebe is foolishness, and not worth her time.  Mama Lil also says “Bebe get that backward idea out of your head” showing she thought the job wasn’t a good idea. Both details from the text show that Mama Lil thinks that the job is a terrible idea, and there is no way she was going to sign it allowing Bebe to take part in engineering.

          In order for Bebe to stay and not want the engineering job, Mama Lil takes it upon herself to get Bebe a job fit for a girl her age. She got her a job at Rimley’s Beauty Parlor. This s a big part of the text because we see Mama Lil try to take Bebe’s mind off engineering by replacing it with working in a beauty shop around where they live. You can see right here that she doesn’t want Bebe to go.

          At the end of the passage we see a huge character change with Mama Lil towards Bebe. Without saying she doesn’t want to sign the permission slip Mama Lil talks more in depth onto why she can’t. On page 29 in “Building Bridges”, Mama Lil tells Bebe “Your dreams are the kind that’ll take you away from here, Bebe away from your Mama Lil. You got big hopes, child, but they gonna leave me alone, by myself”. This is the most important part of the passage because we see Mama Lil go from just saying plain old no to Bebe, to finally sharing her feeling on how she would feel if Bebe were to leave her.  If Bebe were to go and become an engineer Mama Lil feels like she might leave for good. She might finally know what she wants in life and leave Mama Lil at home alone. Mama Lil adds on to what she was saying, by stating, “That’s an upsetting truth, Bebe. It makes my heart hurt every time I think on it.” Not only does this show how hard it is for parents to leave their child, but it shows what they go through thinking that one day their child is going to grow up and have dreams of their own that they want to follow, and they will slowly drift away. Mama Lil has some to the realization that nothing last forever and she is going to have to let Bebe free.

           For most of my life I have lived with my own grandparents and I know how Bebe feels. Sometimes when I ask to do things it takes them days to think about it. They see me gaining an independence that will slowly drag me away from their hands into adulthood. Mama Lil takes her time with her choices and Pinkney shows it. Mama Lil is scared for Bebe, and scared for herself. You can see in the last pages of the passage she explains to Bebe how hard it is to see her dreams take her away and leave Mama Lil.

Niya Williams class 711

My name piece

My name is like gold in 1848. It is so hard to find and you really have to search for it. My name can’t be found on key chains. It can’t be found on mugs, and it surely cannot be found on magnets or stickers. Trust me I have spent my entire life searching through stores for my name. I have always felt like my name is one of those names that your parents made just to make sure that when your family went into a souvenir store they couldn’t get you anything with your name on it.

My name can be pronounced 2 ways.

Its quite annoying when you have to repeat your name over and over again to a person just so they can spell it right. And even if they spell it right there is still a big X over the part where they messed up. The only reason why I would never change my name is because it is sort of special. It might be annoying, but I feel like I was given it for a reason in which I will have to find out.

My name sounds like a flower. Maybe like a purple one you can only find in the rainforest. One that is so precious, so beautiful you would travel the long distance just to get it. It’s kind of like the flower your wife likes the most that you are really excited to give to her on the special occasion. My name sounds like a lot of things, an old ship in a museum, an old ornament passed down from family member to the next generation, and many more. But mainly my name fits me. a person who you can find two of, so original no one can be the same.