In the graphic novel “The babysitters club” by Raina Telgemeier, four girls, Kristy, Marry Anne , Stacy, and Claudia start a babysitters club. In the club the girls have to deal with dogs, creepy neighbors, and loud kids. The main character Kristy Thomas, is going through a hard time with her mom because of her mom‘s boyfriend, who she does not like. Through the babysitters club, Kristy slowly gets to know her mom’s boyfriend by getting to know his children better. And Stacy is hiding a secret from the rest of the girls that caused them to have a fight. What I liked about this book was that some of the scenes in the book were very relatable to how I feel sometimes. For example in the beginning of the book Christie Thomas is in her last class of the day and it’s really hot out. When the bell rings she yells out “HOORAY!!!” Sometimes I feel like doing that as well. I also thought this was really funny. my favorite character in the book was boo-boo. Boo-boo is Watsons cat. Watson is Kristy’s mother’s boyfriend. boo-boo is a very upset looking cat. He looks like he’s going to attack it any minute but when he’s around Karen and Andrew(the Watson’s children) he just tolerates them. On page 116 Karen says “He gnawed the laundry room door all up” I thought this was a very cute response from Karen because as a kid you think everything‘s funny including something that is quite the opposite which made it more entertaining. My favorite line in the book is “he’s an attack cat!”. I like this line in the book mostly because of the illustration but also shows how grumpy of a cat boo-boo is. He’s like the cat version of Ebeneezer Scrooge.

My hero is my mother. She is my best friend, supporter, and cheerleader. I tell her everything. I tell her all the things that I would never tell my dad or my friends and family. Sometimes I feel I treat her too harshly. Because I tell her everything and I feel the most comfortable with her, I am more inclined to lash out at her because I’m not afraid of my mom and I can talk more openly. I love that she never makes a decision that will affect my life without me and isn’t a helicopter parent, but still cares about me.

In the month of December I read Charlie and the Grandmothers by Katy Towell. This book is about siblings named Charlie and Georgie Oughtt . A 12-year-old boy who is very anxious and worries about everything, and a eight-year-old girl who is never afraid of anything, and considers herself an explore. In the book things start off weird with children going missing because supposedly they’re visiting their grandmothers, and too many children have used that excuse and haven’t come back since. In the book on page 5 the it states Charlies anxiousness and relief for him and his family safety “At least Georgie and I are safe, he thought. Mother would never send us away. She needs is here.” One day there mother starts acting unusual in a weird type of cheery and joyful way, and then continues to talk about sending the children to visit their grandmothers, but there’s a problem. Charlie and Georgie don’t have any grandmothers. They’re both dead. Upon Charlie’s arrival to his supposed grandmothers house, Grandmother Pearl is revealed to be something more horrifying than Charlie’s fears. He and Georgie are thrown into a creepy underworld created of nightmares stolen by children, and where there are monsters impersonating grandmothers to lure children in. The grandmothers serve an evil queen by holding children hostage and taking children’s memories and dreams, but Charlie is different. His worrisome and anxious nature proves useful in this underworld. What I loved about this book is the unexpected turns it took. I love mysteries so when I saw the title I was expecting a creepy story about grandmothers and children, which is partly what this book is about, but I wasn’t expecting the underworld or the queen, which made the book so much more interesting. I would definitely recommend this book to people who prefer mysteries in a fantasy setting. My favorite character was the queen. I know most people wouldn’t necessarily go for the evil queen as their favorite character, but I found her very interesting because of her appearance. She wasn’t like most evil queens and fantasy books like The Queen of Hearts or Maleficent. In the book it describes what she looks like on page 140. “ But the truly bizarre thing about this statue was that it had no eyes. Where is eyes ought to have been, there was only smooth white face. Somebody had gone through the trouble of painting its lips black, though, and its mouth was a bit too wide. With the paint, it made the sculpture look like a harlequin.” There’s also another example on page 143. “ Indeed, she did have eyes. Three pairs of them, in fact, decreasing in size from the top pair to the bottom and trailing down the back of her head. The eyes had scarlet irises without any pupils that Charlie could see, and they never blinked. Not once.” I love this type of villain because she’s not like anything else. She has barely any human features, so it shows how different she is from everyone else which makes her stand out more. On page 147 I found out what type of queen she is. Apparently she is a Egyptian queen. “Queen Nefertiti. Attila the Hun.” I don’t think that the Egyptian queen is the same queen that the author is portraying in the book, but I found that very interesting. My favorite line in this book, which is verbalized by Georgie on page 49 says “… you only said you were going to explore the house!” Charlie pro tested. “ I didn’t say anything about staying inside the house, did I?” Georgie said with the wink.” This is my favorite line because it verbally differentiates the personalities between the two siblings, and shows how mischievous Georgie is and that’s what I love about her. This concludes my read reading December writing.

This year I want to focus on a word that means the opposite of anxiety, and that can be a multitude of words like  calm, relaxed, self-possessed, cool and collected, courage, and other words but the dictionary is too long. I think I want to focus on self-possessed because it sounds like something a therapist would say and apparently their an export on this sort of thing, and I don’t really need courage, and if someone told me to relax when I’m having a anxiety attack it would jut make me mad. Recently I’ve had issues with my public appearance, and letting my brain get overwhelmed from procrastination, so I feel like self possessed is a fitting word that I would like to focus on for the new year.