Mary Seymour

Mary Seymour is quite different than most girls, espicially me. Aside from the fact that she lived about 400 years ago and was the daughter of a queen, there are many contrasts between us. She was orphaned when just a few months old for her mother died of childbirth complications, and her scum-bag father was executed as a traitor just a few months after. My parents are still alive. Then there's the fact that she believes faliing in love is evil. It's no wonder though, her intelligent, admirable mother fell in love with her scum-bag of a father, and that turned out disasterous for her, since it gave her heartache and death. Then her guardian, a duchess is killed because she was in love with the stable master and wasn't paying attention to her horse, who then threw her and killed her. I, on the other hand, believe love is a magical, wonderfull thing. i also don't have magical powers like she does in the book. we are both very different girls, other than for obvious reasons.

Mary, the red queen's daughter

Mary, the orphaned daughter of former Queen Katherine, the last wife of King Henry VIII, and Sir Thomas Seymore (who was brother to the king's third wife, Jane)was a real girl. But Mary seems to dissapear from history after her mother's tragic death shortly after Mary's birth. So the author chose to write about this Mary. In the story Mary is a strong and curious child to begin with, and grows into a beautiful young woman. In the book, she is also studying magic with her guardian, Lady Strange. She wishes to learn as much as she can about her mother and follow in her footsteps. She is quick and clever, and very observant. Already she has decided that love is the enemy, and can turn the most sensible women sensless, as it did to her mother and first guardian. She is a very interesting main character, and it makes me wonder what really did become of Mary Seymore?

Listening at the gate

Kat, the main character, is a girl somewhat like me. She can be stubborn, but also unsure of herself. And she just wants to be loved for who she is. Unlike me though, she has a lover, a loving brother, a sister-in-law, a soon to be neice or nephew, and many loving friends. She has scars and just wants her life to go back the way it was, when she was happy, and nothing else mattered. But now she must be brave, for her lover, for her brother, and for herself. She is also very forgiving, something that i am not. she forgives her father who tried to force her to marry to help himself, and who hit her. I don't think I could ever do that.

Outside Reading Reflection

Listening at the Gate by Betsy James is the third and final book in the Seeker series about a girl named Kat who is on a path to self discovery, and to find where she belongs. Her father’s people shun her because of her father’s shameful marriage to her mother, who was a native and therefore inferior. Her mother’s people, aside from her aunt and cousins, dislike her because of her father. Then she is in love with an outcast from another people who relate themselves to seals. I chose this book because I have read the first two books about Kat and liked them a lot. And as the last book ended in a cliff-hanger, I had to read the last one and find out what happens next.

Thunder from the sea

Thunder from the sea by Joan Hiatt Harlow is a bout a 13-year old orphan named Tom Cambell. When Enoch and Fiona Murray take him in to live with them on an island called Back o' the Moon in Newfoundland, Tom is happy as can be. One day, while fishing druing a storm, Tom rescues a newfoundland dog and names him Thunder. Then Fiona gets pregnant, and an earthquake comes. But the earthquake isn't the least of it, it causes the water to go out of the harbor, then come back in in a rush as a tidal wave. Tom's house is left standing, but alot of their neighbor's houses are swept away. Tom is worried that Fiona and Enoch won't be able to keep him, with a new baby on the way, and money stretched tight. Then something goes wrong with Fiona's baby when it's about to born, and Tom must help get Fiona across the melting harbor to the doctor in a snowstorm. But in the end, everything works out, and Tom is officially adopted by Enoch and Fiona, plus he has a new baby sister!