I used to not look forward to having to get up so early in the morning, get ready so quickly, eat breakfast in minutes and rush into the car starting in mid-August. The relaxing days of summer would be gone and replaced with studying and school. However, I recently watched a movie called, “On the Way to School” that showed me how lucky I am to have such an easy, five-minute drive to my school, and to even be going to school and have such a great opportunity for a great education. The movie focuses on four children that each have to walk more than 10 miles each day just to get to school on time, and their walks are not just straight, easy paths like a road or a sidewalk. Jackson, an 11-year-old, has to cross savannahs in Kenya filled with wild, angry elephants with his little sister twice a day. With her two friends, twelve-year-old Zahira must trek across more than 13 miles of rocky cliffs in the Moroccan Atlas Mountains to reach her weekly boarding school. Samuel, who is thirteen, but cannot use his legs, has to be pushed 2.5 miles by his younger brothers on a homemade wheelchair in eastern India in the morning and afternoon. And finally, Carlito, 11, rides eleven miles (on a horse) through the plains of Argentina with his younger sister the way to school and back. What amazed me was that these children, who are all around my age, walk these distances and face these dangers alone! Their parents pray for their safety before they go, and they all have friends or siblings accompanying them, but they are very brave to go on the journey by themselves. They all realize the importance of doing whatever it takes to go to school to learn. I cannot imagine doing the same thing any one of these kids does on a daily basis. When asked about what they want to be in the future, they all had inspiring replies. Samuel said that he would like to become a doctor so he could help fix other people with conditions like his. Zahira wants to travel to the villages around her school and persuade families to send their children to school so they can have the same opportunities as her. After watching this movie, I realized that when I complained about having to get up early and rush in the morning for school, it was nothing compared to what these kids had to go through to get to school as part of their normal routine. I felt grateful that I could safely sit in a car and ride with my parents to get to school each day for a 10 minute, not 10 mile, ride. So the next time you get annoyed for having to get up so early to ride in a car, take a bus, bike or walk a short distance o school, remember these four kids and how they must walk miles in dangerous locations just to get to their schools. We should all be grateful we have access to a good education and an easy path to it. If you want to find out more, you should watch the movie, “On the Way to School.” I highly recommend it if you want to watch an inspiring and motivating movie! “On the Way to School” (2015), DistriB Films. Directed by Pascal Plisson, written by Marie-Claire Javoy, Pascal Plisson.
review
The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle, Reviewed by Nina Vigil, 11
During the summer, I’m sure you are all looking for new summer reads. May I suggest The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss, a unique book that will keep you reading for hours straight. It sure did for me! The book is about a girl (as you may have guessed) named Bicycle. She has lived at the Mostly Silent Monastery for most of her life, a place where near silence is the norm. Bicycle has no friends because she isn’t used to how loud other kids are. Sister Wanda, Bicycle’s official guardian, decides to send her to The Friendship Factory, a camp in Nevada that guarantees she’ll make three friends. But Bicycle has other ideas. On her bike, Clunk, she sets out across the country to cover the 4,000 miles from Washington D.C. to California in order to meet her idol, a famous bicyclist she’s hoping will become her friend. Along the way, Bicycle will encounter a bike burglar, a Civil War ghost, a French restaurateur, a ghost town, a bike-crazy horse and 838 pigs. A central theme of The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle is perseverance. Even when she’s faced with difficulties and problems and exhausting miles, Bicycle keeps working towards her goal. In Virginia, she rides up hill after hill after enormous hill. She bikes through the Rocky Mountains. She even treks for hours and hours through a sunflower field. Bicycle stays on a strict 50-mile-a-day schedule for weeks on end, for thousands of miles. You have to work hard to in order to reach your goals, and this book is an excellent reminder of that. Another theme is the importance of friendship. Bicycle sets out on her epic quest in the hopes of making one single friend, but along the way, she makes a lot more friends than she expected, like Griffin, Estrella, Jeremiah, Chef Marie, the Cookie Lady…. I could go on and on. Bicycle’s life is made so much better because of the friendships she develops. Another point the book makes is that friendship can’t be forced. You can make friends unexpectedly and in the unlikeliest of places. I loved all the zany adventures Bicycle has on her trip across the U.S. Few of us have been run over by a parade of pigs, or biked over the Rockies, or won a missile-launching bike at an auction, or accidentally wandered into the Kentucky Derby. Reading this book made me want to take a road trip, and any book that makes you want to go have an adventure is a good book! You will definitely love The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle, so ride your bike to the library immediately! The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle by Christina Uss. Margaret Ferguson Books, 2018. Buy the book here and support Stone Soup in the process! Have you read this book? Or do you plan on reading it? Let us know in the comments below!
BizTown Money
Image by Melody Ann Crespo via Creative Commons Review by Megan Li, age 10 Ever thought how it would feel as a kid to sell, manage, and earn money? Well, with BizTown, you can! Yeah, I know, this sounds like one of those commercials we all know, but seriously, you can! My class in 5th grade started it on February 1st, 2018. BizTown allows kids, or anyone, to manage money and learn how to save or spend it. Our teacher gave us all a “small” booklet that read BizTown on the front. There were all kinds of things to do inside, like how to endorse checks, definitions of different words or making a fake bank account. We learned what types of checks there are and you could be arrested for writing a check that pays more money then you have in your account. That’s called a bounced check. Later on, you get assigned a job and either you’re an employer or an employee. If you’re the boss you can decide whether to invest, spend, or save the company’s money. You get a checkbook and can write checks or deposit money. BizTown not only shows kids how to act responsibly with money, it also allows you to have fun with it. You can play games and buy fake stuff. For example, my class played a game where you could spend or save money and earn interest. You would answer 3 questions in a round. There were 3 rounds. If you got it right, you got 1 dollar. So if you got all of them right you would earn 3 dollars. The interest rate was 30 percent, of course fake. There was stuff you could buy from the shop, like candies, bracelets, or a watch. But you had to buy at least 3 things by the end of the game. The money you saved earned you interest and at the end we could see how much money we had. Of course, like any session or subject, there might be quizzes. Not always but sometimes. It’s not that hard though, you just have to know the definitions of some words, like checking account or debit card, or what someone should do if they want this or that, but it’s pretty easy. All in all, I think BizTown is an awesome program.
