Character Change in Elsewhere

     Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin, is about a fifteen year old girl hit and killed by a cab. Liz, the girl killed must understand her new life in Elsewhere, her after and before life. In Elsewhere, time travels backwards, so every day, Liz gets younger. When she first gets to Elsewhere, she hates everything about it. All she wants is to go home, but without realizing it, she will going to find almost everything she wanted on the Earth.

     When Liz gets off the boat bringing her to Elsewhere, she is surprised to see her grandmother and wonders whether it is all a dream. On the ship there, she didn't understand anything that was going on at all, and when she did realize that she was dead her heart split into two. Liz spent hours at the binoculars that let her watch her friends and family. I noticed that watching the people she loved every minute of every day hurt her more. When she left the binoculars to work her avocation as a dog interviewer, therapist and welcomer for new dogs in Elsewhere, she found happiness. I think that her job numbed the pain because she was focusing on other problems that weren't hers. It brought her attention away from what she could be doing if she was on Earth and living in the now, or then.

      Another thing that helped her was Owen. Owen arrested her for going to the Well, a forbidden place where you can make contact with people. After this incident, Owen did Liz a favor and they became fast friends. Owen was still getting over is wife from Earth, but he fell in love with Liz anyway. They both got younger, and they always stayed together. Though they might have looked different, I believe that their hearts stayed the same. This unexpected love, along with the love from her grandmother filled the holes in her heart and stitched the two pieces together. This book explained to me that anything can happen. Any love, and any happiness.

The Green in Christmas

Middle School 51                                                                                                         Meredith Lunceford

English                                                                                                                                     11/5/13 707

Memoir:My Christmas Tree

     When the jolly Christmas music begins to play on the radio, I know that I can get excited about decorating a beautiful pine tree in our living room. I am always there to pick out a tree. I love that feeling where you can think Isn't that tree beautiful? I helped chose it. I look for a tree that is singing for me to come to it. I try and find a tree that wants me to find it. As we go through the place where my dad decides to get the tree that year, he feels each one looking for a tree that isn't too dry. Dad checks the body to make sure it's not lopsided or too tall. I just make sure that the tree seems right.

If Carolyn, my younger sister, doesn't join us to get the tree, she makes sure to see it as soon as we are home. She sprints to the door with a smile covering her entire face. Carolyn then pulls on my jacket repeatedly saying Can I see it?! She always chooses then to help us carry it. My dad puts the tree in the green and red base as I go to the kitchen to get a cup of water to fill the base. My older sister, Myah, and my mom find the box of ornaments and our Madame Alexander china angel doll that sits on the top of the tree watchfully.

     As the box of ornaments is opened, it feels like the paper wrapped objects in that box fill the room with happiness and excitement. The paper makes a dry crinkling noise as I find my favorites. I look for my snowflake decorated with tiny bells among many others. My dad always has to tell me to slow myself. My mother reminds me to be careful with the things that I love. I have never broken any of them and sometimes I wonder why they don't trust me with them. At least they let me do anything at all. I am always the first to place an ornament on the tree after the lights are stranded over the tree. Finding the right branch can be tricky, but it all pays off.

     Once the lights are turned on, the room comes to life. I want to pause that moment and keep it alive forever. We are all smiling, or at the very least having a nice expression. The ornaments shine reflecting the light. You can smell the pine and it always makes me feel like I'm back in Maine, the place where I feel most at home. We have the red, green, and white Christmas candles adding cinnamon to the mix of smells and putting a comforting dim, yellow light in the room which puts shadows that are almost graceful on the walls. Carolyn's brown eyes reflect the image of the tree and Myah is actually looking happy though she may be tired from homework and school. This Christmas, I will be sure to make a wish that it could always be that way.

Where Your Cellphone Goes to Die

     Americans alone throw away an average of 150 million cellphones a year. Almost none of the people that are throwing them know where their cellphones going when their put into their garbage. They don't know that these phones can kill a child or even a pregnant woman in Ghana, India, and/or China. I didn't know either, and that's why I am writing this piece. People in the US and many other places need to be informed of this problem and act on it.

     While children in the United States of America go to school daily, children in the countries listed above are working long hours extracting metal out of electronics. The children in China and the other countries are quite poor and need the copper, gold, and silver that is in your cellphone, even if it only sells for a few dollars. Boys in India sit in toxic flakes of cadmium while recovering this same thing from the inside if batteries. They must use mallets that could potentially hurt them. I don't believe that this is right. All children, internationally, should be getting an education. Women should be doing a job that doesn't hurt them, rather than sitting over a boiling pot of led, which is toxic, extracting gold from circuit boards.

     The article states that scientists agree that it is quite dangerous to people's health and that a low level of a toxic chemical can stop a child's growth or cause neurological damage. The US needs to act further on the Responsible Electronics Recycling Act, which would make it illegal for toxic waste to be exported to countries with very few or no safeguard. The Basel Convention is a similar treaty that makes it illegal to export toxic waste of any kind. The US is the only country that has yet to sign. I think that we need to think about others and stop being so selfish as a country. The children in China, India, and Ghana matter just as much as us.