Dairy Queen
April 7, 2008
Murdock, Catherin Gilbert. Dairy Queen. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
Think you have it bad this summer? DJ has it worse. She is spending the summer single-handedly trying to save her family’s dairy farm after her father injures himself. Up at 5am to milk, then clean the stalls, then bail hay, milk again and do it all over the next day.
Football is in the family’s blood. Both DJ’s older brothers had historic high school careers and now play college ball. Her father used to coach and names all the farm’s cows after famous players and coaches.
Her summer looks like it might get even worse when a family friend and rival coach asks DJ to train his starting quarterback, Brian. As DJ and Brian train together, they begin to question themselves and what they want out of life. DJ discovers that she doesn’t want to be a “cow” following the herd.
” ‘You’d probably jump off the roof if they told you to.’
” ‘What are you talking about?’
” ‘Don’t you see how you live? You do all the work they expect you to do and you don’t even mind. It’s like you’re a cow. And one day in about fifty years they’re going to put you on a truck and take you away to die and you’re not even going to mind that either.’ Brian shook his head like he was truly sorry.”
In fact, she wants to follow her own beat and play high school football in the fall. Her decision will strain her budding relationship with Brian and her family.
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April 29th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Brashares, Ann. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Imagine having three friends you grew up with. You spent every summer with them, until one summer came a long. You were all in high school. Every one of you was going a different way for the summer, and you couldn’t really keep in contact with them. What would you do?
Well, these group of girls got a pair of old raggidy jeans. But they weren’t just any jeans. These jeans fit all of them, and they were all different sizes. Carmen decided to make the jeans into a sisterhood, the sisterhood of the traveling pants. These jeans traveled all over the world, because Carmen went to visit her dad, One went to greece, Bridget went to a soccer camp, and the other stayed home and worked.
They each shared the pants, and sent them through the mail. The jeans made them feel unstoppable, like they could accomplsih any challenge that came towards them. But at the same time, it gave them a great amount of luck. Each of the girls went through difficult obsticles in the summer, but with eachtoher and the jeans, they made it through them.
That summer helped them realize they love eachother like sisters. If it wasn’t for the “traveling pants” maybe their summers would have been different..