The Da Vinci Code 200-300

Langdon realizes that they must be holding the Priory keystone. He says that only the leader of the Priory would have access to the keystone, and Sophie says she thinks her grandfather may have been the leader of the Priory. The car stops and Vernet lets them out, but then apologetically pulls a pistol on them. Vernet tells Langdon and Sophie to give him the box. He just heard over the radio that they are wanted for three other murders. Langdon realizes who the three must have been. He hands the box over to Vernet, but he also manages to put a spent shotgun shell into the door. When Vernet tries to shut them into the truck, but can't. Langdon bursts out of the door, takes the box back, and gets back into the truck while Sophie drives away. Vernet then calls the manager of the bank and has him activate the tracking system on the armored truck. Langdon smuggles the cryptex into Teabing’s house and hides it underneath a divan in the sitting room. Langdon says that Sophie doesn’t know the true story of the Grail, and Teabing says he will tell her. Teabing explains that Leonardo Da Vinci thought the New Testament was written by men, not God, and that some gospels had been left out. Teabing shows Sophie a picture of the Da Vinci fresco The Last Supper. There is no chalice or Holy Grail present in the painting, as many people think, but only wine glasses for each person. Teabing says the Holy Grail is not a thing, but a person. Teabing says that the Holy Grail is Mary's body and that the documents prove that everyone in Mary’s blood line is related to Jesus. Collet receives a tip about Langdon’s and Sophie’s location. He gets in his car and heads to Versailles. Langdon tells Teabing that all of the members of the Priory are dead. They guess that the Church itself figured out who the brothers were and killed them. They also surmise that the Church struck because it thought the Priory was planning to release the documents. Teabing, Langdon, and Sophie look at the cryptex. Langdon tries to determine whether part of the box might contain a clue about the password. He finds a small hole in the interior. When he pushes the end of a paper clip through it, the rose falls out of the wood. Behind the rose there are some lines of text. As he is looking at the text, Silas hits him on the head. Silas has Teabing and Sophie at gunpoint. He orders Teabing to hand him the cryptex. Teabing agrees and then slashes Silas with one of his crutches, right on the punishment belt strapped around Silas’s thigh. Silas goes down, and they bind and gag him. Langdon, Teabing, and Sophie fool Collet and the police into going upstairs. Collet goes down to the barn and finds that most of the sports cars are there, except for one of them. On the plane, Langdon and Teabing try and fail to decipher the text on the back of the rose. Sophie takes the text from them and says it is simply written backwards, the way Da Vinci used to write in his notebooks and that it can be read in a mirror. At the airfield, Fache cannot find out who is on Teabing’s plane with him, but he does manage to determine where the plane will land.

Paper Towns 101-200

Margo’s parents are not upset by the fact that she ran away. They always just kind of have seen her as a pain, so they don’t really put a lot of effort into finding her. Quentin knows that if she’s going to be found, he’s going to have to be the one to find her. He knows that when she’s disappeared in the past, she’s left clues to where she was. The window of his room and the window of her room face each other, and he notices a poster on the back of her window shades that has never been there before. Quentin and his friends Ben and Radar go into Margo’s room at look at the poster. It is of Woody Guthrie. After they see the poster, they find a Woody Guthrie record in her room with the song “Walt Whitman’s Niece” circled. After this, they find a Walt Whitman poetry book in her room with a lot of seemingly random things highlighted, one of them being “Unscrew the locks from the doors! / Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!” They couldn’t figure out a figurative meaning for any of the highlighted quotes, so they decided to try a literal meaning. They went back to Margo’s house and unscrewed her door from it’s jamb, but found nothing. Then he realized that the clue might be for his door, so he unscrewed his own door and found a piece of paper with an address. The address leads them to an old deserted strip mall near where they live. It’s really creepy in there, and they see some graffiti on the wall that is in Margo’s print that says “You will go to the paper towns and you will never come back.” Q looks up paper towns and discovers that they are subdivisions that were built but nobody ever lived in them. Q starts to think that Margo might be dead. He thinks the Whitman poetry might have been like a suicide note. Q goes back to the mall to see if he can figure out anything new, and he notices a few subtle differences to know that somebody has been there, and he figures it was Margo, so he’s pretty sure now that she’s not dead. He also found many travel books with different things highlighted, so he studies those too, but there are still no solid clues as to where she is.

The Da Vinci Code 100-200

Langdon believes that the Mona Lisa became famous because Da Vinci said it was his masterpiece and carried it everywhere he went. At the museum Langdon and Sophie found blood on the Mona Lisa and on the floor beneath it. Langdon said the message the blood says on the Mona Lisa stands for female worshipping religions in the Catholic religion. Landon is then arrested while Sophie hides behind a bench. Langdon is taken captive by Claude Guorard. Sophie and Langdon escape the museum in her car. While in her car, they try to formulate a plan for sure fire escape. They then go to the station to get tickets for the next train out of Paris. Sophie and Langdon buy two tickets and get in a waiting taxi. Langdon discovers an address written on the back of a key. They head toward that address. Fache tells Collet that the train tickets Sophie bought were probably decoys. He decides to alert Interpol to their flight. Sophie then starts to ask Landon questions while in the taxi. Langdon then tells her of documents that were found in a ruined temple. Since then, the documents have made their way around the globe are now hidden in an unknown place. Langdon tells Sophie that the documents and the secret they corroborate are commonly known as the Holy Grail. Sophie realizes that their cabbie is about to turn them in. Holding him at gunpoint, she forces him out of his cab and makes Langdon take the wheel. Langdon can’t drive a stick shift, but they manage to get away. Sophie takes the wheel, and they continue driving toward the address written on the key. As Langdon looks at the key, he thinks about the equal-armed cross engraved on it. The cross is very similar to the symbol used by the Knights Templar, the guardians of the Holy Grail. Sophie wonders if the key is to the Grail itself, but Langdon thinks it unlikely that Sophie’s grandfather was so high up in the hierarchy of the Priory of Sion that he had access such classified information. They finally reach the address on the back of the key. It is the Depository Bank of Zurich, a Swiss bank. In the Depository Bank of Zurich, Sophie and Langdon use the key to get through security. 

The Always War 100-200

She realizes that she is on a plane with Gideon and they are heading toward enemy territory. She sees all the instruments lighting up as Gideon tries to disable all of the security on all of the plane. Then the plane jolts around and Tessa gets thrown around the inside smacking into everything. Then she flies all the way to the back and hits her head and everything goes dark. She wakes up and Gideon is getting ready to go out of the plane and surrender himself to the enemy for the ones he killed. She then tackles him to the ground and nothing happens. They hear knocking on the closet in the plane and a girl comes out named Dev. They find out they are in the wrong place and that bomber planes are going to drop bombs in their position. They duck for cover and nothing happens. They decide to take off and go towards a friendly base. They are up in the sky and go over the arch that was blown down by friendlies that was one of the enemies most cherished relics. Then something goes wrong with the plane and it starts to go down they crash land somewhere they do not know so Gideon jumps out of the plane and yells he surrenders but nobody was there. They later find out many secrets about the war and how when Gideon flew the plane and bombed the people the reason he did not do it in real life is because the war they fought in happened over 75 years ago. They wanted to keep people at a stand still and from another war breaking out. Everyone is shocked to find out that the whole war is a conspiracy to keep people at bay for bigger plans to take place. After being chased by people and learning the truth they wanted to go home and tell everyone the truth and make sure this comes to light. They find out the computer simulations they flew on were set to the environment of the past and they were not flying anything. The video he saw of the bombing killing everybody was a very old recording and he did not actually do that and everyone in the country is dead and nobody wanted the Americans back home to know. They find out there are bigger plans at bay but they do not know what and that this whole war that was over 75 years ago may start up again and it has only just begun.

Da Vinci Code 1-100

Jacques Saunière is in the Grand Gallery of the Louvre. He pulls a Caravaggio painting off the wall in order to trigger the gallery’s alarm and seal himself inside, away from an albino attacker who is pursuing him. But the protective metal cage does little to stop the man, who pulls a pistol on Saunière and asks him to reveal where “it” is. Saunière at first pretends that he does not know and then gives the albino a fake location. The fake location is a lie that Saunière has carefully rehearsed. Saunière realizes that his three partners are dead, and that if he dies the secret they all shared will die with him. Fache lead Langdon to the Grand Gallery. Langdon knows that the agent is wearing a cross that depicts Jesus and the twelve apostles. Silas arrived at Saint-Sulpace and started to reflect on his past. He left home at a young age after murdering his abusive father and then went to jail. Angirosa saved Silas, giving him that name, and then Silas became Angirosa's right hand man. Fache and Collet continue to try to reach Sophie. An alarm rings, signaling a security breach in the men’s room. The two policemen see on the GPS screen that Langdon has apparently jumped out of the window. Silas enters Saint-Sulpice. Sister Sandrine offers to give him a tour of the church, but he refuses it. He asks her to go back to bed, saying he wants to pray and can show himself around. She agrees, but she is suspicious of him. Hiding in the shadows, she watches him pray, thinking that Silas might be the enemy she was warned about. Langdon tries to decipher Sophie's message and then realizes that it says "Leonardo Da Vinci! The Mona Lisa!”

Paper Towns 1-100

Quentin is a slightly nerdy high school senior who’s not too high up in the high school food chain. However, ever since he was little, he’s been in love with the most popular girl in school, and his next door neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman. One night, she knocks on his window at about midnight dressed in all black and wearing black face paint. She tells him that she’s going on a mission and she’s chosen him to help her out. Even though it’s a school night, he can’t resist. That night, they go around town completing her eleven-part revenge scheme. She gets revenge on her ex-boyfriend Jase for cheating on her. She gets revenge on her ex-best friend Becca for sleeping with Jase. She gets revenge on her “friend” Lacey who’s never been a very good friend. She also tells Quentin that he can choose someone to get revenge on, and he chooses Chuck Parson, a guy who had picked on him for as long as he could remember. After that, they go break in to Sea World just for the fun of it. They have an amazing night together, and Quentin falls even more in love with Margo. Quentin went to school the next day after about only half an hour of sleep, and barely made it through the day awake. Margo, however, didn’t show up at school for the next two or three days. People started to talk, because she was basically the “queen of the school.” She’s the one who kept the bullies in line, and since she was gone, some of the school jerks, like her ex-boyfriend Jase started to terrorize the school. Quentin got them to stop by black-mailing Jase about the night he and Margo got revenge on him. The next morning, when Quentin wakes up, there is a detective in their living room asking questions about Margo because her parents filed a missing person report for her.

The Always War 1-100

Tessa a girl from the town of Waterford City a run down town in the U.S. The country is in the middle of a huge war and guy from Waterford was being recognized to today at a ceremony for his courage and bravery in the war. The whole town gathers to see this one person who has brought pride and joy to this run down depressed city. He gets up to the stage and when the general calls him to come forward and receive his medal he stops. He hesitates and says he does not deserve it because he is a coward and he runs off. Tessa chases after him to go see what the problem was and if he was alright and wondered why he stormed off. She found him puking into a trashcan and thinks he is sick but he tells her that he is not. He tells her that he did terrible things and he should not get a medal for it so he went back home. Tessa laid in her bed thinking about what happened today and was mad about it. She then heard tapping on her wall coming from the room next door which was Gideon's room and she figured out he was tapping in morse code. She got out and encyclopedia and figured out he was tapping SOS. She then devised a plan to go see what was wrong with him and if she could do anything to help him. She gathered some flowers to take to him so his mom would not just think she is there for no reason. His mom lets Tessa in and she goes into Gideon's room. She tells him that she heard his SOS and that she was here to help if he needed anything. He asks her if she could bring him a computer and she did but hides it on the way to his room so if anybody was watching they would get suspicious. Gideon takes apart the computer and rewires it so the government cannot trace what he is looking at then hacks it into the data files of the military and pulls up a video. He tells Tessa she does not want to watch it but Tessa insists on it and it was Gideon dropping bombs on a village killing men, women, and children and Tessa gets upset. Gideon tells her that he killed over 1000 people in the war and that he was no war hero he was a cold killer. Tessa storms out upset and runs away. She goes to her room and slams the computer under her bed upset. She runs down the street upset then thinks of this beautiful spider web she saw before the ceremony and runs back to where it is at. She goes there and two kids were fighting and one falls on top of the web and this upsets Tessa she starts beating on the kids and runs away. Now upset with herself she thinks back about the video. She realized that he was looking for something in it and he still had hope of something. She goes to her room to find Gideon escaped from his room by going through Tessa's wall and floor and he painted it and left it unnoticeable when he left. She watched outside in the dark and spots Gideon walking down the street but was being followed by someone so she decides to go help and try to warn him. She gets close but hears Gideon talking to someone making a deal and he tells the stranger he can operate it perfectly fine and Tessa hides inside of something and covers up with a blanket and listens. All of a sudden she feels the floor vibrate underneath of her and feels the object she is in go forward and up into the sky.

13 Little Blue Envelopes Response

Book Title: 13 Little Blue Envelopes
Author: Maureen Johnson
Year of Publication: 2005
Number of Pages: 321
AR Points Awarded: 9.0

Literary Elements
Narrator - It is written from the third person limited viewpoint, with Ginny as the main character. “Ginny wasn’t sure if she believed that there was any more money waiting for her in an ATM.” p. 45
Protagonist - Ginny is a kind of shy and awkward teenage girl who’s not overly confident. She never really had a lot of courage until Aunt Peg got her going on the quest across Europe. She’s really nice and a very intriguing character. “As a rule, Ginny Blackstone tried to go unnoticed...” p. 7
Antagonist - In a way, Ginny is also the antagonist. Sometimes she is so shy and reserved that it actually works against her. It really takes a lot of self-convincing for her to do many of the things in the letters. “Only Aunt Peg could make something like this happen. Not that Ginny hadn’t had to do her part. First, she’d had to convince herself that she could follow what seemed like an obvious flight of insanity from an aunt who wasn’t known for her reliability.” p. 14
Setting - This story takes place in so many places across Europe, it’s impossible to find one setting. It takes place in London, Scotland, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Denmark, and Greece. (Amsterdam) “Amsterdam was damp. For a start, the central train station was smack in the middle of some kind of inlet and surrounded by water...A canal even separated it from the busy main road that curved past...From there, countless tiny bridges spanned the canals that spidered out and cut through every street. Plus, it was raining--a slow steady drizzle that she could barely see...” p. 199
Conflict - The conflict is sort of man v. nature, but I’d say it’s more man v. the world. On Ginny’s quest, she’s got to do so many things that are unfamiliar to her, and she’s pretty much on her own. The conflict is simply getting each of the tasks done. “...she thought that this was a perfect Paris night. But she didn’t feel perfect. She felt alone...” p. 170
Theme - Even when everything seems terrible and hopeless, it is up to us to make things good. We need to look for the positives in every adventure. “...understand that the world is not such a bad place....we try for a better future...We make the fields beautiful.” p. 239
Historical Context - Ginny visits a lot of sites and monuments that are historically significant, such as the Vestal Virgins, who were significant in Greek mythology. “My favorite of all the gods and goddesses, believe it or not, was Vesta, the goddess of hearth and home.” p. 123

Reflection
I really liked 13 Little Blue Envelopes. It was easy to read and it was really interesting. I love learning about new places, and the author did a great job of describing all the places Ginny went to. I really identified with the main character, Ginny. She’s just an average teenager who’s not overly confident. She’s just an average girl who’s trying to be happy. It didn’t remind me of any other books specifically, but it was like a lot of books where the main character eventually finds herself and lives happily ever after. It would make a good movie because there would be so many cool settings, and the characters are likable. I would recommend this book to any teenage girl. It didn’t end the way I expected. I was kind of upset when the thirteenth letter got stolen, but I actually kind of like this. Ginny ends up finding out her own meaning for the quest that way.

13 Little Blue Envelopes 301-321

Ginny discovers that the number her Aunt left with the paintings was the number of a famous art dealer. Aunt Peg wanted her paintings auctioned off to make money for Ginny to have. Ginny ended up making over a hundred thousand dollars off of them. She’s pretty sure that this is what the thirteenth letter said to do, though she never did find it. Ginny ends up going back home to her family, and she leaves half of her money for her uncle Richard. She also tells Richard that Aunt Peg was in love with him.

13 Little Blue Envelopes 201-300

Ginny ends up going to stay in a youth hostel, but it was really gross, so she left. She went to a hotel, but the last room had just been rented out. A nice man in the lobby could tell she was really distressed and had no place to stay, so he told her she could stay with his family. She spent the next week with the Knapp family. The mother and father were very detailed and overly energetic, and the daughter, who was about Ginny’s age, was very moody and kept to herself. After about a week, she finally got a “day off” to go to the museum her aunt directed her to talk to Piet about the painting, The Night Watch. Piet didn’t really say anything significant, and Ginny was starting to get disappointed and frustrated with her aunt’s pointless quests. Her next letter tells her to go to Copenhagen, Denmark. There, she meets an artist friend of her aunt’s named Knud. Knud lives in and paints from a house boat. Ginny goes to visit him in it, and she immediately falls asleep. When she wakes up, they’re sailing north watching the sunset. Knud tells her that these sunsets were one of Aunt Peg’s favorite things. Ginny then went to stay in another hostel, and there she met four teenagers from Australia and became friends with them. The next letter from Peg tells her to immediately get on a train and go catch a boat to Greece. Ginny tells her friends about her trip to Greece, and why she has to go, and they all decide they want to go with her. When they got there, she was instructed to open the twelfth letter. This one told her a lot about Aunt Peg’s life. It said that Peg had been in love with Richard and that when he told her he loved her, she freaked out and ran away. The journey Peg had led her on across Europe was the same journey she had taken. It also says that when Peg got really sick, she returned to live with Richard. It also tells her to open the thirteenth letter when she’s ready, because the letter has a very important task in it. Ginny decides she’s going to open it, but she wants a little time first. She and her friends go swimming in the sea in Greece first, but when they get out to read the letter, Ginny discovers all of their bags have been stolen, including the letter. The only things she still has are her passport and ATM card, and she only has forty pounds left in her ATM account. Ginny gets ahold of Richard, and he gets her a plane ticket to London, and when she gets there, he tell her that he and Aunt Peg were married in the last part of her life, so Richard is technically her uncle. When she finds this out, she kind of freaks out and runs away. She goes to see Keith, and he tells her that she needs to go back and talk to Richard. When she does, she goes into her Aunt Peg’s room and looks at her Aunt’s favorite painting. She feels it, and feels a weird lump underneath it, and discovers a key. She thinks the key is to her Aunt’s art studio in Harrod’s. In there, she finds a bunch of paintings her aunt did in the last part of her life along with a phone number for a man named Cecil.

Anna Dressed in Blood 213-314

After Anna went outside, Cas realized that she was now free. Anna could leave and do whatever she wanted, but Cas knew she wouldn't. He then went home to see his mom and catch up on some sleep, hoping that he would soon have his athame in his hand again. When he arrived at home he told his mom that he had lost the athame, and she had a disappointed look on her face. She then told Cas that she felt sorry for him and that she knew he would get it back. After he talked to his mom, Cas left and went to find Thomas and Carmel at school to talk to them. He wanted to ask them if they could help him talk to Will and get his athame back. Once he was at school though, he realized that Will and Chance were both gone. They figured that they probably just stayed home and would come to school tomorrow. The next day, Carmel, Thomas, and Cas waited until school started and then went to Will's house, knowing he wouldn't take the athame to school with him. When they went to his house, it appeared no one was home so Thomas and Cas went inside to start looking for the athame. When they got inside, they went upstairs to where they thought Will's room must be. They then went into his room which was pitch black in the dark upstairs. After looking and stumbling around, they realized that it looked like the room had already been gone through. Thomas then turned on the lights and they realized what they were stumbling on were Will's and Chase's bodies lying on the floor. They both had huge bites taken out of them. Cas then knew what had killed them. It was the same ghost that killed his father. He didn't realize why or how it was there, but he knew it was the same ghost and that they had to get out of there. As they ran out screaming, Cas spotted his athame and grabbed it. Once outside, they got in the car with Carmel and headed to Anna's house. Once there, Cas told Anna what had happened and she wanted to help. She then got in the car and her and Cas headed to Cas's, and Carmel and Thomas went elsewhere. When they arrived, Anna couldn't go in because of the spell to keep ghosts out, so Cas went in by himself to explain to his mom what had happened. He went upstairs and found his mom and told her what had happened. She then began freaking out and just wanted to get out of there. She started throwing things in the suit case and then her and Cas both heard a distinct noise. All Cas said was "we have to get out of here." Right after that, the steps from the attic hit the hall upstairs. The ghost, Cas's father's killer, had been in the attic the whole time. Cas and his mom went out slowly and looked at him. He had no eyes, with his eyelids stitched shut, and was mossy with dreadlocks. He explained to Cas that he had been there before they moved in, and that he knew where they were because of the athame. Cas then got furious and lashed out at him. The ghost then threw Cas against a wall, with Anna outside yelling, hoping everything is ok. All of a sudden, Anna blows the door off of the house and is looking the ghost in the eye. He tells her to come in, knowing she can't, but she just tells him to come out there and fight her. He then laughs and disappears. Knowing that Cas doesn't have much time, he gets to Thomas's shop to figure out how to kill the ghost. They then come up with a plan and head to Anna's house, knowing he won't be as powerful on her turf. Cas and Anna while at the house waiting to set up a plan, kiss for a long time, knowing that they love each other. Cas doesn't want to hurt Anna, but knows what he has to do in order to save the ghost from killing him and her. Cas then cuts Anna a little bit, hoping not to hurt her, but knowing it will draw him to the house. Sure enough, he arrives and Cas and him start to fight. Beings Anna is cut, she is weaker, but starts to help Cas when the ghost cracks Cas's ribs by throwing him against the wall. She then gets furious and rises, her dress covered in blood. Anna then punches a whole in the floor, and flames appear. Cas knows what she's going to do and shouts, "Anna, No!" but Anna just looks at him and says "I don't regret this." and drags the ghost into the flames. Then Thomas, Carmel, and Cas's mom run out of the house, dragging Cas with them. The house then caves in and practically disappears with no remains left. Thomas then tells Cas how sorry he is, knowing how him and Anna felt about each other. He even saw how they felt before Cas did. But Cas just looks at the house and says "I wish i could see her one last time." And then everything goes black. Cas then wakes up the next day in a Thomas's shop with everybody around. They are happy to see him awake and Thomas and Carmel want to speak to him alone. They then ask him how he's feeling, but all he can think about is Anna. He then mentions her and Thomas asks " Where do you think she went?" Cas replies, " I dont know, maybe you and Carmel can help me figure it out."