finding what we've lost

I’ve been looking back at my old posts. The first post was during January 2019–two entire years ago. I was still an immature fourth grader.

Then again, I’m not very mature right now, am I?

My first post on this blog (back then, it was simply a website to record my book reviews) was also my first out-of-school book review. It was about the book There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom. I remember that book being in my fourth grade classroom library. I loved it.

This is what I wrote (or you can find it):

I think this book tells the feelings of a boy that is disliked by his teachers and peers. 10 year old Bradley Chalkers actually enjoys that everybody hates him, until he meets Clara Davis,who will become his favorite consoler in the future. Clara, who likes Bradley a lot, gives him advice. She tells him that he is always going to be nice on the inside,even if he is a monster on the outside. After hearing that, Bradley tries hard to be kind to everyone. But then a terrible tragedy occurs. Clara leaves the school to teach kindergarten at a different school. Bradley feels like he has lost everything. But then he joins his former friend, Jeff Fishnose. Jeff helps him be like other people. He takes Bradley to a birthday party and teaches him how to behave since he hasn’t gone to a birthday party in many years. Finally, Bradley feels like he has changed into a completely different boy.

Now, it’s time to nitpick my fourth grade grammar (this shows how immature I am–why am I even doing this? Just for the satisfaction, I suppose. And trying to procrastinate doing more book reviews. I feel kind of guilty not reviewing a whole lot of good books I read over the past months.)

First off, a problem that’s not very important. I wrote “I think” at the beginning, but behind that, I’m stating something that happens in the book, so the “I think” can be removed. Next, a digit cannot be at the beginning of a sentence, so it should be “Ten-year-old” (I also missed the dashes… I think there are supposed to be dashes?) The comma after “meets Clara Davis” needs a space after that. I spelled consoler wrong–it should be counselor. Another space needed after the comma after “on the inside”. Otherwise, there’s actually no more grammar mistakes.

Alright, obviously, what’s more important than the grammar errors in my review is the content itself. This is a book report, not a book review like I thought it was. All I was doing was summarizing the book’s content. And sadly, I just kept doing that until in fifth grade or something, when my teacher corrected me. And my writing is confusing. Where in the world did Jeff Fishnose come from? How is it “former” best friend?

So yes, I was terrible at writing book reviews.

Rather, I still am terrible at writing book reviews.

Ha, at least my blogging skills are better!

I hope…

BTW: The subscribe thing on the side doesn’t work. Actually, it has never worked before since we added it. After we move and everything’s settled, I might try to fix it with my dad.