8th week -Martin Luther King-

Title: Martin Luther King

Author: Alan C. McLean

Publisher (level): Oxford Bookworms Factfiles (3.2)

Summary:

Martin Luther King was born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia. When Martin started school, he couldn’t find his friend. After school, he knew that his friend went to school for whites, and that he couldn’t play with his friend anymore, because he was black and his friend was white.

This segregation is based on slavery in sixteenth century. Men and women were taken from their homes in Africa and brought to the North and South America to work on farms. Many slaves fought against the slave-owners. Britain made buying and selling slaves against the law in 1807 and a year later America did the same. But slave owners in the South of the United States of America refused to free their slaves.

Martin thought non-violent protest is the best way to fight to segregation because he heard of a talk about Mohandas Gandhi, the Indian leader, who thought that love was more powerful than hate. He followed this thought whenever he took any action. When more than 200,000 people marched on Washington D.C. to ask for equal rights for black Americans, he stood in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln and made the most famous speech of his life.

A few years later he was shot and died. He was thirty-nine years old. The last words of his most famous speech were written on the stone above his grave.

Evaluation: 5 stars

This is only after reading this book that I know why Martin Luther King referred Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana in his speech. There were terrible segregations for black people. I could gain my knowledge about racism and how to overcome it by reading this book.

In order to prevent from making more tragedy of segregations, this book should be more familiar to people all over the world.

7th week -The Birds-

Title: The Birds

Author: Daphne du Maurier

Publisher (level): Penguin Readers (2)

Summary:

Nat lived near the sea with his family. He liked working out on the farm down near the beach quietly with only the sea and wind to listen to. He watched the birds. In spring the birds moved away from the beach, but in autumn they came back. But suddenly the weather was colder. The birds were more excited than usual. There was something wrong with them.

At night Nat heard the noise of the angry from the window. He opened it and something flew past him. It was bird. Later, there was a sound at the window again. He opened the window and there was not one bird but five or six of them. Then he heard scream from his children’s bedroom. Hundreds of birds got into there. They started to attack and wanted to kill.

Next morning the radio said that there was something wrong with millions of the birds and that they must shut the windows and the door and stay home. Nat worked all morning, putting up wood over the windows and doors of the house. He recommended owner of the farm near his house to do so but he denied and said, “I have more important things to do.”

Next day there were hundreds of dead birds at Nat’s garden. Nat went to the owner’s house to get some foods but the owner was dead and there were lots of dead birds in the house. He took some foods and wood for fire. He must still be afraid from thousands of birds.

Evaluation: 2 stars

I want to know the conclusion of this book. But it was not written. Whether he succeeded to escape from the angry birds or killed by them? Otherwise did the author want to tell us that not to prepare cause big problems? I can’t be satisfied with this book.

By the way, I know the case that the birds kill someone indirectly: for example influenza. But is there the case that the birds kill someone directly?

6th week -Commerce-

Title: Commerce

Author: Paul A Davies

Publisher (level): Oxford Bookworms Factfiles (3.2)

Summary:

Every time we watch television, travel on a bus, or buy something in a shop, we are taking part in the world of commerce. Hundreds of years ago, families worked for themselves. But as people started to live together in towns and cities, they began to do different jobs. People work, earn money and spend money.

The value of world trade is about 4,000 billion dollars a year, and it is growing fast. The European Union began in 1952 when six European countries formed the ECSC. In 1957, the same six countries formed the EEC to made trade much cheaper and easier between these countries. Other parts of the world started to make similar agreements. But there are unfair trade between richer country and poorer country. Richer country controls the businesses of poorer country.

In the 1990s, the stock markets decided that Internet companies were the future of business. New Internet companies were formed everyday and people bought stocks in these companies. But Internet business is the same as other kinds of business: only the best companies are successful and most of the companies go out of business.

The world of business will continue to change quickly. The most successful companies will be the ones who can change with it.

Evaluation: 4 stars

This book is suitable for Japanese students to learn reading, and politics and economics in secondary education. But it isn’t for this reading class because it is already summarized: it has no words to erase. So I picked up what I want to write as the previous review.

I got a lot of knowledge of economics from this book: the history of money, economical problems of poorer countries, importance of fair trade, and so on.

5th week -A History of Britain-

Title: A History of Britain

Author: Fiona Beddall

Publisher (level): Penguin Readers (3.2)

Summary:

Britain was invaded four times in its history by the great Roman Julius Caesar in 55 B.C., the Angle Saxons in 409, the Vikings at the end of 8^th century, and Normans in 1068. In the time of Norman kings the language of government and literature was the Normans’ language, French. So though the Saxons’ language grew into modern English, Half the words in English language come from French.

Catholic Church had great power in Britain until the time of Henry VIII, who closed Catholic and started new one when he had religious problem of marriage. Since then, Catholic Kings and Queens, and Protestant ones competed and Protestant got more power.

In the 1930s, about a quarter of the world’s population was ruled by the British and they said “The sun never goes down on our empire.” They meant that it was always daytime somewhere in the Empire and their empire was forever.

After The Second World War, most of Britain’s Empire became independent. But Britain plays important places of the world. (172 words)

Evaluation: 3 stars

In Japan, We must learn about world history when we are high school students but we can’t learn about British history as more as this book especially about each kings and queens before Tudor.

Because of the quality of this book about history, I picked up stories only which I was interested in. To say the truth, I wanted to pick the stories of each kings, queens, and governors, Magna Carta, and The Industrial Revolution but if I wrote all of them, the summary section would be too long.

I want to read a book about social sciences in the next time. (102 words)

4th week -Green Planet-

Title: Green Planet

Author: Christine Lindop

Publisher (level): Oxford University Press (2.6)

Summary:

On 1 March 2002, the Ariane rocket went up into the sky. On the rocket was Envisat. Envisat is the satellite which gets power from the light of sun, and uses the power to send information back to scientists on earth. Scientist can learn what is happening in the air, in the sea and on earth.

There are many people and organizations that have tried to make the Earth a better place. For example, Rachel Carson　wrote a book Silent Spring which says that using a lot of pesticides destroys our environment, Greenpeace was established to protest to those who do wrong things to the Earth, and so on.

Even not so famous people take effort to save the Earth. When there was an accident that large amounts of oil went into the sea and onto the coast in a lonely part of Alaska in 1989, over 10,000 people helped cleaning the beaches.

To save the Earth a lot of people will need to work hard. (166 words)

Evaluation: 4 stars

This book is written in British English but I think we have no trouble to understand the sentences. It takes not more than one day to read it.

I could understand what efforts are taken by people to save the Earth. I think I am taking more or less efforts: not using plastic bags when shopping, going to bed early in order not to use more electricity. But when I am being lazy, I waste more resources than I have saved. (81 words)