#19 Burnet Book Club!
29 January 2021
Making links in your learning is important - so we love it when you link your learning from your BNC sessions to other subjects. To help you to do this more in English, we have started the Burnet Book Club: a place for you to find and recommend books that talk about important themes from the news. Take a look at the Burnet Book Club page for our latest reads!
For this week's competition, we would like you to tell us about a book that mentions one of our themes for this half term: DEMOCRACY or PROTEST. These themes do not need to be the focus of the whole story - we just want to hear about when and how they were mentioned.
For example, did one character show their disapproval by going on strike? Were lots of characters fighting for or against something? Or did the characters make a decision in a democratic way, for example, by voting?
The best entries this week will give us the title of the book, the author's name and a well-explained example of protest or democracy. You could also tell us whether you would recommend this book to someone else and why.
You could say something like:
The book I read was (insert book title here) by (insert author's name here). I think the story showed PROTEST / DEMOCRACY because in the story (insert the example from the story). I would recommend this book to (who?) because (insert reason here).
The deadline for entries is Friday January 29th at midday. PLEASE ENTER ONLY ONCE and make sure your work is your own. Good luck!
Comments (30)
The book I read was world of norm must be recycled. It shows democracy because they go on and on about climate change and protecting the tip of the ice burg I would recommend this book to Jeff kinney fans because that's who the books are made for and also it has the same humor as Jeff kinney books
Thanks for introducing us to what sounds like a hilarious and relevant book, ethical_cliff! I think you're saying that discussing climate change is an example of democracy. Can you say more about the connection between the two?
Hello BNC,
The book that I chose was the first book that sprung to my mind when I saw this question. The book is a part of a series called 'Cherub' and the title is 'Man vs Beast' and I will be talking about protesting AND democracy. It is written by Robert Muchamore who was a private investigator. All of the Cherub books are based about children who are recruited to be undercover agents and in most of the books the main character is called James Adams. In Man vs Beast three agents (Called: James Adams, Lauren Adams -James's sister- and Kyle Blueman) are trying to infiltrate an animal terrorist organisation called the Animal Freedom Poliza, and have teamed up with two of the adult mission controllers and a ex-convict animal demonstrator who is a huge advocate for peaceful protesting. In the story, outside of a huge animal testing laboratory large groups of peaceful protestors who are trying to campaign to get the laboratory shut down or to stop using animals. While all of this is happening, the Animal Freedom Poliza are trying to cause as much havoc as possible to shut the laboratory down for good, they are committing loads of terrorist acts and assassinations. As you could have probably guessed, this is infringing on democracy due to its complete lawlessness. I would recommend this book and the whole series to teens as it has loads of violence and explicit content. In conclusion, 'Man vs Beast' both have elements of protests and democracy making it be a good entry.
Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed,
-careful_science
Me and my dad are reading a book called Meta Wars fight for the future by Jeff Norton and at the start some people blow up a big warehouse and I think in my view that is a violent riot.
My name is daring_whale and this is my review on one of my favourite books.
It is called The Girl Who Stole An Elephant by Nizrana Farook. I think the story showed democracy since near the end the sister of the current king is made the queen after a fierce fight between the main character, Chaya and some villagers. I would recommend this book to 7+ since it is fun, exciting and interesting. I really enjoyed reading it!
The book I read was 'The Girl of Ink & Stars written by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. I think the story showed protests because in one part a boy does a riot protest because he didn't like the Governor, it was a riot protest because he burnt the Governor's ship. I would also like to say about how a girl in the story did a silent protest because she wanted her dad back, and they took him away because they thought he burnt the ship. I would recommend this book to people who love mystery books because this book is filled with mystery and friendship.
From buzzing_grapefruit
The book i read was 'A.N.T.I.D.O.T.E' by Malorie Blackman also famous for writing naughts and crosses. I believe the story showed protest because the company antidote did not like the shelby pharmaceutical and/or any company that was testing their products on animals. Back to where they showed protest was when they were holding up banners and signs saying animal testing with a huge X on it.I would recommend this to the people who love problem solving and using detective skills.
from decisive lion
Greta is 16 years old and she is from Sweden.She belives that humanity is facing an existential crisis
Good example. I like Greta. Her protests are more march and silent types I think.
Hello BNC
When I here protests my mind goes to the BLM protests going on all around the world. When I think of that I go to The Boxer which is a book by Nickesh Shukla. This book was recently a whole school read and the author actually filmed a video and sent it to our school! This book features Sunny a poor boy growing up and the book starts with Sunny getting beaten up by racists at a train station which really turns his entire life around. For the entire book he is constantly haunted by the memory and throughout the book there are protests and much more. This book also features the LGBTQ+ community which makes it that much more current. I highly recommend this book to any Secondary school child. It is quite hard hitting emotionally so only read if your ready. Thanks for reading!
-Empathetic Wildcat
Hi burnet news club
Although this might not be a book I have chosen a very interesting movie that I would want to publish a book on that movie is called “the hate you give”
i find this movie very phenomenal because it gives me a sense that I should be proud of who I am and I shouldn’t let anyone take me down as summarie of this movie is about A young black girl and a young black man were in the car and the young man named khaill Went and picked up a hairbrush in his car the Young black girl named Starr told him not to get the hairbrush since the police are right behind them. Without Him knowing he decided to go and take that hairbrush out of the car meanwhile the police behind them thought that it was a weapon used against them So as you guessed it the police decided to shoot him
starr Was in shock as she saw her best friend lying on the floor in case the police decided to arrest her for no reason and unfortunately Khaill didn’t make it through.
Starr Could not take that her best friend was killed for no reason so She decided to make a point about this.
When she went to school the next day her friend asked her how old is like seeing her best friend not making it today and she didn’t want to say anything about that and eventually the best friend at school said “it looked like a weapon in his hand that’s why the police shot him”
No one would like to take that in so she decided I’m not going to do this she used an example she got her best friends hairbrush and start rubbing it in the air screaming this is how it was this is how it was to noticing your best friend getting killed for no reason this is how it was get on the ground get on the ground
This part really meant a lot to me because although someone might say that the situation isn’t that important you might think it’s important and for them to disgrace it and say something very inappropriate about that situation will really hurt your feelings imagine if you decided to run a protest on anything you liked And someone was to come up to you and say this protest is dumb I don’t even know why you support this person I know I would feel very angry at what do you said but why do you feel very angry I’m sure no one would like to take the lead and no one would like to keep in themselves therefore you would like to say I support this person because of this I will not change my mind and I will stick with it for the rest of my life.
I do not want to spoil much of this movie but I recommend you watch it it is a very interesting movie and I would love to publish a book on this and make it a truly amazing book.
This might not be a book but I really enjoyed watching the movie and I would recommend it being published as a book I am not sure if it is already a book but if it is it’s amazing and deserves 10 out of 10 stars!!
You can find this movie on Netflix 123, prime video, YouTube
Decisive_redcurrant
Sounds like a very heart touching movie, Good luck decisive redcurrant.
Thank you very much XD keep up with the good work no never give up!!!
Hello, I am reading a book called "Animal Farm". It is written by George Orwell. I have not finished it yet, but so far there are so many vandalism protests by the animals. They are not happy with the way their owner is treating them with no food, etc. so they decided to break the food storage door together to eat food and then when the owner was angry with them they attacked him and his friends. So, I think these are riot type. They made their own rules and all agreed on them so I think that is democracy. The rules are like all animals are equal and 4 legs good 2 legs bad (they counted wings as legs), … . That was it so far. I like the story so far.
Hello, just an update for the book. Things are getting messy! The pigs are breaking the rules and no democracy any more! Other animals working hard especially the horse and the donkey!
Thanks for the update! And well done for reflecting on how the events have changed the democracy.
I dont think that i have read a book that involves protesting or democracy. But i have watched a movie that involves protesting tho i cant remember the name. It was about womens right, the husband demanded that he should have food on the table when he came home and that the house should be clean the cows should be milked and the chikens eggs should be collected all whlie she has to look after two kids. she finally had enough and went to parlement and started protesting, other women started coming out the shadows and they all spoke with there voices
Hello, I am read this book before it is called The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis .Published on 2 October 2018. I like this book and I think because I think it explains polition and what happens in the presidency of Donald Trump. The department of energy , the department of Agriculture and the department of commerce. I reccomend this book because people who dont know how politics work should read this because it is important to know what is happening around the nation .
Can you tell us a couple of things you have learnt from the book?
Uh ok so I dont really have an idea BNC because as desicive_lion said A.N.T.I.D.O.T.E I also had that and when I wrote mine they were exactly the same so I didn't post it because maybe you would think it was plagiarism but if you want it here you go.
The book i read was called 'A.N.T.I.D.O.T.E' by Malorie Blackman she's also famous for writing naughts and crosses. I believe the story showed protest because the company antidote/( where the main character Elliot's mum worked.) did not like the Shelby pharmaceutical and/or any company that was testing their products on animals. Back to where they showed protest was when they were holding up banners and signs saying animal testing with a huge X on it.I would recommend this to the people who love problem solving and using detective skills and loves action and mystery twists.
It's great to have a similar point of view as another BNC member but you're right that we don't accept plagarism. It would be great to explain your view, in your own words, perhaps with an example to support why you think that you do.
A book I have read was 'Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World' by Kate Pankhurst. I have read both books on this and just read them over and over again because I find this book so inspiring and it enables me to do whatever I put my mind to. As the title gives off, these are fantastic women who changed the world for a better future in protest or other ways. For reasons such as racial inequality,(which has been going on for so long) or for women's rights. The thing I loved the most was that what they all did was the same: whatever they are told they cannot do, they will go out of their way to prove them wrong. Rosa Parks stood up to racial inequality by not standing up on a bus and leading a boycott, Emmeline Pankhurst organised the suffragettes who stood up to the lack of women's right and the law that said females couldn't vote. Another book that I loved was 12 years a slave by Solomon Northup. This book is also a movie. It is about slavery a black man who was actually born FREE, but was tricked into going to Washington D.C., kidnapped and then sold into slavery in the Deep South. Although it was originally written in 1853, I still think it is important, especially now when,(shamefully) there is still racism and SO MUCH to the extent that there HAD TO BE black lives matter protests.
P.S i love the hate u give
Hello BNC
The book that I have read is 'They can't kill us all'. This book is written by Wesley Lowery and it describes the Black Lives Matter movement in the context of U.S. history as well as Wesley's personal life. A deeply reported book that brings alive the quest for justice in the deaths. He concisely presents a story of human grief. Another reason why this is a great book is because it covers almost all the things which happens in the protests. My favourite quote of the story is "There is nothing that can prepare a family for the heart-clenching shock of loosing one of their own. And time and time again, those left behind described to me how so suddenly a normal, mundane weekday had become the worst day of their lives. This is because it tells the audience how someone feels after loosing their loved ones.
From ambitious_blackberry
I am reading a book called, ''Race & Class in the Ruins of Empire''. It is written by Akala. It is also the Sunday Times Bestseller. I have not finished it yet but so far, it is telling us the history of Britain in relation to BLM. The book, gives diary entries of different teenagers of ethnic minority, experiencing racism. It includes a lot of autobiography and political history and I'm discovering more and more as I go deeper into the book.
The book that instantly pops into my head is a book called TrooFriend and it's about a robot(Ivy) and lots of people who protest about not wanting to keep these tech monsters because of injuries from the robots ( called TrooFriend 560 mark IV) and it's one of my favourite books ever.
A book I have read is vote for Effie by Laura wood. Its shortlisted for the blue peter book award 2020. This book shows important topics: gender imbalance ,outdate school rules and woman's rights.it really shows how times are changing, how girls should be able to wear trousers and express themselves by there clothes .It all starts when the last piece of chocolate cake is stolen from her and she meets Aaron Davis school president and most popular kid in school. The boy who doesn't care about the school and his interest in school president only extends to free lunch passes. He gives all the school budget to the boys football team. Effie starts by campaigning for school council president with a bunch of misfits because she wants to change her school .She is shocked by the injustice she sees all around her and wants to fight for what's right. She campaigns for girls to play football, recycling ,a buddy scheme so no one feels alone. I love the feminist in this book, it shows the sexism that girls and women face everyday and it shows aspects of woman's right and links more recent women's rights march.
Hello active_guava here and my book is noughts and crosses
This book can be very political and can involve protest. This is about to younge people one white and the other black and they are not able to be together due to the law and this just creates chaos and destruction as later during the story a mal gets blown up by protesters and many black people died. The people who had done this were called the Liberation Militia and there were consiquenses as many of them were captured and later hanged.
Did I menchen the fact that in this book the black people had everything and the white were poor.
The racist part was if a black person had done this they would just have to pay for damage control which is why this links to democracy and links to protest.
Hope you enjoyed my book recap and how this links to our issue.
Hi BNC. I have chosen a particular chapter of a book called The Worlds Worst Parents. During a sports day, the parents are wanting their children to win. And that is when it all starts to get a bit chaotic. The children do not mind who wins, but the parents do. Eventually, the parents argue so much that it gets very violent. They all start to fight and get into a big protest on a sports day. This protest or argument, would probably be a riot as it gets pretty violent and harmful. I have finished that particular book now, and I would recommend it to everyone. Thank you!
protective_dusk.
That's an interesting point, protective_dusk. Are an argument and a protest the same thing?
Hi BNC,
I recently read the book 'The Boxer' by Nikesh Shuklar. It is about a teenager at college who gets beaten up because of the colour of his skin. The book is all about racism and ends in a massive protest where there are lots of angry people being very racist. It is a really interesting book which sends a powerful message. I strongly recommend this book.
sceptical_rainforest
Hi sceptical_rainforest, this sounds like a very powerful read! I have edited your comment slightly because some of the quotes you chose from the book were quite strongly worded and could be offensive to others. Keep up with you reading - great work.
Although I haven’t chosen a book, I have selected an interesting episode of the ‘Tracy Beaker Returns’ series written by Jacqueline Wilson. I think it is about protest because in that episode, the council was shutting down a care home ‘Elm tree house’ that Tracy Beaker(ex care kid) who works and lives in that care home too.
The Council decided to shut down the care home because they didn’t have enough money to stay open.
Instead, the council was going to send the kids to Burnywood(the worst care home in the country).
Tracy Beaker could not and did not allow that to happen, to let the council dump the children in an awful care home.
So, she encouraged the kids and senior care worker ‘Mike’ to start campaigning for a protest. At the same time one of the kids, ‘Lily’ who lived there was feeling upset because she didn’t want to go to her new foster home(even though her younger sisters wanted to).
On the day of the protest, Tracy was protesting on the roof to get the tv people to come, and it worked, she had the media’s and public's attention.
But Lily’s foster mother came to take Lily away, she was so upset that she climbed on the roof to tell Tracy that she doesn't want to go with the new foster family, but her foot slipped and she fell down from the roof and broke her arm and leg. She was rushed to the hospital and the council fired Mike for letting this happen.
But.... it all worked out in the end, because Mike got his job back as the council and one of the reporter’s understood the whole problem and realized how unfair this decision would have been on those kids. Lily and the other kids returned to their care home too.
I would recommend this episode to children because it’s warm-filled, fun and laughter and all sorts of adventures. There are unexpected twists and surprises too, and it also gives us a bleak idea of the real world, how it would be like to live in a care home.
-discreet_drum
Hi, Burnett News Club,
I am reading a book called " Freedom " By Catherine Johnson, which is a book about slavery. So far, what I've read is a boy named Nathaniel is a slave with his housekeeper, Missis Palmer who is very strict and and a talking repetitive bird which repeats every bad thing she says. Nathaniel wants to be with his Mamma, as he calls her and his younger sister named Martha, who are on their way to Mount Vernon and Missis sends other slaves there, and Nathaniel wants to go there too, but the housekeeper isn't letting him. There is a Mr Thomas which works there too, which I haven't heard of since I'm only on chapter 2, but he seems nearly as bad as Missis, as where I'm at in the story.
Hello BNC ,
I am going to tell you about what a democracy is so lets get into that .
So a democracy is basically the same as a vote like the vote in America and people voted Joe Biden and he won then people started to protest because Donald trump lost and people started to protest and they attacked the white house i think and sometimes it can get a little bit violent .so a democracy is a vote
thank you for listening today(:
The book that I have chosen that involves protests is “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. I have chosen this book because it involves animals fighting for their freedom which they do through vandalism and violence. Their farmer forgets to feed them regularly and the animals are treated differently based on their abilities and intelligence, the pigs are the higher class and get treated better then the donkeys, horses and dogs. The animals aren’t happy with how their owners treat them so they rebel and the animals create a democracy where all animals are equal. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to read about protests because it shows how everyone should be treated the same and it makes us change our perspective on people. It also teaches us not to judge people and assign put them into groups.
Have you reached the end of the book yet, insightful_orca? Do things end up as a fair democracy?
Hi BNC,
The book that I read was called 'Lord of the Flies' by William Golding. I think that the story showed Democracy because in the story, the children made rules on the island that they crashed on. One of them was that they could only talk if they held a conch (which the main character Ralph found). They have to live with each other, but there is a twist, so the larger group split into two. There are leaders of both groups, one with Ralph as leader, and one as a larger rebel group. I would recommend this book to older children because there is a lot of violence, although it is quite a funny book. I would give this book 5 stars out of 5. What I learnt from this book is that in order to live peacefully with others, we need to compromise and listen to other people's views. I also learnt that you should let your views be heard. I think that this is a great read.
Thanks for reading,
eager_reflection
Hello Everyone at BNC,
My entry isn't about a book that I've read by an author but a book I've started to write called 'Freedom in windershire' (a place that I made up) and it is about the government and royals ordering certain people that were bellow them in royalty to stay locked up in their houses and do all the house work and become separated from all the people that were high up in royalty in their family and then there's an enormous protest and many people become injured and then the government does a vote between them or a house wifeand the house wife wins so every thing gets repaired and life goes back to normal.
thanks for reading
emotional_night XXxx
This sounds like a fantastic story, emotional_night. I look forward to reading it when it's published.
The book that I read related to protest was naughts and crosses, by Malorie Blackman. It was sort of related to protest, as it was related BLM. However, it was the other way round as instead of Whites enslaving blacks, the Africans enslaved the Europeans. The Blacks were called 'Noughts,' and whites 'Crosses'. One of the characters (Crosses) hated noughts, but his brother didn't. The whites begin to protest for democracy, as they were treated like how the Black people were in the olden days-quite unfairly. They split into two civilisations. I think that this book would be a good read, but it has some violence in it and I haven't completely finished it yet.
Thank you!
I haven't read eny books but I found a book on the internet called
The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart by
Alicia Garza it's about the girl who mad BLM here is the first part of the book.
Seven years ago, Alicia Garza changed language (and the world) as we know it when she, alongside Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, introduced the phrase "Black Lives Matter" into the public lexicon. It's since become a rallying cry and a full-blown civil rights movement, focusing the nation’s attention on systemic racism, anti-Blackness, and police violence. With her debut book, The Purpose of Power, Garza outlines her personal journey alongside her organizing work, providing a model of action for future organizers — even if they're not calling themselves that yet.
Oops ment made