Monthly Review

5. Find out about the author. How did they end up writing this particular book? Is the author's true life reflected in the book in any way(s)?
8. Pick a character that interested you and write about them in depth.
9. Describe your favorite part in the book?

In this novel Maximum Ride: School's Out Forever by James Patterson is about six mutant kids who tries to find out about their parents better at Washington DC. As they headed to Washington DC they get attack by new versions of erasers and one of the member of the flocks get attacked by Ari who is Jeb's only son. FBI agents come to the hospital to question them and one of the agents wants them to stay at her house to make sure they are safe. They are sent to school and they escape far away from the erasers. Max and the flocks are headed to Florida to the Itex to destroy their cooperation.

James Patterson is the bestselling author of his writing career and the Time magazine feature called him, "The Man Who Can't Miss." He also wrote about thriller, nonfiction, and romance novels. In the North America by itself he had sold over 16 million books. A few years ago, James Patterson sold more books than all of the other authors and the books that he sold all together was about 170 million copies in worldwide. With all that copies being sold, he must be wealthy. He is the very first author to receive the number 1 brand new titles simultaneously on The New York Times on books for adults and children. James Patterson is the number 1 best selling authors in the New York Times and holds the Guinness World Record for selling 46 most Hardcover Fiction titles. As a writer he did not have any reflection on his true life for this book.

The character who interested me in the second series of Maximum Ride is Agent Anne. She intelligent and nice. She works with the F.B.I. What seems suspicious about this character is that she kinda came out of nowhere. In the part when Fang had to go to the hospital because of Ari. Three F.B.I. agents appeared to the hospital to question the flocks. They all had to lie about their names and they were related. Max told them they were adopted and their parents are missionaries. The agents bring them to a private room to question them one on one. Agent Anne questions Max and held up a picture of Jeb. Max felt the betrayal from the picture of him. She showed a picture of an eraser and asked her if she ever saw one. Max pretends that she has not seen one in her life and describing how ugly it is. And how did she get those pictures of them. As Fang recovers from his injuries, Anne makes a nice offer to the flocks if they want to stay at her house. Since they had nowhere to go they took her offer. Anne would have to take care of six children and letting them stay in her barn house. Anne does a lot of work to take care of them and they can eat more than an average person can eat. Anne has to cook a lot of food or spend a lot of money on them. Anne takes good care of them and Max feels like Anne is her mom. Later she thinks she can trust Anne because she works for the FBI and can not be an eraser. Max tells her some information like at least that the flocks can fly. They were mutants with 98% human and 2% birds. She tells her that their parents are not missionaries. Later on Anne wants them to go to school. Some teachers were erasers and they bust out off school and try to tracked down the flocks. They head over to Anne's house to get supplies and it turns out that Anne is working with Jeb. I find that disappointing that Anne betrayed the flocks like that and I thought Anne was out to help them.

My favorite part in the book was when the flocks were being ambushed with lots of action. I was surprised how the enemy characters changed from the first series in Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment. In the setting as Max and her flocks are headed to Washington D.C. and they took a break from flying. As they continued their journey walking, Max randomly does a 360 she sees a dark cloud coming towards them. The flocks thought a storm is coming, erasers in a chopper, or birds. As it came closer it turns out they were erasers with wings! Also their leader of the erasers, Ari, he came back from the living dead. It could probably be Jeb and the other scientists who helped brought Ari backed to life along with the erasers being mobile in air. The scientists made the DNA transfer quickly to the erasers to make them fly. When the erasers were about to attack, Max ordered the flocks to split up in positions to get ready to fight. Max was feeling the adrenaline then she launched her foot at the biggest eraser to his chest. It was a bit weird when Fang clapped his hands against an eraser's ear making him scream and made him lose control in the air. Max and her flocks were kicking butt and the erasers just kept coming after them. Ari came lunging at Fang and manage to slice his jacket. The erasers started to retreat and it was Ari against the flocks. The flocks regrouped and Ari seemed a bit happy to see them again because he wants to keep beating them up. Ari left with his gang saying " We'll be back!" As they left the flocks waited a moment to see if there was going to be another attack but it was clear. Max notice Fang's critical hit from Ari. Max needed to get an ambulance quick and she had to risk choosing Fang's life or avoid strangers. If she did that, then Fang would die.

Maximum Ride # 3

At the school, the flocks had an assembly but they were not there. They started to wonder around the school but the principle caught them. The principle started to turn into a eraser so the flocks split up to lose the eraser. As they met up again they took off in the air away from the school. They needed to head over to Anne's house to get some supplies. Max already hid some back up supplies a few days ago. Angel wanted to go back to Anne's house which is not a good idea but Total was there. Angel found Total in the yard and she flew to get him. When she got him the flocks sees a car pull up in the drive way. It was Jeb, Ari, Anne, and the other teachers. They were all working together after the flocks.

They flew away towards the beach after a second battle between Fang and Ari. Ari is the only child that Jeb seems to care for and Ari wants to be with max. Max is twice his age.When the flock are on the run again and always being located by the Erasers which is possibly a via chip implanted into Max. They try to find the corporation who planted the chip in Max Located in Florida called Itex that Angel recalls the scientists discussing when she was captured by them. Max is captured by their eraser and a Max-clone is left in her place. She is held captive at Itex as a subjected to an isolation tank. The flocks which they don't know that Max is Max is lead by the Max-clone into Itex. They try to discover what they can about the flocks parentage and Max's Voice's telling her to save the world but they lead into a trap where all the members of the flock are to be terminated. Max breaks out of the isolation tank, reuniting with the flock and continues life on the run towards an unknown journey ahead them.

Spring Break Snowboarding

Starting of my spring break on a Sunday was my last day of winter to go snowboarding with my sister. We decided to try out Yosemite's ski resorts which I been to once with my friend Adam. But my sister found another ski resort that would save us an hour of time to snowboard at Dodge Ridge ski resort located in a small town called Pinecrest. Before our trip we went to San Fransisco to rent my snowboard at the Sports Basement. This place was actually big and it had three floors with sports equipment. My snowboard rentals were cheap that only cost me $15 for my snow boots and my snowboard. They had some other cheap snow clothing that was around ten dollars off than the original prices.

My sister called the ski resort to check if they had more snow built up over the night. No one picked up and it went to the voice message. It said Fridays snow went up by five inches of snow overnight and the morning was 27 degrees. We were on our way to Pinecrest. It took about two and a half hour to get there. We were an hour away from Yosemite. When we got there we just notice it was Easter Day when we saw the Easter bunny walking around. My sister went to go pick up our lift tickets and we were headed to our first run.

When we started to go on the ski lift it was dangerous for people who never went to this ski resort because the ski lifts were too fast even tho they slowed it down for you. The ski lifts were two seated but in the middle there was a pole in the way when you sit. Right when you sit on it you really don't expect the seat to go back and forth like a swing.When my sister and i got on the ski lift it was all bad. Right when I sat down the seat tilted backwards that almost made me fell like three feet of the ground. Then I looked next to me to see if my sister was okay but she wasn't next to me. I looked back and she fell right before she sat down. That was why I almost fell off also. That part kind of ruined our day and they need to up grade their lifts. We just continued our snowboarding day. We went on a intermediate run and it was fun. We went up on the same one and while we were the lift we saw some snow ramps at the side. We wanted to try it and it actually wasn't scary at all. After that we started to go to the left of the mountain where there was the steeper slopes. When we got to the top it started to snow a little bit so I had to go back down to see if they had snow goggle on sale because it was their last day until they closed. I wanted to look around to see if they had cheap snow goggles. The cheapest they had was $44.99 which is a good deal. Regular snow goggles are worth $70-$120 for good ones. We went back up to the top. We went on a advanced slope that was steep and we went for it. It was really fun and I wanted to go again. As we went again I was right be hide my sister and we were going in a zig zag. Good thing I bought snow goggles because I started to go straight and my sister went to the right. A few seconds later I hit her snowboard and fell down head first on a really steep slope. And I slid down about 40ft and it was hard for me to stop. I had a lot of snow in my face and i went down about half the steep slope.

An hour later the weather started to get bad. It was freezing cold and winding. It was 30 degrees cold. So we went started to go home about an hour early due to the weather. I was surprised it was still snowing during April.

Maximum Ride: School's Out Forever

In our new book Maximum Ride: School's Out Forever by James Patterson. The flocks who are ages six to fourteen, are fleeing the lunatic scientists that created them. They experience a brief respite from the Erasers, human-wolf recombinant that are like the scientists' hit-men and they can command the eraser what to do. The flocks were on there way to Washington D.C., and they notice a big dark looking cloud coming towards them and as it came closer it turns out they were eraser with wings. It turns out the chief eraser Ari is back. From the first series Max had killed Ari in a battle and he was completely dead,now he is a live. The flocks and the erasers start to battle. Everyone is beating up each other and after one of the two oldest children is badly beaten up by Ari. Fourteen year old Fang had been cut when Ari attacked him and he had to get to the hospital. Max did not want to be in contacted with the humans because they could be erasers and Max had to risk Fang's life or get involved with more erasers. When Fang arrived to the hospital he was losing lots of blood so Max donated blood to Fang. As Fang was resting some FBI agents came to the flocks to ask them some questions. There were three of them who were asking the flocks questions and they lied about their names and that they were brother and sisters.
One of the agent, Anne, offers the flocks to stay at her house since they have no where else to stay. In Anne's home the flock; leader Max, second in command Fang, blind Iggy, Nudge, and six year old Gasman and Angel experience normalcy for almost the first time in their lives. In the country setting the flocks even uncover certain heretofore unknown abilities. All six children can fly but during their stay with the FBI agent Angel discovers she can talk to fish and further develops her ability to read minds and exercise mind control over others. A dog the flocks picked up at one of the underground genetic engineering labs is discovered to be able to talk. As they were staying at Anne's house she wants them to start school. Max and Fang both have love interest and they are both getting jealous of one another, the chapter, Fang falls for Max and she doesn't show any interests like not having a date or a talk. When the flocks are attending at school, seems like it could not get better except for a school principal who seems to have it in for the children and glimpses of Erasers in the local town. While the Gasman and Iggy are looking around in the school basement. They find all of these files that were about how the school got closed down a long time ago. A teacher comes down and tries to kill them. Iggy's specialty is creating bombs so he makes a bomb quickly and lets it set off. Later it turns out that Agent Anne is actually an eraser. She was one of the scientist working with Jeb and the others to track down the flocks. Anne was even nice enough to offer the flocks to stay at her home but she had to betray them. Anne actually got Max to give her some information about whats going on with the flocks. When I was wondering when I read the part when the FBI agents came to question them, how did they know where they were? She literally has a Voice inside her head that alternately councils and frustrates her, telling her that she must ‘save the world'.