My Year 8 English Experience

Recently, I read this great book called Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman. I found the book quite sad, but it also is based on things that happen in real life. When Colin found out that his brother Luke has cancer and was going to die, he decided that he had to do something to cure it. His parents sent him off to England to stay with his aunt, and Colin decided that he was going to visit the queen and make her find the best doctor in the world so that Luke could be cured. Colins’s crazy ideas to save Luke were quite amusing. Then one day, Colin met a man crying in the street outside a cancer hospital in London called Ted. Colin got to know this bloke quite well, and found out that he had a good friend with Cancer who was going to die too. Colin does all he can to try and help his friend get through his troubles. Although Ted was very upset and knew his friend was going to die, he kept on visiting his friend everyday. Towards the end of this story, Colin realised that he needed to be with Luke. He used his determined personality to get back to Luke in Australia, and this is how the story ended.

I really like how Morris Gleitzman used his imagination on the front cover of the book. Each letter of Two Weeks With The Queen was made into an event that happened in the book. For example: The “T” was made with the shoes that Colin got for Christman in the beginning of the story.

There was one part of the story where Ted was giving out chocolate frogs in the Cancer hospital. He did this to clear away people’s Misery Guts. One of Morris Gleitzman’s other books is called Misery Guts. I think this was quite creative of him to do this.

This is a lovely film about a girl called Amy who used her fathers flying machine to fly some geese home. The story is based on a real-life man who had the idea of building an ultra-light plane to fly orphaned geese south during migration time. In the film, Amy (Anna Paquin), who is 14 years old, found some geese eggs. She looked after them, and soon they hatched into about 12, very adorable geese. At first, Amy tried to hide them from her father. However, he soon found out about them. Amy, her father, Susan and her uncle trained the birds to fly, and afterwards, they set off on a journey to fly the geese home. I won’t reveal everything that happens in this beautiful film. You will have to watch it yourself!