The Awesome Book: Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

Forks, a rainy city in Washington state, is a place you probably have never heard of. Stephenie Meyer’s masterpiece book, titled Twilight, takes us to the gloomy city of Forks, through the eyes of a high-school girl named Bella Swan. Bella Swan arrives at her new school and quickly falls in love with a guy named Edward, who she figures out is a blood-thirsty vampire!

Bella Swan is your everyday high-school girl. She makes good grades, has good friends, and likes to have fun. In the beginning of the story, Bella moves from the sunny, warm state of Arizona, to the cloudy, we city of Forks, Washington, to live with her father, Charlie. The only reason Bella moves to Forks in the first place is to satisfy her mother (who is traveling with her boyfriend, Phil). Bella hates everything about Forks; the wetness, the absence of the sun, and the dull, dreary days. Bella settles into Forks quicker then she expects, and once she meets Edward, her life gets thrown into confusion, excitement, and a race to stay alive!

As you read Twilight, you will feel like you have known Bella Swan all your life! Bella immediately becomes your best friend throughout this exciting, page-turning, breath-taking book. Twilight will definitely please a wide range of audiences. Fans of action, suspense, mystery, and romance will enjoy this intoxicating thriller! Boys and girls both will enjoy this book. This book is great from beginning to end! One of the best things is that Twilight is just one book of a thriller series. So far, New Moon and Eclipse (books two and three in the series) are also in stores, and Stephenie Meyer promises more books to come! These books are so great. Eclipse even knocked out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows out of the #1 best-selling book slot for a short period of time! Trust me, there are no negative sides to Twilight, or the rest of the series!

Twilight is one the best books I have ever read! I cannot get Twilight out of my head. It’s just one of those books that stays with you long after you have read the final page and set the book down. In the past, I have picked Twilight up at the bookstore, but I always but it down for some reason or another! I now regret ever doing that! This book (and series) is not to be missed!

Chatting With Chad

“Dear Chad, There is a certain help section in a certainonline magazine called What’s Up Wakefield that happens to tell only lies and give bad information. I want him kicked off WUW. How do I get him kicked off?”-Horosco Preader ”PS, your team stinks at soccer!!!”

I think the certain help section is very good. I think you should be kicked off.-Chad PS Your team stinks. 

“My team is better than yours “Chad.” I would know, because we beat you 9 to 1 (that’s an 8 point difference if you didn’t know.) That’s the kind of lies I’m talking about. We can’t stink if we’re really good.”-Horosco Preader

It should have been 9 to 2 (that’s a 7 point difference.) My teammate blocked my own shot. My team stinks, but I’m still better than you.-Chad

“Should I click on the ads on this website?”-Ad Clicker

Yes ,you should click the ads. Good things will happen when you do.-Chad

“Dear Chad, why are you full of lies?”-Ricky Ross

I don’t tell lies Luke. I mean Ricky.-Chad

“Dear Chad, I am weird and seeking toenails.”-Mr. No One

I’m just going to turn off the lights and hide till you go away.-Chad

“Chad, why are the horoscopes so cool?”-Horoscope Lover

They really are pretty weird. So are you.-Chad

“Do you like chicken sandwiches?”-Justin Trested

I don’t like chicken sandwiches. Stop asking me about food when there’s a section on this website about food.-Chad

Stock Market on Your Computer

Many of you have heard of the stock market, where you buy a portion of a company and as their stock price increases, so does the money in your wallet.  But for those of you who are planning on investing on stocks, or if you are just a competitor, this is for you!   StocksQuest is kind of like a game with money.  Of course, StocksQuest is free and you don’t actually receive money or lose.  Once you have an account, you can join groups and play competitively.  Not only are you competing against opponents, but you’ll be able to learn a few things about the Stock Market.

Let’s walk through the steps of how to register for free and start competing.

Registration

Step 1:  Go to www.stocksquest.com

Step 2:  You’ve just reached to home page of StocksQuest.  To begin the painless registration process, click on Sign Up.

Step 3:  Fill out the registration form.

Step 4:  Now that you have registered, log-in to your My Stocks page.

Play Competitively

Step 1:  You have reached your portfolio named StocksQuest.  This is an individual folder where you can experiment with stocks.  You can reset this folder at any time.  But to play competitively, you need to Join a Contest.

Step 2:  Click on Join a Contest, which is on a bar that looks like blue tabs.

Step 3:  I have created this contest for What’s Up Wakefield’s readers.  You will be asked the Contest Name and the Password.

Contest Name:  wake

Password:  wuw

You’ve now joined the contest.  So, spread the word to friends and family to make this competition more fun.  Good Luck!

Karlly’s Korner

BOOK REVIEW:
Do you remember Peter Pan, the magical boy who never grew old and flew around Never Land with his fairy Tinker Bell? Did you ever wonder how Peter got to Never Land, or how Tinker Bell was created, if you did then you need to get reading! In Peter and the Starcatchers, Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson go back to when Peter was an orphan boy living in St. Norbert’s home for Wayward Boys in England.
After living in St. Norbert’s for seven years, Peter is dragged out of St. Norbert’s in the early morning along with Prentiss, James, Tubby Ted and Thomas. They are on their way to a ship called Never Land, is what they are told by Grempkin, the mean grammar teacher and second in command at St. Norbert’s. When the boys are loaded on to the ship, Slank, the second in command and first officer on the Never Land tells them that they are going to become servants for King Zarboff the Third in Rundoon, who when isn’t pleased with a servant’s work will feed them to his pet snake. The five boys are then put into the basement of the ship with the rats, and when Peter escapes he runs into Molly, the ambassador’s daughter who he talked to when they first boarded before Slank took them away.
When Peter and Molly become good friends and Molly tells Peter a secret about herself and her father that isn’t supposed to be told, Peter sees the world in a new magical way. Soon Peter is flying, talking to dolphins and trying to escape an evil pirate. To find out what happens to Peter and Molly, pick up the national best seller, Peter and the Starcatchers and get reading! Once you finish that, read the sequel to the prequel, Peter and the Shadow Thieves.
~Karina~
JOKE:
Q: Why couldn’t the man work at the orange juice factory?
A: He couldn’t concentrate!
~Jeremy
BRAINTEASER:
Instructions: This week there is not a 6th, 7th, and 8th grade brainteaser-there is one for all. Figure out “Einstein’s Riddle” and send the answer along with your homeroom and what grade you are in to either kelly@whatsupwakefield.com or karina@whatsupwakefield.com. We will notify you via e-mail if you are the winner.
Einstein’s Riddle:
Einstein wrote the following riddle. He said that 98% of the world could not solve it. But several NIEHS scientists were able to solve it, and they said it’s not all that hard if you pay attention and are very patient.
Give it a try:
There are 5 houses in 5 different colors in a row. In each house lives a person with a different nationality. The 5 owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same beverage. Other facts:
1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the immediate left of the white house.
5. The green house’s owner drinks coffee.
6. The owner who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The owner living in the center house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The owner who keeps the horse lives next to the one who smokes.
Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who drinks water.
The question is: WHO OWNS THE FISH?
~Braingle
STUDY TIP:
Always copy down everything a teacher writes on the board. If it’s on the board, you can assume it’s important. Be careful to copy the words the way the teacher spelled them
~Super Study Skills, By: Laurie Rozakis, Ph.D.
DID YOU KNOW…?
Mr. Parrish (7th and 8th grade P.E./Health teacher)- has had a pool building service for over 20 years and has even built his own pool.
Ms. Stallings (Royal Wolves Math teacher)- 1. Grew mold in a lab 2. Fed snakes in a lab
3. Collected male and famale crickets for a lab experiment

How-To: Creating Your Very own Website

Almost everyone now who has a computer with internet access has a website of their own. That website could be a personal one just about them, or they could have a small business. Maybe kids have a MySpace or FaceBook page, or maybe they made one completely from scratch. By reading this handy guide, I will walk you through step by step making your very own website, with your very own name in the URL. The process is fairly simple, and you don’t any programming experience at all or you don’t need to pay for anything. You just need to know how to work a computer, how to use the internet, and need an internet connection (which I am pretty sure you have, considering you are reading this article on the internet).

Types of websites

There are many different types of websites, of which have many different types of programming used to make them (don’t worry about all of the programming terms I use, as we will get to that later in the guide). Some websites include a personal website, which is just a site about you. You probably wouldn’t have any more than 10 pages in a personal website and you would use CSS or HTML to make it, and use JavaScript to spruce it up and add effects. Another type would be a website for your small business. This website would probably have no more than 30 to 40 pages or so, and would probably use CSS. Finally, the third website you would want to make is a large business one, consisting of 100 pages or more. These are industrial companies, such as Microsoft, who have literally thousands upon thousands of pages on their website. We don’t really need to worry about making one like that, because I am going to show you how to make a personal website later on in the guide.

Programming used to make websites

There are so many different programming languages out now used to make websites, but I am going to cover just the most basic and most popular languages. The most popular is probably HTML, because every site has some HTML code in it. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. HTML uses tags to organize and format text, pictures, audio, and multimedia into a website.Another Type of language is called Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. CSS works by making a default layout and format for a webpage, and each page would have the same layout and format, except with different content on it. CSS is more complicated to script than HTML, but once you get that script in, that takes care of all of the formatting so all you have to is type regular text into the text editor.

JavaScript is a scripting language that can actually be embedded into HTML code. You would use JavaScript maybe to add a clock or visitor counter to your website. JavaScript is very complicated and hard to learn, but I will talk about it later.

Time to make your website!

Now that I have explained to the basics of a website and how one works, we can now start working on your very own! First of all, we need web hosting. This is server space to store all of the files on that will be viewed on the internet. I am going to use FreeWebs in this example, but there are many others, some of which include 110mb, Yahoo Geocities, GoDaddy, and 1&1. I am using FreeWebs because it is simple to use and is very popular.

First of, start by going to http://www.freewebs.comOnce at the FreeWebs site, click the button “Start Now”

Now, a window should pop up. Enter all of the info into the fields shown. Your username will be in the web URL, in this case I used: “whats-up-wakefield-example-site.” It will say if it available or not. Enter a password, and make sure it a strong one, and that you can remember it easily. Now enter your email address. Select your gender and your age, and I chose “my age is private”. Read the terms and conditions, check the box, and click Go!

Now, if all the information you entered is correct, you should now pick a template to use. I am going to use “Clean as a Whistle” For my example site. Click the one you want, and then a confirmation box will come up. Click Ok to proceed if you really want to use the template you selected.

Next, Describe your site. The site title will be what you see at the top of your internet

browser. Select Done! to continue

An advertisement will come up. Select the “No thanks, let me build my website” button up at the top to continue

After you continue, this page should pop up. Click the second option, Start my website from a blank canvas, and click continue.

Now, You can edit your site however you want! Use the toolbox on the side to add multimedia and widgets to your website. All of the formatting options are in the toolbox. You can add new pages and preview your site any time you want. I was talking about JavaScript earlier, and there are multiple sites you can get free JavaScript codes from that will make your website more creative. You could add a clock script or even a visitor counter script. The widgets you can add are also very neat too. They allow you to add shout boxes, and all the things like that to your website. Do whatever you like, because now it is YOUR website!Thank you for reading my guide and I hope this helped you out a lot in creating your very own website! Here is the link to the example site I used: http://www.freewebs.com/whats-up-wakefield-example-site

Tips for Teens: The Perfect Gift

The holidays are always a difficult time to find the perfect gift. Be it, trying to see what they want, getting something good, or the expense of the perfect gift. Not to mention wether the gift is appropieate for the person you are giving it to. But have no fear, I’ve got 6 tips for all of your holiday gift blues.

Try these tips and this holiday season will be a piece of cake.

1. To help you narrow down the list of people on your holiday gift list think of the top 10 of your closest family and friends. Focusing on those 10 will allow you to think of better gifts and really see what those special people want.

2. Try asking around for ideas from your friends. They can always provide really awesome gift ideas and may help you find a gift for another friend.

3. For the artsy type, you could make something of your own to give to a friend or family member. Most of the time they will really appreciate the thougt, but be sure to make it good or it could be considered cheap.

4. You could organize a secret santa with a group of your closest friends. Try getting them something that symbolizes your friendship with them like a basketball for your friend on the basketball team. It ‘s a fun way to show your friends that you care and you could make it a game to, try to see if they can tell who it is.

5. But when crunch time the easiest and best gift for anyone is the world-famous GIFT CARD! It is the most ideal gift for anyone of any age. Plus most stores have them so check out your friend’s favorite store and get one!

Nonsense Sentences

Here is a list of 10 sentences that either don’t make sense, make you think about, or just plain odd! Try to think about these sentences to see what you think about them!

1) If you don’t get this message, please call back.

2) Raise you hand if you’re not here!

3) Nobody goes to that restaurant, it’s too crowded.

4) Don’t ever go in water until you can swim.

5) Don’t drown yourself in the Fountain of Youth.

6) Half of my family lives here, half of my family lives there, and the other half lives even farther away!

7) Stop reading that picture book.

If you stay in the Fountain of Youth too long, you’ll get too old!

9) Stop thinking, it hurts your brain.

10) Two wholes make a half.

Dirt-mound on Wheels

It’s like a dirt-mound on wheels, and all the germs kids spread don’t help. We will not abide to riding on a bus where window sills are crusted over in brown, the seats are covered in junk, and the floor is covered in dried, cracked mud and trash. It reminds me of animal cruelty when animals are forced to live in their feces. We do not want to go to school, or anywhere else for that matter, in a big brown cage of muck.

Maybe the kids do put the garbage on the floor, but it’s not our our fault about all the dirt. Once in a while the board and drivers should consider washing not only the outside, but the inside too. Sure sweeping the floor helps, but what if the dirt is caked to the floor just like the windows? It just spreads and makes more. Of course they might not like it, but their abusing our air. All of our air and the buses too. One day our buses will be filth free and we can continue our journey to good health.

iPhone: Bust or Must?

The iPhone is every person in the universe’s dream. The phone’s touch screen was the first in the line up, and now is copied by many. The iPhone’s cost has gone down in the past months, but it has still stayed the same old cool gadget of 2008. Read more

Book Review: Code Orange

The book fair has ended at Wakefield Middle School, and as many of you know, Code Orange, by Caroline B. Cooney, was one of the most sought after books available. I, loving books of that sort, eagerly waited to purchase a copy, which proved difficult, because the book fair sold out numerous times, along with my local bookstore. Read more

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