Allison's Blog #6

This week I read a book called Times Squared, by Julia DeVillers and Jennifer Roy. It is a great book, from the series with the identical twins named Payton and Emma. (The series doesn't have a name!) The books in this series are: Trading Faces, Take Two, Times Squared, and Triple Trouble. 

My first connection to the book is: Text/World. When Payton and Emma get frustrated that nobody can tell who is who, sometimes even their parents can't! This reminds me of a lot of people who have older sisters that have went to the same school, and then the teachers always get them mixed up, and sometimes it can be really annoying to the students. Now I know how annoying it must be to have someone who looks similar to you, and people can never tell you apart from one another! Another connection is, Text/Text when Payton and Emma say how different they are from one another; Payton has an amazing social life, and is a fashonista, but is not as book smart as Emma. Emma is an overachiever, who has an A+ average, and is constantly winning competitions in math, spelling, science, and basically everything else, but thinks she has no time to waste making friends, since she can be using all that time studying. This reminds me of another book called Fearless, where the main character, Jordan has a best friend named Molly, and they are complete opposites. Jordan is always scared to do new things, is not that adventurous and gets scared easily. Molly is adventurous, willing to try anything, and is not scared to say what she is thinking. But even though they are so different, they are still best friends. Now I know how people so different can still be friends.

The themes of this book are: enemies, and friendship. Enemies is a big theme, because in the book, there are two enemies, for Payton there is Sydney Fish, and for Emma there is Jasmine James. Payton really doesn't like Sydney because she is really mean to her, always making fun of everyone, always trying to steal the spotlight, acts all sweet and good to adults and teachers, and just a horrible person. Emma really doesn't like Jasmine, because she is always trying to beat Emma in something, like the math competition, the spelling bee, and the science fair. Jasmine also has a mean sidekick named Hector, and he always follows Jasmine around, also making fun of people. I have learned from the twin's experiences that you just have to ignore the mean people, or else they will see that it bothers you and they will just do it more. Friendship is also a big theme because Payton and Emma are really good friends, even though they are twins, they always try to help each other as much as they can, and they help each other with homework and everything.

Some transformed thoughts are: I thought since Payton and Emma are sisters, I thought they would always be fighting, but it turns out that they actually get along really well, and they try to help each other as much as they can. Another transformed thought is that I thought that Sydney and Jasmine would destroy Payton and Emma's trip of a lifetime to New York, but they don't, because Payton and Emma try to stay away from them as much as possible.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog! If you think that this book would be interesting, here is a little more about the book: Payton and Emma are both going to New York, for both different reasons. Payton, because she is going with the drama club to watch an off- Broadway show, and Emma, to go to a math competition. When Payton and Emma get there, they both find out that they should be in the other groups, Emma's group is in the candy shop, and Payton's group is in the bank, learning about totally boring stuff that Payton doesn't even understand. So should they risk switching, or will they get caught?