Student name:  Charlotte McLennan

Student class: 7E

What can you tell us about this piece of work?

I actually think it’s interesting that I wrote this just before the current pandemic really started to affect us, seeing as the topic is about learning life skills. Right now, we’re all learning some of the most important life skills of all, like resilience, independence, and responsibility - both on an individual and community level. Whether or not schools teach these life skills is something that I’ve talked about with my family many times before, so I had lots of ideas for it, and the debate around it intrigues me.

I tried my best to cover the most important aspects of it from both perspectives, because I think it’s always more important to hear how other people think about it instead of just seeing your own view of an argument, no matter what the topic is.

What is your favourite thing about English?

I love that it encourages both critical thinking and creativity, which the other core subjects don’t usually do. I particularly enjoy writing narratives because it’s just such a great way to extend yourself in all areas. It’s so much fun to incorporate parts of yourself into the characters you create, and to let them do all sorts of things that I can only dream of doing myself.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m currently brainstorming ideas for the KMHS Short Story Competition, which I’m excited to enter. For me, brainstorming is the best part of writing, and I do it constantly, usually without even realising it. I love creating weird universes with bizarre characters that I usually base off of a person that I know, or experiences that I’ve had, but I also use it as a way to express myself in any way that I’d like.

What are you reading at the moment?

Right now, I’m reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It’s so much more interesting than the title suggests, and it’s actually about a young German girl during World War II. Liesel, the girl, goes to live with her new foster parents who she bonds with faster than she expected, and the book revolves around her life as war hurls problems through her front door which is always open to anyone, including Jews.

What is your favourite book and why?

My favourite book is actually The Book Thief. I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I first picked it up, but I definitely didn’t expect it to be written in the way that it is. It’s in the perspective of Death, who’s portrayed as a gentle and poetic man, but he views things very honestly. Everything is described through colour and time, which I thought was really strange, and lots of metaphors as well. The book is based purely off of description, and it focuses less on the violence and terror of the war, and more on the guilt and sorrow that so many people would have felt.

What are some books that you would really like to read?

I’d really like to read The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, which I have sitting in my room. The Second World War is the most intriguing part of history for me, and most of the historical fiction books I’ve read have been about it. I like the fact that Anne Frank had no idea that her diary would become famous, and she just wrote things exactly as they were for her, because it must give a really good insight into what it was like as a teenager back then.