25 Facts About Me

1. Being happy and living life to its fullest comes first to me.
2. I care about others more than myself.
3. My boyfriend is my best friend.
4. I love the TV show "What I Like About You."
5. I love eating muddy bears at Regal Cinemas.
6. I want to travel the world.
7. I am 100% Bulgarian and I speak it fluently.
8. Drawing is one of the things I'm best at.
9. I can't play sports to save my life.
10. I am an animal lover.
11. I think Techno and club music is amazing.
12. I want to move to Europe when I grow up.
13. I want to be a model one day.
14. I'm so afraid of sharks and death.
15. I could never live without chocolate.
16. PF Chang's is my favorite place to eat. I'm obsessed with their strawberry cheesecake and lemon chicken.
17. I'd do anything for the people that mean most to me.
18. I have never been to a private school before.
19. I set high moral standards for myself.
20. My favorite car is a Corvette.
21. David Beckham is my favorite athlete.
22. I love fashion brands like Dooney and Bourke, Prada, and Gucci.
23. I love more than I breathe.
24. I almost always get the Caramel Frappachino at Starbucks.
25. The Titanic is my all-time favorite movie.

Interview with Mom

1. Can you tell me what you remember about being in ninth grade?


2. What did students wear to school?
Students wore polo shirts with jeans and sneakers. Turtle necks were in style and the clothes were baggy. Big earrings were in style, gold beaded necklaces.

3. How would you describe attitudes towards teachers? Was there much misbehavior in classes? If so, how was it handled?
Most students were nice to teachers, however, when someone misbehaved they got a detention.

4. Do you remember any groups or cliques in your school? Describe the people in the different cliques and their attitudes.
There were cliques like the snobby girls, the jocks on the football team, soccer players, druggies, and nerds.

5. Tell me about extracurricular activities at your school. Which were the most popular? Did many students participate?
Sports like soccer, football, cheerleaders, softball, basketball, field hockey, tennis. Language clubs, health club, drama club.

6. Was it important to your parents that you get good grades? If it was, what did they do to make sure you kept up your grades?
Yes, they didn’t do much because I was a good student and I studied myself.

7. Did you think it was important to graduate from high school and go to college?
Absolutely.

8. What kinds of jobs were available to students who graduated from high school? Did many of your friends go to work, join the military, or go on to college?
Most of my friends went to college, I don’t know anyone who went into the military. During college there were jobs such as: waitress or working in local retail stores.

9. Tell me about the kind of friends you had in high school. Did any of them ever encourage you to get in trouble?
No none of them encouraged me to get into trouble, my friends were nice and not selfish.

10. What kind of rules did your parents have for you on curfews, dating, and helping at home?
I had to be home at 10 o'clock, couldn’t talk on the phone after 9, and dating was 16.

11. What ways do you think kids of today are different from the kids of your generation?
Kids today are better with technology. Back then we had no face book or MySpace. We only had telephones. Most people had more respect towards adults.

12. What advice would you give to teens today about getting through the teen years?
Be yourself, not to worry about what other kids say and not to care about others' opinions. The people's opinions that do matter are the people who really care about you.

13. Do you remember any world events that had an impact on you as a teenage student?
The world event that happened was the accident of the space shuttle.

14. How did you spend your summer break in your high school years?
We went back to Europe for about a month.

15. What were your hobbies and interests as a teen?
I liked music, dancing, gymnastics, and fashion.

Pen Pal Letter, Dead Girls Don't Write Letters

The John Carroll School
703 Churchville Road
Bel Air, Maryland 21014

Dear Sunny,
Hello, my name is Stephanie and I am a freshman at The John Carroll School. This summer I read the novel, Dead Girl Don’t Write Letters, by Gail Giles. Besides reading the novel, I was with my friends a lot of the time, and I also went to the beach. I thought the novel is very well written and once you start reading it, you wouldn’t want to stop.
I thought you handled the events very well, and took care of your mother good due to your sister’s death. You also handled the fake “Jazz” very well also by not really telling her you know she’s really not your sister but by kind of going along with it for awhile, then reading her journal to figure out who she really is.
I had a few questions when I read specific events in the story. As the story goes on, I think the author’s style is very interesting and makes the story very suspenseful. Each event happening made me want to read more of the book to discover the next event. The character is realistic to the reader, because she was a normal teenager.
What did you first think when you saw that there was a letter from your sister, Jazz, in the mail? Also, when she came to your house and you knew she wasn’t your real sister, what made you want to keep quiet and not say anything first thing?
The novel makes you raise awareness about the issue because apparently there are people out there that could pretend to be someone they are not, either on the internet, in person, or even on the phone. The novel will leave me thinking more about the issue since it was a big deal to a family that lost their daughter/sister.
I really enjoyed reading your novel, Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters, during my summer. It was interesting and fun to read. I hope you and your family take care. J
Sincerely,
Stephanie

Book Review

When I read, Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters, by Gail Giles, I loved the story. It was exciting and upbeat. By reading the title you’d probably assume someone dies in the story. Jazz Reynolds has been claimed to be dead. Sunny Reynolds, her younger sister, is living in a world where everyone knows her as “Jazz’s sister.” The family has already been through a divorce, now dealing with depression, and also alcoholism. Sunny is left to deal with all of this and needs to take care of her mother including herself. No one has given or is giving Sunny any credit. Sunny has been taking care of her mother for awhile, and one day, out of nowhere, she finds a letter in the mail from her sister Jazz. This shocked Sunny because her sister was dead. How could Jazz write a letter and be dead at the same time? Sunny is asking herself, “Is this really my sister or is it a joke?” This book is filled with questions, emotion, and mysteries, which made me love reading it.
The plot and characters were very modern, and the author’s style was like it’s written for a teenager to enjoy. The message of the story was meaningful; it taught us that we should care for one another, and no matter what kind of family you have, they will always care for you. What I disliked about the novel was that the ending was very unclear. Besides that, this book is overall a good choice and it leaves readers wondering what happened.

Author Biography

Gail Giles is the author of the novel, Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters. She was born on September 24th and is married to Jim Giles. She lives in Woodland, Texas. She is a writer, and taught high school in Angleton, Texas. Her interests are watercolor painting, reading, computer solitaire, playing guitar. Gail Giles has received many awards like the Best Books for Young Adults selection and Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers selection, American Library Association (ALA), both 2003, both for Shattering Glass; ALA Teens Top Ten selection, 2003, for Dead Girls Don't Write Letters. She dislikes, mean people, cabbage, bad books, bad movies, really bright light, sweat or any activity that produces sweat, repetitive noises, waiting for anything, airports, getting up early, and people that ask when I’m going to write for adults. Gail Giles has many pets. She has two Great Pyrenees, named Jack London and Chicago. She also has three cats, Hemingway (Himalayan), Buffet (Scottish Fold), and Oz (Balinese). Gail Giles likes, chocolate, good books, good movies, hot baths, crisp, clean sheets, big cities, rain on a tin roof, my friends, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jimmy Buffett and sleeping late. Some of the books she wrote were: Breath of the Dragon, illustrated by June Otani, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 1997. Shattering Glass, Roaring Brook Press (Brookfield, CT), 2002. Dead Girls Don't Write Letters, Roaring Brook Press (Brookfield, CT), 2003. Playing in Traffic, Roaring Brook Press (Brookfield, CT), 2004. What Happened to Cass McBride? (novel), Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2006. Right behind You (novel), Little, Brown (New York, NY), 2007.

Note Card #1

Byck, Robert. "depression." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. 2008. Grolier Online. 22 Sep. 2008 http://gme.grolier.com/cgi-bin/article?assetid=0083450-0.

-Depression is an uncomfortable mental state that may be characterized by such adjectives as blue, dejected, or discouraged.
-Major depressions occur in 10–20% of the world's population in the course of a lifetime.
-Depression is defined by its symptoms.

Here is The American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual f Mental Disorders lists:
poor appetite and significant weight loss, or the reverse;
insomnia, or increased sleep;
agitation, or retardation, of movement and thought;
loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities or decrease in sexual drive;
fatigue and loss of energy;
feelings of worthlessness, self-reproach, or excessive or inappropriate guilt;
diminished ability to concentrate, or indecisiveness; and
recurrent thoughts of death or suicide, or suicide attempts.

-Depression is treated by psychotherapy, drugs, or electroconvulsive therapy, and often by some combination of these treatments.
-In psychiatric usage, disorders of mood are called affective or mood disorders.

Note Card #2

- Depression is a serious mental condition that is characterized by extreme feelings of sadness, worthlessness or hopelessness, fatigue, irritability, loss of appetite, inability to concentrate, and insomnia or excessive sleeping.
- It may include physical or emotional causes and might require long-term treatment.
- Depending on the type of depression and how severe it is, treatment may include prescription antidepressant drugs, psychotherapy, or in some rare cases, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
- Depression lasting more than a few months or is recurring is known as “major depressive disorder” or “clinical depression.”
- Depression is sometimes accompanied by alcohol or drug abuse and in some severe cases may lead to suicide.
-Experts say that students with depression are more likely to have difficulty in school because they may lack the motivation to learn or may not have enough self.
- Some depressed students show no signs of academic failure because they try to hide their feelings by becoming perfectionists or overachievers.
-Statistics show that one out of every five children in the United States has a mental-health problem, and between 10 percent and 15 percent of young people exhibit symptoms of depression.

http://sks.sirs.com/cgi-bin/hst-sub-display?id=SMD0067H-0-1140&res=Y&ren=N&gov=N&lnk=N&ic=N&keyno=0000007107&leadiss=Y&auth_checked=Y