The Magna Carta was a charter of rights established in 1215 because of the harsh ruling of King John the I of England. He was the youngest out of all his brothers so he expected to inherit nothing important. During the reign of his brother Richard which was going great but when Richard went to go fight in the crusades John tried to steal his thrown which he was unsuccessful at. Although when Richard passed John became king which shocked him. One of the first thing he did was get into a fight with the Pope and wouldn’t comply with the Popes demands. After the people kept demanding that he comply he finally did but didn’t change his ways as a ruler. He was also a horrible military leader and had to raise money just so they would defend him. To get enough money he raised the taxes without asking any of the barons which made them very mad. They were very mad that John was just ignoring the rules of the Feudal System and just doing his own thing so they marched to London to take control. He met the rebels in a field where they made the Magna Carta that John signed promising certain rules,

Literature is a very important part of our lives and improves the worlds in so many ways. It does come in a few different forms which are novels, short stories, novellas, poems, and drama. Some people only read one or two out of these five styles because its their favorite style so today I’m going to talk about my favorites.

Short Stories

Short Stories are a brief piece of literature thats usually fiction and written in narrative prose. I really enjoy reading short stories because of how you can read a couple in just a hour or two. Short stories are normally based on a contained incident or a series of incidents that just keep happening. A pretty famous short story that you may or may not know is ”Where are you going, Where have you been?” which is about a teenage girl who skips out on a family barbecue leaving her home alone when she gets an unexpected visitor. This is a great example of a short story and what they are like. Short stories are a great way to keep yourself busy without going on social media or watching TV.

Novellas

A novella is some times described as a short story but isn’t one. A novella is normally about 100-180 pages which makes it longer then a short story. Novellas are also usually fiction and aren’t divided into chapters. Unlike a novel that follows a few main characters a novella typically follows one main character with one central conflict. They also travel at a faster paste with things happening one after the other making them trilling to read. One main thing that novellas do that novels normally don’t is they follow one big question the whole time looking for an answer that is usually found at the end.

Novels

Novels are probably the most popular form of literature. Novels are a pretty long work of narrative fiction that is usually published into a book. I’m currently reading a novel and have read many before. I find them really entertaining but I do find it hard for me to actually start reading the book because I look at it more as school work rather than free time. A novel is pretty different compared to a novella for example novels get separated into chapters and have more than one conflict in the story. Novels are usually set up with a few main characters about 2-6 who are trying to achieve an end goal but come across a couple different problems along the way. Along the way you get to watch as the characters grow and figure out new things about themselves and the world.

Crusades were a series of religious wars that were usually lead by a king. There were 8 crusades total and only one of them was truly successful but a few did come close. The first crusade started because the Christians were being treated poorly by the Muslims which lead to Pope Urban II to call a crusade. The goal of this crusade was to get the Christians to the Holy Land and they were successful in doing so. The second crusade started when the Muslims took over the County of Edessa and when this news got to Europe a crusade was immediately called by the leaders because of how successful the first one was. This crusade was lead by Bernard of Clairvaux which was a bad choice because of how this crusade failed. In addition to the soldiers and citizens there was also two kings, Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. Conrads army started first and they did not wait for Louis which led to an early defeat. They eventually came together after meeting in Jerusalem. Because they did not work together very well the crusaders were defeated. Because of how unsuccessful the second crusade was a third crusade began to get the holy land back. This crusade was not successful but did end in them making peace. The last few crusades were also unsuccessful except for the sixth crusade where they gained the holy land back but only for 15 years.

Last week I wrote about the book A Knight of the White Cross and focused on more on the plot when I was writing it, but today I’m going to talk more about the author and his writing style. This book was wrote by G.A. Henty who like any other author has his own writing style. Henty enjoys writing about boys verse writing about animals like the author of White Fang Jack London. Henty always includes a lot of dialogue as well as action but still more dialogue. He also likes to put a few plot twists in his books making them entertaining to read. Something that I have realized in his books are that they are very stereotypical and always have the same set up. For example he never puts girls in his story’s and when he does they aren’t very important to the story. Another thing he does is the main character always has a group of friends who somehow get introduced to the king and when the king meets the main character he immediately loves him. Overall Henty’s books are entertaining to read but can be pretty stereotypical.

A Knight of the White Cross is a story that follows an orphan boy named Gervaise Tresham who joins the order of the Knights of St. John and proceeds to travel to Rhodes. While he is there he ends up being made a Knight of the White Cross for valor. Not to long after he is appointed commander of a war-galley and on his first voyage destroys a group of pirates. A while after he is attacked and kidnapped on shore during one of his cruises. He is then sold into slavery but eventually escapes. This is a very well written book and has a lot of detail put into it. For example you can see it when he describes the main character smart, daring, loyal etc. This book definitely has a completely different plot then the books I have recently talked about which is pretty nice to have a little change in what I am reading.

In the middle ages knighthood started with the Feudal System and the service of the king’s army. The idea of a knight was any warrior riding on a horse with armor and weapons. This idea came from the Franks after the fall of Rome and expanded during the reign of Charlemagne. Eventually it became a social rank and they were considered lower class noblemen who were slightly similar to calvary because knights also rode on horses. One of the most important things to a knight was Chivalry, even to the point where they had an organized code that they had to follow. Knights also had many values which were faith, hope, charity, justice, strength, moderation, and loyalty. A knights main job was to be a skilled fighter on horseback and to provide military service to their king. Knights still exist to this day but become one for different reasons then before

You should already know that I read many books for my school and usually write about them but today I’m doing something different where I compare two books that I have read. The two books I’m going to be comparing today are Treasure Island which I have wrote about and White Fang which is the book I’m currently reading. I’m going to give a little overview of White Fang so you have some understanding when I compare both books. This book follows a wolf cub named White Fang learning the way of the wild after his dad being killed, his mom the she-wolf is doing the best she can to protect and feed her cub but in doing so gets in a fight causing her to be injured while still having to care for her cub. This book continues to take them on some crazy adventures and overall is a great book. Both Treasure Island and White Fang are great books and both are some what similar but are also different. One big similarity is that they both those their dad’s early in the book but only Jim from Treasure Island finds a new male role model versus White Fang only has his mom. Another similarity is they are both trying to learn more about the world but are learning from different perspectives, Jim is learning from a human boys perspective and White Fang is learning from a young wolfs perspective. A difference that they have is that White Fang is growing up with his mom but Jim sadly never really got to know his mom. The last difference I’m going to talk about today is that they are both trying to achieve different things, Jim is trying to find jewels and treasure while White Fang is trying to grow stronger and earn his place in the wild. Although these books are mainly different they are similar in a few ways but either way they are still great books that I recommend you or a friend should read.

In 1054 problems occurred in the East and West church’s that caused them too split and today we are going to be talking about the reasons that caused them to split. First off the two church’s in the end were the Eastern Roman church and the Western Orthodox church, they were already some what separated due to some invasions that happened and they also spoke different languages. One of the biggest reasons that the churches split was because of Michael Cerularius instigating the split by shutting down the Latin church. They also were different in a few ways which I’m going to go over now.

Differences

Their first difference was that they saw the pope in different ways for example the West let the Pope rule freely verses the East didn’t want him ruling their territory at all. Another difference is the East didn’t have a centralized ruler like the West had with the Pope. They had a few more but one difference that really stuck out to me was that the West church was separate from its state but the East church was under it’s state jurisdiction.

Leif was born in Greenland which was discovered by his father Eric the Red. He grew up to be a handsome and wise man. When he came of age he traveled to Norway and then was converted to Christianity. He then decided that it was his calling to travel back to Greenland and convert all the settlers there. During his trip back to Greenland the ship got way blown off their original course and landed in North America and he named this new land Vinland. Eventually he made it back to Greenland and began to spread Christianity. Lots of people converted including his mother but his dad refused to convert. He then returned to Vinland to build a better settlement and spent the winter into the spring there then returning to Greenland in the summer with loads of grapes and lumber. It was only on the trip back that he earned the name Leif the Lucky. He did this by saving a group of castaways who probably weren’t gonna be saved if he hadn’t found them. To this day scholars still don’t exactly know where Vinland was but they think it was where modern day Newfoundland is.

If you did not already know I read a new book every 1 to 2 weeks for my school and often write about that book when I’m done reading it. This week I read Treasure Island which is a wonderful book that I recommend for kids. The book is about a 13 year-old boy named Jim Hawkins who finds a map that leads to an island that has hidden treasure so when he tries to go find it this creates a crazy adventure for Jim and his friends. Although this is an adventure type book it has a kinda of sad theme in the book which is Jims dad passing away leaving him without a father figure or role-model. So through the whole book you can notice that he tries to find a role-model which he found in one of the other characters called Dr. Livesey who was normally at his house anyway to help Jim’s dad. The reason that Jim found comfort in Dr. Livesey is because when he was at Jims house taking care of his dad he was very nice to him and was already at his house a lot.