My name is Grace Lienhard and I am ten years old. I know that I may seem a bit young to say this, but I have a very important request involving food stamps. I also know that America is having some difficulties with food stamps because my father is a lawyer. I hear that when homeless or poor people’s food stamps should be working, sometimes the cashier says they are not. But I am sure that we are able to find a way around that. And I am sure we would with great ease.
This is an environmental situation. I am requesting two things. Number one is the prices being lowered on foods stored in recycled packaging: just enough so that they are slightly lower then the prices on the products sold in packaging that was never used before. I want that because re-used things do not have as much value as never- used ones. And that may seem like a bad deal, but recycled things work almost as well as freshly made ones. And I don’t know about the rest of the United States, but I think that recycled things work very well indeed.
Number two is that people who use food stamps should only allowed to buy and eat food that comes in recycled packages. I think that this environment is in great danger right now. And as you may have read before, I requested that recycled things should be cheaper. So now when packaging companies find out that homeless people and everyone else is buying recycled packaging, it’s only normal that they will want to make their packaging products out of recycled material.
You may have a few counter explanations for me, but I have good feedback for some of them.
First of all I believe that recycled products and newly made ones are at war right now. Eco-lovers like me are buying or would like to buy things in recycled packaging. But the newly made products are cheaper, which means that everyone else buys them instead. So I thought up this plan and made a way around that. As you may have seen in the text above that I request making recycled products and their packaging cheaper. And you may think that the cheaper things are the less those companies are going to want to make them cheaper. But bear in mind, who wants to buy the more expensive products anyway? So therefore, if recycled things are cheaper the companies that make them get more money. Because no one is going to buy the expensive things.
Second of all I know you are thinking at this very moment that I am far too young to make important laws like this one. And you are correct. But I was never making a law in the first place. I was only requesting it. And neither me nor my father (who is a lawyer) knows any law against that. I am sorry for bothering you about this if there is. But I am certain that there isn’t.
Third of all I forgot to tell you that my family and I are taking a sabbatical year in France. And if there is a problem with that I will accept that without any excuses. But I am certain that it would be fine with all of us if we have to spend a few months back home to make sure the job gets done properly if we’ve convinced you.
Fourth of all this is all fine with my parents. And I am not trying to be conceited, but I consider myself very independent and mature. Or if you put it in other words you could say I am a small adult except for the fact that I am not quite over the age of twenty. Or you could say eighteen if you consider that as the line where you are not a teen any longer. And I told you I was ten because I never tell lies except when needed. So you could say that you can count on me.
Cordially,
Grace Lienhard
In The Subtle Knife, a young boy named Will meets Lyra in a haunted world filled with ghostly monsters called Spectors. Will and Lyra are both from Oxford. Lyra's Oxford contains people's souls walking beside them as talking animals otherwise known as "daemons." To follow that, Lyra's world is also filled with Spectors alongside powerful and beautiful witches. Will's world contains the same familiar objects and creatures as ours.
Will takes Lyra into his world, where a dishonest man steals Lyra's compass and then tells them to bring him a knife if they ever want it back. But when they go to find the knife, turns out that it really belongs to Will, after he loses two fingers fighting for it. But the thing that irks me about it, is that the man who wants it doesn't know how to use it. And therefore, he was stupid to ask for it because all he really wants is to travel to other worlds, and the knife does allow you to do it but he knew it wasn't going to work if the holder didn't work it properly.
One thing I noticed about this book is that Lyra (even though she's the child, who's a very important person in the first book) is much less important than Will, who is, surprisingly, a new character. And that Lyra starts using the alithiometer less and less, Pan is now referred to as "Pantailomon," who was mentioned a fair amount of times in the book before "The Golden Compass", but now his name is barely mentioned at all, and so is Mrs. Coulter's daemon, who was mentioned a surprisingly high amount before.
The setting where Lyra and Will meet each other is the haunted world, which is a good place to meet. It adds a little twinge of fear when you hear that Lyra and Will have been standing right in the middle of conscience-sucking ghosts the whole time they were there.
Notice how most of the characters don't feel a lot of fear when a big battle comes. Lee Scoresby for instance. Whenever he gets in a big mess he's always calm and sophisticated.
I recommend this book to people who love suspense and action. And for curious people like me. After all, Lyra does find out a lot about Dust in this book.
Speaking of, Grandma and Grandpa just arrived the other day with a huge story behind them. And as they were telling that story, I was staring off into space thinking "Wow I really wonder if the next visitors won't be so lucky. Let alone the cookie-loving four-year-old and his exhausted mommy that are supposed to be arriving tomorrow." (Otherwise known as cousin Finn and Aunt Laura.)
