Some Known Maplewood Students

Here are some of the known Maplewood students. Obviously there are more than this, but here are some that come into the other stories... or at least their kids do.

Class of 1983
Hugh Avery: current math teacher and former physics teacher at RHS

Class of 1984
Nicholas Saunders: father to Kathryn and Evan Saunders

Class of 1985
Jonathan Liu: father to Michael, Andy, Elizabeth, Cassandra and Hannah Liu
Jeremiah Liu: father to Mei-ling and Jenna Liu
Felicia McGonigall: mother to Scott and Samantha Adams
Melissa Royal: mother to Kathryn and Evan Saunders, wife to Nicholas Saunders.

Class of 1987
Shaun Ackerman: history teacher at RHS.
Emily Royal: younger sister to Melissa Royal

Class of 1988
Tetsuya Takahashi: father to Emiko Takahashi
Kiyoshi Sato: birth father of Hideaki Sato, deceased
Eugene Kim: classmate and close friend of Tetsuya's
Andrew Tam: father of Ming-yue Tam
Jedediah Sharpe: chemistry teacher at RHS
Rose McGonigall: mother to Nate Winters
Mac O'Brien: father to Frances O'Brien

Class of 1990
Johannah Liu: younger sister to Jonathan and Jeremiah Liu

Class of 1991
Jennie Alton: part-time employee at RHS

Class of 1994
Mandie Alton: younger sister of Jennie Alton

Class of 1999
Victoria Lim: recently hired as the physical sciences teacher at RHS

Victoria Lim is one of the younger teachers at RHS. As a comparison, graduate student Aislynn Celeste (who works under the direct supervision of Hugh Avery) finished up her last year at Northpointe Academy in 2002.

To Learn by Reading

To be a good writer, one has to learn not only by writing, but also by reading. Eventually (once school settles down - haha), I'll probably get around to talking about some of my favorite books and authors here and what I do and don't like about those books. Despite my abhorrence for unnecessary character death, I still enjoy reading the works of William Shakespeare. In case anyone was wondering, CS Lewis is probably my all-time favorite author.

Things I Enjoy in Books:

• Good characters. A book has to have decent characters for the book to be good. As CS Lewis remarked, "we read to know we're not alone" and through the characters of a book, an author can speak to us in ways he or she wouldn't be able to otherwise.
  
• A halfway decent plotline. The more complex the plotline, the better. As a writer, I love making complex lines and intricate threads for characters to follow and I appreciate an author who can do the same and do it well. This is where I especially love the works of JRR Tolkien.
• Believability of a world. It doesn't matter whether it's real (The Andromeda Strain) or historical (Pride and Prejudice or The Three Musketeers) or made-up (Lord of the Rings or Narnia), but the world has to be written well and believable. One thing that I really love about Tolkien is that he goes through all the trouble of making up the languages (okay, so he really loved that stuff) and the races and the stories were just a product of people seeing what he'd done and asking him to write. In creating a different universe, you almost have to do all the background work before writing all about the characters or you'll have a lot of gaps. Trust me... I know from experience.
• I love it when authors think of clever allegorical references or symbolism or interesting names that actually apply to their characters somehow. For example, in CS Lewis' Narnia series, Aslan is Turkish for lion. Quite suiting, considering the fact that he is the Lion. Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is frequently characterized by being tall, dark and handsome. Darcy means dark. Pretty interesting if you ask me... and I'm sure there are other authors who do this; I'm just not sure of any others at the moment.
  

Things That Are Major Pet Peeves in Books:

• Unnecessary character death. Mr. Shakespeare, anyone? Need I say more? Actually, I do like Shakespeare... I just see it as unnecessary to kill off characters without a good reason.
• When authors don't check their facts or make things realistic based on what universe they're operating in. Take The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (scroll down between half and two-thirds way for the part I'm talking about), for example... excellent book and it was written well overall. Unfortunately, I have a knack for random facts that'll only be useful if I happen to get asked to appear on Jeopardy.
• Weak female characters, especially if all the main characters are female and they're all weak. I love the strong female character, like Eowyn from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
• This applies more to fan-fiction and short stories that people write and share online, but I really dislike it when they don't include warnings. If you're going to write romance (whether it's slash or non-slash and especially intense romance), please warn us. Same thing with language, etc.

I suppose that's all I have for now. I enjoyed taking a little bit of time out of my busy studying schedule to write this up and organize my thoughts into a somewhat coherent thought pattern before I go off to eat something for dinner and do more homework.

Hoorah for homework and studying! No really. Oh, this is the site I found the name information from.