Michael's Blog

First of all, I’m sorry, I don’t have enough space here to write the rest of my summary. I’ll just say that everything ends perfectly. It would be perfectly fine without a sequel, but Mr. D’Lacy decided that it’s going to be a series anyway. So, on with the main content:

Q: How would you have handled finding food if you were Conker?

A: Just so you know, Conker is this little squirrel that lived (note it’s “lived” not “lives”) in the big old oak tree in Mr. Henry Bacon’s yard. He was attacked by Caractacus (the resident crow) and one of his eyes got damaged. Now he can’t see out of that eye and gets dizzy easily. I would probably just trust Snigger (another resident squirrel, that happens to save Conker’s life) to feed me. If I had a really bad eye, (which I do, a “lazy eye” as it’s called) I wouldn’t risk going out in the open to get it myself.

Q: What would happen if David didn’t write a story for Lucy?

A: The first thing I think of is that David wouldn’t know the abilities of Liz’s dragons. He would be very confused, and really, I don’t know what after that. The book doesn’t give that much information on David, except that he is a college student. The book just goes as it is. If the story wasn’t written, well, there’d be no plot line of the book! If somehow, the plot line stayed the same, then David would probably be less nosy and know less about them, because for me, the more I know, the more questions I have. Also, Gadzooks, David’s special dragon, would have been useless, and would have “died”. Gadzooks was given to David before he started writing the story for Lucy, so unless Gadzooks, or what ever David decides to name his dragon, has a different personalty, David would have to write a story.

Now for book club, and sadly the last one of the year, I’m reading The Fire Within by Chris D’Lacey. It’s the first book in the Last Dragon Chronicles, apparently containing, as of right now, 5 books, each over 300 pages long. Looks like I’ll be doing a lot of reading this summer. Plus, Chris D’Lacey is writing another series based off of the Last Dragon Chronicles, called the Dragons of Wayward Crescent.

Summary: David Rain is renting a room from the Pennykettle household. According to the ad he found, he was supposed to “like” dragons. When David came to preview the room, he found a little clay dragon sitting on their fireplace. He accepts the room and moves in. Soon afterwards, Liz Pennykettle makes him a special dragon, which he names Gadzooks. He is chewing on a pencil eraser, and in his other hand, he is holding a note pad. Lucy Pennykettle, Liz’s daughter, has an unusual love for animals, and recently, a large oak tree in their neighbor’s house was cut down. Lucy was very worried about this because she has found and named some small grey squirrels. One of them, Conker, has a swollen eye, and can’t see out of it. Lucy’s birthday is coming up and David decides to write a story about that. This is David’s first time writting a story, and as he will soon find out, there is much more to these dragons that meets the eye.

Review: So far, I think it’s a very good and interesting book. It’s double spaced, so it’s actually not as long as it seems (300 pages). This book is, as of now, is quite interesting. If I tell you why, it will probably spoil it, but one reason is that Gadzooks tells David what to write in his story…

For my book club, we’re reading Give Me Liberty. We’re studying the Revolutionary War, or as of right now the events that lead up to the Revolutionary War, so all of our book club books are related to the revolutionary war.

Summary: Nathaniel Dunn is being sold as an indentured servant. He is met by a mean plantation owner named Owen. He “buys” him, (he hasn’t payed for him yet) then sends him to a stable to pick up a horse. He decides to be naughty and gets the worst horse ever: Vixen (his name is actually a mean thing; look it up. You can guess what’s going to happen next). Nathaniel takes Vixen back to Owen, and nearly kills him. Owen then punches and kicks Nathaniel numb (as in, he nearly faints from the sear pain). Then, a friendly man walks up and commands Owen to stop. Owen never actually paid for him yet, so Nathaniel is still up for bidding. The friendly man outbids Owen and buys Nathaniel officially. Then he blacks out.

When Nathaniel wakes up, he is sitting propped up against a tree. The man is sitting closely by, going through his books. He is deciding what to sell to pay for Nathaniel. The man’s name is Basil. He is a school teacher/music teacher/clerk. When he learns that Nathaniel can read, he is delighted. He at first had no idea of what he was going to do with him. If he could read, he could give him to a workshop that is directly below where Basil rents his room. They want apprentices “…tolerably educated.” He does a lot of thinking out loud about the financial costs of having him work there. They go to Williamsburg.

This is not the end of what I have read, but it is a good stopping point. (if I go on, it’s going to take just plain forever). I will try to catch up on where I am next week (hopefully. I really don’t know if I’ll have enough time)

Review: I personally love this book. I’ll say it’s better than The Mysterious Benedict Society, Where the Red Fern Grows, and the 39 Clues Series put together (those are/were my most favorite books at some point). That’s how good I think this is. The author puts so much emotion in this book. I’m surprised that it didn’t win a metal or an honor! It kept me interested the whole time. The only times I felt were appropriate to put it down is either a chapter break or a section break. (It has 10 sections, 39 chapters) And that’s really the only part I disliked. The section breaks had small poems that were sometimes two pages. Otherwise it’s great. I would put all of the things I said about Guns for General Washington here.

I recently listened to Adora Svitak’s speach on TED, and I think it was one of the best speaches I’ve ever heard. And on top of that, it’s all true. You can watch it below:

What she said was what I’ve been thinking ever since I thought about how the world worked. I thought, “Why do adults always boss their children around? We’re eventually going to grow up too and have children, and run the world. And because our parents treated us unfairly (at least from our point of view; the American Revolution is a good example of this) so we treat our children the way we were treated, then they treat their children like that, and it’s just a never-ending cycle, unless someone gets treated fairly.” Then I though, “Well, since no one will end the cycle, is is never ending.” Until now.

Since then, I’ve tried my best to impress my parents by thinking like a mini-adult, and I’m partially happy about that, but there was always that nagging feeling that this was unfair. My parents liked this at first, but now, they’re saying things like “Don’t worry about this” or “we’ll take care of that”, and I also have split feelings on that too. I think it’s nice, but I’m never sure why. I don’t think positively or negatively on anything without any reason behind it. It’s like your parents suddenly saying, “You now get $ 1,000,000 a month for allowance!” You’re happy but also cautious, because you have no idea of what might happen next.

I also like how she mentions trust being a very big part in being treated unfairly. I think my parents trust my because they also bought my a laptop, but at an age of seven. I can’t remember four/five years back why they decided to buy me one at that time, but that’s really off the point. They also didn’t give me chores, but I’m not sure why… (don’t leave any comments about that point.) More recently, my dad agreed to buy me this middle/high school level programmable robot. That, I remember, was because I was going to be bored over the summer, but also because my dad thinks that I am more than capable of controlling it. That is another example of what was in her video.

To cut a long story short, I’m just going to say that Adora Svitak’s speech was very inspiring.

I’m reading the Viper’s Nest by Peter Lerangis, and so far it’s a really good book. However, there is one character in the book that really interests me: Kurt.

Kurt is first introduced in a mine shaft, supposed to contain where one of the 39 clues are. He is sitting on a table, playing chess with himself. (That kind of says it. Playing chess on a table in a mine shaft. Not really interesting, is it?) Amy goes to play chess against Kurt while Dan goes into one of the mine shafts and finds a secret message. He scribbles it down on a sheet of paper and gets out of the mine shaft, just in time for Amy to epically pone Kurt (which means to win). Then they leave without Kurt.

I don’t think that Kurt was that important of a character, mostly because that is the one and only time he shows up in this entire series (at least to what I’ve read so far). He just seems to be an ordinary person, playing chess. Nothing strange about that. That’s what made him interesting to me, him being a nobody. I do think that he is going to turn up somewhere and help them, because our teacher said that every character in a book has some important role.

My latest writing piece; It’s about how I saved Disney’s website.

Disney’s Website Failure

Since Guns for General Washington was so short, we’ve started a new book club book. It’s called George Washington, Spymaster. But, we’ve basically already finished the book and it’s all just like a reenactment of the Revolution. I’ll skip the summary part because it’s all historical, and there’s really nothing to summarize.

I liked this book because I think the author did a great job of describing what it was like. He created a very full picture of the events in this book. He also listed many references in his book, so I know it’s true. There is also a code in the back of this book, where they say what Tallmadge’s code was. (In the book, Tallmadge made a secret code for the letters. They do display the original letters.)

In Too Deep is the 6^th book in The 39 Clues series. This time I am going to spoil the series up to this book (including this book). Actually, I’ll let you decide whether I spoiled it or not.

Here it goes…

Amy and Dan are going on a hunt for The 39 Clues. They had a chance to chose between either $1,000,000 or the first clue in a series of 39 clues to become the most powerful human being in the world.(We don’t know what it is. Just powerful.) They are given a hint to the first clue, and then they travel around the world to find the rest of the clues. They have been tricked, ailed, and many times more than once just narrowly escaped from death. They have discovered that their parents have also been on this clue hunt, and now they’re chasing in their parent’s footsteps. They have found out that there was a ship carrying two of the clues, tungsten and myrrh, headed for a remote island on the island of Java. They also know that there was a Cahill working at the delivery point. It seemed just too suspicious to be coincidental. There was also an active volcano at the time he was working there. In fact he built his lab into the volcano. It was said that he had 38 of the 39 clues and was assembling them together. The volcano erupted just as he finished. Amy and Dan discovered a letter he had written after his lab was destroyed. They deciphered the poem, and found that the clue was–(I’ll tell you at the end of this post)

The main reason I read this book is that I’m into the 39 Clues series. Some of the books are cliffhangers, and most of the authors chosen to write the books are very good. You get to know Amy and Dan very well. You can almost tell what they’re going to do next. (Amy is a bookworm and Dan is, well, average. Collects cards, likes swards, is annoyed by Amy…) I also read it because I like to find out myself what the clue actually is this time instead of entering the cards and see the clue pop up. (In each hardcover book, there is a compartment in the front cover that if you lift open, there will be 6 clue cards with a secret code at the bottom of the card. You can enter the code online and the cards will pop up and a clue will be reveled.) There is, however, one small thing that I would change in the book: Irina dies. She used to be the “bad guy,” but she died to save Amy and Dan. I didn’t want her to die.

The Clue:

(You’ll kick your self when you read it; It’s so stinkin’ simple! It’s even on the cover!)

(Hint: Blue; Bubbles; Sharks/Dolphins)

H₂O (water)

I like this book so far because of the way the author expresses the characters’ feelings.  It makes you feel like you are standing right next to the character, this is from the author’s point of view, and reading his thoughts at the same time and also somehow hear him whisper in a snow storm (or that of equivalent).  Also, it seems exceptionally realistic. Considering that there was little to no first hand accounts of exactly what happened, the author was very considerate of what they might have said/thought.

Character Connections:

Ranger & Gar Face

The connection between Ranger and Gar Face is very important to the book. Gar Face feeds Ranger, but Gar Face is also the “Bad Guy” in the book. This connection is probably the most important in the book because it connects everything in the Underneath to Gar Face. It is crucial to the plot of the book. If Ranger never met Gar Face,  a whole string of events wouldn’t have happened, and the calico mother would only nave herself to take care of her kits and no place for shelter.

Grandmother & Night Song

This connection is important because, in the end, after over 1,000 years of reflecting on what happened, she broke the chain that held Ranger.