Learn Spanish with Superman: Up, Up, and Away!

You might have thought of having comic books integrated with learning to make school more fun. Well, if so, here it is! (I'd think the author was psychic!) Anyway, in this book, random words are chosen in a Superman comic, deleted, and re-written in Spanish. The Spanish words are then re-written on the side of that page (in order) and their English meaning is written below them.

If you (or anyone else) asked, "Is this useful in Spanish class?" I would have to say Yes and No, because, as I said earlier in this post, random words are chosen. This means that I shouldn't expect to see the word "dare" in Spanish on the whiteboard very soon, but there are some words to expect. In other words, expect the word pero, or but from your Spanish teacher before está muerto, or you're dead, or tú, or you before ¿Crees que soy patético? or You think I'm pathetic?. (for some reason, whenever I see that é thing I notice that the same thing is in Pokémon...)

Car Science

Did you know that cars actually have science behind them? To tell the truth, they have a TON of science under the hood. This book mainly talks about both forces and motion, and car stuff, with occasional breaks to show the reader stuff like the Top Ten CRAZY ideas, (I like this part!) with ten totally FREAKY cars or concept cars, my favorite of which is a Swiss concept called the Rinspeed Presto, which, to avoid tight parking spots, can shrink from a four- to a two-seat roadster at the touch of a button! This book is AWESOME!!!  

I learned about lots of things in this book like how skids can be awful or awesome and the physics of what you are trying (or not trying) to do when you skid. Some of it includes your rear wheels floating off the road slightly, causing you to turn more tightly than you want, or your front wheels doing the same which makes you not turn sharp enough. Or, if all of your wheels lose grip probably on some water, which causes you not to be able to turn at all. Trick drivers can use skids to do awesome tricks, like skidding and turning their car around onto the next lane which would be handy if you really need to turn around fast!  Basically this is a really big skid caused by the rear wheels which I forgot to tell you, is called Oversteer (Understeer is for the front wheel one). In skids it is basically friction and inertia causing problems. Friction, as you probably know, is the force that gives something its grip, even ice has some friction. Inertia is a force that makes something keep moving if it was moving, which I think is also one of Newton's three laws. It also talks about engineering that could be used to prevent skids. Most cars have Antilock Brakes and some have Traction Control. Antilock Brakes do their work when a wheel stops turning because the brake has locked the wheel which can easily happen on wet or icy roads because the brake and the wheel don't have much friction. The system then kicks in and automatically releases and then reapplies the brake quite quickly which allows the wheel to roll just enough to get back its grip.

This book has that much science detail for all of its facts! There are a whole bunch of pictures and words so it's really good for everyone.

Warriors comic books

Now here's some more Warriors for you! This series of books is actually a bunch of side stories to the novels. It tells you about a point of time which I haven't reached yet (I'm on book 4 which is called “Rising Storm”). Anyway, Graystripe gets lost and ends up stuck with a bunch of Twolegs (people). He soon makes friends with a cat (I almost wrote kit-kat!) named millie and soon he escapes from the torturous Twolegs (with millie) and finds himself...worn out. but he survives, and finds his way back to the forest...which is in ruins. (*DUN-DUN-DUH!*)

Compare and contrast to the Warriors novels:
To me Warriors novels are more detailed but I like the comic books just about equally, perhaps from my liking of reading lots of Pokemon graphic novels! To me, the images in the comic book tell me what the cats might look like in certain people's minds. They don't match up with what I picture them most of the time and they definitely don't match up with the pictures of Greystripe and Millie in my Warriors Cats of the Clans book (which basically shows all the characters in the novels). The comic books are better for people who think best with pictures instead of words. I'm not sure which I am--probably I'm just both, but let's not get off topic too much! Those people who prefer words would prefer the novels.

The Secrets of Droon: Journey to the Volcano Palace

Droon is back! The gang now faces lord Sparr and must take the Eye of Dawn, a magical jewel that can do many things, from him. But first they must get there-which involves throwing water at an invisible gate to make it visible! Will the group of kids manage to steal the eye from Sparr's palace-which, by the way, is in a volcano? Read this book to find out!
Who I would Recommend this book to?

Anyone who likes Spore computer games and Harry Potter books. This is a combination of those two sort of things, at least to me.
This book was slightly easy for me (like the first one)--I probably read it in something like an hour, but there was a big gap between reading part of it and the next part because me and either Mom or Dad or both went somewhere before I finished the book. But anyway, here's some things you do and don't get out of easy books:
You do get a lot of entertainment but you don't get much reading practice. It's pretty fun to blast through a book but it is also kind of nice to have a book that lasts a long time.
I think I might read more of these books, but I'm not totally sure. I still have to decide.