The Great Number Rumble

The Great Number Rumble is a fictional story about math. When the Director of Education in some non-specific town where a kid named Jeremy lives (the whole book is told from Jeremy's perspective) removes Math from the School Curriculum, the kids held a “yay-saying marathon”. Even the teachers happily ditched their math textbooks, expecting not to see them ever again. But Jeremy's friend Sam, a self-proclaimed mathnic, hated the math ban that the director of education, who's name, by the way is Mr. Lake, set up, so he sets out to prove to Mr. Lake that Math is fun, and also proves that math is everywhere in the doing of it. He covers all of the math in sports, art, music, nature, and more. Sam finally convinces Mr. Lake that math is fun, and then he lifts the ban. Cool, huh?

My favorite thing about this book was how many tricks Sam had up his sleeve. He seemed to have a way to get around everything Mr. Lake threw at him. Plus, I thought that math was integrated into almost everything, but I didn't know how.

There's also some history of famous mathematicians in this book. My favorite one was probably Pythagoras and the order of Pythagoras. They tried to prove a mathematical universe, and got extremely close, but disaster struck when one of them discovered the square root of two, which is impossible to write in whole numbers (decimals weren't part of math then).

Warriors: Into the Wild

Warriors is about four wild cat clans that seem more like societies to me. A human-pet cat named Rusty joins one of them which is called Thunderclan and takes the name Firepaw.

Let me explain something about the clans: the names of them are Thunderclan, with a leader named Bluestar (all leaders are given the name 'star' when they become leader). Thunderclan is perhaps my favorite one, just to tell you. The evil Shadowclan, which is really just evil because they have an evil leader who I think is pretty stupid--all he wants is power. His name is Brokenstar (broken the promise of being a good leader of course :\). Shadowclan is across a street from Thunderclan (they call the street the Thunder Path because they think the cars are monsters). Riverclan lives across a river from Thunderclan's forest; their leader is Crookedstar (because of his crooked jaw). And finally Windclan which is pretty much separate from all the other clans on a plateau near the Thunder Path and a farm. Their leader is Tallstar. Shadowclan drove them out so they aren't heard about much in this book.

There's also something called Star Clan, but that's basically the heaven for the cats.

Anyway, Rusty gets turned into Firepaw in Thunderclan and he becomes a warrior apprentice. The clans of cats have warriors which basically are the fighters. The book is about him training to be a warrior and all that happens within his training. First he quickly becomes friends with a cat named Greypaw (all of the apprentices are named 'something'paw--Firepaw got his name from his fiery red fur.)

Suddenly some warrior or warrior's apprentice says that Bluestar's deputy (Redtail) is dead. This is very disappointing moment as Redtail was Bluestar's deputy for many moons (they call months 'moons') and by warrior tradition Bluestar must choose a new deputy before the next full moon (moon-high). Bluestar chose a warrior named Lionheart.

The thing I enjoyed most in this book was the most exciting part when Thunderclan defeated Shadowclan's sinister leader. There was a huge war between the two clans--some Shadowclan cats hated their leader so much that they helped Thunderclan.

By the end of the book, Firepaw becomes a warrior and his name changed to Fireheart. That's basically the end of the book--of course that's just the first book!

I read this book faster than I usually read a chapter book because of how much it excited me and interested me. I think the author, whose name is Erin Hunter, is probably really good at putting excitement into her stories. This was perhaps the most exciting chapter book I've read ever! And as a result of that I've quickly tried to find the next Warriors book (which we have since my Dad and Fiona read both this book and are somewhere in the next book) and I've already started reading it. So stay tuned for that--coming up pretty soon!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (part 3)

In this Blog post I will talk about the end of the book. After returning from a long journey trying to destroy a Horcrux (I have no clue how to spell it, OK?), Harry and a weakened Dumbeldore find out that Hogwarts had been attacked by Death Eaters!! :(

Eventually during a fight, Dumbledore gets thrown off a tower after Avadakadavra--the killing curse--is used on him by Severus Snape. It was supposed to actually be Malfoy, believe it or not, he had never actually killed someone and he felt like he just couldn't do it.

Dumbledore was a very important person so this is very, very significant. With Dumbledore not there, Harry will have no one as important as him to help him. When I was reading the book, I couldn't believe Dumbledore was dead! He was quite a powerful wizard.

Dumbledore had rescued Harry and no there was no one to do that. Which is very significant to Harry. I don't know if Harry will be strong enough to defeat Voldemort without Dumbledore's help. Before when Harry reached a stumbling block, Dumbledore would step in and help him, but now there is no Dumbledore to do that. In this book, at the end, Harry says that he won't be going back to Hogwarts because he'll be trying to destroy horcruxes and Voldemort. Ron and Hermione say that they won't go back to school if he won't--so Harry won't totally be on his own. But they're young witches and wizards too. So he doesn't have anyone with much experience following his path with him.

By the way, Harry later discovers that Snape was the Half Blood Prince. So the theory that Hermione earlier placed was correct.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (part 2)

This is another section of my Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince blog post. It is about a certain section. Harry goes to a potions class, which he thought he wouldn't be taking because he only got an "E" on his OWLs because Professor Snape, who Harry loathes, was teaching it. Part of the reason is that Snape only continues teaching people who got "O" on their OWLs for potions. But Harry can take the class because Snape is not teaching it anymore!

Anyway, he forgot his book and then gets a spare which the last user apparently scribbled a whole lot of annoying notes in. He starts making the potion that Slughorn asked his students to make and then eventually (after deciphering the writing that was obscured by those annoying notes) he took a chance and tried to do what the annoying notes said. When he smashed a bean with a silver knife (he was supposed to cut it if he was just paying attention to the author) it did exactly what the book said the results should be.

He now knew that the annoying notes were not annoying at all! And the next time he followed the instructions and got what he wanted in like two seconds once again.

To me the significance of this is it lets Harry get Felix Felicis, which is liquid luck, as a prize. This unlocks a whole ton of things that rely on it so Harry can basically do almost anything he needs to.

A list of stuff Harry learns from the Half-Blood Prince:

1. How to be good at potions, even better than Hermione!
2. A few spells that the Half-Blood Prince invented himself: Levicorpus (which makes someone float in midair) and Sectum Sempre (which makes the person aimed at spill out their blood--the Prince wrote "should only be used against enemies.")

Hermione really doesn't approve of the Prince. Because Harry is kind of following someone else's orders, she gets quite unhappy. She thinks that the person who invented the spells was a dark wizard.

Harry really feels good about this Half-blood Prince but Hermione is suspicious. They both are kind of right but I believe the proof of who this Half-blood Prince is, personally I must say, belongs in my next post.

Stay tuned (please...)!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (part 1)

Just a quick note: this may be an awkwardly long blog post, so please just... keep... reading...(well, it is a big book!) So, anyway, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is another harry potter book (duh!).

A lot of the energy in the lessons that Harry took from Dumbledore is spent trying to find out about Voldemort (oh no! I said it!) and his past. It's important to find out this because this may help them defeat Lord Voldemort. They go into many people's memories with the Pensive and each one is about something to do with Voldemort. You need to know your enemy's strengths and weaknesses.

Here are a few things that Harry may have discovered in that range.
Voldemort's Strengths:

• He can obviously stand to kill someone, which is probably his main strength.
• He was a pretty good student when he was at Hogwarts. In fact he was pretty much the best student anyone had ever seen. So he's probably pretty smart.
• He has an army of Death Eaters--he basically controls them with fear.
  
• He has killed many people to make Horcruxes. A Horcrux is a part of a person's soul that got ripped apart from the rest. You can't be killed if you have your soul ripped up into pieces until the many pieces are destroyed.
  

Voldemort's Weaknesses:

• He is not good at making friends.
• It's not really good for you to have a ripped soul. He doesn't even look human anymore. He looks kind of like a snake.
• Voldemort never told anyone about the Horcruxes. So it is a weakness that his enemies know, y'know. Now they can destroy however many Horcruxes they know of. They believe the number of Horcruxes is 6, with the 7th piece of soul still in him. Voldemort knows that 7 is the most powerful magical number.
• They have destroyed two, one which was Voldemort's diary, and the other was Marvolo's ring (Marvolo was one of Voldemort's ancestors, to be precise his Grandfather). They think the other ones are: they thought they had found a horcrux in Slytherin's locket (but it turns out to be a fake, there is a piece of paper in the fake that says that someone intends to destroy the real one but we just know they intend to, not whether they actually did), Helga Hufflepuff's cup, and something of Griffendor's and/or Ravenclaw's.
• Dubledore says that Harry has a power that Voldemort doesn't--he can love. It's kind of weird to me. And Harry might think "how is that a power" as well, but still then again Dumbledore is pretty smart!

In my next post I will talk about some other stuff in the book.

Tiger math

Tiger math is about a Siberian Tiger who's Mother, without warning, died of cancer (and learn graphs from the tiger cub, who's name, by the way, is T.J.). Poor T.J. had no one but the Sheila, the tiger keeper, and Cindy, a vet assistant at the animal hospital, to take care of him, so it was up to them to do it. Their goal: get him as big and healthy as his father, Matthew, was at his age. It was hard to reach it, but, eventually T.J.'s condition was just as good as his father's. About the math? well, this book explains graphs using things about T.J. and tigers in general. for example, there's a pie chart that shows the number of different types of tigers on the globe (the whole thing representing tigers in general). My opinion of their method is, "Excellent!"

39 Clues, book 2 (first half)

The 39 Clues!

I chose to do "One False Note" as its called (book 1 is "The Maze of Bones") in I/IIs, so its not all of the book. OK, now U get that, so lets explain the book. The 39 Clues is about Amy and Dan Cahill. The Cahills are the most powerful family on the face of the globe. They have been fighting for ages and, to me, seem to have no idea what Peace is. ☢=☑ Oᵒ%oO☮=?

Questions from my mom:
Each book has some historical figure that it teaches you about. What person is featured in this book and what did you learn about him or her?
The person is Mozart and Mozart's sister Nannerl. I learned that Nannerl would have become as great as Mozart if women were more allowed to be musicians back then. I think I learned that Mozart was a prodigy.

What do you think is going to happen in the second half of the book?
They were in Venice when I stopped reading. We last left off at a place that it is hard for me to guess from.

Is your favorite character still Dan? Why or why not? (give examples)
My favorite is, yes, still Dan because he's still silly enough. For example, he was trying to operate a boat in Venice and he said he had a lot of experience because he had played a lot on X-box! After he bumped into someone, he said it was better to think of bumper cars. But he ended up being pretty good at it!

Do you think you want to read book 3 when you finish this book? Why or why not?
I'm not sure. I think yet again that I'm not quite at the point where I'm ready to say that yet. I do like the books, especially Dan's jokes, and I kind of like the cat-and-mouse aspect of it, but I might find that we leave off on a really so disturbing part of it that I'm starting not to like it as much, like the way that people are unkind to each other or the way that someone blasts the over violence aspect into existence. And I might just be reading other books too much.

But I will definitely write about part 2.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Do Re Mi: If You Can Read Music, Thank Guido D'Arezzo

Do Re Mi: If You Can Read Music, Thank Guido D'Arezzo

Do Re Mi is a informational book about Guido D'Arezzo, who created Written Music. It all starts out when young D'Arezzo took singing class. A thought popped up in his head saying "some songs may be forgotten forever!" Many people had tried write music (like he successfully did) before he made it happen, but everyone either failed or never got known well enough. Guido Blasted the Barrier to Bits. Even though Guido's original staff had 4 lines,
______________
_____☐_______
______________
______________
and the modern one has 5,
__________________
__________________
_____♪____________
__________________
__________________
he still is known as the man who made written music come true. Amasing, right?☺

Polar Bear Math: Learning Fractions with Klondike and Snow

I didn't have a lot of time to write about this one, so that's why it is kind of brief.

Polar Bear Math is a math book that uses the help of two baby (in the beginning) polar bears that were abandoned by their mother to explain fractions.

They talked about how to take care of the bears and they also helped you learn fractions in the doing of that. For example there was one that said that the bears had to be fed 1/12 of their total food 12 times a day. And then they said stuff like what fraction of a week does one person get it out of the three people that cared for the bears. So one person got the bears every three days. So how many times would that person have them in a 30 day month?

I think this is a great way to learn fractions in the way that the book had the fractions and bits about the story of what happened to the polar bear cubs. The story kept me reading the math.

Afterward my mom gave me some fractions to work on and I got them done like BAM! I'm done!

The Ink Drinker

The Ink Drinker is a mystery and a Holloween-horror type book. The main character, a boy who I think it never said the name of, (why the bugonzas didn't they?) and he is left to take care of his dad's bookstore. Then the title character comes in: a dude who sucks ink out of books come into his bookstore. Then the boy gets curious about this dude and follows him out of the bookstore where ever he is going. He follows him all the way to the graveyard and finding out that he is a VAMPIRE! The Ink Drinking vampire tells him that he used to drink blood, but he became allergic to the stuff. Then he bites the boy with his ink-nib shaped teeth. When he wakes up later back at the bookstore he tries drinking ink himself and it works! Weird, huh?

This book was kind of weird, but I learned to enjoy that partly because I've read my Ripley's Believe it or Not Book (enough that I've already mentioned it in another blog post). Even though this kind of weird is a bit different--of course it is fiction and Ripley's only has stuff that is reality, even though it is still weird (yeah, duh!)

Questions from my mom:
Q: Are you an Ink Drinker? Why or Why Not?
In the book being an Ink Drinker means being someone who sucks all the ink out of books (as I already said) but in reality it would probably mean stuff like the phrase "You gobbled up that book!" Am I an ink drinker? It depends. I'd probably be getting drunk on the science section in the bookstore or library but I might want to read some other book again and drinking it means it would be all gone!

Q: Would you recommend this book to someone? If so, who and why?
I am not quite sure who I would recommend this to. Nobody specific. I liked it enough to say that someone else might enjoy it. There's a whole bunch of other ink drinker books so I might want to read those. I'll recommend it for now because of my evidence from this book but all say if I don't recommend one of them after I read some more of them.

The Werewolf Club, book 1: The Magic Pretzel

The Magic Pretzel is a book about a kid named Norman Gnormal that was raised to "be" a dog, in the respect that his parents wanted a dog, not a boy (not that I know why, it didn't say why...) and a group of kids that turn into werewolfs. Norman joins The Werewolf club (though he isn't one himself, being "half canine" helps him just about keep up with the pack) of 3 or 4 "werekids".

A few of my responses to this book were: I like it (that's almost times too broad to be on this thing) partly because it was silly like when he said, "wait a howling, drooling, barking second!" sometime near the end.
Here are some questions my mom asked me and my answers:

Q: Is this book a part of a series? If yes, do you want to read more of the books?
A: On the first one, Yes, but on the second, I have to say maybe. I might have little time since I could have too many other books to read. Wait a sec, yes, I do want to.

Q:Did you have a favorite character? Who?
A: I don't know :P

Q: What is a Magic pretzel?
A: The magic pretzel is a (completely fictional) pretzel that is supposed to take the 1/2 werewolf curse off you if you have it.

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

This book is about Philippe Petit and his amazing attempt (and success) to walk between the used-to-be-existent Twin towers of New York City. He was a person that performed in a circus and did the tightrope walk. He really did other things like juggle but I really have to say the tightrope walk because that is basically what he did (except for the fact that they were between the tallest buildings in New York at the time). The thing that made this different was a) super duper height and b) no net to catch him if he fell and finally c) most of the watchers eventually became police trying to arrest him.

You are obviously not supposed to do this because you would almost surely fall and die. But he didn't. It sounds crazy especially since he was on there for quite a while but it is true (this obviously must appear in Ripley's Believe It or Not book somewhere). I responded to this book in a few ways. First, "Wow that dude that they are talking about is amazing!" Second, I pretty much liked the book a whole lot. Last, see if I can find something about that or something similar in my Ripley's Believe It or Not book. I think this guy was amazing, brave and quite a dare devil but this list probably goes on quite long. I think that I wouldn't do this because I barely go on the balance beams that are at some playgrounds and if I did it, I probably wouldn't be very good at it. The other reason is that I probably wouldn't be that brave. I'd call myself crazy over and over again if I suddenly dreamed of myself doing it.

The pictures are great too, as well as what happened. The pictures basically give you the sense that this is not an exaggeration. The images of the towers probably looked much like what you would see in a photograph. The pictures at least to some people actually give you the image of what it might be like from his point of view; in fact, it makes Mom feel kind of dizzy and activates her fear of heights!

Ultimate Field Trip 5: Blasting Off to Space Academy

Ultimate Field Trip 5! You might have read my previous Blog Article about Ultimate Field Trip 1, Adventures in the... oh, just see it yourself! Anyway, both 1 and 5 are, although this may be obvious to you, part of a series of Ultimate Field Trip books. In this book, a bunch of kids known as Team Europa (named after one of Jupiter's moons) go to Space Academy which is in Alabama. While they are there they do some of the stuff that astronauts-to-be at NASA do (use equipment like 5DF chairs, use swimming pools to simulate weightlessness, etc.) and then go on a simulated adventure. They found out how to build model rockets--the kind that actually launch--use creativity to make possible future stuff for landing on Mars and much more.

I think that this book is amazing, especially the simulated adventure part which I should say is my favorite part. I'm amazed that they somehow managed to operate that space shuttle simulator! At the end they had a celebration and also the team won the outstanding team award for amazing team work. That's probably the most major thing they learned--teamwork actually is important in space. You can't get much done without help from others.

This makes me think that I want to go to space camp someday too. I really hope I do since by the sound of this book it sounds amazingly fun though I may agree with what one kid said and never think of really going into space because it's too scary, even though I don't believe that now.

Anyway, check this book out!

Ultimate Field Trip 1: Adventures in the Amazon Rainforest

Wow! Follow a bunch of kids one-week trip to Peru and the Amazon rainforest and that's what you'll say. These kids studied the rainforest for a year (by the way they are in Michigan and people from Michigan are likely to like that fact, including myself) and at the end got this trip to it.

They learned amazing things -- I might be more surprised than they were since I didn't study about the rainforest. They definitely couldn't learn that just by reading books--for one thing, if they didn't go the book wouldn't exist! Just reading it you can't always visualize it--you might think they are exaggerating; that's part of the reason why they put photos in. They have to see it with their own eyes.

The most interesting part was the strange things like humongous lily pads that had razor sharp spikes on the under sides of them! At least to me, what properly would be considered interesting would be their opinions but I'm not sure who to choose to take the opinions of!

I think people should read this book because they have to know how amazing the Amazon is. Also they should read this because at the same time it explains that the rainforest is being destroyed and they need to help by not buying as much stuff that comes from it.

By the way, I had a similar experience except much nearer to home and not a rainforest. It was being at Camp Talahi, a place that I and the rest of my class at school went. I learned many things about the regular forest including building shelters just like they built thatched houses and someone (I believe it was my little sister) found a little tree frog. But that's another story that we wrote about in our Camp Talahi News.

I'm sure I'd like to read another one of the Ultimate Field Trip books, especially the Space one that I got the image of the cover of while we were looking for the image of the cover of this book that I'm talking about. That says that I really want to read all these books and whoever is reading this should too.

A Boy Called Slow

I finished this book on 07/17/09.

A Boy Called Slow is a book about a Native American boy (called slow). The reason he got the name Slow was that kids were most often named like this: first, the parents find a word or words that describe the kid well. Then they use it as the kid's (not permanent) name. For example, I might be named Computer Liker or Likes Computers!

The name isn't permanent though. If you lived then, you'd do something quite significant to outgrow your kid name (which I believe many kids loathed.)

Slow got his name when he didn't respond quickly to one thing his dad or mom asked. To outgrow his old name, Slow gets on a horse he owned and wards off enemies that were attacking their tribe. He became a very famous Indian chief and earned the name Sitting Bull. You might have heard of it before which gives away that this is nonfiction!

In this book I got a better idea of Sitting Bull. I knew there was some famous guy called Sitting Bull but I didn't know much about him, nor did I know that kids were named like his child name. This also reminded me of something that I did in my class at school. My teacher, Denise, took us to West Park and fixed up an old Native American trail along with some help from our buddies from Community High. It was a huge thing and actually the city did some of it too!! Later in the summer me and my friend Saul walked down it, at least a section of it.

First on the Moon

I finished this book on 7/10/09.

First on the Moon is (obviously, unless you never knew about it) about the Apollo 11 mission to land men on the moon for the first time ever. One interesting thing about this book was that it also talked about Buzz Aldrin's daughter, Jan, as she watched him on TV while he was in space. It also told about how one of them, I can't remember which one (Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin) found a funky looking rock that looked like it was molten though it obviously couldn't be, because the moon doesn't have a molten bit of it.

The Science Fair From the Black Lagoon

I finished this book on 7/9/2009.

The Science Fair from the Black Lagoon is a quite easy to read but at the same time it's silly, so it's still a great book. Its sense of humor gives the entertainment, like when one kid which, in the beginning of the book, said that his project was to turn invisible, but, at the end, he just handed out blindfolds!

The Voyage of the Beetle

I finished this book on 7/02/09

The Voyage of the Beetle is another book about Darwin, but this time, A: it isn't a picture book, and B: it isn't from a human's point of view. Instead of using a human being's point of view, the author of this book uses the viewpoint of Darwin's “pet” beetle, Rosie! It was a very good idea for the author to do this because it made it a bit more interesting. I learned that Darwin at first didn't even like being at the Galapagos Islands-–he said some kind of swear-word like thing when he stepped on the shore because he didn't like the looks of it, though he made one of his major discoveries there!

39 Clues, book 1

I finished this book on 6/23/09.

The 39 Clues is a great book about a cool hunt for 39 clues (duh) and I Like it a lot. My favorite person in it is Dan. He is very silly and also good with technology and math like me.
The famous person this book has to do with is Ben Franklin and I actually learned something about him. For example, he made batteries and an essay on farts.

The Stuff of Life

I finished this book on 6/20/09.

The Stuff of Life is a cool comic book about genetics and DNA and that kinda stuff. It is a least a bit silly—as almost all comic books are—but really manages to get excellent information in there in the same time. If you're not that much of a comic reader you might want to read about genetics in a traditional book, while if you look at comics all the time and nearly never look at regular books, LOOK AT THIS!

What Darwin Saw

I finished this book on 6/19/09.

What Darwin Saw is a book about Darwin and the journey he took on a ship called The Beagle. The book isn't too much of a straight forward reading book, but it is still interesting to read in any order. It was organized by the time this happened and followed Darwin's journey from place to place. He went to places like areas in South America, a few stops in Africa, and a bit in Australia. And of course, the Galapagos, which you might already know about. He figured out that things evolve differently in different places when he was in the Galapagos and one of the points of this is that the Galapagos is so far off from the mainland of South America that there are species that you can only find there and they differ from one island to the next, but they are still similar. There were three fonts in the book. One was like a narrator, one was some stuff that Darwin wrote down himself in his journals, and last one was (there were only a few of these) an orange type that showed what other people wrote or said.