December 2008 Archives

BOOK NAME: The Lightning Thief
AUTHOR: Rick Riordan
 
The Lightning Thief is the first in Rick Riordan's series of Percy Jackson & The Olympians, and it was great!

It's about a boy named Percy Jackson who's sent to Camp Half-blood by his Mom. It turns out that the camp is for half humans-half Gods. But something has been stolen from the God of Gods, Zeus - his lightning bolt. (I guess that's where they got the name of the book, huh?)  So Percy is sent on a quest to find out who his dad is, and to find Zeus's lightning bolt.  Percy and his friends, Grover the Centaur and Annabelle the Half-blood, take a treacherous route to find the lightning bolt in the underworld. Will Percy be able to find his way through confusion? Who will he be able to trust?
 
I rate this book a 4 out of 5.  This is a very confusing book at times. It was VERY hard for me to get into the groove of the book, but I understood it later on. This book teaches you about having courage to save ones life. I would have never gone to the underworld or fought mythological creatures and Gods like Percy did.  It does get kind of scary at parts when you are reading at night. No matter what, KEEP READING!

    I suggest this book for readers who are up for a challenge; for readers who like long fantasies and mythologies. If you liked the Harry Potter series, then this is probably a book for you. The Lightning Thief is definitely a book worth reading.

BOOK NAME: Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters
AUTHOR: Lesley M.M. Blume
 
                                                                      I just finished a book called Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters. Yeah, I know; it's a long title!
     This book is about a girl named Cornelia, whose mom is a professional pianist, and is always away at concerts. With Lucy (Cornelia's mom) away at concerts all the time, Cornelia never gets to spend time with Lucy. I would hate to have a mom like that.
     One day Cornelia walks by a door in her apartment, and there is a sign on the door that says, Chien Bizarre. What does that mean? Cornelia asks herself. Eventually she meets the people who live next door. The people who live next door are a woman and a man. They are not married but only friends. The woman has a lot of stories to tell Cornelia. Cornelia visits her neighbor a lot just to hear the stories, and she thinks that the woman is very interesting. I think that the reason Cornelia visits her neighbors so much is to get her mind off her mother. 
     One day Cornelia comes over to her neighbor's house and finds her typing away on a typewriter. Her neighbor is writing a book. She won't tell Cornelia what it is about though! Cornelia finds out what the book is, so if you want to know I think you should read the book!
    I liked this book because one chapter is about Cornelia, and the next one is one of her neighbor's stories, and so on through the book.  These stories are very interesting and fun. I do admit that in the beginning of the book I did get bored.  Once she meets her neighbors it gets very interesting, so I do recommend it.

BOOK NAME: Secret Agent Jack Stalwart: The Pursuit of The Ivory Poachers
AUTHOR: Elizabeth Singer Hunt



Jack is a 9-year-old secret agent who lives in England and works for the Global Protection Force. He has a small globe named Whizzy that tells him where to go on each adventure. In this book, which is the sixth in a series, Whizzy tells Jack that he's needed in the country of Kenya, which is in Africa. Jack goes there and meets Chief Abasi, who show him how people are shooting and killing elephants for their ivory tusks and skins. Jack finds these people, who are called poachers, and uses transformer dust to turn them into different endangered animals, like elephants and rhinoceros. The dust only lasts for an hour, but Jack wanted them to know what it was like to be hunted. When they turned back into people, they were hauled off by the police.

I think Jack Stalwart is really cool because of all the magic gear he gets to use as a secret agent, such as his watch phone, his special backpack, his transformer dust and Whizzy. I also liked all the action in this book. I want to read some of the other books about Jack and I would suggest reading this one, if you haven't read a Jack Stalwart book yet.

BOOK NAME: Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Writing Thank You Notes
AUTHOR: Peggy Gifford and Valorie Fisher

This is a funny book. I enjoyed it so much that I read it in one sitting. It doesn't really say, but I think Moxy is about my age and in 6th or 7th grade. And the story in the book covers all the funny things that she does to get out of having to write thank you notes for the Christmas presents she has received. 

The problem is that she hates writing thank you notes! She could just refuse to write the notes, but she is promised a very cool reward if she gets the notes written in one day. Plus, her mom insists that she do them before she gets her reward. The reward is that her dad has promised to take her to a big, fancy, Hollywood movie premiere. She might even get to be on TV. But her mom has told she won't be able to go unless her thank you notes are done.

Moxy tries all sorts of short cuts to get her thank you notes done. Most of them don't work out very well. First, she thought she would write a single note and run it through the copy machine. That failed because they ended up making thousands of copies instead the 12 she needed. Next she tried to make them look fancy by using gold spray paint. She ended up painting a "T" on her friends clothes and "hank you" on the wall of her room. She got in pretty big trouble for that!
 
The book has some cool illustrations that really make the book fun to read. You'll have to read the book to see if she ever makes it to the movie premiere.