Wonder Struck by Brian Selznick

The book Wonder Struck is by Brian Selznick, who wrote the Caldecott Award winner The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a book that is told in pictures and words (about 50-50). The way he writes his books is in a very special way, the slower, dialogue heavy parts of the book he does in words and the more action-y parts of the book he does in pictures. In Wonder Struck he does it differently, one of the stories is in pictures and the other is done in words. It give the book that sense of wonder when one of them is missing words and the other is missing pictures. Wonder Struck is one of those books where there are two different stories going on at the same time, but close to the end of the book the stories become intertwined.

So be on the look out for this cover in book stores during the month of October (when it comes out)!

                                         

I will make another blog post on this book when this book comes out.

Skullduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

I made this video for my aunt to put online and I just found it again.

Warning: I did this when I was 8.

If there is a problem watching this video click on this link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzoqFCrgWzk 

If you think you will enjoy this book from the description, you should know a few things about the series. One of them is that there are 5 books in the series. Book 1: Skulduggery Pleasant (The first book might not be called Skulduggery Pleasant any more because the publishing company changed the name and the cover during the process of publishing. I think it's called The Scepter of the Ancients now but, I'm not sure). Book 2: Playing with Fire. Book 3: The Faceless Ones. Book 4: Dark Days. Book 5: Mortal Coil. (The 4th and 5th books might not be available the US for the time being. If you would like to buy the 4th and 5th books you might have to order them from somewhere else.)

Chasing Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson

Chasing Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson, is a young adult version of his book Manhunt. It's a non-fiction book about the 12 day hunt for Abraham Lincoln's killer, John Wilkes Booth. I found this book in the little bookstore in the Lincoln Memorial, I was just looking around the store and BAM there it was. At first I thought it was just some dumb (excuse all of my followers who like these books) books where some kid travels back in time and helps "change history". This book is actually a real, honest to goodness, all facts book that seemed like it was historical fiction, not real history. I normally don't like history books where it's just a bunch of facts listed on a piece of paper that got published and called a book. But, Chasing Lincoln's Killer isn't just a bunch of facts it's actually an interesting story to read.

I think that if you are interested in Lincoln's political life this book doesn't really portray his political life, it tells the story of him being assassinated and the scheme that John Wilkes Booth used for killing Lincoln and getting away with it. I think the most interesting thing I learned is that John Wilkes Booth wasn't working alone, he and two of his friends went out to kill other people, too. He sent someone to kill the Vice President and another person to kill Seward. The reason why I think we don't really know about the other two is because the person who went to kill the Vice President got drunk (I think that is the only time that drunkenness is okay) right before he was going to kill him so he didn't.  Also the person who was trying to kill Seward only severely injured him. I think my favorite (Well, if it weren't in real life) thing is that Booth shot Lincoln during a "laugh line" so some of the people in the theater didn't know that Lincoln was murdered. A lot of people though it was all just part of the show.

I think that if you are a person that likes fantasy or just general fiction, you will like this book because it's told from  a point of view of a fiction book.

I hope you like this book as much as I did!

Science Fair

Since I'm an 11 year old girl, I was in a science fair on May 25 and my friend and I did a project on food science. I'm going to put all the text on my blog.

Scientific Chemistry in Food!

What does science have to do with your favorite foods?

Everything!

Crystallization is when a sugar molecule gets very hot (melting) and then cools and hardens (setting). When that happens the results are (virtually) endless, it all depends on what you do with the sugar before you let it cool. If you don’t do anything to the sugar, you would get caramel after it cools. If you add some nuts to it you would get a brittle. The test that we we’re using is fudge. In fudge the sugar doesn’t crystallize completely, it only melts the sugar in the chocolate and adds some liquid to keep it soft (when refrigerated). Fudge is the result of the chocolate melting and softening the sugar molecules in the chocolate crystallizing some of them. If we didn’t have sugar chocolate and all those yummy, sugary things would not be sugary, and as a result of that it would lose all its yumyness.

Recipe:
3 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

1/4 cups of butter

1 cup chopped walnuts (optional) 

1.Place chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, and butter or margarine in a large microwaveable bowl. Zap in microwave on medium until chips are melted, about 3-5 minutes, stirring once or twice during cooking. Stir in nuts, if desired.

2. Pour into well-greased 8x8inch glass baking dish.  Refrigerate until set.

Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a single celled organism that makes bread rise. Also called bread yeast, this little creature, when placed in a warm environment with sugar, will feed and multiply rapidly. It will also eat starch, which it converts to glucose. The yeast then produces carbon dioxide, which create the little bubbles in bread. 80-90 degrees Fahrenheight is the ideal temperature for yeast growth, when it rises, creating small pockets in the bread. But if it grows to quickly, it will create large bubble pockets. Yeast begins to die at 120 degrees, so you want your yeast in an environment where the temperature is stable. You should not mix yeast into salted water. The salt inhabits the growth of yeast, so the yeast cannot make the bread rise. Yeast has been around so long, people refer to it as the oldest plant cultivated by man. If yeast did not exist, bread would not rise, but instead would be a flat, unfluffy, unappetizing lump of dough.

Recipe:
1 Package active dry yeast

1 1/2 cups of warm water (105 - 115)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 tablespoon shortening

4 cups all-purpose flour 

Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup of the water. In large bowl, dissolve the sugar and salt in the remaining water. Add shortening and yeast mixture; mix well. Add flour, a little at a time. Cover bowl and set aside. Stir every 10 minutes, 5 times. On a lightly-floured surface, form into 2 long loaves; place on a greased cookie sheet. With knife, make a few diagonal on top of the loaves. Let rise in awarm place until it is light and has doubled in size. Heat oven to 400. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until brown and crust sounds hollow when lightly tapped. Remove from cookie sheet. Cool on wire rack.

The Global Gourmet, Concordia Language Villages

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Fudge/Detail.aspx

http://edel-science.wikispaces.com/file/view/sci_fair_layout.gif/89799935/sci_fair_layout.gif

http://homecooking.about.com/od/specificfood/a/yeast.htm

http://images.wikia.com/recipes/images/1/18/ActiveDryYeast.jpg 

http://img4.myrecipes.com/i/recipes/su/07/12/creamy-fudge-su-633386-l.jpg

http://www.a-night-in-paris.com/images/typical-french-food-la-baguette-02-225w.jpg

http://www.allbreadrecipes.com/wp-content/uploads/french-bread.jpg

http://www.bionewsonline.com/q/what_is_yeast.htm

http://www.crystalsandjewelry.info/wp-content/uploads/sugar%20crystals%20information.jpg

http://www.food-info.net/uk/colour/caramel.htm

http://www.getprograde.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/pile-of-sugar_sm.jpg

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy By Douglas Adams

It's a funny story, how I found out about The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I was sitting at a rest stop (in Delaware!) and I asked my mom a question that she didn't know the answer to. She told me the answer was "42" (Yes that was a very odd answer). Then she started to tell me about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Their are five books in the series. Book 1: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Book 2: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Book 3: Life, the Universe and Everything. Book 4: So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish. Book 5: Young Zaphod Plays it Safe.

The book is laugh out loud funny. I wanted to read almost every other line out loud to someone because it was so funny. One of my favorite jokes is that humans are only the third most intelligent species in the galaxy. The most intelligent species is mice, followed by dolphins, and then us. The whole book is about a man named Arthur Dent who gets lifted off of Earth (right before it explodes) by his good friend Ford Perfect. Ford is really an alien from Belelgeuse (not from Guildford like he told Arthur before) which is some weird spot in the universe. If I were to rate this book on a funniness scale from 1-10 I would give it an 11.

I think my favorite character is Trillian. Trillian is a human who (randomly) got picked up by Zaphod Beetlebrox (President of the Universe) for no apparent reason and now she is his girlfriend. What I find funny is that Arthur tried to "pick her up" at a party, when Zaphod blew up the place and unexpectedly picked up Trillian. The two things she managed to keep from Earth were two white mice that she cherished, because they were the only things that she managed to save from her home.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a very funny book and I hope you love this book as much as I did!

This is a picture of a book with all five books in it.

I just have to mention this.

One day my friend and I were talking and in the middle of nothing she said "Oh! I have a blog now!" When I got home I checked it out ( Hint Hint:I think you should, too). Unfortunately the blog isn't about books. But, it's about food!

Here's a link:
Http://www.mymindthinksinfruits.blogspot.com
(If for some weird reason that link doesn't work you can just copy & paste the link into the "address bar".)


I hope you like it!

The Magickeepers By Erica Kirov

My friend was telling me to read this book called Magickeepeers : The Eternal Hourglass.  It's the first book in the Magickeepers series. There four books are in the series (so far). In the first book Nicholi (Nick) discovers that he is from a family of Russian magicians and soon is being trained in the art of magic. He meets his cousin Isabella who has a pet Siberian tiger, who will protect her to the death (while he only gets a hedgehog), Damien his other cousin  who runs the family's magic show, and Theo who (also happens to be his cousin) is Nick and Isabella's teacher.  Nick, whilst trying to handle the fact that he will be in one of the best magic shows in all of the country, figures out that a magical "relic", called the Eternal Hourglass, has gone missing! In this book Nick learns many of things, one of which is that he hates Russian food.

I think the characters in this book are very likable. Probably my favorite character in the book is Isabella, she has never lived anywhere besides the family hotel(I find it sad that she's never had pizza before). I bet my second favorite character is Sergei, he is a crazy magic animal seller, who also delivers pizza and Chinese take out through your closet.

The book as a whole is very witty and I like the fact that the family magic act is actually magic not mirrors and smoke. This book is full if adventure, humor, and  excitement.

I hope you enjoy this wonderful book as much as I did!