Josh's Blog

The book I’m blogging about today is called The Whipping  Boy by Sid Fleischman.  This historical fiction story takes place in China. Here’s a small portion of what happened.  A young boy (named Jemmy) is plucked from the streets and made a whipping boy for Prince Horace.  Jemmy is always beaten because the prince is always disobeying orders and playing pranks.  We all know, a prince can’t be whipped so Jemmy takes his punishments. The prince gets bored with his royal life and tells Jemmy he’s running away.  They sneak away from the castle only for the prince and the whipping boy to be taken captive by two outlaws named Hold-Your-Nose Billy and Cutwater.   They manage to escape their captors and the prince takes Jemmy back to the castle, there the two get in trouble for running away, but the king was secretly happy that they got away from the castle and got away from their captors and got to know each other.

On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a nine because of old timey words.  The words made it sometimes difficult to follow the story. This book would be a great book for a person who loves stories that take place when there were kings, princes and all that goes along with them.

Have you ever wanted to read a fantasy book but can’t find the book?  Well the Kingdom of Paradise is the book! Geronimo Stilton, the author and main character, has written over 50 of these adventures. Geronimo is a mouse that writes, runs and publishes the Rodents Gazette. His life is smooth sailing until he needs a top article in the paper.  That night, he gets the feeling someone is watching him (I won’t tell you who) or where they go together.  On Geronimo’s adventure he meet’s friends like Oscar, Boils, and the Dragon.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this a “ten” for being full of adventure and teaches the lesson of  “never judge a book by its cover”.  I’d recommend this book to fantasy adventure lovers!

Ladies and germs, I present …..Bear Watching! This informational book written by Diane Bair, was published in 2000 by the Captone Press.  Bear Watching is a how-to-guide-book about bear safety and general facts about bears all over the world.  I really enjoyed learning about the different types of bears.  I learned an awful lot that I didn’t already know. The book really was interesting.  I guess the one thing I didn’t understand in my reading was why bears traveled so far to find a mate.  I’m not sure if it has to do with territory issues or what…. I have decided to investigate this one further.

Some interesting facts are that brown bears can smell 1.6 miles or one kilometer away!  Sun bears are the worlds smallest bears and they live in Asia.  Did you know that there are probably only 1,000 pandas left in the wild according to my reading? That’s sad.

On a scale of one to ten, I’d rate it a ten because it’s highly educational. I think a true nature lover would love this book!

 How many of you want to read a great classic that has adventure at every turn?  Well, this is the book!  The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster, is the perfect book for a mystery and fantasy lover.  It starts out as a boy named Milo who thinks everything is a bore, like school, eating, family, and more.  One day after arriving home from school he found a big box in his room.  Milo opened the box to find a tollbooth, tokens and directions. He hopped into a car that was in the corner of his room and away he went!  He traveled to the Kingdom of Wisdom. The kingdom was a mess, the king and his brother were fighting, there were princesses that had to be rescued and much for Milo to do!  Milo made several friends along his travels. Tock, a friend tells a tale about time and the Humbug, who tells why words are not important or needed. I can’t tell you much more because you won’t need to read it if I do!                                                           

  On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it a ten because I really enjoyed reading it.  I would, however recommend maybe reading it as a family, because of some of the old timey words used.

For the month of January, I read a book called Sea Creatures.  The authors Jane P.  Resnick and Anton Ericson must have been geniuses because they thought of, researched and covered everything!  This book has to be an informational hit!  The publisher is Kids Books, L.L.C., and was published first in 1998 and again in 2004. In summary, this book is about fish, birds and other mammals.  It is also about  how they are born, what they eat, what habitat they live in and much more! One example is about how the male Chinese Fighting Fish blow bubbles around their eggs to hide and protect them from predators.  This is an example of how they make sure as many eggs as possible hatch.  I also found it fascinating how Sandshark pups eat their siblings at birth.  The first one or two born usually eat the other siblings after they are born.  So, usually only about two of the five survive birth.

I found this book interesting in a lot of ways, but I’ll tell you three examples.  First, sharks don’t sleep and penguins have a special way of making fresh water from salt water so they can drink it. They take water into their bills and a special gland removes the salt and releases it through special grooves in their bill and last, but not least, penguins spend 85% of their life in water.

On a scale of 1-10, I’d give it a ”10″  for being highly educational.   I really enjoyed reading it and sharing facts with my family.  I would definitely recommend it to others, especially anyone interested in marine animals or anyone interested in becoming a marine biologist!