The Kingdom Keepers

A few years ago, my mom told me about a book series called the Kingdom Keepers. I said "I'll check the first book and see what happens next." Now, I still read them, all seven books, over and over again.

The Kingdom Keepers Book Series is an amazing story about five teenagers, (Finn, Maybeck, Philby, Willa, and Charlene), that auditioned for Disney's DHIs, which stands for two things. 1: Disney Host Interactive, 2: Daylight Hologram Imaging. To put it simply, the guides at the Disney Theme Parks have been replaced by holograms.There are seven books in the series, Disney After Dark, Disney At Dawn, Disney In Shadow, Power Play, Shell Game, Dark Passage, and The Insider. The Disney characters are real and alive, even the villains. All of the villains are in a group called the Overtakers, and the Keepers have to stop them from taking everything Disney and making it dark and scary. The leader of the Overtakers, (Chernabog from Fantasia), is rising, and can only be stopped by the mouse that started it all. The problem is that Mickey has gone missing for a while. How will they defeat the Overtakers and bring the magic back without him?

The book series was written by Ridley Pearson, and caught my attention from the first page of Disney After Dark to the last page of The Insider. This would be an excellent series for kids and adults alike. I think it's  great as far as the story and how Mr. Pearson kept me on edge to see who would win. Would the Overtakers win and destroy Disney, or would the Keepers win and save Disney? Would there be another strike from the Overtakers in the future? The last question remains unanswered. It just might be on your mind when you read the last page of The Insider.

By Fletcher Morton.

Happy Birthday Dad!

This Monday was my Dad's 54th birthday. We went out and had a birthday lunch, with Sam T. Dog. My Mom and Dad had Publix sub sandwiches, and I had some chicken strips with Cool Ranch Doritos. We also had some really good barbeque sandwiches for dinner. Then we had some Pecan Pie for the birthday cake, and watched The Hunt For Red October, which is about submarines being very quiet on the sonars when they activate their Caterpillar Drive, a mechanism that is very effective under water.

My Mom and I are going to go see the Hunger Games: Mocking-jay Part 1. I have seen the trailer for it and I think that it is going to be awesome. In Catching Fire, Katniss Everdeen, the main heroine of the story, shot an arrow at the top of the arena that houses the Hunger Games, a fight to the death, just when a stroke of lightning the tree that had a piece of string that was attached to the arrow. The arena blew up, and her friends came down and picked her up, but left Peeta Malark, Katniss's love, behind and now the Capitol, the makers of the Hunger Games, have him as prisoner. Will Peeta still be alive in this movie. Who knows?

I am working on a song called The Mad Man With A Box from Doctor Who on my piano. So far, I have little pieces of it right, but I'm still working on getting the whole thing. It is a great song about a lonely Time Lord, traveling through time and space on his own. The rest of the Time Lords are dead, and he has lost his friends. Then, he finds Amelia Pond, and soon after Clara Oswald, a.k.a The Impossible Girl.

Aviation 101

As part of my homeschool curriculum, I am studying how to be a pilot and how airplanes work. One of the sites that I use for that is Aviation 101, a site made by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. If you want to be a pilot, go to this site. It teaches you things like what the basic components of a plane are, what the different controls do, and more, and the best part is, it's free. All you have to do is sign up. I took my first test, which wasn't big, and I got an 84%. I am so excited about tonight, because tonight on Doctor Who is The Night Of The New Doctor, as I call it. I hope he is as good as his predecessor, Matt Smith. You can check him out on BBC One at 8:00 PM Eastern Time. I am working on a new song on my piano called Come Sail Away by Styx. It is going very well, in fact, I almost have it complete. The first Harry Potter book is very good so far. It has lots of wizards, spells, and Monsters. One of my favorite people from the book is Hagrid. He's a softy but he's also hard and mean when he needs to be. If I were a wizard, no offense to my dog because in Harry Potter I am pretty sure wizards can't have dogs as pets, I would have an owl. One of my documentaries I watched with lunch this week was about London, England. If you want to explore Hyde Park in London, you can take a tour on horseback.

This Is Your Brain On Music

My guitar teacher, David, gave me a book called This Is Your Brain On Music. It's written by a great musician and producer, Daniel J. Levitin. It's about why people like music so much and why some people have more abilities with music than others. For example, he did some experiments and one of them was to put people in an MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, machine and played them some music. Then, he asked them to imagine hearing music. On the screen, parts of the brain lit up both times. In fact, the parts of the brain that lit up were so similar that they couldn't tell which one was when he played and which one was them imagining.

I'm also learning a song called The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby. It's going pretty well. I have the first intro, the second intro, and the piano fill.

The Way of the Peaceful Warrior

This week I read a book called The Way Of The Peaceful Warrior. It's a great auto-biography written by Dan Millman. It's a useful book if you're having trouble concentrating, or staying happy and satisfied.  Dan Millman was a gymnast training for the Olympics. He sustained a serious injury in a motorcycle accident but continued in his gymnastics with the spiritual guidance of a man named Socrates, who taught him the way of the peaceful warrior and the way of happiness. This is an inspirational book and it taught me some good lessons about how to be happy and satisfied with what I have.