Book Review on “File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents” by Lemony Snicket

The book I’m recommending is called File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents, by Lemony Snicket. It’s a funny book about some experiences the author is pretending to have had when he was a child. There are short mystery stories that you could solve along with the main character, who is Lemony himself. However, the mysteries are rather easy to solve and do not require much thinking. They do have quite interesting and logical reasons for the solutions, though. It isn’t a problem/solution story, more a collection of short stories about his stay in the rather problematic Stain’d-by-the-Sea. He was sent there with his mentor to solve a big mystery that a secret organization that he was part of was trying to solve but ended up studying some smaller mysteries.

I think that in these stories, the author is trying to tell me that there are people everywhere that you can help, you just have to look for them. The stories have deep meanings to them but also include humor.

My favorite story was when the minor miner told Lemony about how her paintings were falling too neatly whenever she was down in the mines. I liked that story because I felt like it was the funniest story. If you want to know the stories’ ending, you’ll have to read it yourself. 

I strongly recommend reading “File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents” by Lemony Snicket. It was one of my favorite books and will probably become yours, too. Thank you for reading my blog post!

Welcome to 5th Grade!

Over the last 18 months, there have been a lot of crazy things going on. I feel like there were more Zoom meetings than actual, face-to-face encounters. Things have gone so fast that I really can’t believe that I’m already in 5th grade. It seems like I was just in Kindergarten, so excited to start elementary school.

Something I’m looking forward to would be the rocketry science unit. I think it would be really fun to do, and I hope we get to make a rocket model and test it out. I’d like to do it because I’ve always been interested in engineering, but I’ve never really gotten to find out how the inside mechanisms of a machine worked. It’ll be exciting, whether we get to build a model or not.

A few other things I’m interested in are cats, reading, writing, Minecraft, and rollercoasters. I love cats because they’re really cute and my friend Cindy got one in January. To determine her name, we made a long list of names and let her choose from 2 of our favorites – Coral and Venice. She ultimately decided on Coral, after a long and thoughtful wait.

I started loving writing because I loved making up stories and reading them too. It’s fun to create different types of characters and give them funny names, personalities, and their family and friends. I also like describing things because I can always picture the scene in my head.

I like Minecraft because I like LEGOs and building, but if I go in creative there are endless materials I can use to create different types of structures and buildings. I don’t know why but I just like building, crafting, and destroying blocks.

I’ve never really liked scary rollercoasters, but I’ve recently gotten over my fear of scary rollercoasters after visiting 4 amusement parks this year. I love the thrill and excitement of the ride, I love how the loop-d-loops give your head a slight airy feeling and how the wind whooshes by really fast, but I don’t like how some rollercoasters always bump your head against the seat.

I hope you’ve learned something new about me and thank you for reading my blog post.

Maglev #2/3

This week we added more power. We did this by sticking 2 more bar magnets on top of the old ones. But since the old ones and the new ones repelled, we had to flip the bottom ones so it could stick. I thought there might be a problem, since wouldn’t the train just stick to the bottom magnet? Plus, it wouldn’t be just as powerful. In fact, it would be less powerful! But it did work, and we were happy. The placement of the strip magnets on the tracks was very common. Everybody used it the idea!

The first time, we failed. That’s because our train had South, and the train tracks were North. So it stuck. We fixed that by taking the train out, and then we switched sides. Now it was North to North, so it repelled and the train levitated! When we got it right, though, we needed to make the train fly higher. So, the way we improved it is that we added another 2 magnets to the track.

I learned a lot of things from this experience, from what a maglev is, to the EDP (Engineering Design Process). The EDP, in case you don’t know, goes like this: Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Improve. Working with groups is also something I learned. It told me teamwork is hard, but it pays off. A maglev is a levitating vehicle that works with magnets. That’s what maglev stands for: Magnetic levitation.