The Re-education of Huckleberry Finn

   "Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned."

(Mark Twain)

   The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, written in 1884 by Mark Twain, is considered by some to be the first piece of true American literature because it had all American themes, characters, regional dialects, and settings.  The book is about an "unsivilized" boy named Huck Fin who is going down the Mississippi River.  He becomes friends with an escaped slave named Jim and ends up wrestling with his conscience about whether or not to turn him in.  Society tells Huck that slavery is acceptable and as he goes down the river, he encounters educated and so called "civilized" people who kill, harm, and manipulate each other.  Jim, on the other hand, is kind, intelligent, and caring.  Huck begins to see Jim as an equal and far different than all the other people he meets, so he decides to help Jim escape slavery.

   In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huck and his friend Tom find $12,000 and they split the money. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn starts after Huck is adopted by the Widow Douglass and her sister Ms Watson. They try to teach Huck religion, get him an education, and teach him right from wrong. Suddenly, one day Huck's drunk and abusive Pap shows up asking for money.  Huck refuses to give him the money and Pap abducts him and takes him to a secluded cabin in the woods.  Huck manages to escape to a nearby place called Jackson's Island. There Huck meets a runaway slave named Jim.  Huck and Jim escape together on a raft down river.

   After a number of adventures, a horrible incident occurs, separating them:  a steamboat collides with their raft. Huck fears that Jim was killed and Huck swims to shore and to safety. There he encounters two educated and "civilized" families feuding over something they can't even remember.  They shoot and kill each other and wipe out an entire family over it. Thankfully, Huck finds Jim and they get away on the raft.

   After reuniting, Huck and Jim meet two people who say they are a duke and a dauphin. They are con-men and try to jip all sorts of people out of their money. Not only do the Duke and Dauphin pretend to be royalty, but they also pretend to be great actors. They stop at the next town where they stage a play called The Royal Nonesuch.  The whole thing is just the Dauphin romping around the stage naked and striped like a wild animal. After these devious hucksters swindle the townspeople out of their money, they drift away on their raft with Huck and Jim.

   Next they come to a town where the Duke and Dauphin pretend to be uncles coming from England to attend a funeral for their brother.  The dead man's will gave the uncles $6,000, so naturally these greedy men want the money for themselves.  Huck is disgusted by what the Duke and the Dauphin are doing, so he takes the money and hides it in the dead man's coffin.  The Duke and the Dauphin are found to be frauds, and later they and Huck slip away and escape.

   The Duke and Dauphin now have no money and decide to stage The Royal Nonesuch again in another town.  They leave Jim at the raft and head into town to begin advertising their show, but they decide to turn Jim in as a runaway slave for the money.  The Duke and Dauphin sell Jim and don't tell Huck.  News gets out about the Royal Nonesuch, and the townspeople tar and feather the Duke and Dauphin.  Meanwhile, Huck decides to help Jim escape, even though it means he might have to sell his soul to the devil. 

   Huck finds out that Jim was sold to a farm owned by the Phelps, a local family.  Huck arrives at the farm and is greeted by a woman running toward him, who mistakes him for his friend back in St. Petersburg, Tom Sawyer.  Huck feels very lucky because he knows everything about Tom and this will help him further his plan to save Jim.  He leaves the house and pretends he has has to go get his bags in town, but he really wanted to make sure the real Tom doesn't show up.  He gets half-way to the next steam boat when the real Tom pulls up in a coach.  Huck explains the situation to Tom and says that he is going to steal Jim.  To Huck's surprise, Tom agrees to help Huck. Tom is very well-known, has a family, and has pride, and if he helps free Jim, he might be looked down upon and bring disgrace to his family.  Huck, on the other hand, has nothing to lose, only something to gain:  Jim's freedom.

  Tom starts to formulate a plan.  First he pretends to be his cousin Sid, and then they begin digging a hole into the cabin to free Jim.  Tom has these crazy ideas that everything has to be done by the book, which means that everything has to be done the way prison escapes are portrayed in action books.   Tom comes up with all sorts of flapdoodle (nonsense) of how to help Jim escape. The boys even go so far as to get snakes, rats, and spiders for Jim to tame and train them as his prison companions.   Before they tried to save Jim, he was kind of comfortable in the slave cabin, but after Huck and Tom started "helping" him escape, he was pretty miserable.  Eventually, it was time to really free Jim.

   Tom decides that they need to write "nonamous" letters that state that slave stealers are coming to get Jim. The Phelps family reads the letters, and get all the farmers from around to catch the slave stealers and shoot them.  By the time the farmers reached the cabin, Huck, Tom, and Jim had scurried silently down to the fence.  Huck and Jim scrambled over, but Tom got his britches snagged on a splinter of wood.  The farmers charged toward them thinking they were the slave stealers.  As quick as a flash, Huck, Tom, and Jim were in their canoe paddling toward an island when Tom excitedly announced that he had a bullet in his calf.

My map of the Phelps's farm and the Big Escape

   Huck and Jim decided to go get a doctor to help Tom, and Huck went back to the Phelps's farm. Two days later Tom was carried by the doctor back to the Phelps's.  The Doctor explained how Tom was shot in the leg and that Jim risked his freedom to help him remove the bullet.  Jim is put back in his cabin this time with chains on his hands and feet.  The doctor tells the guards not to be too rough on him because he helped Tom.  Tom meanwhile is sick in bed recovering with Huck near him.  When Ms. Phelps enters the room he tells her that he and Huck freed Jim.  Ms. Phelps doesn't believe this but Tom reassures her it did happen.  Then to everyone's surprise, Tom's guardian, Aunt Polly, all the way from St. Petersburg, enters the room.  She says she got worried after Ms. Phelps sent her a letter saying that Tom and Sid came to the farm.  She only sent Tom.  She says Huck is not Tom but really Huckleberry Finn and Tom is not Sid but Tom Sawyer.  

   Huck is surprised to learn from Tom that Jim had been a free man the whole time.  Miss Watson, Jim's owner, passed away and in her will she freed him.  There was no need to help him escape after all.  Tom created this whole thing just for the adventure of it.  In the end, Jim celebrates his freedom and Tom pays him forty dollars for playing prisoner.  Huck is adopted by the Phelps and to keep from being civilized again, he decides he wants to  head out to Indian Territory with Tom and Jim. 

  There is an expression my mom uses:  "You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar."  By using humor to explain important social topics, Mark Twain gets his readers to rethink their beliefs and reeducate themselves.  He thinks critically about slavery and the negative traits of society (people are greedy and easily manipulated, and they profess to be cultured and civilized, but may be anything but).  On the raft, life for Huck and Jim is peaceful, easy, friendly, and simple, whereas life on shore is a complete contrast. Because of the friendship he develops with Jim, he faces big moral changes about the true meaning of brotherhood and humanity, unlearning everything he has learned about African-Americans.

My visit with Picasso

Yesterday I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (the VMFA) here in Richmond.  My mom and I went to see the Picasso exhibit from the Musee National Picasso in Paris.  Picasso lived in Spain and France most of his life.  He was told to paint in the classical style, but he liked to paint in his own way.  Picasso invented cubism, modern art, and created collages.  

Picasso didn't stay with one style of painting for long.  In one year, he might do at least three different styles of painting.  His first period, the Blue Period, came after the death of his friend.  He depicted sad and depressing scenes, usually in blue.  After the Blue Period he entered his Rose Period, and he depicted scenes of circus performers and other serene images.  

From there, Picasso's paintings and sculptures became more abstract.  Picasso was heavily influenced by African art, and began to incorporate African designs into his own pieces. He once said, "Bad artists copy.  Good artists steal."  In his work, you begin to see mask-like features that look chiseled and  lots of jagged strokes that look like carved sculpture.  His most radical painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was created in 1907 and it showed five women in a brothel - two of the women in the center have mask-like features, while the other three look like they have actual masks on.  Even though this work was not in the VMFA show, there were many other paintings and sketches that demonstrate this new style.  

Some of his art work conveys different meanings if you look at them from multiple perspectives.  It was astonishing to actually see these amazing pieces done by Picasso.  My favorite pieces included the goat sculpture (as you can see at the top of this post) made out of recycled materials and the portrait of Dora Maar in which Picasso used lots of brilliant colors on her face.  "Colors, just like features, follow the changes of emotions," Picasso said, and in looking at this picture, her expression seems calm, but the colors are very vibrant and exciting.  She looks very self-assured and the colors hint at her artistic energy.  As Picasso said, "Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?"  Here, he paints her emotions and spirit. 

If you have no background knowledge about Picasso, you might be confused by what you're looking at.  It was helpful to read about him first.  My mom taught me a lot about his life and work, which helped me understand him better.  We also watched a great BBC show on You Tube:  Modern Masters:  Picasso, and I read the book Pablo Picasso:  Breaking the Rules by True Kelley.  All this helped me really understand and enjoy his work.  If you go to see the Picasso exhibit, be prepared to be blown away by his awe-inspiring works of art!

Happy Pi Day!

  Today is March 14th.  To most people, it is just an ordinary day...but to the geeky among us (like me), it's PI DAY (3/14)!  (Coincidentally, it's also Albert Einstein's birthday!)  Yes, this annual celebration was established twenty-two years ago at the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco in honor of the never-ending number pi.  Pi got its name from the Greek word for perimeter.  Pi is an irrational number, meaning its value cannot be expressed as a fraction, and its decimal form is a never ending number that never repeats.  Most of us know it is used in geometry, mathematics, science and engineering, and only know it to a few numbers:  3.14159265.  The first person ever to find the 3.14 number for pi was Archimedes in 250 B.C.  The farthest that pi has ever been expanded has been out to the five trillionth digit!  In honor of Pi Day, we made a pizza pie with a pi symbol made out of pepperoni.  Yum!  Tasty pi! 

   Check out these cool pi videos!

Sound Sketches

  Starting this week, I'm beginning to learn about sound for my science class.  Sounds are made by vibrations.  The amount of time between vibrations determines how high or how low the sound's pitch is and what the sound "sounds" like.  Sounds also differ between pleasant and unpleasant noises.  Jackhammers make an unpleasant noise and classical music makes a pleasant noise. On Tuesday, my mom and I went around to a few locations here in Richmond to see how their sound environments differed.   To grade the four locations we visited on how loud or quiet they were, we used a scale from zero to five.  Zero was absolute silence and five was harmful to hearing.

   First we went to the Richmond International Airport.  It was full of noises like buzzers, telephones, and people talking.  I gave it a four to five on our sound scale.  It could have been louder if it had been a holiday when lots of people travel or if it was summertime and everyone was taking a vacation.

A quiet day at the Richmond Int'l Airport

   Our next destination was Belle Isle where the rapids in the James River were loud and the current was strong.  It had rained the day before so there was a lot more water in the river.  We gave this destination a three to four rating because the river was so loud.

Looking out over the James River

 

Chillin' and enjoying the quiet at Chimborazo

Then we went to Chimborazo Park in Church Hill where there was some traffic noise but there was a lot of quiet natural noise.  It was so quiet that I was able to locate a woodpecker.  Chimborazo was our quietest site and I gave it a one to two rating.














   My final site was my own backyard which had some car noise from the street and the sound of people talking as they walked by the house.  I gave it a two rating even though it would be much louder in the summer when more people and more animals would be out and about.  Here's a video clip of how my yard sounds in the fall:

Looking at my patio and the brick wall next door

   In doing this sound project, I learned that there are lots of different sounds that occur during different times of day and throughout the year.  Earlier in the school year, I conducted a biodiversity project and discovered that the more biodiversity there is in an environment, the more natural sounds there are (like birds chirping or squirrels chattering).  In that project we visited nature parks, urban gardens, and corporate parks in the city. I learned how important it is to incorporate green spaces in metropolitan areas in order to beautify the city, provide living places for animals, and to give people quiet space to relax, have fun, and connect with nature.  The sounds in an environment affect how people feel about that environment.  If there is a lot of man-made noise, people and animals will like the environment less.  If there is a lot of natural sound, people and animals are more likely to want to go there.  Animals are more likely to live in biodiverse areas that are relatively quiet, and this has a positive affect on the people who enjoy the quiet of these natural habitats.

Mark Twain's Adventures of Tom Sawyer

"There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable." (Mark Twain)

 

   The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a book by Mark Twain written in 1875 about a boy who loves to do what he is told not to do.   That naturally makes him a trouble maker who is always getting punished.  Once he was told to paint a big fence and, using trickery, got his friends to do it for him.  Tom's best friend is an outcast who has no parents and doesn't follow any rules.  He is named Huckleberry Finn.  All the kids' parents forbid their children to play with him. This made Tom want to play with him every chance he got.  Tom's life was all about having fun until one of his adventures gave him an unexpected surprise.  

   One night Tom and Huck went to the graveyard to test a superstition that if you throw a dead cat into the graveyard at midnight, the devil will take it and the cat will take away your warts.  When they entered the graveyard, they saw three men digging up a grave -- a doctor, Injun Joe, and Muff Potter.  Injun Joe demanded more pay than he was getting for digging the grave.  The doctor refused and started to fight Injun Joe in protest.  The doctor accidentally knocked out Muff Potter in the struggle.  Injun Joe then took Potter's knife and stabbed the doctor, killing him while Potter was unconscious.

   From this point onward, Tom begins to make a number of grown-up decisions.  When Muff Potter is tried for the doctor's murder, Tom speaks up and says that Injun Joe stabbed the doctor.  Tom and Huck had sworn not to tell anyone what they had seen, but Tom broke that oath to keep innocent Muff Potter out of jail.  Right after Tom spoke out in court, Injun Joe fled from town.

   Tom soon returned to being his crazy boy self, even though he he feared Injun Joe would kill him for testifying in court.  Tom decided to go looking for treasure one day in a haunted house near his town.  He and Huck went to the house and left their tools by the door while they went upstairs to explore.   They had just reached the second floor when Injun Joe entered the house with a bag of money.  As he started to bury it, there was a ping, and Joe picked up a chest of gold he had uncovered.  Joe decided to take the money and the gold to a new location because he felt like someone was watching him. 

   Tom eventually found the location of the hidden treasure during a horrible accident in which he and his friend Becky Thatcher got lost in a cave.  Even though Tom was experiencing this terrible situation, he was determined to find a way out of the cave.  As he looked for exits, he was surprised to see Injun Joe hiding out in one of the tunnels.  Thankfully Joe didn't recognize him and Tom slowly backed away.  After he and Becky escaped, Tom came back to the cave with Huck.  Together they went to where Tom saw Injun Joe.  There they found the treasure stashed in a secret tunnel.

   When Tom and Huck get rich at the end of the book, people's opinions about the boys change.  They began to admire and revere the boys.  Almost everything Tom and Huck did seemed important.  Eventually everybody in their town and in neighboring towns knew who the boys were.  Huck was expected to act like other people now.  He went to live with the Widow Douglas and had to live under her roof.   He didn't like being rich because now he couldn't smoke, cuss, skip school, or get dirty.  He felt like his freedom was being taken away.

   What I enjoyed about the book Tom Sawyer is that even though it was written 136 years ago, it had me laughing like crazy!  The book sounded like it actually could have happened.  I found it interesting how Tom developed his moral conscience throughout the book.  Moral conscience is your inner voice that tells you right from wrong.  The right choice is not always easy, like testifying in court or finding your way out of a cave.  Boys will be boys, but eventually we all have to make good decisions that show who we really are.  I can't wait to read our next Mark Twain book:  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn!  

Science Biography: Mary Anning

   Have you ever heard the tongue twister "She sells sea shells by the sea shore?"  If you have, I'm pretty sure you didn't know it is about a girl who lived in the 1800s named Mary Anning.  Those "sea shells" in the tongue twister were actually fossils that Mary Anning sold in her fossil shop.  That "sea shore" is the rocky coastline of Lyme Regis, England, the town where Mary Anning was born and where she made many important scientific fossil discoveries. 

   Mary Anning's father was a carpenter who added to his income by fossil hunting along Lyme Regis' rocky cliffs and beaches.  When Mary was a few years old, she started going fossil hunting with him.  They found lots of ammonites and plant fossils from the Jurassic period.  Sadly, when Mary was eleven years old, tragedy struck her family.  Her father was out fossil hunting when he slipped and fell off a cliff to the bottom and died.  Mary then took up her father's fossil hunting job to make money for her family.

   A few months after she took on the job, Mary made an extraordinary scientific find - the fossilized remains of a strange creature that no one else had ever seen.  She named the creature ichthyosaur, a name she invented herself.  She sold it to a museum for enough money to feed her family for half a year.  Little did she know that this was only the first of her great finds.

   She bought a store where she could display and sell her fossils.  Mary soon made two more fascinating discoveries:  a plesisaur and a pterodactyl, both of which were new to science.  Because of Mary's amazing fossil finds, many famous scientists came on fossil hunts with her.  One of these people was the man who invented the word dinosaur.  

   Mary Anning would continue her paleontological searches into her forties until she got breast cancer and died.  She was a pioneering woman scientist.  Hardly any women were scientists in the 1800s.  At a time when most women weren't encouraged to get an education, Mary taught herself and helped to establish the field of paleontology.  Sadly, most of her finds ended up in museums and personal collections without Mary getting any of the credit for them, maybe because of her gender and social status.

   If you want to know more about her, I would recommend these books that I read:  Rare Treasure:  Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries by Don Brown, Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon by Jeannine Atkins, and Chapter Five in the book The Kid Who Named Pluto and the Stories of Other Extraordinary Young People in Science by Marc McCutcheon ("The Curious Girl Who Discovered Sea-Monster Skeletons").  On Google Earth, you can visit Sidmouth Beach near Lyme Regis where Mary Anning explored the rocks.  Here you can find The Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. Even today, you can still find lots of ammonites and plant fossils on the cliffs and beaches.  Check out this video below!

Mysterious Mysteries!

 In my genre studies in December, I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  It is about a detective named Sherlock Holmes who solves mysteries with his assistant Mr. Watson.  My favorite of the mysteries was the Case of the Six Napoleons, which was funny because a man was smashing plaster busts of Napoleon to find a stolen black pearl.  After I finished the book, my mom said my next project would be to try and write my own mystery story.  It took me the entire month of January!  In my mystery that follows, The Case of The Triangular Book, I used detectives, witnesses, a secret, a crime, and one red herring.  It is all about a detective named Alex Sampson, who is asked to find a stolen book.  He finds not only the book, but a surprising secret.  In the process of writing this, I developed a greater respect for the people who are professional mystery writers.  It is challenging to reconstruct a crime and tie up all the loose ends at the conclusion of a mystery!  Hope you enjoy my story! (And thanks to Mom for typing this story up for me!)

The Case of the Triangular Book: Chapter 1: The Case

  Alex Sampson is great at solving mysteries.  Last year, someone stole a gold bracelet from a friend of his.  The thief was very clumsy and left behind a butter knife.  Alex took the knife to the maker and the knife maker said he sold the knife to a man named John Ringhorn.  Alex went to the Ringhorn's house and found the bracelet on his dresser.  Ringhorn was thrown in jail and Alex's friend got her bracelet back.  After that incident, Alex opened the Alex Sampson Detective Agency.  He has had many cases since then, and all were successfully solved.

   I have known Alex for many years.  He is very humorous.  He can be so funny that I lose track of what I am doing.  We hadn't been on a good case in awhile.  Our last case had been about finding some stolen flower bulbs.  It turned out that the bulbs were two cabinets over from where the man had left them.  Then we got lucky.  The owners of Fare Well Estate came to the Alex Sampson Detective Agency.  They looked very worried about something.  The Sarquets had never had anyone break into Fare Well because they had the highest of high security in all of Virginia.

   Alex looked up from behind the desk where he was sitting and said, "What a lovely surprise!  Not in a million years would I have expected to see such wonderful clients.  I would be honored to assist you.  What case do you need me to solve?"   Ms. Sarquet was the first to speak.  "Last night, I awoke to find that someone was sticking a knife in our lock to our private library.  I sleepily tried to pinch myself and I must have missed because I didn't feel a thing.  Very tired, I went back to sleep."  Mr. Sarquet added, "I awoke about an hour later to a loud crash coming from our library.  My wife Lura here was already sitting on the bed.  We clambered out and rushed to the library.  One of the book shelves was overturned and shattered, books littered the floor,and there was no glass in one panel of the skylight.  The knife she told you about earlier was near the entrance, and a man with a triangular book poking out of his backpack was disappearing through the skylight.  I suddenly realized that the book that the man had stolen was an heirloom that had been passed down through the family for generations.  The book was called The Castle Under the House.  Can you come over tomorrow to investigate?"

   "Should my assistant Harrison and I come over at 11:00 tomorrow morning?"  Alex asked.  "Yes, that would be perfect.  Hampton and I will meet you at the house at 11:00.  Remember, Fare Well is at the top of Glen Hill.  Bye!,"  Lura Sarquet said as she and her husband, Hampton, left.  "Harrison, why don't we get some sleep?  It's very late," Alex said to me.  "Okay," I said. "Bye!"

   The next day we drove our car out to Fare Well and rang the door bell.  We entered and the Sarquest ushered us to the library where we examined the damage.  It was as they told us:  books and things everywhere.  We put on some gloves, cleared a table, and got to work.  We picked up the knife and laid it on the table cautiously.  The knife was gorgeous. The hilt was gold and the blade was ruby.  It was more a dagger than a knife.  We dusted the dagger with dust that sticks to fingerprints.  There were none.  The robber must have used gloves.  To my astonishment, Alex picked  it up and swung it at a book on the floor.  The book sliced cleanly in half.  Then he threw it at the stone wall.  The blade went right into the wall and stuck there.  Then Alex swung the flat side of the knife right at the table.  The ruby dagger gave a slight ping and showed no sign of damage at all.  "Harrison," Alex said to me, "Hold onto this.  There's something very odd going on.  Next let's check out that skylight."

   We were on the roof in no time, examining the skylight.  The dagger was in my pocket, wrapped in paper so that it didn't poke me.  Alex had gloves on his hands as he put his head into the hole and kept himself from falling by holding onto the glass.  I walked to the edge of the roof and was looking at the pool near the side of the house two stories below.  It was a very hot summer day and I was starting to think about walking down to the pool to go for a swim.  Suddenly Alex yelled, "Oh my gosh!  This glass was melted!"  I turned to face him, but suddenly Alex lost his grip on the glass and fell head first through the hole. I started to run towards the hole, but I tripped on a triangular object and sent it skidding through the hole with Alex.  I fell backwards off the roof.  I plummeted toward the brick patio and toward my grave...

Chapter 2: Secret Ways

  SPLASH!  I missed the patio by inches and landed in the deep end of the pool, which I guessed must be at least fifteen feet deep.  I was surprised to be alive.  I resurfaced to find Alex reading a triangular book. Hooray, I thought, Alex is alive!  He was reading the same book I tripped on.  There is something strange about the book.  Well, lots can be strange about a triangular book.  The name, though, is odd...The Castle Under The House, I whisper.  Then it hits me.  The name....it's the stolen book!  But how did Alex survive, I wondered.  "Don't worry, Harrison.  I landed on the couch.  Did you go feet first into the water?," Alex asked.  "Y-y-yes.  T-t-that pool is v-very, very c-c-cold!," I replied.  "Let's go talk to the Sarquets and get out of this odd place," Alex said.  "There's a towel over there.  Why don't you dry off?"

   "How does your search go, Alex?," Ms. Sarquet asked in the hall.  "I see your assistant went for a swim."  "You know that hole in the skylight?  Someone blow torched that hole,"  Alex stated.  "Really? That glass should be indestructible," Ms. Sarquet said as Alex started to lean on the wall.  "He - and I'm certain it's a he - didn't just push out the glass in the..."  Alex didn't finish because suddenly the wall he was leaning on opened and he fell through a crack.  That was followed by the breaking of wooden steps and loud whacks and thuds.  Then the noise stopped, accompanied by an "Ow!  Why was that sliding wall there?" "Oh, are you alright?," Ms. Sarquet worriedly asked.  "I didn't know that passageway was even there!"

   "I'm alright, Ms. Sarquet," Alex answered.  Mr. Sarquet joined us as we entered the secret passageway cautiously.  The Sarquets and I occasionally picked up a piece of broken step and tossed it over the edge of the stairs to see how far down we had to go.  Very far.  The only light was behind us, coming from the secret passage entrance into Fare Well.  It was almost gone by the time we reached the hundredth step (yes, I was counting).  Suddenly, Alex's joking voice was right in front of me.  "Welcome!  You have reached the ground floor!  Watch your step.  There is lots of junk down here."  It was so dark that I couldn't see a thing.  Then Alex announced, "When I was in the library, I picked up this flashlight."  This was followed by lots of banging and clicking from what I guessed was the flashlight.  "Turn on, you stupid thing!," Alex yelled as he hit it on the railing.  "Turn on, dang it!  Why won't you turn on?  There we go."  We were blinded by a sudden light.

   Alex then said, "I found The Castle Under the House book and I read some of it.  It mentioned a Fare Well Castle that sank into the ground and then was covered up with sediment to form a hill.  Glen Hill.  then, in the past two centuries, someone built a house on that hill:  Fare Well Estate.  Now, there is a rumor that the castle contained gold, lots of gold.  I read this as well.  From my knowledge, I remember that the last owners died by poison as they ate dinner.  You did that, if I am correct, Mr. and Ms. Sarquet, so that you could buy this house and get to the castle.  That door over there probably leads to it.  Looks like someone has been here already."

   Alex pointed calmly to toward a door that had been cut from its hinges that I hadn't noticed until now.  "Yes, we did. Alex, you are very, very smart.  You would probably want us to come with you to the police and turn ourselves in, but you'll never get that chance, Alex.  Good-bye," Mr. Sarquet said as he took out a pistol and loaded it.  "Good-bye."  Then there was a bang, and Alex fell to the ground.

Chapter 3: The Culprits

  I grabbed Alex's flashlight and ran through the doorway.  It led to what I guessed was the dining hall of the castle.  It was magnificent, with gold plates, tables, chairs, forks, spoons, knives, and goblets, but something was wrong.  Parts of the tables and chairs had been chipped away and some of the plates and goblets were missing.  I had just spotted someone taking a fork when another shot was fired.  A third shot was fired and imbedded itself in the wooden beam three inches from my head.

  I dropped the flashlight and ran for the door.  I was almost out when I saw that the fork stealer, Mr. and Ms. Sarquet all had guns and were shooting at each other.  There was a bang and the fork stealer went down.  BANG! BANG!  Both of the Sarquets began shooting at me!  One of the bullets hit the support beam above the door making the doorway collapse and the second bullet hit me in the thigh with a loud ping.  Then I realized that the ruby dagger was in my pocket and the bullet must have hit it!  I took out the dagger and the paper I wrapped it in had shrapnel stuck in it.  I unwrapped the dagger to find it unharmed.  Next I was forced into the stone wall by someone.  The dagger sank into the wall until only the hilt was visible. 

   Then a voice that sounded strangely like Alex's said "Cut the wall, or we'll be stuck here forever with the Sarquets!"  I did as Alex said and, with the dagger, cut easily through the wall and stepped inside.  I turned around to see Alex clambering through the hole behind me.  That voice I had heard was Alex's voice.  "What?  How did you live?" I stammered, but Alex hushed me up.  We started up the stairs behind the wall right about the same time as the castle started to collapse.

   We were running so fast that we were at the top of the steps in no time.  Alex and I dashed out of the house and saw half of the hill start to fall away, taking our car with it. How bad could our luck get?   Suddenly I noticed that Alex was dragging me to the Sarquets' red sports car.  He took The Castle Under the House book out of his inside coat pocket.  "They left their keys in here," he said as he unlocked their car and took the driver's seat and I took the passenger's seat.

   Alex put the car in drive and spun the car around and we headed down the hill.  We drove as the hill crumbled down behind us.  We drove straight for the police station and parked right in front.  Before we entered, Alex began to explain what had happened.  "You probably want an explanation.  The robber took the book and read part of it on the roof, then left it there so it didn't get wet when he jumped into the pool to escape.  Now, before he got on the roof he moved the book shelf into a position to blow torch the surprisingly thin 1/8" thick Crato Glass which the Sarquets invented that cannot be broken - but it has a melting point of 150 degrees F.  Now the man who moved the book shelf had to be strong and the man by the gold table who stole the fork was very strong judging by the size of his muscles and the heavy bag that he was carrying that was full of gold."

   "So Fork Stealer did it!," I exclaimed.  "Go on, continue Alex."  "Okay, Harrison. The Sarquets admitting to the murder of the previous owners of Fare Well was a shock...What have I left out?  Oh yes!  How I so bravely cheated death!  At the same time Mr. Sarquet fired the gun, I tripped on a stone and fell.  You took my flashlight and ran away like a maniac and then the Sarquets followed you.  I got up and ran after you, but you kept running, and I finally ran into you once you stopped near the wall and that's where I rejoined you,"  Alex concluded.

   "Yes.  Hey Alex, what part of The Castle Under the House do you think Fork Stealer read?,"  I asked.  "I believe he read the part about the passageway under the house," he said.  "Now Harrison, we will never know how the Sarquets got the book because when you cut through the wall you also cut through a major support beam that brought down the part of the house that the Sarquets and Fork Stealer were in, likely killing them.  The Sarquets took the answer of where they got the book to their graves."

   "Before I conclude this mystery, I must say that your ruby dagger is enchanted.  Yes, enchanted.  No ordinary dagger could cut through solid stone.  Your dagger must be magical.  There is no other explanation, Harrison.  The fork stealer tried to steal that knife from the Sarquets and used it to break into their library and that's where he found The Castle Under the House book.  He thought it was valuable and could possibly sell it.  He dropped the dagger, the item he came for, to move the book shelf in order to blow torch the glass.  After he made the hole he put the blow torch into his back pack with the book.  He then accidentally knocked over the book shelf, forcing him to jump off the shelf as it fell and through the skylight, unfortunately leaving behind the knife," Alex finished.

   We went inside the police station and I looked out the window to see the ruins of Glen Hill.  I noticed that people were now gathering by the remains and staring and pointing.  To think that I has caused Glen Hill and Fare Well Estate to collapse was crazy, but true.  I had never hurt anyone and now I was responsible for the deaths of two people, Mr. and Ms. Sarquet.  I will have to live with that guilt, but on the bright side, the case was solved successfully.

Check this out! US History and Science Drawings

This is my picture of the three branches of government:  legislative, judicial, and executive

This is a comic of a news reporter at Yellowstone when the super volcano beneath it erupts!

 

What I Did on My Winter Vacation

  In home school I have been learning about the three branches of government, the Charters of Freedom, and what then ensure for us.  After I finished my studies, my brother Zane, my best friend Dylan, my mom, and I went to Washington, D.C. to visit the National Archives and to take a tour of the Capitol Building.

 
   We arrived at the Pentagon City Mall and took the metro to the Navy Memorial/Archives stop on the Yellow Line.  At the National Archives, we hopped into the line of people waiting to have their bags checked.  Soon thereafter we were stepping up to see the Charters of Freedom:  The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.  The Declaration of Independence was very faded from sitting in the U.S. Patent Office in direct sunlight many years ago.  You can still read parts of it clearly, like John Hancock's signature.  The Constitution is in perfect condition.  You can still read the preamble at the beginning of the four-page document.  I also spotted Benjamin Franklin and George Washington's signatures.  The Bill of Rights was in good condition, and you can see all the words to it.  Zane even spotted John Adam's signature.

  After that we took a taxi to the Capitol Building.  We went into their amazing new visitor's center and watched a short movie before we began our tour.  We started in the room called the crypt, where George Washington was going to be buried, but he refused the offer because he didn't want to be treated like a monarch.  This room holds up the rotunda above, where we went next.  Its dome is huge, bigger than I had thought it would be.  Above us was a painting of thirteen ladies representing the original thirteen colonies and right near the front of them sat George Washington.  Around the room were paintings telling little bits of American history.  We then visited the old House Chamber.  It was very small and domed at the top, and was full of statues.

 On our way out, we stopped in at the Library of Congress.  It was probably the most extraordinary building I have ever seen.  It had tons and tons of books inside.  The Grand Hall lobby had a tiled ceiling, corinthian columns, murals, and mosaics everywhere.  I would have stayed there all day, but we couldn't.

Seeing these historical documents and visiting the Capitol Building meant so much more than just reading about them.  I'm looking forward to our next big visit to DC!