It’s May!

It’s May! May is a glorious time of the year when lilacs bloom, tulips sprout, and all sorts of animals are born. I have been busy reading, writing, and playing with my dog since my last post. I hope you like to read and write, because those skills enhance your view of the world.

I will be posting a few times this month. I have a few field trips to wonderful places this month such as Sandy Hook Lighthouse and Millbrooke Village. Those places are beautiful and you get to learn about history and science, which are important things.

I think later I’m going to pick fresh lilacs for my room, because the ones on my desk are looking kind of droopy. Lilacs have wonderful smells, in my opinion. So, I will see you hopefully next week! Bye, and thanks for reading.

 

Reading and Writing

Sorry for such a long absence, but I have been busy reading and writing. I bought yesterday three complete Stephen King novels in one: Carrie, ‘Salem’s Lot, and the Shining. I started reading Carrie already. It’s very good. I hope you take the time to look outside at the beautiful scenery. Since I last posted, the trees have begun to bloom and some near my house are already in full color. Spring is a beautiful time of year.

So I bought a new bookshelf and that’s already filled up. I’m thinking about buying another one soon.

I’ve been busy writing, also. I wrote a short story about an alligator and I’m planning to write a novel taking place in 3039 on Pluto. So I’m in the middle of all my research and I’m working on my outline for the book. Meanwhile, you should keep writing and reading.

Check out these websites to learn more: www.marypopeosborne.com and www.marypopeosborne.net . Also type in your search engine “Random House Classroom cast with mary Pope Osborne”. You can see how she writes and the steps she takes to work.

Thank you very much for reading this today.

 

“Dark Day in the Deep Sea” and “Sea Monsters”

On Tuesday, March 25, 2008, the two newest Magic Tree House books released. They were: Magic Tree House #39: Dark Day in the Deep Sea and magic Tree House Research Guide: Sea Monsters- A Nonfiction Companion to Dark Day in the Deep Sea. They were written by Mary Pope Osborne (Dark Day) and Natalie Pope Boyce (Sea Monsters). You can find more about these books at these websites:

• www.magictreehouse.com
• www.randomhouse.com
• www.marypopeosborne.com

Dark Day in the Deep Sea is about Jack and Annie finding the third secret of happiness to help Merlin the Magician get rid of his sorrows. Sea Monsters tells about the creatures of the deep.

My next post will be on Earth Day.

Thank you and enjoy Sping,

Chriska

 

Dear Readers Spring 2008

Dear Readers,

It seems like it’s been such a long time since I last wrote a blog. March has been a crazy month with many holidays and activities that took the time which I wanted to use to write my messages here. Well, anyway, I’m back and in the groove. My computer clock says 5:18, so it turned Spring 5 hours and 17 minutes ago. Wow! Already Spring!

I’ve been busy reading and writing. I went to the library the other day and got out the following books by Dean Koontz: Lightning, The Darkest Evening of the Year, The Good Guy, By the Light of the Moon. They are pretty good.

If you want to learn about your favorite books or author, check out this website: www.fantasticfiction.co.uk . You can type in the author’s name and look at his/her page to see all the books he/she has written throughout the years.

The next two books that I will be getting pretty soon are: Magic Tree House #39- Dark Day in the Deep Sea by Mary Pope Osborne and its Magic Tree House Research Guide companion, Sea Monsters, by Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce. Both books come out on Tuesday, March 25, 2008.

I started another book about a novelist and his adventures in life, and it’s very good. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about. You”ll have to wait.

So I’ll hopefully see you here on April 1, and I can tell you about April Fools’ Day. Have a wonderful time waiting for the next message.

Best wishes and good luck,

Chris

 

It’s March!

It’s March, a very fun month with many holidays and activities. I can’t believe that Easter is so early this year–This year it is March 23, and last year it was sometime in April! Next week–it’s less than a week away–we switch our clocks ahead one hour. Two weeks from today we have St. Patrick’s Day. Then on March 20 Spring begins, and then we have Good Friday, then Easter. And on March 25, 2008, two new Magic Tree House books release: Merlin Mission #39: Dark Day in the Deep Sea and its research guide companion, Sea Monsters.

I ordered them and they should be coming. I also ordered a biography of Mary Pope Osborne, the six books in her series Tales From the Odessey, and the newest Alan Jackson CD. And I also ordered Mary Pope Osborne’s first book—a 1982 novel for young adults called Run, Run As Fast As You Can. You can order all of these books and more at www.amazon.com .

Today was surprisingly warm for a March day, and I rode bike for a while. The other day I took a walk to the brook and down to the road garage. I saw the wonders of nature: Birds, squirrels, deer, insects—things that make you say, Oh, wow, that’s beautiful!

I Hope you find the same things in nature beautiful just as I do. I will hopefully see you in my next post sometime next week if I don’t get sidetracked. Oh, and I’m reading Duma Key by Stephen King. He is a great author. I have The Mist, Duma Key, and the video of Storm of the Century.

Books help me to love the wonders of nature more, and I hope books do the same for you.

 

What I Am Reading

As you may know, I love books. I have a huge bookshelf in my room that is about three feet long and five feet high, with three shelves. Every shelf is filled with books. And yet, I still need room! Right now, all three shelves are filled, there are about thirty books on my dresser, seven piled up in a corner, and about twenty on my bed. Oh, and there are some on my television stand, also. There are a lot of books. The first shelf of my bookcase alone has seventy thick books.

Today I went to the library and checked out some books. So I am reading them right now. I have a book of poems by Phillis Wheatley, who was an African American slave. I have Adaline falling Star by Mary Pope Osborne, and a biography of George Washington by her, also. There is also another 900 page book of 17th and 18th Century Poems, and two books on writing.

Each book takes me into a new world and on an adventure. For instance, George Washington will take me with him to be President and on his war battles. The Phillis Wheatley poems will take me back to the 1700s, onto a plantation where the slaves worked at picking cash crops. And all the books on my bookshelf are mostly fiction, and will take me into imaginary worlds, and in my imagination I will go on adventures with the characters.

I hope you use your imagination every time you read. I hope you picture the settings as your neighborhoods and imagine that you are doing activities with the characters and completing tasks. These are just two of the many wonders of the imagination.

My all-time favorite books are The Magic Tree House series, The Spiderwick books, and the Sherlock Holmes and Hardy Boys mystery books. I hope you enjoy the same things and read the same adventures.

After you finish reading this book, I want you to try and pick up a very long novel, say the Harry Potter 5-Order of the Phoenix-or one of them. But pick up a book and try to have the adventures with the characters and imagine you are in the settings mentioned and described in the book. in Narnia, you could feel like you are walking through a fresh blanket of white snow, heading for the White Witch’s dreaded castle to eat some Turkish Delight.

Try it, and I promise you that it will be a fun adventure. Or you can imagine that it is February 27, 2008, the date of my next post and my birthday. I am going to tell you about some upcoming books, and what I got for my birthday. See you Wednesday.

 

Chinese New Year

Happy Chinese New Year, to any of the readers who might celebrate this traditional Chinese holiday. Did you know that this year, 2008, is the year of the Rat? And today, February 7, 2008, happens to be Chinese New Year.

You can check out a lot more information at www.wikipedia.org , such as the upcoming year’s animal and the date for the holiday. Just to let you know something, 2009 is the year of the Ox.

The first day of the New Year is the welcoming of the deities of heaven and earth. A fun fact: Some people cosidder lighting fires and using knives bring bad luck on Chinese New Year. But that is just some old belief, right? Or is it true?

It is your mystery, and you have to solve it. Join me next time, for another edition, of Chris’s mysteries.

 

At My Writing Desk

Well, I am back at my writing desk again. I am very sorry for the weeks I was absent from posting. Everything is going well for me and my writing. I am revising Samantha Higgins, and at the same time working on a sequel. This book is very exciting for me, and the first chapter has been very fun to write. I went to Google and looked at some more maps on Portland, Maine, and some other places where this book is set to take place in. About twenty minutes ago, I arrived home and unpacked some bags from the store.

My writing desk is neat, nice, and tidy, my favorite words to describe my surroundings. On my desk I have a lamp, a birdhouse, a pad of paper, a box of tissues, and blue glass dolphin toy that I look at when I get stuck or bored, and two pictures, one of me when I was young and then one of me and my brother a few years ago. I also have a pile of plain white paper, some articles on books and Mary Pope Osborne, and then my current manuscript of Samantha Higgins.

Oh, by the way, the title for my sequel is called Justice. I made my outline and it is very fun to read from time to time and to refresh my memory when I am writing. Let me just take a few moments and make a new paragraph to tell you about some books that I am working on.

I have Justice, Samantha Higgins, of course, as you know. But I also have a book about Mars, and I think readers will like it, and it is sort of a suspense-mystery-science fiction book. And then a book about a kid at summer camp forming a bully-defense shield with friends called John’s Summer. Every one of these adventures I like and am in the process of writing. But right now, I’m really only focusing on Justice and the Mars book.

I will try to keep posting every week, but you can leave a comment on my newest post letting me know about a post. Let me get back to writing.

So, as I said, everything is well: My writing desk is clean and tidy, my mother is making lunch, and I am writing this for anyone who wants to read it. I hope to see you very soon. In my next post, I think I will tell you about the progress of my manuscripts. And maybe about Tipper again. Or the other dogs in my family, and about their capabilities. You will really be amazed.

 

New “Magic Tree House” Adventures

Exciting, right? That’s what I thought Saturday morning as I typed EVE OF THE EMPEROR PENGUIN into RandomHouse’s search box and saw the astonishing result. I hope you agree with me that this new work by Mary Pope Osborne looks elegant. This book releases on September 23, 2008, along with its Magic Tree House Research Guide companion, titled Penguins and Antarctica.

I hope you have had a good time waiting for me to post again, and I think I wanted to post tomorrow, but never mind. My dog Tipper was very happy, and she tried licking my computer screen, anxious to communicate with the emperor penguins.

Next time when I post an entry, five days from now, I am probably going to write what I think is going to happen in this work and keep you updated about other upcoming novels within this year, 2008.

So let me go right now. Have a good week.

 

Adventures of Tipper

Hi! In my most recent post, I promised you a post mainly about my dog. So this post is about Tipper, and enjoy reading. Well, the story really begins on December 1, when I received a reply from Santa, saying that a dog would wake everyone up on Christmas and it wouldn’t be an easy thing for him to haul. So my family and I went to the New York HUmane Society and looked at some dogs. We finally decided on a nice brown dog, and we named her Tipper. My parents do not think Tipper was worth the amount of money we paid for her, but I disagree. Tipper has been a lot of fun, which my brother also thinks. Tipper just celebrated her second birthday on October 14, 2007. Now we are awaiting the third.

I have had other dogs, one named Snoopy, who unfortunately died a few years ago because of a tumor and artheritus. Check my spelling and comment if I am wrong. Thanks. Tipper likes to run around a lot, and also likes to catch tennis balls, frisbies, and likes to lay lazily on my bed in the mornings like a queen. And I treat her like a queen. She has had many adventures, but not outside of the electrical fence around the property here to keep her from escaping.

One adventure happened a few days after we got her in 2005. WE had put up our Christmas tree and decorated it with the bulbs and lights, and something made her not bark, which is the signal to go outside, and she went to the bathroom behind the Christmas tree. She was very pleased with herself, but my parents weren’t.

She likes my grandfather very much, probably because he is always around meat and other animals, which are Tipper’s favorite things beside relaxing.

Right now I’m listening to John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival. In a few moments, after I finish my second entry for 2008, I’m going to change the music to Hank Williams Sr. Enjoy the next seven days, and keep thinking about my post then. I’m going to give you a surprise.

Bye.

 

New Years Wishes

Happy New Year! What do I wish for most in 2008?     

I want world peace, and I also wish that my writing would get better. I completed Adventures of Samantha Higgins on December 26, 2007, at 27, 178 words and 154 pages. Now I’m starting a sequel, called The Higgins’ Adventures, where John comes back to life and they go on an adventure trying to put Doctor Morrison to justice. I have planned that whole book out and it is very exciting.

My dog, Tipper, is asleep right now in a blue chair in my room. Sometimes when she is sleeping, she dreams and makes little noises like “Umph”, “Gargoyle,” and others. Right now she is  just sleeping, I think. How can I tell if she’s dreaming?

So after I finish this post, I am going to probably either continue work on the sequel or continue reading “Swordbird” by fourteen-year-old author Nancy Yi Fan. There are a few kid authors in the world. There is an author of two novels who I think is 14, Nancy Yi Fan, whose second book comes out this month on the 22nd, Christopher Paolini, who isn’t really a kid at age 25, and probably more. Soon I might be added to the list.

In my next post, I’d like to tell you about my dog Tipper and about her dreams. When she wakes up I can talk to her and see what she says I can put in the post. See you soon!

 

January!

Hello, and Happy New Year! What do I wish for most in 2008?

Besides wanting world peace, I wish my writing could get better. I finished Samantha Higgins on December 26, 2007, and now it’s five days later in 2008. There is 154 pages to the story, and about 28, 000 words.

The picture you see at the left I just took a few minutes ago. All I had to do was go outside with my camera and shoot the picture. It’s raining hard today for January 1, 2008. I think last year at this time, if I can remember, it was snowing. Wow, what a crazy day.

So I hope to see you soon.

 

Christmas 2007

Sorry about yesterday, and if you visited, here’s a post for you. I was very busy all day long, and didn’t have any time to post a blog. Santa Claus visited my house and dropped off some wondrous presents, including a 12 inch world globe, an air pump, a CSI Fingerprint Examination Kit, a FlyWorld pentop computer, and later my grandmother gave me some software, and she also gave me a huge twin alarm clock. Not digital, of course, because they’re no good. I also got Guitar Hero 3 from her, which was very nice. I got a gift card to a book store, too.

Remember, you can always email me at chriskaufman15@gmail.com to tell me things, like what you got for Christmas. I can’t believe the year is already over. Well, the year is over for me and posting to this blog. My next post will be on January 1st, 2008, titled New Years’ Wishes.

I hope you had a good Christmas and see you next year!

 

Dear Readers Winter 2007

Wow, I can’t believe how quick the year of 2007 has been coming and going. It just seemed like yesterday was February 27, 2007, and I was celebrating a birthday, and now today is three days before winter begins. I was busy all year long meeting new people, writing, and most fun I was going to school and sharing my writings and doing work. But I believe that there is nothing better than reading. During the summer months, I was reading books like 20, 000 Leauges under the Sea, Magic Tree House series, Inkheart trilogy, Alex Rider books, and some old timers like The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, some Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Hardy Boys, and Spiderwick Chronicles. When you talk about reading, you talk about the imagination and fictional worlds like Narnia and secret, myserious gardens with  bug detectives like in The Spider Kane mysteries by Mary Pope Osborne and The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis.

I wanted to tell you that the whole PTA money-getting-back scheme has been called off, and my mother and I eventually got the dolphin wind-chimes un-tangeled and now I am getting them all ready for distributing to my aunt on Tuesday. That’s when my next post is, anyway. That Thursday that I was planning to give them back was wasted because school was cancelled because of heavy ice and snow in my region of northwestern New Jersey. But it was back open on Friday, and because I went to a computer program on Friday, I didn’t go back to the shop on Friday, because by then I had the problem fixed.

Already my Christmas tree is up and decorated. My grandmother and I, and my parents and brother went to Fred Ayers’ tree farm and got Christmas trees. The snow and ice was so thick there that even my heavy father could not break through the mixture, even with steel-toed boots on! So now everything (well, just about everything) is ready for the holidays. My stockings are up, the house is decorated, the tree is ready for a welcoming of presents. The only thing not done yet is my yearly letter to the big man, Santa Claus. I think after I finish this entry, I will start it.

My next post is going to be on December 25 (Christmas!), and if you visit My Blogging Times—to get there, go to the top of the screen where other links are to other pages and click on the right link—you can see what the post is going to be about. See you on Christmas day, which will be my last post for 2007. When I post again, it will be 2008. . . not including my Monthly Message.

Oh, I want to briefly tell you about the progress on my book, Adventures of Samantha Higgins. The font was at 16.7 size, which was entirely too big, so I re-sized it to 15, shrinking it 40 pages. Now there are 135 pages so far. I re-did my outline, which I had planned for Samantha and John Higgins to become slaves, but to save me the trouble but add some more pain and destruction, John dies and Samantha and her grandmother travel up north for the Great Portland fire of 1866.

Thst wraps up everything. Thank you for reading.

 

Announcement

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