Scratch

Hi,
I'm Lellowsfuzz, junior author. I am writing my first book called Aviation: A 5th Grade Mystery and hoping to get it published (someday!) After revising, I'll be posting parts of it on this forum as an eBook and formatting it in BBCode. Please give me any feedback you have.

Enjoy,
~Reid aka Lellowsfuzz




Aviation: A 5th Grade Mystery
A Story By Lellowsfuzz


Introduction
     You know how in a lot of books and movies, there's a “popular crowd” and “bullies”? My school is nothing like that. The only person that's considered popular is Avery Pickers. He doesn't try to be popular; he just is. The reason for this is simply that no one cares if they're popular or not.
      Bullies are another thing. Because everyone's friends, nobody really harms anyone else. That's good for me, because if there were bullies in my school, I would be toast. I'm the smallest one in the class and the second smallest person in the grade.

    Fifth grade is going well for me so far. The experience is different from the first five years; we get to teach little kids about what goes on in their sixth year of school. I've always anticipated fifth grade, and here it is. Summer ends, and it just engulfs the sun like a solar eclipse. It's not that bad so far, but I have a feeling it's going to be a wild ride and I should just stick with it.

Part 1
    “What do you think the ratio of girls to boys is in the school?”
    This is the start of one of our controversial lunchtime conversations. My friends and I sit together at lunch, and we're all geeks. We may not look like it on the outside, but we're geeks at heart. The most interesting thing about these talks is that we seem to use math to figure out stuff about pop culture, school, and other things.
    “How about the ratio of teachers to students?” I say. The main reason we do this kind of thing is because we just can't get enough of brain problems.
    “Well, either way, we'd need to get out our school phone book to tally the boys, girls, and teachers,” states Max.
    Max is always helping us get data to solve our problems. You may think we say stuff like this all the time, but really, it's mainly just at the lunch table. At recess, we run around and play tag and football like normal kids.
    I'm not trying to brag, but I think I may be the smartest kid in the school. I mean, think about it. People in the grade consider me the smartest, and I'm in the highest grade in the school. That means I'm the smartest in the school, right?
    Lunch finished up and recess started. From the stories my mom tells me, kids back in the day got TWO recesses. I think it's unfair that they only give us one. I run around with my friends and we come inside. My dad must've been lucky too, but I don't even know who he is. My mom has one picture of him, but I don't know his name and she never talks about him.
    Science is interesting for me. Today, we mix vinegar and baking soda in a sealed bag. Normally, this would be boring because we all know what happens when vinegar and baking soda are mixed. But after they were mixed, the bag puffed up! It created air in the bag.
    “Why was extra air created?” I ask.
    “The carbonation in them makes bubbles of oxygen that fill up the bag,” replies my teacher, Ms. Elise. “It's like when you open a bottle of soda and carbon dioxide gets released into the air.”
    We spend the rest of the day learning about chemical reactions.
    The experiment we did today makes me think about how objects can release air. When I get home, I plan to do my own experiment.

Part 2
    “It's flying!”
    My little brother Andrew chases my plastic-bag-with-candle-inside-hot-air-balloon experiment. I got the idea from my mom's collection of hot air balloon figurines. The wooden shelf that she keeps them on also houses the one-and-only picture of my dad.
    The balloon actually is pretty cool to watch as it floats around our vast kitchen.
    I follow it all the way down to the basement and into the “attic.” The attic is what my mom calls the room that's underground but acts like an attic.
    Anyway, I follow it down to the attic and it bumps into a  rack of newspaper articles. Even though I know that I shouldn't be down here, I take out one of the newspaper clippings and start reading.
    The title reads, “1986: Jeff Collins Does It Again! Famous Aviator Flies Across the State.” This Jeff Collins guy looks pretty cool. I look in the background of the picture, and there's a tethered hot air balloon. What a coincidence! I bring the clipping up to my mom to ask her where we got it.
    “Mom?”
    “I'm up in my room!” she shouts back.
    I walk up the stairs. My mom is washing her hair.
    “Who's this?” I ask.
    As soon as said it, I knew it was a big mistake.
    “Where did you find that?” she snaps. “You know you're not supposed to be in the attic.”
    She looks very nervous as she talks. I can tell that something very suspicious.
    “There's a hot air balloon in the back of the picture. I know you're into them, so maybe you could tell me a thing or two about this one.”
    The look on her face tells me that I just got into something I wasn't supposed to.
    “Does Jeff Collins have anything to do with Dad?”
    “No!” my mom says very quickly. “Why would you ever say anything like that?”
    I finally give in and can tell that the conversation is closed. As I walk back to my room, my mom locks away the hot air balloon shelf.


More coming soon!
(btw: this book used to be called Year 6. Because of a change in storyline, I renamed the book.)

Last edited by Lellowsfuzz (2011-12-02 18:41:14)