How to Speak Dragonese by Cressida Cowell

After the ending of the last book, How to Be a Pirate, you would think Alvin the Treacherous is gone to the great Viking beyond? Not quite. He somehow escaped and becomes an ally on a Roman pirate ship. Now these pirates make their living pirating dragons hundreds and hundreds of dragons.

So hopefully Hiccup, Fishlegs, and Toothless would not have to meet up with Alvin ever again right? Well Hiccup is useless during pirate training. When they are supposed to raid a peaceful fishing boat Hiccup and Fishlegs get lost in the fog and raid the Roman boat instead. Oops.

Unluckly for Fishlegs and Toothless the Romans capture them. Hiccup was able to hide quickly and avoid capture but he did overhear the Roman’s secret plans. They are going to kidnap the heirs of local Viking tribes the Hooligans and the Bog-Burglers. While the tribes are fighting the Romans will go a shore and steal all the dragons on the Isle of Berk.

Hiccup quickly goes home to raise the alarm to his father Stoick the Vast about the capture of Fishlegs and Toothless and the incoming plans. But Stoick doesn’t listen to Hiccup because he got a nasty letter in the mail from the chief of the Bog-Burglers stating that he kidnapped their heir Camicazi.

As Stoick and the rest of the Hooligans go off in battle Hiccup is kidnapped by the Romans. Can Hiccup figure a way to get out of the hands of the Romans and Alvin the Treacherous? Will his father remember what Hiccup told him go out to sea and find them? Or will Hiccup, Toothless, Fishlegs, and their new friend Camicazi end up being killed by the gladiators?

How to Be a Pirate by Cressida Crowell

After surviving the events that followed Thor’s Thursday in the previous book Hiccup is viewed as a hero…for a while. Life and lessons have to go on and since Hiccup is useless he falls in the background of life once more.

The Hooligan tribe has now moved onto pirate lessons their first assignment sword fighting at sea. Hiccup is horrible at sword fighting. Of course he is paired with Snotlout who is really good everything to practice. During the lesson the boat they were practicing on sinks and Hiccup and Fishlegs find a coffin to hold onto.
Now this coffin is not an ordinary coffin it has a message written on it to KEEP OUT BY ORDER OF GRIMBEARD THE GHASTLY. So what is a person to do when faced with something that says KEEP OUT? Open it up of course. In the coffin they find Alvin The-Poor-But-Honest-Farmer.

Alvin comes with stories to tell of how he lost his hand (it got caught in the coffin when trying to open it) and of how he learned that there is a large amount treasure hidden on the Isle of Skullion. And that the treasure will only be found by the true heir of Grimbeard the Ghastly’s tribe. But who could be the great-great grandson of Grimbeard? Could it be Hiccup or his cousin Snotlout? And is Alvin a true Poor-But-Honest-Farmer that he says he is?

How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell

This book is the first book in the Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III series. That is WAY better than the movie will be.

Hiccup is a small, weak and all around useless Viking. He is also the son of the tribes chief Stoick the Vast.
His best friend Fishlegs isn’t any better in the hero department either he’s even skinner, wears glasses and is allergic to everything. Hiccup’s rival is his cousin Snotlot and his friend Dogsbreath the Duhbrain they are stonger, tougher, and meaner than Hiccup and Fishlegs will ever be.

In this book Hiccup and his classmates in the Hooligan tribe finally get to the time where they get to catch their very own dragon. Hiccup is very excited because he secretly watches dragons and has begun to speak Dragonese the rare dragon language. Not many Vikings want to learn Dragonese because that makes you a wimpy nerd.

When they get to the big day of going into the Wild Dragon Cliff to pick out their hibernating dragon the day does not go as planned. Hiccup easily picks out his dragon but Fishlegs has an allergic reaction and sneezes in the cave waking all the dragons. Not wanting Fishlegs to get expelled for not catching a dragon Hiccup hands off his dragon and goes back to grab the first dragon he saw

Unfortunately for Hiccup that dragon will end up to be Toothless the smallest and most useless dragon the village has ever seen. Toothless is so small he can curl up into Hiccup’s shirt pocket. And yes to live up to his name Toothless has no teeth.

Part of Hooligan dragon training leads up to Thor’s Thursday to show off how well the Hooligans have trained their dragons. Can Hiccup be successful and train Toothless enough to win Thor’s Thursday competition? Or will he be exiled from the tribe for life?

I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

Wow, I all I can say about this book is Wow. To me this book was very powerful and moving. I actually cried in public three times while reading this book.

The book centers around Ed Kennedy a 19 year old cab driver from Australia. He does nothing with his life but play cards, drink, and goof off with his friends Marv, Richie, and Audrey. He also has a very stinky dog named The Doorman who is just as lazy and useless as Ed.

His life changes after he surprisingly stops a bank robbery. He is written up as a hero in the town’s newspaper for doing a good dead. But it is after his 15-minutes of bank robbery fame that his life begins to change. An ace of diamonds with three addresses on them is mailed to him. At each address lives someone who needs their life changed. There is a woman at 45 Edgar Street who needs to be saved from an abusive husband, Millia at 13 Harrison Avenue who suffers from Alzheimer’s and longs for her true love, Jimmy, and Sophie at 6 Macedoni Street who loves the feeling of running barefoot but lacks the confidence to do so when she is competing.

After each card is completed another one comes to take its place. Can he protect the diamonds, survive the clubs, dig deep through the spades and feel the hearts to complete is mission? Also there is the mystery of who is controlling these aces?

Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin

Confusing, odd, love-it-or-hate-it, and hard to put down is the quick description of this book.

This strange, strange book is about Sophie Blue a high school senior. She seems like a relatively normal Goth teenager who is seems to be working out some issues. She loves to draw, enjoys a few cans of Diet Crank, and has a crush on Aaron Agar.

But within the first chapter we find evidence that not everything is quite right in her reality as an ice cream truck only she see’s crashes into her at a local swimming pool. Other odd things happen to her also she sees odd motivational posters at different places saying things like “Happiness is Relatively Relative,” she keeps getting these messages of “go to the lab” and “beware of the nurse,” and of course there is Kenny Fade.

The story revolves around the mystery of Sophie’s father who disappeared the day she started going crazy. Does his disappearance hold the key to her strange life?

I guarantee this book will leave you confused. But I think that is what the author wanted to do in this book. To make the reader confused and wanting answers to the question everyone asks. Is life real?

Introduction

Hello fellow readers and web crawlers. This blog is you have found is another book review blog that many people post. But mine is different for two reasons.

First I tend read mainly children and younger young adult fiction. I find these books to be funnier than adult fiction mainly because my humor tends to be the same as young kids. I’m just one of those people who are just big kids.

Second the adult books I do read usually revolve around auto racing. I have been an avid race fan my whole life and have found a love for the obscure genre of racing literature. These books are a mixture of fiction and non-fiction but usually have some type of auto racing involved within the story.