Three New Skills

Guess what? Adelynn learned how to ride a bike without training wheels this week. She sort of popped onto the bike and said: "Hey, Shayl! Look what I learning do!" (Shayl is what she calls me now; she no longer says "Shaylie"). Nicholas learned how to do the Ripstick (a two wheeled skateboard), and is now able to turn tight curves. All in a week! If I don't hurry up and practice the Ripstick, all of my brothers will be better than me at it! However, I have done one thing on the Ripstick that they have not tried yet: dribbling and attempting to shoot a basketball while riding it through a sort of obstacle course. And the third skill mentioned in the title is- the unicycle. I have gone all the way across the driveway on it! All that I need to do now is learn how to turn. While spending several hours in the driveway with the unicycle, I learned many things. One of them is to never try riding it while both Nick and Addie are on the Ripstick and bike; you wind up falling off every foot to avoid crashing into them.

Recently, I finished reading Eragon and Eldest by Christopher Palonini (spelling?). I thought they were pretty good; especially because they were written by a highschooler! Because I am trying to write my own story, I now appreciate just how difficult it is to create one. Here is a tiny review of the book by yours truly:
The Inheritance series is the story of a farmboy who discovers a dragon egg. He finds out that he has become a legendary Dragon Rider. Then he is thrust into a world full of magic, dwarves, elves, monsters, treachery, treason, friendship, adventure, discovery, and many, many other things. His goal is to defeat the evil king Galabatroix, who is a Dragon Rider gone bad.
Many people critique the fact that the dragons are good, rather than the typical, traditionally evil role played by these giant fire-breathing creatures. However, in the books, the dragons have free will the same as humans; they are neither good nor bad as a whole, but choose their own path. Magic is also often critiqued (as it is particularly rescpetable to being made into some new age sort of thing). In the books, it has a huge part and the author goes to great lengths to describe how magic is used in his world. Magic seems to be a tool that can be used for both good and evil; it is used by spells (which are phrases in the 'ancient language') that are uttered, and each spell uses energy. If you preform a spell too difficult for your abilities, it will draw on your strength so much that it can kill you. One thing that I do not like about the uses of magic in Inheritence is that it is possible to use energy from other creatures, and thus easily kill them. The magic seems to be so strong that it can control everybody, and those without any magical abilities can be killed or controlled very easily, without any chance to defend themselves. However, the author makes a big deal about the fact that magic is a responsibility not to be used lightly, and concentrates on how evil it is to misuse it.
The magic used is not particularly bad (though not particularly good, either) and I would normally think that the books are just fine, were it not for the fact that a couple parts are notably atheistic. The dwarves and the humans in Aglagasia are basically pagans; they believe in a number of gods and have their own mythology. However, the two races that are the most looked up to, the most revered for their wisdom, reject the notion that any greater being(s) exist. They are the elves and the dragons. The elves have lives many hundred years long. They have used magic to increase their time span, and spend much of their time studying magic. They fancy that they know everything and have not discovered any thing supernatural that they they think cannot be explained by magic. In Eldest, Eragon and his elfish teacher have a lengthy discussion on the elves' religious beliefs, and the case of the atheists is discussed in far too much detail. There are the usual, pointless arguments ('if there is a god or gods, why do they let bad things happen', or, 'well, maybe they exist but they deserted us long ago'). The dragons simple seem to believe that they are the gods themselves. This is my biggest problem with the book. I would recommend the series (at least the books so far) as an enjoyable and creative story, but I would warn people to read with digression (is that the word for that idea? or is it discretion? or some totally different word?).