Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It (13 page)

Some More Things I Found Out About Rocks and Minerals

By Brendan S. Buckley

• Up to 100,000 tons of rock fall to Earth from space each year! The largest meteorite in the world lies in the ground in Africa and weighs more than 60 tons.

• A lot of dust is finely ground rock and mineral particles. Sixty percent of the earth’s airborne dust comes from Africa’s Sahara Desert, and some of it even reaches the U.S. The soil in my backyard might contain grains of dust from halfway around the world!

• More than 3500 different minerals have been discovered, but fewer than twelve minerals make up 97 percent of all rocks.

• Humans can’t make minerals. And minerals are not alive. They are not plants or animals.

• Each mineral has one kind of molecule repeated over and over in a pattern (which is another reason Grandpa DeBose likes them—they’re orderly).

• We use and even
eat
minerals every day: Pencil lead is the mineral graphite; table salt is halite; school chalk is gypsum; the little white
M
on M&M candies is made of two minerals, rutile and ilmenite, which also turn toothpaste and paint white. And they are in the white filling of Oreos.

• Muscovite is used to make glitter and to decorate Christmas trees with fake snow.

• Quartz (number 7 on the Mohs Scale of Mineral Hardness) is used in sandpaper, soap, radios, watches, TVs and computers.

• Sulfur is used in matches, fireworks and medicine.

• Without bauxite, we wouldn’t have soft drink cans or aluminum bats.

• An ounce of gold can be hammered thin enough to cover a football field, or rolled into a wire long enough to stretch 50 miles.

• If you strike the mineral pyrite against flint or iron, it produces sparks. For centuries, people used pyrite to make fire. Pyrite is also called fool’s gold because it sparkles like gold.

• President Abraham Lincoln was a rock hound, too. A museum in Iowa has a cigar box marked “Collection of rocks made by A. Lincoln” with his signature on the lid.

• The largest rock and mineral collection is in the Natural History Museum in London. It has 350,000 minerals and 100,000 rocks! I sure hope I can go there one day.

If you’d like to become a rock hound like me, you can call, write or visit your state capital, where there’s a department called the U.S. Geological Survey (it’s sometimes called a Natural History Survey or Bureau of Mines, depending on the state). This office can give you a map of rock and mineral collecting sites in your state. You can also write to or visit the geology department of your local college or university for more information.

And here’s a great Web site for kids who are interested in rocks and minerals: http://library.thinkquest.org/J002289/index.htm.

I hope you like collecting and learning about rocks and minerals as much as I do!

Some Interesting Facts About Tae Kwon Do

By Brendan S. Buckley

• In case you don’t know, Tae Kwon Do is pronounced “tie kwon dough.”

• Tae Kwon Do is a martial art form that started in Korea more than a thousand years ago, although it wasn’t called Tae Kwon Do until 1950.

• It is especially known for its fast, high and spinning kicks (which is what I like most about it).

• In Korean,
Tae Kwon Do
means “the way of hand and foot,” or “the art of kicking and punching.”

• Becoming a black belt will probably take you two to five years, if you train two to three times a week. (I’ve been doing Tae Kwon Do for two years, and I hope to earn my black belt in one more year.)

• Tae Kwon Do became an Olympic sport in 2000.

• The first Tae Kwon Do students were soldiers and police officers (like my dad).

• Tae Kwon Do teaches you to respect your elders, family, friends and teachers, and never to take another life unjustly. You should also always finish what you start—which is why I had to find out the truth about Grandpa DeBose, but I learned that I shouldn’t have disobeyed my parents to do it.

• The forms (or
hyungs
) that we practice in Tae Kwon Do are patterns of defending and attacking movements performed against imaginary opponents. Each level has a different form that you have to memorize and master before you can get your next belt.

• The first form, called
chon-ji
, means “heaven and earth” and represents the creation of the world, or the very beginning. That’s why you learn it first.

• The second form, called
dan-gun
, is named after the man who founded Korea in 2333 BC, although Master Rickman says he’s more of a legend than a real person.

• In the break test (or
kyepka
), you use your foot, hand, elbow, knee or head to break a wooden board, although some people also break bricks, tiles and even baseball bats! We do the
kyepka
because it requires concentration, focus, speed and accuracy. It’s also a good way to learn that our bodies are strong weapons and we should be careful when we’re sparring with our partner!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am eternally indebted to the many people who’ve encouraged me to pursue the significant calling of being a writer, starting with my parents, who’ve believed in me beyond what I’ve given them credit for. To author Kevin McColley and my advisors at Vermont College, Jane Resh Thomas, Louise Hawes and Sharon Darrow: The pieces of stories you helped me to write didn’t end up in this book, but they got me to this point and hopefully will appear in others! To Norma Fox Mazer and Marion Dane Bauer, thank you for sharing so generously the invaluable gift of your experience. To my writing buddies, Nicole Schreiber, Lisa Bose and Joelle Ziemian, and my best buddy, Fina Arnold, as well as my current writers’ group, thanks for reading various versions of this work, for the many fine ideas and insights and for cheering me on along the way.

A huge heartfelt thank-you to the best mentor anyone could wish for, Carolyn Coman, for giving so much. You prompted me to dig deep and find the dedication to make big changes, the discipline to value little details, and the determination to listen for my true voice. I greatly appreciate my agent, Regina Brooks, for her enthusiasm about my work and her zeal in everything she undertakes, and my editor, Michelle Poploff, for vitalizing Brendan’s story with her kid-friendly vision.

On a practical note, thank you to fifth-degree black belt Josh Henkel for checking my portrayal of Tae Kwon Do, and to Ed Lehman of the Washington State Mineral Council, who led me on my first rock expedition as I researched this book, and who, in one of those fantastic coincidences that occur when you write a novel, just happened to share Brendan’s grandpa’s first name.

Above all, much love and gratitude to my husband, Matt, for asking two of the Biggest Questions I’ll ever be asked in my life, and to my daughter, Skye, for waiting to come until Mommy could finish this book. I love living my story with the two of you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sundee T. Frazier
says: “When I first wrote this book, Brendan’s grandpa didn’t show up until the very end. Little did I know that the discovery of Grandpa DeBose was actually where Brendan’s story began…but as Brendan says about asking questions, writing often leads to surprises, and it
always
leads to asking more questions.”

Like Brendan Buckley, Sundee T. Frazier is proud to come from both black and white people. She is the author of
Check All That Apply: Finding Wholeness as a Multiracial Person,
and she especially wants to see young people grow up feeling good about their heritage and identities. Raised in Washington State, where she currently lives and has hunted for rocks and minerals of her own, she’s also lived in California, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and she completed her MFA in writing for children and young adults at Vermont College. She lives in the Seattle area with her husband and their daughter, and you can read more about her published work at
www.sundeefrazier.com
. This is her first book for children.

Published by Delacorte Press
an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2007 by Sundee T. Frazier

All rights reserved.

Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.randomhouse.com/kids

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at
www.randomhouse.com/teachers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Frazier, Sundee Tucker.

                                    Brendan Buckley’s universe and everything in it / Sundee Frazier.—1st ed.

                                                               p. cm.

                                    Summary: Brendan Buckley, a biracial ten-year-old, applies his scientific problem-solving ability and newfound interest in rocks and minerals to connect with his white grandfather, the president of Puyallup Rock Club, and to learn why he and Brendan’s mother are estranged.

[1. Grandfathers—Fiction. 2. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 3. Minerals—Collection and preservation—Fiction. 4. Rocks—Collection and preservation—Fiction. 5. Tae kwon do—Fiction. 6. Family life—Washington (State)—Fiction. 7. Puyallup (Wash.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

                                    PZ7.F8715Bre 2007

                                    [Fic]—dc22

2006034041

eISBN: 978-0-375-89057-4

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