The Last Olympian is the fifth and final book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series. Percy is about to turn sixteen. He should be thinking about what movie he wants to go see, which girl he thinks is the cutest and when he will finally get his driver’s license. Instead, he’s thinking about saboutaging a ship and the reality of an inevitable war…and how his sixteenth birthday might be his last.
Percy gathers Annabeth, Rachel, Grover & Tyson plus his own army of loyal friends to fight alongside him against the Kronos army. Author: Rick Riordan Series: Percy Jackson and the Olympians
The National Security Agency (NSA) is the agency in the United States government that is responsible for finding out information ABOUT enemies and protecting our own information FROM enemies. The NSA makes and breaks codes. Their website for kids, Cryptokids, tells a lot of interesting code history. (It also has good photos and fun games.) You can look at a bunch of pictures of different code machines and you can look at pictures of spy aircraft. There is a picture of a slave quilt that has a secret message coded in it to help slaves know about Underground Railroad routes. You can read some declassified top secret documents and learn how to make six different codes.
If you’ve ever thought about what it might be like to be your pet, try Crusher’s story, the tale of snake held captive in a young boy’s bedroom.
Remember Syd in Toy Story? The boy who abused toys? Remember, Syd straps Woody and Buzz to the rocket? The boy in this story reminds me of Syd. I really would not want to be one of his pets.
The boy’s name is Gunnar and he has captured Crusher because he wants to watch her eat mice. Gunnar gets mad when Crusher refuses to eat. Crusher is determined to escape despite the warnings given to her by other captive creatures in Gunnar’s room. When he gets bored, Gunner forgets to feed the animals. In their view, the only way out is dead.
Crusher is determined to break that cycle and studies the human that has captured her to strategize a way out.
It’s always good to think about things from another person (or animal’s) perspective. As Crusher says, ”Humans give me the creeps. Theyare so slimy.” Crusher will remind you to get up and go feed those goldfish and take the dog for a nice long walk. Those pets can’t talk, but if they could, they’d probably sound a lot like Crusher.
Codes are used whenever people want to keep a message private. You need to know how the code works and the person receiving your message needs to know how the code works.
Thunk is an example of a code generator. This online generator converts your message into a code for you. This is the lazy way to do it, and not as secure as a top secret code, but it works. The person you are sending the message needs to use the same online code generator to translate your coded message back into English. Give it a try. Click on the Thunk Code Generator. Copy and paste this message into the generator. Click “Unscramble”.
Now here’s a game that doesn’t do all the work for you - try to Crack Digit’s Code. Look really carefully at the secret decoder. Roll over the letters with the mouse to reveal which symbol is associated with each letter. TIP: Look how each symbol in the coded message has some lines around it. You need to match up those lines with the lines in the tic-tac-toe grid…THEN figure out which of the letters you need by looking at the symbol.
If you want to communicate secretly with another person, you might decide to write your message in a secret code or you might choose to write your message in invisible ink. Today, you can learn how to write in this secret ink and tomorrow you will start to learn about codes. These three websites give you directions for writing a message in invisible ink. Give it a try!
