Baby, It’s Cold Outside — Here in the Bonny Glen

December 7, 2009 @ 1:25 pm | Filed under: Books,Links

Gray, chilly, bleak, rainy day here. We are spoiled by all the San Diego sun. Days like today make me feel like I’m made of tissue paper, in danger of dissolving during the brief sprint from house to car.

We had to go out for a while this morning, and now we’re home, and I am feeling considerably cheered by the tortilla chicken soup simmering in my slow cooker. (Not the chai kind.) A couple of gingerbread cookies helped too. Now I’m snuggling under a quilt and wishing I had some good tea, the fruity, tangy, zinger kind. Instead I’ve got a fat baby and a good book, as soon as I put this laptop away (in about three minutes). I’m halfway through The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and it’s just right for a blustery, waterlogged day like this.

I can see why Jane liked it so much; the heroine is a precocious eleven-year-old growing up on an old British estate around 1950, a motherless imp whose chief entertainments are distilling evil poisons in a long-dead relative’s abandoned chemistry lab and tormenting her two older sisters. Her father is a distracted philatelist who occasionally mourns his wife’s loss by sitting and weeping in her bunkered and dust-covered Rolls Royce. This sounds like the makings of a children’s novel, but it’s an adult murder mystery, really. Young Flavia, our budding chemist, stumbles upon a dying man in the cucumber patch one very early dawn, and she seems determined to muck up the police investigation as much as possible by solving the mystery herself first.

Delightful.

Speaking of delightful, I bet I’ve watched this video clip (via BoingBoing) ten times in the past few days. It’s from an upcoming documentary called Babies, about the lives of four infants from birth to age one in Namibia, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Mongolia. We can’t wait.

Comments RSS | TrackBack URI

Ellie says:

Now you’ve made me want tea: it’s …. 24F and they’re predicting a RatherLarge amount of snow to come in the next two days. Definitely tea.

I only paid vague attention to the book description: nothing’s changed there I’m afraid …
Posted on December 7th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Ellie says:

And … the kids and I just watched that clip twice. Looks lovely!
Posted on December 7th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Susan says:

Thanks for the chuckle! You wouldn’t want to be where I am now in central Alberta. We woke to -30 with a windchill of -40.
Posted on December 7th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
sarah says:

I don’t know that anything beats a fat baby and a good book.
Posted on December 7th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Melissa Wiley says:

Update: Finished the book! Great fun. Recommended for an entertainment read.
Posted on December 11th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Vanessa says:

The Babies clip melted my heart!
Posted on December 14th, 2009 at 4:32 am

Comment a lot? Register here. Already registered? Login here.

Want your own gravatar? Get one here.

Welcome to

the online home of

children's book author

you'll find posts about:

and much more!

Where to find unabridged Martha & Charlotte Books

Jane, 15 yrs old
Rose, 11 yrs
Beanie, 9 yrs
Wonderboy, 6 yrs
Rilla, 4 yrs
Huck, 19 months

and Scott, the love of my life

“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”

Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?

And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?

(from a post called Way Leads on to Way)

Subscribe to my feed

Melissa Wiley: Theresa, the Encyclopedia pubs August 24. (That’s not an affiliate link so this is not a...
Ellie: Oh, Lissa! I must have this!! Oh, what fun, can’t wait. **sigh** I know I say this every year, but you...
tanita: Just about everything First:Second does is my favorite. I enjoyed interviewing Gene Luen Yang so much, and I...
Theresa: When does it come out?? Gotta have it!
Farrar: I have been so enjoying your Comic-Con posts. Gene Yang is one of my favorite comic artists these days...
KC: We have fallen in love with graphic novels. It’s such a wonderful vehicle for my autistic son to follow a...
Sarah N.: What a great list. My almost 7yo loves the Owly series and Adventures in Cartooning. I’m putting...

Coming in October with a foreword by yours truly

Check out this big list of children's-book-related blogs at Kidlitosphere Central

Author and Illustrator Blogs

Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.

(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)