Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
And I was only there for half of it.
Whew. As has always been my comic book convention experience, the weekend was exhausting but sooo much fun. That it fell on this particular weekend was a bummer, though, because a bunch of my girlfriends were at an entirely different conference on the other side of the country, and I (sob) could not be in two places at once.
Looking at all the beautiful pictures from the FCL Conference gave me such a smile, because talk about a study in contrasts! Here’s what their weekend looked like.
Here’s what mine looked like.
Scott had to work at the con Wednesday night, Thursday, Friday, and through the weekend. My mother arrived bright and early Saturday morning, and I brought her home from the airport, gave her a hug, and abandoned her with the children for the next two days. More or less.
On Saturday, while Scott worked at the WildStorm booth and did portfolio review and all that editor stuff they pay him for, I strolled up and down the convention center taking in the sights. There is always a lot to take in.
View from the DC Comics green room.
Saw eye to eye, Yoda and I did.
After a while, you’ve seen so much it all becomes a blur.
Sometimes you just need to sit down and take a little breather.
Fortunately, Scott got a late lunch break just in time for us to hook up with our beloved (and gorgeous) college friend Kristen, her husband Vinny, and Vinny’s Attack of the Show co-producer, Joshua. We survived the cattle crossing that is the big intersection right outside the convention center
and wandered into the Gaslamp District in search of a good place to eat.
Speaking of cattle crossings, we passed these characters just hanging out on a streetcorner.
Rumor has it they were a promo for the TV show Fringe.
The restaurant that boasted of having award-winning meatloaf had a 45-minute wait, so hmph to them. We found ourselves at Fred’s Mexican Cafe, and oh my goodness. The complimentary chips and salsa were so good they nearly made us weep.
Kristen took this picture of me basking in post-salsa contentment.
She also got much better Comic-Con pix than I did.
After stuffing ourselves with cajun shrimp tacos (oh. my. goodness.) and carnitas burritos, we waddled back down the street toward the Con. OK, I waddled. Scott had to dash ahead to get back for booth duty. Kristen and I took our time. We passed Joss Whedon on the street. Kristen greeted him with what is now my favorite greeting ever. (“Hey, Joss Whedon! Yay!”) He grinned. Then we reached Kristen’s hotel and said a weepy goodbye. L.A. is just too dang far away. At least, as the car drives.
Back to the Con for me, where I visited artist friends until Scott was finished at the booth. Tim Sale shook his head in amazement at the news that we are expecting again. I told him we figure there won’t be any Social Security by the time we’re old enough to draw it, so we’re making sure we have plenty of children around to take care of us. He said, “Good point. It’ll be an agrarian society by then anyway, so you’ll need all those kids to work the farm.” Ha.
It was around that time that I had a little bag crisis. The bag I’d brought with me (this delicious creation by Beauty That Moves) turned out to be just a leetle too small for the event. My camera was perched too near the top, just begging to be snatched. What choice did I have? There was this booth full of big ole bags with zippers, and one of them was lime green. Seriously, what choice did I have. OK. I admit it. I have a little problem when it comes to bags. In fact, just minutes later when my husband was introducing me to one of his favorite writers in the comics industry (Kelley Puckett, whom I’ve been hearing about—and reading—for fifteen years, but somehow had never met until this weekend!), he broke off in mid-sentence and said, “Hey, is that a new bag?” I said, “Hmm? What?” And he turned to Kelley and said, “My wife has only two flaws.” (He’s wrong about that, but it was sweet.) “Number one: her ridiculous affection for me. Number two: her compulsion for bags.” I can’t deny it. I am so thrifty and purchase-cautious when it comes to clothes and furniture and household items and pretty much everything except books and handbags. I mean, it’s not like I buy a bag a month or anything like that. But three or four a year, yeah, maybe. It’s a quest, see, for the perfect bag. As pretty as this one but with lots of pockets and a sturdy bottom and some kind of inherent magic that will make me always be able to locate my keys when I need to. That kind of bag.
But I digress.
Our Saturday evening wrapped up with what is for me the best part of a comic book convention. We wound up in the Hyatt bar eating appetizers and drinking beer (ginger ale for me) with a group of writers and artists. I love this, the jovial camaraderie and stimulating discussion of a community of creative colleagues. Our Barcelona pal Andy Diggle was there (but no Jock, alas), and Kelley Puckett joined us, and Fiona Staples (Scott’s artist on Jack Hawksmoor), and a bunch of WildStorm people, and assorted other folks wandering in and out. We stayed up talking too late and dragged ourselves home well past midnight.
And then poor Scott had to start all over at 9 a.m. on Sunday. I lingered at home, took the girls to Mass, played with my little ones. I didn’t want to take a second car into the convention-center madness, so I parked at the trolley station near our house and took the orange line downtown. And what an interesting trolley ride that was. I Twittered the experience (scroll down to “waiting for the trolley” and read upwards) and was probably lucky the Loud Girl didn’t know I was recording her rantings for all the internet to see. I told Scott you know it’s been a freaky train ride when it’s a relief to get back to all the nice, sane people at Comic-Con.
Like these guys.
I am proud to say I bought no bags on Sunday (although the blue soldier guy’s messenger bag up there is kind of cute, isn’t it). I took in the sights and drank free DC Comics cranberry juice and met more nice artists and attended the WildStorm panel. And then it was back to the Hyatt for more food & fun with Fiona and Andy (but no Kelley this time) and Mike Costa and Neil Googe and other engaging, talented folks. Scott, Mike, Andy, and I spent a good three hours talking about the nature of story. That, my friends, is why I go to comic conventions.
Later we stopped by a party hosted by Mark Buckingham, Bill Willingham, and Matt Sturges, but I was too tired to stay long. My obliging hubby took me home where I snuggled up next to my baby who is no longer a baby and dreamed about absolutely nothing, because I was that wiped out.
Last Friday Jane and her friends had the great fun of making blankets together for a service project headed by my sweet and generous friend Katie. All the volunteers were sent home with giant bags of fabric, fleece and cotton, to be used in making more blankets for the pro-life center and anything else the girls want to tackle for themselves or their families. Jane spent the weekend making fleece blankets and pillows, some knotted, some hand-sewn. I promised to work on making a space for her to have easy access to the sewing machine: all three big girls very much want to learn to sew, really sew, on the machine. So that was Monday’s project: finishing the big overhaul of the craft room that I started while the girls were in Colorado.
What I had done while they were gone was: tidy and reorganize the shelves, especially the craft-supply shelves under the window. Now it was time to tackle the closet. Jane was on hand to bag the trash I pitched onto the floor behind me. One of the first treasures I unearthed was a big book of placemats to color in, a German publication I remembering buying two-for-a-dollar at a Hearthsong sale many years ago. This felicitous find kept Beanie busy for most of the day, perched at the table behind me in the middle of the craft room. And Rose worked her magic on the little ones, entertaining them, guarding them from harm, answering countless requests for the refilling of sippy cups.
About this “craft room.” It ought sensibly to be a bedroom. We are (for now) seven people in a 1700-square-foot house. Rilla still sleeps in my bed. She’ll most likely move to a toddler bed next to mine sometime before the baby comes. That’s been our pattern with all the others and it has worked beautifully four times. Wonderboy has his own room, sort of: it’s also Scott’s office and laundry-folding center, and the boy’s closet absorbs a lot of the overflow from the rest of the house. The three older girls share a bedroom, from which we can hear them giggling and talking until late into the night.
The craft room (I call it that because it’s where the girls do most of their drawing and painting and Sculpey-ing and snipping of tiny bits of paper for their own inscrutable purposes) has three tall bookcases full of kids’ books, one tall bookcase full of Scott’s CDs, a fifth tall bookcase half full of more books and, until yesterday, half full of craftsy overflow such as crumpled origami paper, dried-up glue sticks, and eraserless pencils. We must make a lot of mistakes around here, because never in my life have I seen so many pencils with erasers worn away to the metal.
There’s a small desk in the craft room amid all the bookcases. This used to be my desk—since college days, actually—but in this house I wanted to make sure Jane had a corner all her own, so it’s her desk now. She has my old laptop set up there (no internet access, unfortunately—it’s too old for anything but dial-up) as well as all her beading, crocheting, sewing, paperfolding, etc, supplies. What we did on Monday was clear off some shelves beside the desk for her personal use and add a small end table in the corner for the laptop to go on when she wants the desk clear for sewing. And we moved the sewing machine to her desk. Jane’s in heaven.
Rose has long wanted a desk of her own too, and as soon as the dramatic emptying and organizing of the craft-room closet (you can imagine what it looked like before) was complete, she claimed her nook. We have an old children’s table from IKEA in there—I was using it as a kind of shelf. It’s Rose’s desk now, and I think what she loves about it is that it is inside the closet. Safe from sneaky spies, you understand, and prying toddler hands. She found a chair that fits the table and discovered she can store it on the table when the closet door is closed.
Beanie does not yet crave a desk of her own. “I like to be wherever you are, Mommy,” she says, causing me to kiss her all over her face.
Yesterday, Tuesday, we tackled the laundry room and Wonderboy’s room. Stunning progress, if I do say so myself. It may be the last boastful thing I’ll say all week, because the San Diego Comicon begins today (at least, Scott’s work-required wining and dining of the talent does), and just knowing I’m on bedtime duty for the next three days has already sapped all my energy. Also I have to go grocery shopping today and you know how that brings out the wilting lily in me. Do you hear that swell of sad violins? Waaah…
But my marvelous mama arrives bright and early Saturday morning and then I’ll become, for the weekend, a Mary Lennox’s mother kind of mother, gadding off to parties with an airy farewell wave of the hand. Okay, maybe that’s overstating a bit. (Tangent: a Rose quote from the other day: “Mom, I can definitely tell that Rilla is our baby. She’s prone to hyperbole just like you and Daddy. I just offered her a drink of water and she was grumpy and shouted, ‘NO! I never gon’ have water a-more!”)
Poor Rilla. Is it her fault she’s not a morning person?
Anyway, so maybe I won’t be quite as bad as Mrs. Lennox, but I do plan to spend a good bit of time at Con-related festivities. That’s the whole entire reason my mother is flying out here this weekend. Isn’t she the best? (And that, my friends, is no hyperbole.)
Ahead today: Shakespeare Club. I hope. In my closet-cleaning frenzy yesterday I forgot to send out a reminder email to the other moms. Even Mrs. Lennox had better manners than that.
It is possible we shall put out some fires.
Sometimes other people’s secrets are as much fun as your own. I’ve been bubbling over with one of Alice’s for weeks. Go look, go! Is it not the prettiest place on the internet? Be sure to click all around. One thing that especially delights me is having easy access to all her tea menus. These teas are one of her best innovations and have been enriching my own family’s feast-day celebrations for years and years. I was one of the lucky ones, you know, who got to reap the benefits of Alice’s particular genius long before she came to the internet. (Forgive me if I gloat a little.) I remember when she presented her first themed tea menu (a Shakespearean repast, that one) to her teeny tiny girls waaay back in our young-mama days. A decade later, I am still giggling over some of her menu items.
Her Midsummer Night’s Dream tea is another masterpiece, invented for the cast party of her local group’s performance of that play. Because I (more gloating) got to read her upcoming book in manuscript, and because she is including that tea in an appendix to the book, my San Diego friends and I got to enjoy the very same feast after our Shakespeare Club’s performance of scenes from that play—the club itself being an enterprise I was inspired to launch after hearing Alice’s Shakespeare stories. This is the effect she’s had on me for years, and the effect she’s had on the online homeschooling community since she joined that party: she has all these great ideas and makes them sound so easy and doable. So you jump up and do them, and she’s right. I see the fruit of her genius all over the internet.
Which is why people are going to love her book. One of the reasons why, that is. The personal narrative itself is captivating, and I’m not just saying that because I’m a recurring character. 🙂 Although she did make me cry a goodly number of times as she recounted the story of our own budding friendship back in Queens, NY. What delicious days those were! But beyond the fact that her book tells a darn good story, there’s what I always think of as the “practical inspiration” factor—does a book inspire me to get up and DO? Haystack Full of Needles does. Which I think is pretty impressive, considering I talk to the author on the phone almost every day, so you’d think I’d have heard all her ideas by now. Not so. Because the woman is a fount of them; they bubble out of her. As I read the manuscript, I was thinking, gosh, people are just going to wish they could live in Alice’s area and be part of the things she’s describing. But as I read on, I realized that no, the effect of the book goes much deeper than that: you find yourself energized and eager to put her ideas to work in your own home and circle of friends. It’s a beautiful look at family and community, what we give each other and how we grow together. Which is exactly how I characterize my friendship with Alice Gunther: we have grown up together, as mothers—we met when her oldest was two and my only(!) child was fifteen months old. I’ve been the lucky recipient of her brilliant ideas ever since. It just tickles me pink that now the whole world can enjoy the riches too.
August, 2000. Post Barnes & Noble booksigning celebration. From left: me, unidentified man’s bottom, Alice with our friend Brigid’s sweet daughter Emily on her lap. Photo by Brigid! You can’t tell because we’re sitting, but I was pregnant with Beanie—Alice’s future goddaughter.
This month, author Susan Taylor Brown is the host, and in honor of Father’s Day, she has put together a carnival of posts about fathers in literature. Check it out!
When I mentioned yesterday how many specialists my son sees at the children’s hospital, commenter Anna marveled,
Melissa, ELEVEN specialists? Next time I grouse about two specialists, I’ll shut up. 😉
Oh no, please don’t shut up. Grouse along with me! Medical appointments expand to fill the space around them, don’t they, so that I’m guessing your two specialists suck up massive amounts of time just like our eleven.
Eleven is only the number of departments Wonderboy visits at the Children’s Hospital. Then there’s his pediatric ophthamologist at the university hospital, and the speech therapist and audiologist in the school district. Oh, and also the regular pediatrician, his primary care doctor. If you add in his dentist, and since the child managed to knock out four of his teeth in the past year, I think we may certainly add the pediatric dentist to the roster, that’s (gulp) 16 doctors and therapists my little guy sees on a regular or semi-regular basis.
Yes, it’s a little nuts.
One of the hardest parts of juggling this caseload is keeping all these folks on the same page: namely, the page that is all about the whole picture of this kid, not the tiny piece Dr. Specialist is focusing on. I often compare my role as having to hold tight to the leashes of a bunch of big dogs all pulling in opposite directions. And sometimes it seems like the doctors communicate with each other about as well as dogs do.
In Virginia, we had some personal connections with a few doctors in a way that meant I had another set of hands helping me hold on to the leashes. You may remember how I pined for our Dr. Lily when we left, wished I could bring her with me. (She actually did offer to fly out to California with me and the children when she heard I was going to drive them out here all by myself. Now that’s dedication. But I was more afraid of five hours on an airplane with Wonderboy than two weeks in the minivan, even sans other adults.)
Here in San Diego, we have excellent doctors, absolutely. But none who have taken that step past the detached professional relationship toward a more familiar, I’m-your-ally-let-me- help-you-with-those-Huskies rapport. I’ve had to come up with some strategies for making sure all the boy’s doctors take the time to at least glimpse at the whole picture of him, not just their individual pieces of the puzzle.
The biggest help has been the Doctor Roster. I typed up a list of all the people Wonderboy sees. Four columns. First column: doctor’s name and phone number. Second column: doctor’s specialty or department. Third column: date of most recent appointment. Fourth column: Notes on the last appt, tests ordered, recommendations made, etc.
I’m saying doctor, but this also includes his PT, speech therapist, etc. Everyone involved in his treatment.
I carry several of these lists with me to every appointment. It’s the first thing I hand a doctor when he or she walks into the room. Always, the eyebrows go up: the complexity of the big picture is immediately apparent from the length of the list.
I’ve begun to notice some major improvements in communication between departments since I began handing out this list, and I have definitely found that the individual specialists spend more time asking me questions about his history and his overall treatment plan.
Of course, if only the kid had one global diagnosis, that would help so much! One peg for the docs to hang their hats on; one road map to follow. But that, we know by now, isn’t likely to happen. There is no syndrome that fits, no other case in history that contains this specific bizarre amalgam of issues. Someday, some savvy doctor is going to write a paper on the kid and there’ll maybe be a new syndrome in the books. It’ll be named after the doc, but we’ll know it’s Wonderboy Syndrome, won’t we?
It is always interesting to see what odds and ends have accumulated on my bed by the end of the day. My bedroom is a favorite spot for reading, playing Polly Pockets, destroying bedsprings acrobatics, and sundry other activities. Often, at the tired end of a day, I’ll find a pair of dice, a toy frog, a candy wrapper, a sprinkling of buttons: flotsam and jetsam suggesting that perhaps Beaver Cleaver has wandered in and emptied his overalls pockets on my comforter sometime between his after-school milk and cookies and his slingshot attack on Eddie Haskell.
Tonight I find: two hair barrettes (it’s not the Beaver, then); two small sun visors, one pink, one white; a Sandra Boynton book; the decapitated head of a coreopsis; a crumpled tissue, presumably used (ew); and a book I distinctly remember leaving on the nightstand: Noel Perrin’s A Reader’s Delight, a surprise birthday gift from a darling friend, which I have been treating myself to, one delicious essay at a time, over the past six months. What’s especially intriguing is that this morning, the book’s cover was papered with small pink Post-Its: the evidence of a previous day’s fun-in-Mom’s-room hijinks. I had been keeping a small chunk of Post-Its on the aforementioned bedside table for the handy flagging of quotes to savor later. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that the small chunk of notes had been systematically dismantled, one satisfying shhhnk after another, no doubt, and reassembled mosaic fashion upon Mr. Perrin’s fine tome.
Now, today, all the little pink stickies are gone. Vanished. I’ve looked under my pillows. I wonder where I’ll find them?
***
Beanie and I bawled in each other’s arms today. It was awfully sweet. She had picked up an Illustrated Classics version of Jack London’s White Fang at the library earlier in the day. An adaptation, yes, but the kid is seven. Adaptation or no, this was still a hefty volume. She also checked out Dracula, but I told her I should preview that one for her, might be a little scary. She doesn’t like scary. When we got home from the library, all three girls scattered with their armloads of treasure. Beanie reappeared about 45 minutes later, her finger holding her place in White Fang.
“I think you’re right, Mom,” she said. “Dracula might be a bit much for me right now. White Fang is about a REAL wolf and it is so scary! But I love it. You’ve GOT to read it.”
She remained glued to the book all afternoon. When she finished, with a happy sigh, she turned to me and told me all about it. White Fang’s numerous escapes from peril, his brave acts, his poor mother whom he never saw again.
I tried to think of other wolf/dog books she might like, and Stone Fox came to mind. But oh, that heartbreaker of an ending. I told her I knew a wonderful book about a dog similar to White Fang—a Husky, not a wolf—but that it had a sad ending. She likes forewarning of these things.
“Does the dog die?”
(Spoiler alert.)
“Yes. It makes a brave sacrifice for a little boy. Do you think you’d like to read it?”
“Mmm, no, not yet. Will you tell me the story?”
And so I did, the two of us perched on bar stools at the living-room side of the kitchen counter. How the little boy’s grandpa can’t pay his back taxes, loses heart, gets sick. How the little boy hears about the sled-dog race, the prize money in just the right amount. How he practices with his faithful old dog, Searchlight. How everyone knows the race will be run by the big silent Indian, Stone Fox, with his team of five champion dogs. How the boy is determined to try anyway because it’s his last hope. How Searchlight holds her own against the dog-pack surprisingly well, running neck and neck with Stone Fox’s lead dog. How, yards from the finish line, her old heart bursts, and she falls down dead. How the little boy stares down at her in stunned disbelief and grief. How Stone Fox halts his dogs, leaves his sled, picks up the fallen Searchlight and carries her, pulling the boy on his ramshackle sled, across the finish line.
Both of us were bawling by this point. How could we not? My voice was cracking as I tried to finish; tears were streaming from Beanie’s big eyes. She lunged forward, tipping her stool, throwing her arms around me.
“Oh, Mommy. That’s so sad.”
“I know, sweetie, it really is.”
“But it’s…” She paused, seeking the right word. “It’s noble, too. Isn’t it?” Another pause. “White Fang did some noble things too. But it’s a very happy ending. It’s the best book I ever read, Mom.”
***
I’m in my bedroom, writing this post, when I hear the following sequence of events: Scott walking down the hall. Scott suddenly bursting out in an incoherent shout: “GAAH!” Scott bellowing for Rose, speaking to her softly. Rose murmuring a reply. Scott calling the other girls. Pattering feet. Shrieks, squeals, commotion. Paper rattling. A door slamming.
A little while later, Scott IMs me from the other computer. Wants to know if I’m still awake: a joke, because even if I weren’t working, who could sleep through all that shouting? What on earth, I ask him. He explains, but you’ll need a bit of backstory. See, Rose has this toy snake that looks completely realistic. And sometimes she plays a joke on me: coils it in a box of diapers or a laundry basket, somewhere I’ll come upon it unsuspectingly and scream my head off because THERE IS A SNAKE IN THE BOX OF DIAPERS. Then everybody comes running and laughs and laughs. Oh, isn’t it hilarious, Mom just lost another ten years off her life. Ha ha.
I live with a pack of smart alecks; have I mentioned that?
So what happened was, Scott was walking down the hall to the laundry room and at the bottom of the two-step staircase, he almost stepped on a big old lizard. (That was the GAAH.) Looking twice at the hideous, motionless thing, he realized it wasn’t real. Must be one of Rose’s little jokes on Mom, which hmm, seems my hubby finds those a lot funnier when I’m the hapless victim. Thus the bellow for Rose, presumably to tell her to save her jokes for when Mom is sure to be the patsy.
“That’s real, Daddy,” says Rose. And then it moved.
It was this thing. Eek. No wonder he shouted.
Is a transcript too dorky?
Scott: It was about eight or nine inches long
I love it
Bit the hell out of me, though.
Understandably
me: It bit you????
Scott: Yeah.
Doesn’t have much in the way of teeth, fortunately
me: no way!!!! baby!!!!
how?
where?
Scott: Um. Put its mouth on my finger and closed?
me: You offered it your finger?
Scott: Yes.
Yes.
I thought it might be hungry.
Apparently so.
me: Seriously. Did it really bite you?
me: And more importantly, where is it now?
Scott: It started running, but had trouble getting traction on the floor. So it started to go into a paper bag, which was good.
me: Hooray for lousy housekeeping!
Scott: But the bag was ripped, so it ran out the hole. Which was bad.
me: Boo for lousy housekeeping.
Scott: So I picked it up.
And it bit me.
So I dropped it.
Then I picked it up again.
me: Buddy.
Scott: And it bit me again.
me: Honey!!!
Scott: So I dropped it.
Then I picked it up again and tried to throw it outside.
But it was biting me again so I dropped it again.
Finally, I threw it.
And the last I saw it was running under our bedroom door.
(At this point I emit a piercing shriek of my own. I am a long way from Scott’s computer, but evidently the sound carries.)
Scott: Thank you.
That was very gratifying
me: I HATE YOU.
Scott: It landed between the garbage can and the recycling can.
me: I am never taking out the trash again.
Scott: I love it and wicked regret tossing it out of the house.
me: It will never be your friend now.
Scott: Sometimes I act without thinking
me: You?
Really?
Scott: I know!
I think this might really hurt our long term relationship, Liz and me.
me: That’s the same kind of lizard who freaked me out that time in the watering can.
hanging out in there, looking like a rattler.
Scott: http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1285/534174395_b6bfe60133_o.jpg
me: Gah.
I do not want to know how that thing got into my house. Nor do I desire to know, any longer, what happened to my little pink Post-Its. It ate them, I just know it.
Welcome to the May 2008 edition of the Carnival of Children’s Literature!
I promised a no-frills edition this month. It’s a lazy Saturday morning in my house, the kind filled with cartoons and sugary cereals. On Saturday mornings, you would never know what booksy people we are. Saturday afternoons are different. There is nearly always a library run on Saturday afternoon. Sometimes Scott will take some of the kids; other days, I’ll swing by during errand-running to pick up whatever we might have on hold. It’s always fun to see what Scott or Jane might have requested from inter-branch loan during the week. Jane’s queue this week seems to be full of Miss Marples and Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books. Scott has a knack for hunting up interesting new books in all genres, including children’s and YA. At our old branch in small-town Virginia, the librarians told me they used to watch for his requests and snag his returns for their own reading lists. They mourned when he left. We mourned to leave them!
Clare B. Dunkle is a librarian turned author. Becky Laney offers a fascinating Interview with Clare about her recent novel, The Sky Inside, at Becky’s Book Reviews.
For more author interviews, step Into the Wardrobe, where Tarie presents a conversation with author/illustrator Katie Davis, and pay a visit to MotherReader, where Pam Coughlan interviews Kelly Bingham about Shark Girl.
As an author myself, I am always interested in what attracts a reader to a book. Of course, I’m interested in this from a mom’s standpoint as well. It’s fun to see what turns my individual kids on to a title. Rose is at the classic 9-year-old girl stage which leaps at anything with a horse on the cover. At Under the Covers, Lisa Chellman shares some observations about book covers in Book Jackets with Familiar Faces. “Has anyone else noticed,” she asks, “celebrity look-alikes on children’s and YA book covers?” Don’t miss the comments for an informative response from the editor of one of the books Lisa discusses.
The always thought-provoking Jen Robinson shares her own book-appeal criteria in My 6 P’s of Book Appreciation at Jen Robinson’s Book Page.
A number of bloggers submitted book reviews this month. Here’s a wide selection:
Susan Gaissert posted on one of my favorites, Heaven to Betsy, at The Expanding Life. Sounds like Susan and I share a common grief over the out-of-print status of the high-school Betsy-Tacy books.
At In Need of Chocolate, Sarah writes about a book Jane keeps sticking in my to-be-read pile: Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright. I’m going to treat myself to it at last this summer!
Over at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Jules & Eisha give us a delightful back-and-forth about E. Lockhart’s YA novel The Frankie Mystique.
In honor of Asian Pacific Heritage month, Jenny Schwartzberg reviews Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit at Jenny’s Wonderland of Books.
At The Learning Umbrella, Sara reviews two books: Swallows and Amazons and The Willoughbys.
Nancy Arruda raves about a picture book at Bees Knees Reads. “Traces is a book of beautifully written verse by master children’s writer Paula Fox and illustrated by Karla Kuskin.” You had me at “beautifully written verse.” By the end of this carnival, our library reserve list is going to be a mile long.
Case in point: after reading cloudscome‘s review of Millicent Min: Girl Genius at a wrung sponge, I can’t wait to read this book. (Jules & Eisha sold me on The Frankie Mystique, too.)
At A Year of Reading, Mary Lee presents an interesting look at how kids of different ages responded to the same picture book: Experimental Read-Aloud. She says, “As an experiment, I read aloud the same book in Preschool-5th grades. (I am a classroom teacher, not a librarian, so this was a unique experience for me.) The differences in their responses were fascinating.”
Becky offers a Young Readers review of As Good As Anybody by Raul Colón, “the story of two men: Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Two men. Two stories. Both powerful.”
In Weekly Geeks Challenge: Outsiders, Jenny of Read. Imagine. Talk. discusses three books about people on the outside: The Hundred Dresses, Loser, and The Giver.
Libby Gruner muses about the depiction of childhood in Peter Pan at Lessons from the Tortoise.
Several contributors sent in posts about ways of sharing books with children.
Jill at The Well-Read Child feels strongly that Fighting Illiteracy is a Community Effort.
Heather Young recalls how her children followed their own path to reading in Books, books, books! at An Untraditional Home.
At The Reading Zone, a blogger recounts a conversation between two teachers which reveals how they are Censoring in the Classroom.
Silvia and her sister-in-law have hit upon a wonderful way to share beloved books with their children: by having Familiar Voices record the text on mp3 files for iPod enjoyment by their Lucky Kiddos.
One of Karen Edmisten‘s famous Ramona stories captures exactly why sharing books with children is its own reward: Why I Love Our Read-Alouds, Part 937.
And wrapping up our carnival, Elizabeth O. Dulemba presents a fabulous photo-essay of an event I would have loved to attend: the 1st Annual Children’s Book Illustrator’s Show! I loved all the pictures showing kids sprawled on the gallery floor with books in the background.
Thanks for visiting this month’s carnival. Next month, author Susan Taylor Brown will host a carnival with the theme of fathers in literature. You may submit a post to Susan using our carnival submission form. To explore past kidlitosphere carnivals, visit the archives.
UPDATE: Eek!! I just went to the BlogCarnival site to enter the info for this post, and I discovered EIGHTEEN MORE SUBMISSIONS that must have come in after the deadline this morning. That means BlogCarnival automatically began forwarding them to next month’s host instead. Bear with me while I figure out what to do. Meanwhile, enjoy the posts below.
UPDATED UPDATE. I know what we’ll do. I’m out of time for this endeavor, so if you missed the deadline and want your post to be included, you may submit the link in a comment below. But listen, folks, on-topic posts only, please. I’m seeing an awful lot of spam there, or self-promotional pieces that are merely book promos, and a bunch of posts that have nothing at all to do with children’s books. If I spot links like that in the comments, I’ll delete them because I don’t want to waste my readers’ time. For the sake of the substantive and relevant posts in the bunch, I’m allowing this means of making late entries.
Am I up to this, I ask myself? It’s been a crazy week here. Ah, what the heck.
Our very kind volunteer host for this month’s Carnival of Children’s Literature had a scheduling conflict arise, and she had to reluctantly pass on the fun. She gave me plenty of notice to line up an alternate host, but we had Stuff happening here, and I failed to solicit a substitute. And here we are at the end of the month, with no carnival planned.
Well, who needs planning? I don’t promise a clever theme this time, but I’m quite sure I can promise some fun reading. So: pick your best post about children’s books from the past month, and send it my way. No, scratch that—submit it via the BlogCarnival site. That way I won’t have to fiddle with links and code. Make it easy on me!
As always, submission does not guarantee inclusion. I’ll take submissions until 8a.m. Pacific time Saturday morning, and I’ll get the carnival posted sometime that day. I know, the pressure’s on. Move, move, move!
As for upcoming carnivals, there is fun ahead this summer. Author Susan Taylor Brown (Hugging the Rock) will host on June 23rd, with a theme just right for Father’s Day: Fathers in Literature. And in July, Jenny Rich of Read Imagine Talk will be our host. Love that blog name: sounds like our way of life.
To explore past kidlitosphere carnivals, visit the archives.
