Archive for April, 2009
April 4, 2009 @ 7:35 am | Filed under:
Family What a great week.
My parents drove out from Colorado with my sweet almost-13-year-old niece. (Thanks, sis, for letting us borrow her.) We didn’t do anything big, just hung around the house mostly, spending time together. It was lovely. My mom and dad took the four big kids shopping for Easter clothes (woohoo!), took all the kids to the park, took the big girls swimming at the hotel pool—that kind of thing, mellow and close to home. As for me, I got to putter around the house with the baby during those outings, which is exactly what I wanted to be doing.
I amused myself by twittering in rhyme in honor of Poetry Month, and I mowed my first lawn (thanks, Dad, for the lesson) and my folks did lots more work in the backyard, and we cleaned out a playhouse that was here when we moved into this rental house. We had stuck the kids’ bikes in there and they collapsed in a tangle, and there were spiders, so no one ever rode the bikes or played in the playhouse. Now it’s all clean and spider-free, and we’re going to move a kiddie table and chairs in there and some fun playthings just in time for (gulp) Rilla’s third birthday next week.
That’s right; that baby is about to be three.
My mother made fried green tomatoes with our garden’s first bounty, and we stuffed ourselves on her good cornbread and vegetable soup as we always do when she comes, because she’s the spoil-you-rotten type (and my dad is too) and always makes my favorites when she comes to visit. And they brought me a new solar pump for the birdbath to replace the one we burned out, so now the fountain is merrily arcing again, and the birds are indeed bathing, and the backyard is so pretty with the whisper of jasmine, and the daisies and roses and freesia in bloom, and the fat red geraniums, and the red and purple salvia inviting the hummingbirds to flash in and out, and the phoebe singing her name.
What a great week.
April 3, 2009 @ 1:01 pm | Filed under:
Comics People often ask me for comic book recommendations for young kids. Most comics today are written for adults, and they are emphatically NOT for children. Back in the days when Scott was writing Gotham Adventures (a Batman monthly aimed at children), I could point inquirers in that direction with a clear conscience. His comics were age-appropriate and fun, and darn well written, I might add, and I’m not just saying that because I adore the guy. But he stopped writing that title long ago and has returned to the editor’s side of the desk.
The day before the movers pulled the truck into our Virginia driveway to load my hundreds of boxes for the move to California, another box arrived in the mail. From Scott, who was already out here. A little one, but still: I admit I sputtered a bit at the thought of having ONE MORE BOX to deal with. I should have known better. Shame on me. The box contained: chocolate (bless that man!) and a fat trade paperback which, upon inspection, turned out to be a reprinted collection of Batman material originally published in the 60s and 70s
.
60s and 70s, see, which is to say: back when comic books were still being written for kids. The Batman book is part of a series called Showcase Presents
, and there are around a dozen more titles now, I believe. They’re black-and-white reproductions, not full color, but that hasn’t seemed to matter to my gang. They were so crazy about the Batman one (it was passed from child to child in the car and was the most popular reading material on our long, long drive) that he brought home a few more, and OH MY GOODNESS. These book are never NOT being read by someone in the house. (No kidding, right in the middle of THIS VERY PARAGRAPH Rose came to me in tears because Jane had just finished the pick-o’-the-bunch, Teen Titans
, and had the nerve to give it to Beanie instead of Rose who was waiting impatiently for her turn.)
I consider these books perfect reading material for the topsy-turvy days we’ve had this past month: light, fun, absorbing, did I mention fun? When they aren’t reading, Rose and Beanie are LIVING the books; they are superheroines named Aquagirl and Flash Girl, and they have informed me that I’m Wonder Woman, which: bwah ha ha, but thanks!
I haven’t vetted all the titles in the series yet, but some others that Scott gave the gang are The Elongated Man
, Superman
, and Justice League of America
.
By the way, Rose and Beanie seem to have solved their problem by reading side by side.
April 1, 2009 @ 7:37 pm | Filed under:
Books,
TBR 
I haven’t made much of a dent in that stack of books.
14 books in the stack.
I’ve read three books since posting that picture—only one of them (The Sherwood Ring) was in the pile. And another of the three (The Plain Princess) was very short, a fairy tale really. (Sweet and pleasant, very similar to my favorite George MacDonald story, whose name I am suddenly blanking on. The one about the Wise Woman who takes in the spoiled princess and the arrogant shepherdess girl.) The third, The Polysyllabic Spree, was a library request that came in and catapulted immediately to the top of my pile.
Am still reading Lucky Girl, which I had started several days before that post.
Read one chapter of River of Gods—that big fat book adding three inches to the tower in the photo. I really want to continue with this book but its whopping size is hindering me. I tried to read it in bed while nursing the baby and nearly dropped it on the poor child’s head. If it were available through Kindle or Stanza I’d consider buying it to read on my iPod. But it isn’t.
The Glenn Gould piano book was one of Scott’s library picks. He read it and thinks I’d enjoy it too but it went back to the library before I got to it.
I’ve got Daughter of Time here on my bed; was going to pick it up today and then remembered The Mysterious Benedict Society which was supposed to be in the TBR stack photo but was hiding in the girls’ room at the time. Since it’s a copy we borrowed from good friends, I figure I ought to read it before I start anything we actually own. Am three chapters in and transfixed. What a delightful tale.
Meanwhile, I have received six more review copies since I wrote that post. I’d better get busy.
April 1, 2009 @ 6:28 am | Filed under:
Poetry No foolin’—Gregory K. starts his month-long poetry fiesta with a bang: a brand-new, ne’er-before-seen poem by this country’s first Children’s Poet Laureate, the great Jack Prelutsky. You just gotta book on over and see!
