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Thanks - this was fascinating! And yay that you got some flour! We couldn't find yeast for AGES. Or, weirdly, plain yogurt! I finally bought some acidophilus and I'm just going to make my own. We're all going to be weirdly invested in home everything for a good while.
Corona brands: King Arthur flour
Fourth in a series of posts about US brands that are thriving during the COVID-19 pandemic. Around the end of March, a couple of weeks into California’s shelter-in-place directive, I used up the last of my flour on a batch of Marion Cunningham’s raw apple muffins—a recipe I’d first tasted, years...
Love those Piggie pj's!
Rekindling Intrinsic Motivation After Extrinsic Rewards Damage It
Last summer a mother lamented to me that her son, who had been a big reader during the school year, wasn't reading over the summer. She said that this was because he was no longer getting AR points for his books. So, whereas the previous summer he had always had a book in his hand, this summer h...
I still think it's a hoot that this baby can read at all, because somewhere, in some parallel universe, she's still an infant. Now that she's hilariously bargaining with you for "five more minutes," yeah... that's about how I lived my life 'til I left on my own, and realized that staying up all night reading Has Consequences... she'll find out on her own. In the meantime, lucky girl to have a mother who patiently pries her out of bed. ☺
In Which I Admit to Some Hypocrisy Re: My Daughter's Reading
Something I generally try to avoid is hypocrisy: claiming beliefs to which one's actual behavior does not comply. However, I have recently noticed a few instances of hypocrisy in my behavior regarding my daughter's reading. Once my daughter was in first grade, and I was the one driving her aro...
Whoa. Now I remember why I rarely go to the mall. That Loving Hut logo! So many hearts! So many swoops! So much backlighting! More exclamation abuse...!
Names in the wild: Westfield San Francisco Centre food court (and beyond)
I had a little extra time before meeting a friend at SFMOMA to see the “Soundtracks” exhibit (highly recommended), so I took a detour through for the food court of the Westfield San Francisco Centre on Market Street, looking for interesting brands. I scored right away. “Interesting” doesn’t eve...
Awww!😍 She's truly one of us now, poor kid. I don't think I caught up on sleep all the way through high school...
Literacy Milestone: Staying Up Too Late Reading
We've all been there (those reading this blog anyway), groggy in the morning because we stayed up too late reading the night before. My daughter experienced this last week for the first time. It was my fault, really. When I read about Real Friends, by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham, I KNEW she wo...
Oh, woe. So much glaringly egregious in these choices. I know the man "means" well, but there just comes a time when one needs to put aside one's "imagination" and say "Nah. I'll pass."
This is going to be a huge fail.
Name in the news: Werowocomoco
Last November the film director and winemaker Francis Ford Coppola opened a new restaurant in Geyserville (Sonoma County). It has an unusual menu for a California Wine Country restaurant, or indeed any California restaurant: fry bread tacos, venison chili, rotisserie prairie chicken, pine ice cr...
Feral. Fragrance. Clouds.
...smelling of rigor mortis.
O, brave new world, in which one learns such new things.
*One occasionally wonders WHY, but nevertheless, one learns, and this remains of great importance. One supposes.
Word of the week: Animalic
Animalic: Related to animals; used in discussions of perfume to refer to scents derived from or reminiscent of animals, such as musk or civet. The New York Times devoted some ink in its Thursday Styles section last week to the “feral fragrance clouds” that are captivating “high-fashion niche cir...
...this is hilarious!
My nephews are close to the same age - the youngest is about four months older than your Belle Bookworm - but somehow, though their mother lives on FB, they just don't care. It's not as if they don't like to bask in the adult gaze, either, and they're both very articulate. (I blame Lego poisoning: if it's not square and colored, it does not figure in their universe.) It may be that it's because there are two of them - close in age - and thus they find each other the best entertainment - ? Anyway, I can't wait to hear what this Blaze of Fire is going to be as a story!
Literacy Milestone: Posting on Facebook
Today I have another questionable literacy milestone: making a picture specifically for the purpose of posting it on Facebook. My daughter has been aware for a little while that I sometimes stop what I'm doing to post about something that she says or does on Facebook. I use this as a kind of jo...
Oh, many are the stages of development where you just kind of laugh. My youngest nephew just turned seven, and he still occasionally gives me earnest instruction. "Well, you need to do it like THIS." The resigned little sigh of "Aunties's not getting it" is sometimes just hilarious.
Literacy Milestone: "Say It Like This"
The other day I was reading my daughter one of our favorite new picture books: Mother Bruce by Ryan T. Higgins. (I really must review this one - it is delightful). Lately she's been chiming in here and there when I am reading a book, and correcting me if I miss something. (The latter occurs fre...
WOW.
I'm glad that she met the idea of Vincent being the better artist with some equanimity; the worst thing about teaching a mixed elementary art course (K - 4th grade) was seeing my kids grow... despondent at looking at my model of the finished product. Two session into the school year, I stopped making them, and either just gave detailed, step-by-step instructions or showed them a picture from a book. It's hard to teach the joy of creativity with the specter of comparison hanging around. Belle Bookworm has a good, balanced attitude, I'd say.
Developmental Milestone: Appreciating Art
The other morning I was hovering outside the doorway while my daughter was in her room getting dressed (a certain amount of nagging is required for this process on school days). I heard her say to herself, with a little sigh, "That picture is so much better than mine." I peeked in, and found he...
Awww!
It is a loss of innocence, of a kind... and yet, it's a huge expansion of a busy brain to understand subtlety and subtext and things implied.
It's so WEIRD to realize that all our growth happens by degrees! We can hardly remember when we didn't know how to read, and yet, we must have, at one point. It's so subtle that unless we're paying attention, we don't know when. I still remember my little brother's first joke - for a kid with developmental delays, it was huge to realize he'd been able to make a linguistic pun, at last, at the age of six. We could then foresee great things for him, as we can for la Belle Bookworm.
Literacy Milestone: Understanding the Ending to I Want My Hat Back
My daughter has always been something of an optimist. Over the years, I have periodically read her Jon Klassen's I Want My Hat Back, which most adults would agree has a dark ending. [If you don't know what I'm talking about, go and read it. It's fabulous. Here's the link to my review.] I would ...
Um, congratulations...?
*grins*
We've only just begun...
Literacy Milestone: Texting
My daughter recently passed another somewhat questionable milestone on her pathway to literacy. She sent her first text message using words. She had been sending emoji texts or a short while. [She especially favors an emoji that depicts poop, for some reason.] But now she is texting with words....
Wheezing and dying of laughter.
Great job, Paula.
Happy International Women's Day to us all: some positive sexuality in pop culture
Not bad - just drawn that way. You hear a lot, in some circles, about how difficult it is to teach children about values in the face of persuasive and abundant media depictions of violence, licentiousness and other bad crap, including sexual violence and predatory behavior toward women that i...
Oh, my friend, I am so sorry that so quickly the joy is going out of reading for this Junior Bookworm. As no one's parent, my perspective here comes from having taught reading for delayed students and struggled with all of the rubrics and standards and goals we were supposed to hit -- to me, taking the spontaneity out of reading is NEVER the answer and I agree that kindergarten is too early for written reports (surely the "paragraphs" they're going to have to write next year are only three sentences long...? I would think delaying "practice" for that until they have greater motor skills couldn't hurt). Perhaps you can suggest that the kids do this verbally, as a sharing time, and draw ONE picture to share with the class? The point of a book report, I always thought, was to show that the child had both read and comprehended. Surely there's another way to show this mastery.
I think "watchful" is a great attitude. Watching, and then advocating for your child. Perhaps offering alternatives to continue to strengthen the relationship to books and learning that you want to see fostered in your child is a good first step, if you have to say anything...
I'll be interested to see how this is handled. Good luck, Jen.
Literacy Milestone: Doing Book Reports
This one is not, alas, a universally happy milestone. My daughter's kindergarten class has started doing book reports. Each child can pick out a book to bring home in a special book bag each Monday. The book has to be returned on Thursday with a book report. The book reports are to be written i...
Sooo, I guess the Billbox thing is trying to look like zeroes and ones -- okay. I guess.
But I am well baffled by Tampon and Hatchet Hall. Sometimes it seems like it's a Thing to make everything super complicated. Are consumers supposed to enjoy the feeling that the seller is smug and thinks they're smarter than they are??
Brandsplain Me, Please
I’ve tried, honestly. But there are some things I just can’t understand. 1. A sneaker called Tampon. Candice Cooper is an upscale German shoe brand (and the company name is a mystery, too: the owners are Kerstin Honrath and Christoph Siegel). The shoes are made in Italy. The style name is the...
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh. Primal scream time, man. I can't even. This is -- ugh. So ugly.
And those poor boys. We *have* made them ashamed, and also preconditioned them to think that there's nothing that they can learn from women and their experiences. And we wonder why "boys don't read." Self-fulfilling prophesies, anyone?
FAIL.
No Boys Allowed: School visits as a woman writer
I've been doing school visits as part of my tour for PRINCESS ACADEMY: The Forgotten Sisters. All have been terrific--great kids, great librarians. But something happened at one I want to talk about. I'm not going to name the school or location because I don't think it's a problem with just one ...
YAY for the Babybug - or, the Big Bug, anyway.
And yes, when I was teaching reading, it was mind-blowing to me how a young reader could FORGET a word they'd just sounded out a page ago -- BUT -- that forgetting doesn't last, and you sometimes wish it back when they see the first letter and assume every word is the one they already know, and don't bother to actually, you know, READ it. But, it's all a mixed bag of experiences and excursions into the written word, and then suddenly they're on their own little boat, and don't need you at the tiller anymore. Sounds like you're really close.
Literacy Milestone: Reading Collection 2 Bob Books
Back in October my daughter read her first Bob book. She made it through a second one, and then seemed to tire of the whole project, and the Bob books were set aside. Of course we continued reading books aloud to her. She has also been working on sight words and blended letter sounds in prescho...
(She's spoofing that silly Old Spice commercial, Mary.) Blogging dudes, have at it!
2011 Logos
Ladies, look at your blog. Now look at these logos. Now back to your blog. These are the logos that could be on your blog. Then there's this one (really eye-catching, if you ask me): And last but not least: Just right-click and save, folks. Enjoy!
Oh - I just reread the original post. Sheila, thanks for the correction. Wow. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
For a long time I discussed ebook rights with my agent, because I wanted to keep mine, and he said that children's/YA books in ebook form weren't doing enough business for it to be worth the effort of arguing with a major publisher necessarily (he was more intelligent than that; this is a broad overview). He said they weren't anywhere near ubiquitous and that they accounted for only about 25% of those books sold. I don't know - that may have changed. I won't comment further until I hear the rest of the rules.
Books and Ebooks and Apps, Oh My!
Opening day for Cybils 2011 is fast approaching and you know what that means -- yet more changes to the contest. We thought we'd just be tweaking around the margins at this point in our six-year history. But that's an eon in the digital age, and we've had to pivot quickly to avoid becoming the J...
Huh. Makes sense, as YA lit is all about the futuristic and such. How very cool!
To Mrs. Yingling: I think the books nominated will still be offered in hard/paperback - despite none of my books being mainly purchased or read via ebook, my editorial contract covers them and most mainstream publishers create them, but the balance is still the hardbacked book. It's mostly self-pubbed folk who solely have ebooks, and much of the time they also lack editors and some level of quality, which we're obviously looking for in the Cybs, so you might not see those as finalists or winners anyway.
Books and Ebooks and Apps, Oh My!
Opening day for Cybils 2011 is fast approaching and you know what that means -- yet more changes to the contest. We thought we'd just be tweaking around the margins at this point in our six-year history. But that's an eon in the digital age, and we've had to pivot quickly to avoid becoming the J...
:) Shows what I know, which on this topic is pretty much nada.
In which my son and I make our own beer
Ryan is going to be 22 at the end of the month. For those of you who have been here since I wrote the 13 on 31 post, you now know how I feel every single day. The rest of you can get off my lawn before I call your parents. So the other day, he and I were having a beer together, and Ryan said, "W...
Do you suppose maybe the brewer didn't mean the Anheuser-Busch stuff, but the actual Czech Budweiser Budvar, which is a pale ale? Anheuser-Busch did some major copyright infringement; in Europe Budweiser is not made of nasty.
In which my son and I make our own beer
Ryan is going to be 22 at the end of the month. For those of you who have been here since I wrote the 13 on 31 post, you now know how I feel every single day. The rest of you can get off my lawn before I call your parents. So the other day, he and I were having a beer together, and Ryan said, "W...
Did you read what Roger Sutton postulated about this win? I hadn't thought of the ethnicity of the author at all, was just glad that the novel won, because few people know the story...
And the National Book Award for Young People's Literature goes to...
...Philip Hoose's Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice.
Oh, ugh. Pat, I'd like a NEW IDEA for $1, please.
And then, I'd like a vowel...
How NOT to pull me in with your advertising campaign, #24.
This blurb... "Have you ever closed The Scarlet Letter and yearned to see what the future holds for Hester Prynne and her headstrong daughter Pearl?" ...makes me want to run screaming. Is the Austen fanfiction not enough? Must we really be subjected to Hawthorne fanfic, too?? OH, THE HUMANI...
Oh, good. This is reassuring. She sounds quite pissed in the letter as well, which cheers me right up. I hate how they take one sentence someone in public life says, and build a whole headline around it.
More on bleakness in children's literature.
Anne Fine wrote a brief letter to the editor at the Times -- what she says there makes SO much more sense than the earlier article suggested. I really was having a difficult time reconciling the realism of her books with the idea of going back to Blyton. Phew. My world is now back in its regul...
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