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.

Love those Piggie pj's!

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. ☺

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...!

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...

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.

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.

...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!

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.

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.

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.

Um, congratulations...? *grins* We've only just begun...

Wheezing and dying of laughter. Great job, Paula.

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.

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??

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.

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.

(She's spoofing that silly Old Spice commercial, Mary.) Blogging dudes, have at it!

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.

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.

:) Shows what I know, which on this topic is pretty much nada.

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.

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...

Oh, ugh. Pat, I'd like a NEW IDEA for $1, please. And then, I'd like a vowel...

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.