Just Be...

Every once in a while I write a post about how I get into Keeping Up With The Joneses mode. With so many blogs featuring so many great ideas posted by so many Moms it's easy to feel like you're doing well, nothing. Last week it finally occurred to me (I'm a tad slow on the uptake) that whatever you do, you do. Your activities don't have to match the Jones' activities. Some families take road trips. You don't have to. Some Moms knit beautiful sweaters or create cozy quilts. You don't have to (that's what Etsy is for!). Some Moms maintain the sweetest blogs (with eh hem, regular updates). You don't have to. But last week, we had an fall picnic in our own backyard followed by Pip and Sprout making homemade Halloween decorations in front of a roaring fire. We did that. You don't have to. Life is not really a checklist. Sometimes it's just better to go with the flow.

We are reading a number of page-turners at our house. Green Husband cannot put down Devil in the White City which details "murder and mayhem" during the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. This book came highly recommended from Green Nana, Green Husband's MIL.

Green Husband so kindly and so thoughtfully picked up Donald Hall's Unpacking the Boxes. I am just now realizing that I have quite the large collection of works by Donald Hall and his wife, Jane Kenyon, including their wonderful interview on PBS with Bill Moyers.

For those of you in the mood for an extremely moving and beautiful book meant for the tween and teen set, Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons is one of my new all time favorites.

The Achoo From Here

The Wanna-Greenies are a bunch of sickos. No really...we're sick. Nothing major, thank goodness, but just various strains of coughing, sneezing, running of the noses, and just plain grossness. And those are just the people. You should see the house.

I am beginning to think about Christmas (yes, I said it). Besides an Etsy-fest I am hoping to purchase a toy kitchen for Sprout. I have delayed this purchase for some time wondering if her interest in toy kitchens was a passing fad, but it seems to be a perennial favorite. I am looking to go natural and am considering Magic Cabin's mini-kitchen or Guidecraft's non-deluxe model...any thoughts?

The Wednesday Wars and Other Musings

Today, in between the raindrops and my children building precarious bridges between pieces of furniture, I finished my new favorite book, "The Wednesday Wars" by Gary Schmidt. What a beautiful, lyrical work of fiction that certainly cannot be pigeon-holed as "children's literature".

Speaking of books, I braved the Book Festival with Sprout and Pip today. The rain kept up (so it didn't come down) but was replaced by some rather muggy weather for which we were completely overdressed. For my two the Festival was more of an exercise in waiting in long lines to have a picture taken with a PBS character that they were rather frightened of, so a better time was had by all in the cool, darkened dinosaur wing of the Natural History Museum.

New Season, New Blog?

Hello my friends! The bloggy bug fell by the wayside as I adjusted to my new job and many changes - all good, fortunately, but changes nonetheless.

I'm excited to be back and excited to announce that Dayna from "fo.ne.tic.lee speaking" has won herself a copy of "Hey Stinkbug!" and "Winter Trees". Uh, don't hold your breath, Dayna. It took me a month to announce the winner but I promise it won't take me a month to get these beautiful books to you.

Happy Fall, everyone. My favorite season. Look for a few simple changes here and there.

The Dangerous Days of Daniel X - A MotherTalk Review

The "reluctant reader" is a term we've been reading and hearing about a lot lately, usually referring to boys who just can't seem to get hooked on reading. Part of the solution is providing reluctant readers with books they actually want to read, rather than books we think they should be reading. The Dangerous Days of Daniel X is James Patterson's (and his co-author Michael Ledwidge) contribution to this concept of adolescent literature (although the jacket cover reads "James Patterson has written this story for readers from ten to a hundred and ten.").

When I first received a complementary copy of this book from MotherTalk, I was a little bit surprised at the cover of the book - red and black tones with an image of a solar eclipse on the front - it seemed more fitting for adult Clancy fans than for tween and teen boys. I can tell you that even as a brand spankin' new library media specialist, I know that kids do judge a book by its cover and I'm not so sure how much this one would appeal to them.

Moving from the exterior to the interior, we find the protagonist Daniel X, orphaned as a toddler, dedicated to avenging the death of his parents by taking on a number of gruesome aliens. My gut reaction to this book is that it seemed more of an outline than a finished product. It seemed sparse in places and I really did not feel attached to Daniel or particularly inspired by his mission. The nods to popular culture (PlayStation3s and Gladiator) are cute, but will become dated rather quickly. This book was a very quick read for me;I did appreciate the short chapters (often just two pages or so) and I think this will appeal to readers who get a little boost from completing smaller chunks of text rather than a feeling of slogging through long chapters.

I couldn't help but think that books such as Harry Potter and the soaring popularity of graphic novels such as American Born Chinese have shown us that reluctant readers are also drawn to complex tales with well developed characters, but I suppose even adults enjoy the occasional light fare and not all books for teens and tweens need to result in a bout of soul-searching. The Dangerous Days of Daniel X may accomplish exactly what James Patterson intended and inspire readers to read other books with similar but more richly fleshed out themes such as Sabriel or Feed.