Jennifer Weiner’s latest book is a collection of short stories, and each one is very good. What I like about (good) short stories is the way the characters come to life with such depth in the span of only a few pages. This book contains eleven stories, each with vibrant characters and a great story to tell, based on human relationships and frailties. There are similar themes running throughout, from accepting a person despite appearances or prejudices, to abandonment and dysfunctional families that love each other and manage to work despite their dysfunctions. (more…)

Mixtionary: Mixed-up modern words for the mixed-up modern world is a “dictionary” of words created by the melding together of two or more words. When I heard about this book, I thought it would be a fun read. My husband and I have mixed-up words we use in our own conversations that belong to just us (for example, “Perfused” — being perplexed and confused). So when I was contacted by a publicist for this book to read and review here, I agreed because I thought it would be fun to discover more mixed-up words. (more…)

I got a good laugh out of this search engine, Ms. Dewey.

I guess she’s supposed to be a modern-day, naughty sort of librarian. She’s impatient, she’s annoying, she’s silly, she’s (as my husband described her) a hottie (though he now claims that he said “haughty”, which works too), she’s quirky, and she’s really, and I mean really, slow to compile hits. But she’s good for a laugh or two. There’s no way Ms. Dewey would replace Google for my Internet search needs, but you might want to click on over just to experience her once. (more…)

For those of you interested in writing, you may want pick up the December 2006 issue of Writer’s Digest magazine. Lots of great articles about prepping for novel writing, including good advice on mapping out the plot, developing characters, and finding ideas when you’re completely blanking.

I was reading it at work and thought I’d photocopy the article I liked, and then as I read on, I found more good articles, so I figure it might be better to just buy the issue instead of photocopying pretty much the whole thing. Pluys, at 10 cents a page to photocopy, it’s actually cheaper to buy the magazine. Doesn’t it just figure that I had to go and cancel my subscription the month before the best issue in a long time comes out? Now I’ve gotta go pick it up in the store. Silly me.

I’ve had a dream about being a freelance writer for a long time. When I was teaching and I hated all the marking and the late nights and early mornings, not to mention dealing with some ill-behaved kids and (equally ill-behaved) administrators and parents, I would dream about freelancing. Being my own boss. Working when I wanted to, whether it was at 2:00 AM (I’m a night owl, plus some of my best writing happens in the middle of the night) or 4:00 in the afternoon. Having an outlet for creativity, writing something people would read. Yep, very appealing.

So I figure one day when I have kids and want to be at home until they’re in school full days, I’ll try freelancing to make a little extra money. But I didn’t really know how I’d go about doing it. So when I saw this book sitting on the new books shelf at the library, I grabbed it, hoping to find lots of tips and how-to information. There are plenty in this book, but really… the majority of what I found in this book was just a lot of common sense. (more…)

Ellison The Elephant

By Eric Drachman, Illustrated by James Muscarello

Ellison the Elephant is sad because he can’t bellow with his trunk the way the other elephants can. Whenever he tries, it comes out as a little toot (from the trunk, people, from the trunk). The other elephants make fun of him so much for it that Ellison doesn’t want to even try to bellow anymore; he’d rather just stay quiet. Then one day Ellison meets a Weasel that teases him for what Ellison decides will be the last time. When the Weasel goes underground to his burrow, Ellison sticks his trunk down the hole and lets out the biggest toot he can. The weasel can hardly believe it! The sound underground is like a smooth jazzy trumpet! Soon Ellison learns how to blow from his trunk well enough to make beautiful music. The other elephants can’t believe how wonderful it sounds, and they stop teasing Ellison. A nice story with cute illustrations.

It’s Lovely When You Smile

By Sam McBratney, Illustrated by Charles Fuge

Little Roo is grumpy and his mama tells him that his day will get better if he just smiles, but Little Roo doesn’t want to hear it. As they walk around together, Mama tries doing all kinds of things to cheer Little Roo up, but he won’t smile for her. Finally, Mama Roo stops trying, and of course, when she stops trying, something happens that makes Little Roo smile. The illustrations in this book are beautiful, some of the best I’ve seen — I loved this book.

I’m Not Cute!

Written and Illustrated by Jonathan Allen

Baby Owl is so cute, and everyone tells him so. But he doesn’t want to be cute. He’s a huge, scary, sleek, sharp-eyed hunting machine, and they’re supposed to be feared, not cute. Sorry, Baby Owl, but you are cute, and so is this adorable story.

Jonathan Allen also wrote a book called Don’t Wake the Baby, which I’ve used in my storytimes at the library and the kids have just LOVED. Mom leaves Dad alone with the baby for a couple of hours with instructions to be very quiet and not to wake the baby, who has finally gone to sleep. Dad tries very hard not to wake the baby, but wouldn’t you know it? There are lots of things out there that make sounds even when you’re trying so hard to keep it quiet! The book has sounds built into it and as you pull a flap, or press on the page, it makes a loud sound and the kids always, always, laugh hysterically when they hear them, while I’d wildly put my fingers to my lips and implore them to “Shhhh! Don’t wake the baby!” A very interactive, fun story if you read it right.

Hush Little Digger

By Ellen Olson-Brown, Illustrated by Lee White

Set to the tune of Hush Little Baby, this is the book you want to read to your little boys and girls interested in big trucks and monster machines! Not really my kind of story, but I can see kids liking it a lot.

Teacher’s Pets

By Dayle Anne Dodds, Illustrated by Marylin Hatner

This is a fun story about a little boy that brings in his pet for show and tell. Once there, it turns out his parents would like it if the pet could stay there for a little while. At the next show and tell, another student brings in a pet, and again, the parents wouldn’t mind if it stayed at the school for a little while. Pretty soon, the classroom is full with pets belonging to kids whose parents wouldn’t mind if the pets could stay a little while (which turns into the entire school year). Why? These pets aren’t you standard kitties and puppies — there’s grasshoppers, snakes, tarantulas… all the not-so-popular pet choices that Teacher seems to like just fine. A nice story with a twist on the “teacher’s pet” saying, and also nice because the unwanted pets are accepted in the classroom.

Day Out With Daddy

Written and Illustrated by Stephen Cook

Mommy goes away for a day or two, so Daddy’s going to take care of his little boy. They have a very eventful day, starting with lots of sugary donuts for breakfast, and ending with the little guy staying up late watching TV with Daddy. Turns out a day with Daddy is really different than one with Mommy, and the little boy just loves it. But you know? I think Daddy really appreciates Mommy more by the end. :) This is a witty story with lots of fun illustrations showing you just how much fun the little boy has with Daddy, and how hard Daddy discovers taking care of the little boy all day long can be.

Halloween stories to read with your kids!

Halloween Night — Elizabeth Hatch, Illustrated by Jimmy Pickering

One of those chain-of-events stories that all starts with a little mouse hiding inside a pumpkin, and ends with a spilled bag of Halloween treats that finds its way all the way back to that little mouse hiding in the pumpkin.

Algernon Graeves Is Scary Enough — Peter Bollinger

None of the costumes Algernon tries on are scary enough, so Algernon tries to come up with something totally original and super scary. What I particularly like about this story is how scary the costumes look in Algernon’s head, and then how cute they up looking when he tries them on. Really nice illustrations.

T-Rex Trick-Or-Treats — Lois G. Grambling, Illustrated by Jack E. Davis

T-Rex wants to wear a truly scary costume, but he can’t find one that’s scary enough. When his dinosaur friends come to pick him up and go trick-or-treating, he still hasn’t found a good enough costume and that makes him angry. And when a T-Rex gets angry, what could be scarier?

Spooky Hour – Tony Milton, Illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees

Trick or Treat Countdown — Patricia Hubbard, Illustrated by Michael Letzig

Two books featuring countdowns from 12 with some of Halloween’s spookiest creatures. Nice, colorful illustrations in each. Good for very young children who are just starting to understand what Halloween is all about.

All Hallows Eve: The Story of the Halloween Fairy — Lisa and Tucker Johnson

Eve is a fairy who loves Candy! Her fairy magic works for a lot of things, but not to make candy, so when her friends gather together for her birthday (which happens to be Halloween), they all decide to go from pumpkin patch to pumpkin patch collecting candy for Eve from the other fairies in the neighborhood. I like the twist this book takes on Halloween traditions. Also rhymes nicely, and has great illustrations.

The 13 Days of Halloween — Carol Greene, Illustrated by Tim Raglin

Just what kinds of gifts does one loving monster give to his girlfriend on the thirteen days leading up to Halloween? A really fun twist on the popular 12 days of Christmas tune.

Monsters Party All Night Long – Adam J.B. Lane

It’s hard being Count Dracula sometimes. His reputation has scared everyone away, and he’s a little lonely because he can’t make friends. So he decides to invite all the other monsters out to party all night long with him.

Rattlebone Rock — Sylvia Andrews, Illustrated by Jennifer Lecas

Reading this story with your little ones will get them moving along with the creatures in the story as they rattle their bones and dance with the movements. A great, rhyming story that begs to be sung.

Trick-or-Treat on Milton Street – Lisa Bullard, Illustrated by Joni Oeltjenbruns

Charley’s not having a very good time. His mom recently got remarried and they’ve moved to a new neighborhood full of old people. And now Charley’s mom is sick and can’t even take him trick-or-treating, so his new stepfather (who can be SO embarrassing at times) offers to take him. By the time Charley trick-or-treats his way down Milton Street, he finds that maybe living on Milton Street with his new step-dad won’t be so bad after all.

Pumpkin Moon — Tim Preston, Illustrated by Simon Bartram

It’s Halloween night and all the children have tricked-or-treated and are now in bed (probably crashing after the sugar high!). It’s only after the children have gone to bed that the really spooky stuff starts to happen. Is it a Halloween trick?

Pumpkin Day, Pumpkin Night — Anne Rockwell, Illustrated by Megan Halsey

A nice story about a little boy and his mom who make a day of going to the farm to pick out their Halloween pumpkin from the pumpkin patch where there are so many sizes of pumpkins to choose from!

Patty’s Pumpkin Patch – Teri Sloat

The life cycle of a pumpkin patch culminates on Halloween. From planting the seeds, watching the pumpkins grow, selling them, carving them, roasting the seeds, and saving a few seeds to plant and start all over again the next year.

Halloween Songs to Sing To and With Your Kids:

I put the songs lyrics onto an 11″ x 17″ (tabloid size) poster with graphics and printed them off for my Halloween Howls program at the library. If you’d like to print them off, but don’t have a big enough printer for 11″ x 17″ paper, just scale it to letter or legal size in your printer options when you print it.

For I’m A Little Pumpkin, try cutting out a pumpkin, its handle, and its face parts out of construction paper or felt (we use felt at the library because it sticks to our upright storytime “flannel board”). As you sing the song, you can construct the pumpkin face and emphasize the shapes.

im-a-little-pumpkin.doc

Over the Graveyard is sung to the tune of Over the River and Through the Woods.

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Oh My Monster is sung to the tune of (Oh My Darling) Clementine.
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My husband and I have been busy working on constructing our fence (drilling post holes, staking the posts, cementing them in place, painting fence boards, etc.). We’ve been hoping to get that done before the weather gets any colder, though now the rain is slowing things down and it’s supposed to (ack!) snow soon.

On top of that, my brother-in-law came to visit from Atlanta for a week, so we spent many evenings at my parents’-in-law for family dinners, which was nice, not just because we spent time with my brother-in-law, but because I didn’t have to cook all week :)

And then there was Thanksgiving, which was this last weekend up here in Canada. That meant dinners at both sets of parents’ houses.

And oh yeah… I’ve been working too.

So, apart from children’s books, there hasn’t been a whole heck of a lot of reading done lately. A chapter here or there, but nothing substantial. Hopefully I can get back into it this week.

The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon – Mini Grey

Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon, the little dog laughed to see such sport, and the dish ran away with the spoon… did you think that’s all there was to it? Nuh-unh. Turns out the dish and the spoon got into quite a few crazy adventures after running away together. Interesting story.

What a Treasure! — Jane and Will Hillenbrand

A little mole starts digging a hole to see if he can find some treasure, but no one thinks he’ll find anything but junk. But as the saying goes… one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

Anthony and the Girls — Ole Konnecke, translated from German by Nancy Seitz

This is an adorable story about Anthony, a boy with a big car and all kind of wonderful things, and yet… the girls he’s trying to impress won’t pay attention to him! This is a simple story, but very humorous. The children’s librarian at my workplace loved this book and even gathered everyone together for a little adult storytime so she could read it aloud to us. She’s a great storyteller, which made this story even more fun :)

Moon Plane — Peter McCarty

About a boy who sees a plane and imagines what it would be like to fly it. The pictures in this book, not the story, are the real treat. The technique reminds me of some of Chris Van Allsburg’s illustrations.

Up Above & Down Below — Sue Redding

What is down below us? Under the ground? Down the stairs? Under the sea? What is above us? Above the ground? Up the stairs? Above the shore? Interesting perspectives on parts of the world we don’t really think about. Cute illustrations, with each page split along the middle showing what’s above and what’s below. I like this story.

Big Chickens – Leslie Helakoski, Illustrated by Henry Cole

When a fox gets into the chicken house, the chickens go flocking out to get away. As they run away, they encounter all sorts of situations that scares them. They learn that sometimes things aren’t as scary as they seem.

Sleepy Places — Judy Hindley, Illustrated by Tor Freeman

A nice rhyming story about the places animals and people find to sleep. A peaceful story that would be good for settling down or getting ready to go to sleep.

Museum Trip — Barbara Lehman

This book is told entirely in pictures, there are no words. The story of a boy whose class goes to visit the museum. He gets separated from the class when he gets distracted by some art. The art is seen through his eyes. An excellent picture book that tells a story just as well through pictures alone than if there were words. I loved it.

Boy on the Brink – David McPhail

A little boy is watched constantly and told to be careful everywhere he goes and with everything he does. It’s only at night in his dreams that he’s able to have all the adventures he’s not allowed to go on. Nice illustrations in this story.

Clip-clop — Nicola Smee

A friendly horse takes all his farm friends for a ride on his back. He starts out slowly and with their urging, goes faster and faster. The animals go flying off, but the ride was so exhilirating they ask for another one again and again. Reminds me of my niece, and the way she loves it when her daddy tosses her higher and higher in the air. She can get to scary heights, but she always wants to be tossed again and again.

Pinkalicious – Victoria and Elizabeth Kann

A little girl who loves everything pink! One day she eats too many pink cupcakes and actually turns pink herself! The doctor tells her she’ll have to eat more green to turn back into a normal color, but all those vegetables? Yick… not as yummy as the cupcakes! Towards the end of the book, I found myself thinking this was a very girlie book, but there’s a nice twist at the end that makes it a little more boy-friendly :)

All Aboard the Dinotrain! — Deb Lund, Illustrated by Howard Fine

A group of dinosaurs take a train ride across the land. Rhymes nicely and the dinosaurs have a fun adventure. Educational, too… the flaps of the book show pictures of the different dinosaurs and their names.

What Mommies Do Best/What Daddies Do Best – Laura Numeroff, Illustrated by Lynn Munsinger

A flip-me-over book. One half shows what mommies do best and the other half show what daddies do best. Turns out mommies and daddies do the same things equally well! Cute illustrations.

Rufus at Work — Tory and Norman Taber

A little girl named Posy thinks her fat cat Rufus has the easy life, but Rufus does a lot more than she knows about.

So I’ve registered for NaNoWriMo. And I got the fun icons for the sidebar. In a little less than a month, I’ll (try to) pump out a 50,000+ word novel in 30 days. From scratch. I’ve got ideas, and I’ve even done a little research about certain aspects of the story I’ll be telling, but I have tried not to think about it too much. Some of you may have noticed that I’ve had NaNoWrimo creator Chris Baty’s book, No Plot? No Problem! under my “currently reading” sidebar area for a while now. That’s actually purposeful, unlike Jovah’s Angel which I’ve been looking at from time to time but doing a really bad job of actually reading (I think I’m taking a break from that genre and series for a bit). Anyway, back to Baty’s book — I’m reading it slowly, only a few pages of it every day or two, so that I keep my mind on NaNoWriMo and get some motivation from it. So far, it seems to be working. And I find myself kind of wishing NaNoWrimo would get here already. I’m ready to just jump into it. How about the rest of you? Anyone participating? Anyone thinking about participating? Anyone actually planning? I know you are, Sonya :)

The Knight and the Dragon — Tomie Depaola

This is a beautiful story about a knight and a dragon who don’t know just what it means to be a knight or a dragon. They know they’re supposed to duel with each other, but how do they do that? So they study up and finally issue each other a challenge, but things don’t turn out the way they expect. An adorable story with very few words; the pictures tell the story so well. I loved it.

Road Trip — Roger Eschbacker, Illustrated by Thor Wickstrom

A story about a family taking a road trip across the country to grandma’s house. It tells the story of what it’s like to be in the car for long distances: the games you play, the places you stop, the challenges you face (“Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” and “I gotta go pee!”). It really does capture the road trip experience well.

Miss Malarkey Leaves No Reader Behind — Judy Finchler & Kevin O’Malley, Illustrated by Kevin O’Malley

The story about a boy and his friends who would rather play video games than read a book. When their school takes part in a reading challenge to read 1000 books by the end of the year, the boys aren’t interested in participating. But their teacher, Miss Malarkey, is determined to find books that each of the boys will love. Great story. This isn’t O’Malley’s best illustrated book, but it’s still fun. My favorite O’Malley book (written and illustrated) of all time is definitely My Little Sister Ate One Hare, a counting story about all the icky things my little sister ate. Find it, read it with your kids, your spouse, your parents… they will LOVE it.

A Particular Cow –Mem Fox, Illustrated by Terry Denton

The story of a particular cow who goes for his regular walk along his regular route until one particular Saturday when this particular cow has a particularly different kind of day. Cute.

Dear Fish — Chris Gall

What struck me first about this book was its illustrations. They are so beautiful and contain little messages in each picture; it’s worth finding this book in the library or store just to look at them. The story about a boy who goes to the beach with his parents and loves it there so much, he envies the fish for being able to visit there always. He writes the fish an invitation to come visit him at his house anytime, seals it into a bottle, and throws it into the ocean. Little does he know that the fish will actually get his invitation and pretty soon his neighborhood is getting visitors it never expected.

Growing Vegetable Soup — Lois Ehlert

Ehlert takes you through the planting and harvesting process in this simple book for very young children. Lots of primary colors and simple illustrations. It’s a nice way to show the growing process.

Sleepy Little Mouse — Eugenie Fernandes, Illustrated by Kim Fernandes

The illustrations in this book are nice, though the story was lacking a bit, I didn’t find it to be very interesting. About a mouse who doesn’t want to go to sleep so he cries enough tears to create a river that flows him out of his house and out into the underwater world. The illustrations save the story.

The Cow Who Clucked — Denise Fleming

One day a cow wakes up to find he’s lost his moo and taken on a cluck. The cow then goes around the farm talking to the other animals to find out who has his moo. A good story for young kids to help teach them the sounds of animals.

Stanley Goes Fishing — Craig Frazier

The story of Stanley’s fishing trip, which seems like every other fishing trip until he starts “catching” his fish. Different. The only thing I didn’t like was that Stanley went out in his boat without a life jacket. I think it’s important to show kids how to be safe through the illustrations in books (ie. life jackets, helmets when riding the bike, seatbelts when in the car, etc). They do notice these things.

Summer is Summer – Phillis & David Gershater, Illustrated by Sophie Blackall

A story about the things that make summer summer. I thought the illustrations were nice, and the examples of summer were good, but I didn’t like the way the story was worded. I thought it was poorly constructed. The title is Summer is Summer, not summer is summer is summer. The wording got irritating after a few pages.