A Frightful Servitude

Young Frightful on my Father's Shoulder

Have you ever heard the rule “If you find a baby bird on the ground, don’t pick it up”? I always thought that it was to protect the bird. When you live out where I do, wild critters… well, we name them and talk to them, but rarely do we feed them.

War of the Books

Valerie - 2nd row, black jacket, reddish hair / Renee - 2nd row on Valerie's left, pale dress, demonically glowering eyes / Myself - first row, red dress

I am a proud vocal member of the Eva Perry Library’s Mock Printz book club. We read the YA books published each year, and inform the world which one the official committee should award that year’s Printz Medal to. You have never seen such cheerful militancy.

Book Review: Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard

I’d like you to meet my good friend Alex. He’s really just like you and me. He’s seventeen. He’s a high school student. He has a crush on one of his teachers.  Sometimes he does the right thing, and sometimes he just messes things up.  He writes down everything in his diary and… I read it. Actually, that’s how I know so much about him.

50′s Unconventional

It’s that time of year again, ladies! Time to light those candles and set out those Christmas crackers, time to bus your children downtown to Macy’s to see old Saint Nick and, above all, time to tune in! So turn up that shiny new radio and settle down, because you won’t want to miss this!

With us on Women’s Time today we have Mrs. Barbara Wilson, here to tell us about her own unusual choice of a Christmas tree. Barbara, I hear that instead of the traditional cut evergreen, you decided to build your family’s tree out of books, am I right?

Yes, yes I did! You see, it’s our family tradition to gather ‘round the tree every evening and read together, and I thought why not celebrate what really matters to us?

Perfectly reasonable, Mrs. Wilson, perfectly reasonable! So, tell me, exactly which books went into the making of this tree?

Well, of course I started with the Ladies Home Journal Compilation. I think it’s really quite fitting, using that book as the base, since it certainly is responsible for most of the cooking and decorating I do to make the holiday… And my little ones contributed a few of their ‘comic books’, which I added to humor them. And of course I have the traditional Christmas collection – Nothing like Christmas books to make a Christmas tree! A Christmas Carol is my personal favorite. I also included  From Here to Eternity, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, Farenheit 451, On the Road, The Communist Dream -

Aaand there’s our time for today, folks! Well thank you very much for speaking with us, ladies, that was Mrs. Barbara Wilson hailing from Smelton County, Virginia. We’ll conclude today’s programming with an old Christmas classic, rewritten just for Mrs. Wilson’s tree.

O’ Christmas tree, O’ Christmas tree,

Thou structure most sturdy,

O’ Christmas tree, O’ Christmas tree,

Please let me read thee

 

The sight of thee at Christmas-tide,

Spreads the written word far and wide,

O’ Christmas tree, O’ Christmas tree,

Thy paper branches doth beckon me

Thank you for listening, that’s all for this evening, but be sure to tune in next week for our Christmas Day broadcast!

(Here’s my book Christmas tree. Post a pic of yours below!)

Mind Over Matter. Or the Other Way Around.

Have you ever had that itching feeling? The one where you’re on the edge of some momentous discovery or creation, an instant before a breakthrough, so close that a heavenly choir is preparing to sing in the background? If you’re anything like me, that instant-before moment is right about when you lose your train of thought.

The other night I was doodling my own book cover for Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Everything was going well, the  images were flowing freely from my mind to my pencil to the paper. My fingertips were throbbing, but it was that pleasant soreness of effort and accomplishment. The two-dimensional graphite on my paper grew a magical depth and form, reminding me of the real magic that came out of Clary Fray’s illustrations. Okay, maybe my surprisingly decent drawing of a finger sandwich couldn’t actually become a finger sandwich, like Clary’s could in Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones, but it could make my soul soar.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It

Last week I had the pleasure – and terror – of reading Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi (to be published in November 2011). In her debut novel, Mafi paints a rich, gorgeous, and terrifying post apocalyptic dystopian world that left me trembling and eternally grateful for free speech and ice cream. But while I hurriedly checked to be sure that my books and pets were safe and reassured myself that I wouldn’t incinerate if I stepped outside, Mafi’s vision lodged itself into a small but growing knot of anxiety in the back of my mind. I speedily ingest dystopian fiction, from the recent Hunger Games trilogy and Divergent, to the classic 1984 and The Giver. Okay, perhaps I’m taking all of this a little too seriously. How likely do you believe it is for the government to remove color from the world, as described by Lois Lowry?

For the Love of Manga

I admit it–I thought manga was for kids. This was perhaps because my only exposures to the cross-cultural phenomenon were 1) pictures of disproportionate and childish looking characters on my friends’ walls, and 2) the description of manga as “Japanese comics”. However, I soon learned that this portrayal of characters is called “chibi” and that manga is far more than mere comic books. I was hooked by my first experience of manga, the opening chapter of FullMetal Alchemist, Vol. 1.