Dr Seuss

One of the fairly obvious things about me is that I love kids.  I've taught preschool and kindergarten, I've worked at summer day camp, I've got my own two boys and I'm obviously a bit obsessed with kids' books and movies.  As I'm sure everyone on the planet knows, kids love being read to.  My favorite books to read aloud to kids are Dr Seuss books.  The rhymes fit perfectly in my mouth and the silly topics and made-up words make it just that much more fun.  The absolute best one to read is Green Eggs and Ham.  I like to start out pleasant and polite, but get progressively more annoyed and upset.  The kids get all worked up and they really invest in the story.  It's so much fun! Today I'll leave you with a few pictures of my arm to look at.  I've got some Seuss ink that I hope you enjoy.  It goes over really well with little kids!

All this work was done at Eternal Buzz in Huntingtown, Md

I don't think that's a thing anymore.

I Was Vermeer

Hey pals, I don't only have favorite movies and TV shows. I'm like, way cultured, too! Well... I have a favorite painting, anyway. It's called The Girl With The Pearl Earring and it's by Johannes Vermeer. It hangs in a museum in Holland called Mauritshuis (which I've actually been to). It's forbidden to take pictures there, so please take a moment to view a picture of me with the painting.

What a lot of people don't know about Vermeer is that when he was young, his style was much different than what he became famous for, and that there's no appreciable link connecting the early work to his later style. Early on in the last century there was a very talented and inventive artist named Han van Meegeren who created a series of paintings that mixed the two styles and he very successfully passed the paintings off as authentic Vermeers. He became filthy rich, swindled the Nazis and eventually found himself in court trying to prove that he HAD actually forged priceless works of art and become almost limitlessly wealthy selling them. It's a long and tangled story that's a whole lot of fun to read about. 

The book I learned all this from is I Was Vermeer by Frank Wynne. There's a little section of photos in the middle, like you get with some biographies. There are quite a few pictures and they all help to tell the story. The art history is fascinating and the man himself was really an interesting guy with an unbelievable life. I hope you all check it out, and that you love it as much as do. Happy reading!

Fablehaven

Hey there, pals! Long time no see.  I've been a bit sick and pretty busy, so my posts have been a little hit or miss (and this one should've posted yesterday), but now I'm back and I've got good news: I have a book series recommendation for you!  Hooray, right? It's a five-book series about two kids who go to visit family for the summer and discover that their grandparents' wildlife preserve is actually a preserve for magical creatures like fairies, centaurs, demons and even a witch or two.  The older sister, Kendra, is the honest, reliable one and her little brother, Seth, is well-meaning but impossible to harness.  He takes rules and commands more like suggestions and as a result he causes lots of problems, but by far not all of them.  He's also the one willing to take the biggest risks to solve problems and no spoilers, but he's easily my favorite character in the series.  I definitely like his storylines the best.  Well written, Brandon Mull.

Let me also say quickly that I read a lot of YA novels and that's only partially because I'm an aspiring YA novelist.  My main reason for choosing YA is because they often focus more on the adventure, and if there's any romance it's usually secondary(Twilight doesn't count).  Plus, I prefer the quick, satisfying pace used for teens.  I have two small children running around my house and I don't have time to devote six weeks to analyzing imagery for hours on end.  So if you haven't tried Young Adult novels since you were a young adult, maybe give them another try.  Fablehaven is a great place to start.

Check at your local library (since there are FIVE in the series and a companion book coming in Oct '16) or buy them all here or at any bookstore, Target, etc.

Alright, pals, here's the interactive portion of the post.  Drop on down to that little comment box and let me know what you think of YA novels and if you have a favorite.  And no shame if it's Twilight, I liked them too!

What To Expect/Your Best Birth

When I was expecting my first baby, The Bookworm, I did what everyone does; I read What to Expect When You're Expecting.  It turns out there's a website, a mobile app, more than one verified Twitter account, a Facebook Page and a whole series of books.  If you're pregnant and enjoying the book, let me recommend that you go over to Facebook and like Heidi Murkoff's Page. She actually goes online a lot and interacts with everyone.  The most impressive thing (maybe in the world) is how much she remembers about people individually.  I mentioned once that I would like her to speak at the Air Force Base near me and months later when I commented on a completely unrelated post, she mentioned it again.  She seems to remember names and faces and stories and entire families that she's never even met, or only met once at an event full of hundreds of people.  I'm telling you, I don't know her but I love her to death.

More important, though, if you're nervous about labor or birth is a book called Your Best Birth by Rikki Lake and Abby Epstein.  You probably recognize Rikki Lake's name from TV and movies.  Yep, that's her.  In fact, there's a movie version.  It's a documentary called The Business of Being Born and it's on Netflix.  The book outlines all of your options, which is fabulous for us Americans because all they tell us is to either schedule a C-section or order the epidural before you even pee on the stick.  This book made me feel empowered (as much as that word's overuse makes me roll my eyes) and it took my nerves away.

If you go the hippie route, I suggest you check out every book Ina May Gaskin wrote.  My favorites are Spiritual Midwifery and Ina May's Guide to Breastfeeding.  

For parenting advice, check out one of my older posts, here.

Me, with a month still left to go baking The Villain

 
What to Expect on Twitter:

What To Expect- https://twitter.com/WhatToExpect
WTE Pregnancy- https://twitter.com/PregnancyWTE
WTE Baby- https://twitter.com/BabyWTE
WTE Toddler- https://twitter.com/ToddlerWTE

The Dark Tower

This is the second of what will probably be many Stephen King related posts.  Stephen King is my favorite writer and there's plenty of material to cover, so just expect them to keep coming.  Today I'm writing about The Dark Tower, which is a seven-book series* about a gunslinger named Roland who teams up with three other people (and one pet, a billy-bumbler) to save the world... and in fact, all worlds.  They travel between parallel universes to places that are much like what we know but have moved on, to our own world and back again.  They fight dangers both magical and natural, and they become a unified group, a family, a team.  An idea very much like fate is Ka.  Ka is a wheel, you can't get off and you can't change the direction.  You can fight all you want or you can just ride along but you have to know when to do either one because Ka is a wheel that can crush you in an instant. Roland's group is called his Ka-tet.  

The whole series, via Viking Press/Schribener

First is Eddie, a drug addict who was born in the 1960s and joined the Ka-tet at age 22.  Next is Susannah, who joined the group from the 1960s as an adult who had seen a very difficult life, and whose mind contained multiple personalities.  Last in the Ka-tet is Jake, who is only a child but possesses 'the touch'.  He is very sensitive to the signs and clues that the universe shows us and he uses this intuition whenever he can.  The Man in Black is a force of evil who has been working for hundreds, if not thousands of years to balance out all the world's good.  Well, that's maybe not quite right but it's close enough to get you started.  In the quest for the Dark Tower, not everyone makes it to the end (a bit of a spoiler, but that's how King works in general so you really should've guessed that much).  If you want to find out if ANYONE  does, I guess you'd better read for yourself. 

When I started my journey to the tower with book one, I really just couldn't get into it.  Granted, I was only 9 or 10 years old, but I've had other people tell me the same thing.  If you find yourself in that situation, my advice would be reading the second book, then going back to the first one.  The second book has more action and less back story, so if you read it first, you actually ask the questions before you get them answered.  That worked for me.  There was one in the series that I didn't love, and that was Wizard and Glass.  Some people like it best though, so please don't think it isn't well- written.  It's just not my favorite part of the story.  Read it, though.  Decide for yourself.

If you try it and like it, let me know.  I'd love to hear your opinions on it, especially if it's because of my blog that you find new books that you love.  If you've already read it or tried and it wasn't your thing, let me know that too.  I love a good book discussion, especially with the new movie version being filmed as we speak.  It's an exciting time in the journey!

*I say seven books because that's what it originally was, but then later on Sai King added another book in between books 4 and 5.  Also, as you follow on the journey you'll see where a lot of his other books are either loosely related or VERY closely tied in with this series.  They stand alone just fine but whey work even better when you're one of his Constant Readers.

Saturday Spotlight: Post Secret

Every Sunday, I go to PostSecret.com and spy on other peoples' secrets.  They make or buy a postcard, write their secret on it, then mail it anonymously to Frank Warren, who runs the website.  The story goes, he was a student doing an art project for college, and his idea was to hand out blank, self-addressed postcards for people to use for anonymous secrets.  Well, the idea was a great one, and it picked up steam until people were -very creatively sometimes- making their own to send in.  He's ended up with enough postcards to post a long list of them on his website every week and publish seven hardcover books full of the most interesting ones.  I have four of the books.

One is actually signed.  Frank Warren did a thing on Facebook once, where if you like & share or whatever, he'd pick one name at random and send an autographed book and a real actual secret that he received in the mail.  I won!

So, go on.  Give me something to look at next Sunday.  Make a postcard and send it to:

Post Secret

13345 Copper Ridge Rd

Germantown, MD

20874-3454 

Or, if you want you can even send a donation.  He gives the money to a suicide hotline called HopeLine and they've raised over a million dollars so far.  True story.  They also do art exhibits (I've been to one) and he does speaking engagements.  Check out the website, you'll see.  Here's a link.  ----->  This here.

But maybe prescreen before you bring the kids, okay?  It's sometimes very heavy.

M*A*S*H

Man, I've been putting this one off for a long time.  I've been supposed to post it for a few weeks in a row, and now that I'm finally doing it, it was supposed to go up about 3 hours ago.  The problem with writing about my favorite show is that I don't know where to start or what to include.  There's a really neat story that I have about Quantum Leap, for instance, that couldn't be included when I wrote about that show because it was already pretty long and I didn't want to lose you. But M*A*S*H... that show has been with me at every stage of my life.  The characters are my friends now that I'm older and they were my educators when I was younger.  The show started before I was born, so for me there's no such thing as life before Hawkeye.  Who would want that, anyway?

Okay, so let me help you out if you're not familiar with the show, or if you haven't seen it since the 80's.  M.A.S.H. is an Army acronym that stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.  During the Korean War (which lasted 8 FEWER years than the TV show), doctors were drafted to work in those hospitals in war zones alongside regular volunteer Army personnel.  The show is a portrayal of how that kind of situation may have played out.  It covers the horrors of war, social injustices that were perpetrated by Americans and affected Americans, Koreans and everyone else, and the camaraderie that can only be built from tragedy.  Through all that, there were only a few episodes that were not complete comedy.  The thing about good comedy is that even though they're jokes, they can really make you think.  You can pay attention and learn about things you'd maybe rather not think about in a way that feels more comfortable and safe in your head.

I feel like I should warn you, in case you're headed over to Netflix right away, though.  The pilot is actually a feature-length movie, and none of the actors return for the show, except for Gary Burghoff, who plays Radar.  Radar, by the way?  Awesome.  So adorable and funny and sweet, just the exact opposite of everyone else in the war.  My favorite episodes are from seasons six through eight, when there's a magic combination of Radar, Colonel Potter, BJ and Charles.  I love every season, and there's never one where they jump the shark but those seasons are just the best to me. 

Season 7 (I clearly don't own this)

There's only one actor who is in every single episode of the show, and that's Alan Alda.  He wasn't in the movie, of course; Hawkeye was played by Donald Sutherland in the movie.  Alan Alda is an incredibly talented actor, though, who also co-wrote and/or directed some of the episodes.  He's got an autobiography called Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned, which is completely hilarious and includes stories of his childhood on the Vaudeville circuit with his parents!  I recommend it.  I actually have plenty more recommendations and stories for you and I may get to them later, but I know I've used up a lot of your time today.  I hope you'll go watch or re-watch M*A*S*H on Netflix today (or online elsewhere... or on DVD if you're like me and have all the seasons already) and read Alan Alda's book.  Or all of his books.  There's more than one.  And I hope you love those guys (and the girls: Hot Lips and Nurse Kellye) as much as I do! 

I found this one here, a must-read for M*A*S*H fans!

Hunger Games

Here's the thing about me: I don't usually watch movies until they're on Netflix or TV, so all the movies I've seen are usually a zillion years old (hence all the 80s movies on my blog).  My awesome friend Candice recently introduced me to an app called Show Box, though, and I've used it to watch ALL KINDS OF MOVIES!!! I'm super in love with it, so thanks, Candice.  I watched The Hunger Games on TV a while back, so when I saw the rest of them on Show Box I watched them all right away... except for the last one, which wasn't out until Tuesday.  I'm on vacation this week, so I waited until everyone else went to bed and watched it on my phone Tuesday night and man, was it worth it!

North American first edition cover

I don't have a lot of reading time, but I try to do what I can, like I read Mayhem, the sequel to Madness by Derek Dykes (you can read about that here) on the plane Saturday.  The best compromise I've found is audiobooks.  They're free from the library and I can listen to them while I drive.  The book versions of these are, as usual, better than the movies.  I'm only on the second one but I'm really enjoying it. Suzanne Collins is definitely a new favorite of mine and I hope to read a lot more from her.   She also has a five-part series called The Underland Chronicles so I'm trying those at some point, for sure.

So the movies are great, as I probably don't need to tell you.  I'm surely the last one to see them.  I really just love Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson in those movies, and Julianne Moore's hair was wonderful!  It was nice to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman again and he was brilliant as ever.  What a great actor he was.  I'm obviously in love with Lenny Kravitz just like everyone else, and I'd have loved to see more of him.  His character is actually way more important in the books, so if you haven't read them and you liked Cinna you'll like the books too.  Anyway, I just really always suggest reading.  Reading is FUNdamental, ya know!  Get to it.

Saturday Spotlight: Derek E Dykes

This post may be short since I'm writing it on my cell phone. Yikes. I'm a pro at putting things off, and this is where it's gotten me. So, first of all, I'll have to start out with a little background info on myself. When I read a book, even if the story is amazing, I can't enjoy it unless the author's voice is one I can relate to. Because of that, I hate... I mean DESPISE... buying books directly from the author. At cons, you often meet authors, they're often nice people, and they're usually selling their books (you know, doing their job). When I pick a book in a bookstore, I read passages at random to determine how I think I'd like the book. I'm terribly picky and I most often put the book back. Since I can't even IMAGINE doing that with the person who wrote the book staring me down, I tend to pick one book for con weekends almost at random and just hope for the best. 

Last year I hit the jackpot! An author in a panel for writers mentioned a plot detail and I decided to buy that book. It's called Madness and it's by Derek E Dykes.  Set in the future, it involves mental illness, murder, future tech and pure evil. In the beginning of the book the main character, who's an FBI agent, happens upon a decades-old crime scene.  The victim's DNA shows that she's a positive match for our heroine's maternal grandmother, who died not decades ago but only a year ago.  I don't want to give too much away, but it's really intense and at one point I literally had to put the book down to hyperventilate. 

I actually ran into him at the con today and he very graciously posed for a picture with me.  I was a little disappointed that he didn't have any books with him but not to worry.  He'll have some tomorrow, and you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be there to get the next book; I'll get as many books as there are in this series.  (Two.  There are two more books in this series.  I was being dramatic.  But I am buying both of the other two.) 

I think he actually did the cover art as well

Nice work Derek Dykes, you beautiful twisted freak.

Saturday Spotlight: Dr Valerie Crane

This week's spotlight is on a local author I'm blessed to know personally.  She's actually my pastor's wife and one of the best people in the world to get parenting advice from, as I see it.  Her kids are all grown up now, and they're all polite (which is my main parenting goal, to be honest) and smart.  They've also never been in any major trouble, they're great parents themselves, and they're normal, well-rounded non-Stepford people.  As you know, I have two kids myself, so as soon as I had access to her book, Oh Mother, Where Art Thou?  I snapped it up.

Buy it here

It is full of advice and tips that are actually practical and she explains very well her logical and Bible-based reasoning behind it.  It's not too long, either.  Just right for a new mom looking for an experienced mom's perspective.  I recommend it. 

Stephen King

This one... may be lengthy. But that's totally fitting because the subject is Stephen King, the wordiest mofo in the business.  I have a little story about Stephen King.  Actually, I have a bunch.  I'll most likely end up posting stories about him a few times.  For today, though, I'll just start at the beginning.  When I was a kid I read a lot.  I don't ever remember reading many picture books, just Little Critter and The Berenstain Bears.   I read a lot of chapter books about little kids like myself and I read them quickly. After I got tired of re-reading all my own books, I began to go to my mom's bookshelf and read whatever she had there.  Like I said, I was really young, so I forget what kind of books I read at first, but I clearly remember when I got to Cujo, my first King novel.  I was eight years old, and I was used to scary movies, so I was sure I'd be fine.  Just a few pages in I stopped where I was and took the book nervously to my mom.

"Mom, are you sure I can read this?" I asked.  "It has bad words in it."
"Hey, if you can read it... you're big enough to read it."

Now, clearly the 80s was a different time.  Looking back I realize that my favorite movie, The Goonies (and most kids' movies at the time), were filled with cussing.  I just never noticed until I went to show those old movies to my own kids.  Oops.  That doesn't fly nowadays.  Anyway, when I took that book back to my room to read it, I just sat at first and thought about what my mom had said.  It seemed I was done with the days where the grown-ups controlled what went into my head.  The fact that my skill level was sufficient to read this adult book meant that I was advanced enough to read anything anybody had ever written about anyone.  It meant that if I could sound it out, I could know it.

So there I was, eight years old, and I realized that I didn't need someone else to approve of my thoughts.  That's pretty liberating for such a little kid.  It's kind of exciting even now, and I'm glad I recognized it in the moment.  I don't know if everyone sees it that way, but I'd love to hear if anyone else has a similar story.  Put yours in the comments if you have one, because I'm very interested in reading it, and learning whether it was a book, a movie, music or something else altogether that did it for you.  You know, it's funny.  A few years ago he did a reading in New Orleans (through Octavia Books, found on Twitter at https://twitter.com/octaviabooks) and I was one of the first few people to buy a ticket.  My friend and I got there hours early and there were only about 8 or 10 people ahead of us.  We sat all afternoon and evening with a huge line forming behind us. 

When the woman who introduced him started to speak, I started to cry.  Yes, already.  I mean, not like Sanjaya Girl or anything. Just slow, silent tears that basically didn't stop until I was on my way home.  In my defense, I'd just had a baby and my hormones were all over the place.  Two years later I went to see The Jacksons while I was 8 months pregnant with my second one. Full. On.  Sobbing.  But that's a story for another day.  At the end of the Stephen King event, there was a Q&A and the line was crazy long.  I considered standing there anyway, but I just couldn't think of anything to say.  You read that right, as long winded as I am, as overdramatic with my stories, as talented as I am at pointless rambling... I couldn't even think of a single thing to tell the man I owe most of that to.  I just sat there trying to come up with something, anything to say.  I wish so desperately that it had occurred to me to tell him the story of how Cujo led to my own little renaissance and began to lead me out of the Dark Ages that I consider childhood to be.     

All I wanted at the time was something to tell him that would make him remember me.  After all, I'll remember seeing him for the rest of my life, you know? Of course, sitting on the front row in a room full of 1,000 people and silently weeping all Annie-Wilkes-style may have done the trick, so mission probably accomplished. 

*shrug*

Anyway, a few more pictures for your enjoyment: