Hi honey, we’re home

We arrived home on Sunday evening, and Monday was spent unpacking, doing laundry, moving the mounds of extra snow that arrived in our absence, much to the kids’ delight, especially since a family friend had dropped off a snow saucer as a Valentine’s present.
Yesterday we all jumped back with both feet into our usual routines [...]

Aww, nuts

Apparently, librarians around the US and folks around the kidlitosphere are all atwitter over the “scrotum” kerfuffle surrounding the newest Newbery winner, “The Higher Power of Lucky” by children’s author (and librarian), and The New York Times article about the kerfuffle. Lissa has the rundown here.
Since the farm kids in our Farm School have [...]

Charlotte’s cousin

Our friend, the donkey spider (since removed to a safe place, for all concerned, in the garden away from the house)

A late winter Field Day

Here, with great thanks to Dawn!

And the Cybils winners are…

here!
The winners include Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow by Joyce Sidman with illustrations by Beth Krommes (Poetry category — hurray, hurray, hurray!); An Egg Is Quiet by Dianna Aston with illustrations by Sylvia Long (Non-Fiction Picture Books); and Freedom Walkers: The Story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott by Russell Freedman (Non-Fiction, Middle [...]

Lafayette, we are here

We left the little house on the prairie at 4 pm Thursday, and after 75 hours of travel finally arrived at the little island of waving palms, lurking donkey spiders, and plentiful rum. Tom and I still feel rather stunned from the ordeal, but the kids, untouched by any travel trauma, have been frollicking [...]

Ciao to the Chick

I get kind of nervous when military family types say things like “I hate to drop a bomb like this…but…”.
Jill, aka The Crib Chick, has decided to stop posting to both of her blogs (here and here),
When I started this blog, almost two years ago, it was a sort of extension of our circumstances; new [...]

Warm up with a Fun and Frosty Field Day

Dawn is hosting a Frosty Field Day on February 16th, with entries due by the 15th. Which gives you enough time to come down from your Valentine’s sugar high and send something in. Thanks, Dawn!

Getting Ready

Our flight leaves Friday at 1 pm. For the past few years on our annual trip to see my parents, we’ve left home at 8 am, after finishing farm chores and tidying the kitchen, for the drive to the city. That gives us about two-and-a-half hours to get to the airport, and some extra time [...]

Missing Molly

Molly Ivins did not go quietly. From her last column, Stand Up Against the Surge, about a month ago:
Bush’s call for a “surge” or “escalation” also goes against the Iraq Study Group. Talk is that the White House has planned to do anything but what the group suggested after months of investigation and proposals [...]

History and story: When "folklore and fact collide"

At the end of my hep cat post the other week, I mentioned all too briefly Chris Barton’s post at Bartography about fictionalized versions of history in children’s picture books. If you didn’t notice the mention or read it then, go read it now (and not too quickly either), and come on back.
Since we started [...]

Poetry Friday: A month of Sundays

Actually, a month of Fridays in one post, since next Friday we’re off to visit my parents for a few weeks, and a) I’m quickly running out of time (the weather isn’t helping — more wicked wind, blowing snow, impassable roads, and frigid temps) and b) I won’t have my favorite poetry books at hand.
Speaking [...]

Surprise and Imagine, indeed

From today’s New York Times, “Posing as a Family, Sex Offenders Stun a Town” (as usual, all italics and bold mine, all mine):
EL MIRAGE, Ariz., Jan. 31 — To neighbors, Casey Price was a seventh grader with acne and a baseball cap who lived an unremarkable life among a bevy of male relatives.
He built the [...]