Under the Skin

Since publishing my list of books for elementary school boys , I have gotten several requests for a similar list for girls.  I was excited to make the list.  However, I have a confession to make:  I am a girl, but I tend to like "boy books" more.  First I will start by saying that most of the books on my "boy list" could definitely be enjoyed by girls, so first, the carry-overs:   Percy Jackson , Spiderwick Chronicles, Fablehaven, 39 Clues, Half Magic, Holes, Among the Hidden, Artemis Fowl, Joey Pigza, The Giver, Boys Against Girls Of course, any and all could carry-over, but those ones especially.   Now, for the especially-for-girls list. 1) The Humming Room by Ellen Potter (a modernization of The Secret Garden ).  I hate Frances Hodgson Burnett. I hate the stories.  I hate the writing.  I hate the characters. So I cannot, in good conscience, put anything by her on this list.  However, lots of girls like her, so there you go....

 "All you need is stones. If you have enough stones, and the water is shallow enough, you can build a city up through the waves. Like Venice." We (using the royal we here) are reading too much right now.  But, this book is one of those ones that I am not ashamed of having read.  And I would hope others would read it too, because it is a gem of children's literature.  With that introduction, I present Stones in Water .  Roberto (twelve or thirteen), his older brother Sergio, and his two friends Memo and Samuele are just planning to catch a movie in Venice, walking there from their small town outside of Venice. But when Nazis raid the theatre, they become part of a forgotten class of Hitler's victims--Italian teenage boys abducted for manual labor.  If they faint, they are shot.  If they rest too long, they are shot.  And they are split up by Italian city state so that they can't even really communicate with one another to coordinate any k...

“Not belonging is a terrible feeling. It feels awkward and it hurts, as if you were wearing someone else's shoes.”  So, there might be a sequel to this book, but I'm not actually sure.  So, if there is, I may read it.  If not, then I won't.  But, even though I don't usually review incomplete series, I will review this one. Felicity Budwig Bathburn is a British girl who is sent to live with her father's American family during WWII.  But, it would seem that her parents aren't just going back to England. They are moving further into the front--to Portugal, over the Pyrenees, etc.  Why?  And who is this Captain Derek that everyone talks about? And why won't Uncle Gideon let her see the letters?  And what happened between Uncle Gideon and Felicity's father, Danny, so that they don't talk to one another anymore. First of all, I will say that this book is completely mis-marketed.  Note, the cover, but also the fact that the spine...

As more and more people learn that I am a book crazy, they are always asking me for book recommendations. Which I love doing.  I get a natural high from recommending a book and then hearing that someone liked it, especially kids. But like I was saying, people always want book recommendations. Oftentimes for their children.    And usually for their boys.  They tell me that their boys don't read for fun, and they want them to. My first piece of advice is this:  If you don't read for fun, why should they?  Now, if you don't like to read, that's fine.  You can still be a good, intelligent person.  However, if you want your boy to be a recreational reader, you need to be one as well.  It's as simple as that.  Don't be a hypocrite.  However, I can recommend some good books for boys.  These are good books for boys about 8-12/13.  Some of them, however, could be too hard for some on the younger end of that.  If you w...

Oh, the memories. I have a lot of bonded relationships with my brothers (especially Caleb) from Age of Empires.  A game that we could win together (or he could destroy me at), and we could talk about ad nauseum.  Oh, PC games that didn't revolve around the first-person shooting of enemies.  I even was called "hot" in high school when someone found out that I liked Age of Empires. With these glorious memories of Age of Empires, I was excited to learn that they are, after years, releasing a new expansion pack.  I don't know that it will mean that I really play it again more or anything, but it brings back memories. Age of Empires also has its own meme.  The "Age of Empires Logic" meme.  It has a picture of the knight from the logo saying things that only make sense in Age of Empires.  These are things that I sometimes thought about back in my AoE days.  In honor of the release of Age of Empires' new expansion, I present forty statements of lo...

This is a post that I've been thinking about for a long time.  It started in my mind when I read a NY Times opinion piece on Common Core and one of their basic tenets.  You can read that article here .  First, I don't know what I feel about the idea of Common Core--I think the intent is good.  The intent is to have good education no matter where a child goes.  But, it is at the expense of the good.  My best teachers that I ever had were the ones who threw away the rules.  Mrs. Richardson in first grade threw off the standard curriculum and instilled in me a love of science that gave me my life and passion.  By getting rid of water-cycle coloring pages and instead, building biospheres; by getting rid of the dinky little pictures about you chew food and then it goes to your stomach, and instead using real diagrams that used words like duodenum.  By throwing away the stupid little worksheets on how to save energy, and instead building batteries ...

I was practicing my Irish dance today and realized that my twists, rocks and cut-outs look terrible. I only have one twist section in my slip jig, and just one three rocks in my set and one cut-out in my slip jig.  I can do them on their own, but they look terrible when I try to insert them into a dance.  So, I made a slip jig step that featured all three (and an obscene number of twists).  I must warn you, this is so bad that I almost chose to not post this.  But, in the spirit of the Falling With Style Movement, that is all the point!  So, the twisty slip jig.  By Hannah Russell.  Music by Sean O'Brien if you needed to know.

In celebration of Good Friday!