It is thundering again! Or maybe it is still the herd of buffalo thundering through my digestive system! ARGH!!! I won't want to eat another buffalo burger for a long time after spending two days sick from the one at Jack's. It isn't until I get really sick that Steve tells me he was a bit worried when I said the burger didn't taste like it normally does - really salty. Guess that is a ploy to cover the taste of old meat. YUCK!!!

But, I did get some reading done while I was laying in bed. Finished up the final chapters of the 630 pages of The Dream Merchant, a Candlewick title. Maureen White, an authority on translated children's books, got me interested in translated titles when we worked together at UHCL so now I tend to look for the YA titles that are translations. They are typically quite unique and Isabel Hoving's The Dream Merchant certainly is and then some. The Gippart Corporation is so greedy and corrupt that they are using young children to do experimental dream and time traveling. Josh is only 12 when he is "hired" by Gippart to dream travel to find the Tembe in hopes that they can figure out how to travel through time so they can sell more of their products. They have already glutted the markets in real time as well as dream time. Three young humans and the ghost of Josh's twin sister do find the Tembe and help to end a generations long feud between two brothers. An absolutely fascinating book, all 630 pages of it! If this book were marketed like Harry Potter they would be selling kid size versions of the snake bracelet that Jericho gave her brother Josh - the bracelet that falsely convinced the Gippart team that Josh could travel through time.

Yahoo - Houghton Mifflin just reissued a paperback edition of David Macaulay's Black and White. I remember when this book won the Caldecott and all the talk about the multiple stories within. In 1990 this was a very unique book and still holds its own today in the world of children's publishing where format and style can, and often is, as intriguing as the story itself. Oh what fun! I can't wait to share this with our grandkids. :-)