I am trying to keep my head still as I type this. Some weird kind of "flu" hit yesterday with a vicious headache and dizziness and hasn't given up on me yet, but I don't have time to be sick! I even had to turn down Steve's offer to go to our favorite Mexican restaurant, Mi Mexico, last night for dinner. No way could I have had one of their yummy margaritas as I was already dizzy! Bummer!!

We finally got rain yesterday!! More than rain - hail and tornado warnings. I watched the hail hit my car in the driveway and wished I had put it in the garage, but the hail didn't get nickle size as the forecast warned it might. Steve called and told me to turn on the TV for the warnings and to head for the bathtub if the wind picked up. He came home earlier than usual, which sure reduced my storm stress. I wondered how one of the guys he works with was doing as the cover for his little convertible isn't working and he has been using a shower curtain instead. First he used rocks, or it might have been bricks, to hold it down, but moved "up" to clothes pins to keep it on. Wonder if it stayed put with the high winds and hail yesterday. The rocks would have been a better idea under the circumstances. I could just see him going out to his car at the end of the day, opening the door and having water pour out! Convertibles are still strange to me. I am startled each time I walk into our garage and see 1/2 of a car! And Sophie decided it is a fun place to curl up and sleep if she can sneak into the garage when we open the door. Steve isn't too keen on that - heaven forbid, she might scratch the leather or paint when she climbs/jumps out.

Sunday evening we went to see The Producers at the little Opera House on Broadway. Yes, on Broadway, but in downtown Lex. :-) There is no bad seat in this little theater. We have our own copy of the movie and love it, but I had not seen the play before and it was delightful. Actually, much funnier. Steve is very good at remembering lines from movies and plays, etc. and he has been channeling Leo Bloom, pointing at my poor cat and sputtering, "Fat, fat, fat, fat...." Sophie has no idea what he is doing but I am cracking up at him and she is looking at us like we are both crazy. He said I sounded like Leo the when I was sputtering, "Won't work, won't work..." at the remote when I couldn't get it to change the channel. Never a dull moment in the Clark household! :-) We may buy seasons passes for next year - 6 shows, including Cats, which I saw in NYC way back in the mid 90s. We had poor seats in that theater so I can't wait to see it here in Lexington.

I love old movies and Broadway shows, especially those based on beloved books. If you haven't read Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire, put it on your summer reading list. You will feel totally different about Elphaba (Yes, even witches have names) than how you did after watching the movie. Elphaba was born green due to her mother's clandestine love affair - it's not her fault! She becomes a real person who loves and hurts, just like everyone else in this novel. I also enjoyed Son of a Witch, the sequel. Who figured Elphaba had a child, one she raises but does not acknowledge as her biological son. The other Maguire book I love is Lost, a mystery set in England, with a woman moving into a house that is haunted by the person who Dickens' character Scrooge is based on. And, is it Jack the Ripper's body in the wall? A delicious ghost story. I want to read Mirror, Mirror - it is on my "gotta read" list with a myriad of other great books. I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly and read it from back to front as the book reviews are in the back. I keep starring books I want to read and pull out the pages. I have a stack of those pages! So many books, so little time!!

I don't always realize that Steve actually does listen to me when I chatter on about the books I love. He knows I love Broadway shows and book combinations so my darling husband gave me the soundtrack for Wicked, which I can't wait to listen to, and Wicked: The Grimmerie, A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Hit Broadway Musical by David Cote, with photographs by Joan Marcus. I was curled up with the beautiful book last night. It is gorgeous. Love the picture of little green infant Elphaba. The time line starting with Baum's birth and ending in 2005, when the book was published, is a delight. I knew about the many additional titles Baum wrote about Oz due to the popularity of his first Oz book, but I didn't realize that after his death other authors kept writing them and there are now 40 books in the series. Would love to have first editions of the ones Baum wrote - they have such weird green illustrations, but I love them. I wonder how many people only know about the movie. All these years later there is still a fan club with many members, a newsletter, and conferences where they meet and discuss research on Baum, etc. I am not that much of a fan, but if I had the time I would take the whole set of books Baum wrote and find a nice Caribbean hotel to take them to, and read in a hammock under a palm tree!

Now to get some grading done. My students are writing some fantastic booktalks! :-)

I am sitting here watching The Today Show and wishing I were with Matt in Havana, Cuba! I recognize all of the places shown after two visits to that absolutely gorgeous Caribbean country. Of all the islands I have visited, the people in Cuba are the most friendly and helpful. I had such fun with the children, many of whom spoke English. I was enchanted with the National Library's Children's Room. It was full of children working on homework and curled up reading when I visited. They were very friendly, though some were shy. The middle school we visited had hand written cards in the catalog and their pride in the books they had, though few, was clear. Their little one room library was packed to the gills with students doing research from old almanacs and atlases. No Internet terminals. The literary rate in Cuba is one of the highest in the world. Puts the U.S. to shame. The statement was made this morning that the average daily salary in Cuba is 50 cents. Although there are no homeless people on the beach and streets like I have seen in other Caribbean countries, the quality of housing is deplorable in many instances. The beautiful old buildings in Old Havana are falling down around their heads. The issue of the rich Cubans who left Cuba when Castro took control returning to Cuba and taking back their property came up, which won't happen. We are the only country who doesn't have an involvement in this country's economy. The beaches are full of Canadians and Europeans. And, U.S. products are purchased in the "$ stores" in Cuba. A bottle of Johnson's Baby Shampoo is almost $9! I frequently the $ store near the hotel for my Diet Coke, although it wasn't the "real thing" as it was a foreign made Coke product, sweetened with something else. The cola in Cuba is sweet and syrupy and not at all pleasant to drink. But, the rum is to die for! :-) Fascinating - baseball, boxing, and ballet - the three "B's" in Cuba. I knew about the baseball, but not the other two.

There has been a huge book challenge in the Miami-Dade schools about Vamos a Cuba by Alta Schreier, one of many titles in the Heinemann Raintree series of books on countries. This is the Spanish edition of the series, which is also available in English. This books infuriated Miami Cubans because it portrayed Cuba in a positive light. http://www.aclu.org/freespeech/censorship/26010prs20060621.html
The ACLU got involved to voice their disagreement with what the School Board did - they ignored the Advisory Committee's decision and the Superintendent's recommendation to keep the book in the school libraries and voted to remove the entire series from the schools! Cases like this show how emotional censorship cases can become. Anyone who says we don't have an emotional response to books hasn't read about this controversy! So much for the idea of a variety of points of view should be available to children and teens! Rather than removing the book, find another to balance the information available. With this response to the book, the school board acted like the Cuban government - remove any book that doesn't agree with their point of view. Ironic to say the least!

My Cuba "fix" on NBC is almost over so I need to get my act together and refocus on booktalks! :-)

Sophie is exhausted from making sure Mommy and Daddy were awake at 6:05. I swear this cat is better than any alarm clock around. The problem is, Steve's alarm doesn't go off until 6:20 so she deprives us of a good 15 minutes of sleep! So now she is fast asleep on the floor by me, spread eagle on her back - such a lady-like cat! We were so tired last night we gave up on watching There's Something About Mary in bed. Yes, the cable guy came yesterday and hot wired the outlet! I have the Today Show on as I type this. Although I was yawning like crazy, I was also laughing as I hadn't seen this movie is years - Cameron Diaz looks like a baby! Wow- lots of Diaz movies I have not seen, including The Invisible Circus, which really looks good. I love movies that are set in various areas in Europe as I have yet to travel to Europe.

As I type this the page proofs for Tantalized Tidbits 2: More Booktalks for the Busy High School Library Media Specialist are printing. :-) I need to add the final page #s in the index and table of contents, check for typo errors and we are good to go! I have until the 5th to get it back to Linworth so will be spending most of today with the manuscript. Once this is done I need to get some articles written based on all the data I have been getting from my students as to how their teens are responding to the different styles of booktalks. There just aren't enough hours in the day.

The weekend is upon us again and we are still in drought-like conditions here in Lexington. No rain in over 2 weeks. It is so darn hot and dry. Hazy and sunny and 68 degrees already and up to 90 this afternoon. No humidity to speak of so it not like Houston was. Maybe some rain on Sunday. I should get out there and water my babies and maybe even feed them. But, can't do that until I get the page-proofing done.

If and when I start on Tantalizing Tidbits for Middle Schoolers 2, Suzanne Crowley's debut novel, The Very Ordered Existence of Merilee Marvelous, will be included. I absolutely loved this book. Part of it may be because it is set in small town West Texas and I love the down-home feel and the great tidbits of rural speech. The small town of Jumbo, TX helps the Monroe family raise Merilee, who exhibits Asperger Syndrome symptoms. Merilee has a daily schedule of what she does to help her keep her V.O.E. - Very Ordered Existence - intact. Overall her family is supportive, other than a bratty sister and the very sharp tongued Grandma Birdy, who I initially disliked but you can't help but change your mind about her, at least a bit, when you find out what her earlier years were like. Biswick and Veraleen are newcomers to Jumbo and they most certainly mess with Merilee's V.O.E. Biswick bubbles over with bits of trivia and data, but has absolutely no social skills and has the audacity to eat Merilee's purple Tootsie Pops without asking! Biswick and Veraleen, a herbalist/nurse who was fired from a nearby hospital, quickly become a part of the Monroe family, much to Grandma Birdy's dismay when Veraleen outdoes her in the kitchen. Merilee was quoting Shakespeare at age 3, and at age 13 she is into the classics, which her mother buys a new box of books for her each month so that Merilee can curl up in a leather chair in Mama's bookstore and read. I love this young teen and adore this book. A gotta have for every MS/JH library. It will be out from HarperCollins in September.

GRRR!! Been fighting with the printer while working on this. First it jammed, then it ran out of black ink, then it jammed again, and yet again! I am sure it is because I am recycling paper to print on the back, but talk about frustrating. Let's hope the last few pages make it through this print cycle without jamming or something else happening. Listening to Big and Rich as I type this. One of them looks like a throw-back from the 60s (think Bob Dylan but with a better voice!) and the other looks just like a country bubba, but with a dress shirt and tie. They are certainly a weird duo! I do love their Lost in a Moment and their silly Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy! :-) Reminds me - I need to order tickets for Allison Krause - she will be here in Lexington next month.

Printing is done - need to start proofing.

Well, I am about there with the handout for the Smooth Talking: Booktalking Styles to Entice Teens to Read workshop at the downtown branch of the Lexington Public Library on the 16th. My rough draft sits in front of me with 75 YA titles on it. Won't have time to booktalk all of them, but at least the participants will have a list to leave with. Also put together a dozen of my favorite YA Lit and Booktalking sites to visit and spent way too much time on them. Well, I had to check the links to make sure they are current - didn't I? :-)

Man, it is already 4:00. Where did this day go? I have been up since a bit after 6:00 and, though I read for a bit in bed with Sophie, I was on the computer early as no Today Show until the cable guy gets here tomorrow afternoon and "hot wires" the other cable outlet in the bedroom. But, I did order Steve the NFL channel for an anniversary present. I won't tell him that I also got some really cool movie channels out of it and even one that airs hockey games.

We are going to Merrick's for dinner tonight - a very nice restaurant here in town - to celebrate our 5th anniversary. Five years ago at this time I was slipping into a short white dress and Steve into shorts and an Aloha shirt before the limo picked us up at CuisinArt Resort and Spa on Anguilla http://www.cuisinartresort.com/index.php?catID=33. Just looked at the site - oh how I would love to be back there today, but I sadly admit my little white dress won't fit anymore. But, I don't have to worry about the shoes fitting as we got married barefoot on the beach. It was a beautiful evening, even though the champagne the limo driver poured for us was really awful! Steve told me last night he was going to ask the waiter tonight for the worst bottle of champagne they have in stock so we could recreate the first grimace as husband and wife! Steve knows how terrible I am with dates and times so he picked our wedding date and time. We were married on 5/30 at 5:30. Pretty hard to forget that. I also don't forget when he proposed as it was Thanksgiving on Mustique Island, but I have no idea of the exact date! Steve shaved his beard off Monday night so I just keep looking at him and smiling. He was clean shaven when we got married but he wears a beard most of the time. I do adore this guy even if his sense of humor can be a bit perplexing! Couldn't find any of our wedding pics on my computer, but the picture above is what we looked out at from our room. :-) We had breakfast delivered each morning and the bread on Anguilla is to die for. No wonder I no longer fit in my wedding dress - I became a bread-aholic on our honeymoon!

My anniversary present is still in the box on the back deck because I have to pick out patio paving stones before Steve will put it together. At least I know where in the yard I want it! Guess I will do that tomorrow when I run errands before the cable guy gets here. It is a small gazebo with a 3 person swing that actually folds down into a bed. Way cool! I have a terrible time sitting still so I need a rocking chair or a swing when I am outside. I need the repetitive movement to relax. Steve put in Dottie last night - our largest lilac bush - by the deck. I named her after my mom, whose name is Dorothy. Went with Dottie even though I don't know as anyone called her that. I think her nickname as a kid was Butch. Clearly Mom was not what you would call a "dainty lady" - she worked out in the barn on the family farm just like her brothers. The two smaller lilacs aren't in yet, but they are Mary, after my daughter, and Maggie, after my Gramma. We always brought Gramma lilacs for her table too. And cowslips!

Sorry no book to talk about today. I'm reading for the Margaret A. Edwards committee and I can't talk about the books. Dag nabbit anyway!

I'm having Today Show withdrawal! I usually spend my early morning responding to emails and watching Al Roker and crew. We rearranged the bedroom yesterday to make room for the new furniture and apparently the cable connection on the other wall is not "hot". Hopefully Steve can fix it tonight or I'll have to call and get someone out here. This can't go on for too many mornings or I may have to go back to sleeping in!

But, I did join the Kentucky Library Association this morning, along with the Kentucky School Media Association, a division of KLA, and have the site open to put in a proposal for a session at the KSMA Fall conference. Just need to get a bit more Diet Coke in me to get the wording right. :-) I am so glad this conference does not conflict with the NC School Library Media Association Conference as does the Tenn. Assoc. of School Libs. I agrees to present at TASL (not the one in Texas) and then realized it is the same time at NCSLMA in November. So I'll be in Nashville instead of Winston-Salem that weekend, but I am presenting at the NC Library Association Conference the week before presenting at AASL in October, so I should get to see some of my ECU students there. It is going to be a busy Fall semester! But, I am not complaining. When you teach online as I do, presenting is as close to the classroom as I can get. Although I love the flexibility teaching online gives me, I miss the physical act of teaching about and sharing books in a group setting, be it in a classroom or a conference session/workshop.

I stayed up and watching Over the Hedge last night. Cute, but not one of my favorite animated kids' movies. I kept comparing it to other books/movies. Like the cat and skunk - I prefer the old Pepe Le Pew cartoons, especially For Sent-imental Reasons, when he meets Penelope the cat and she falls head over heels for him. As far as turtles go, the level headed Vern is okay but how can you not love the turtles from Finding Nemo better? The concept of humans taking over the animals habitat may be lost to some of the youngest viewers, but it is an important theme, and has been for a very long time in children's books. Just think of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM by Robert O'Brien. Although this book starts off really slow, as do many fantasy novels, it is wonderful. Try to imagine being the size of a field mouse and knowing a tractor and plow is coming at you! Very scary stuff! Feels much more real than the wacko exterminator in Over the Hedge. I guess I am getting old! Did you know that Robert O'Brien was actually Robert Leslie Conly and that he died before Z is for Zacharia was finished? His wife and daughters completed this post-nuclear war tale from his notes. 62 comments about this book on B&N online - it is still live and well on the YA shelves and in the hands of teens. :-) As is Mrs. Frisby and clan in elementary and Middle Schools.

Okay, need to get busy on finishing up the handouts and presentation notes for the 16th. So much for summers "off" for professors. But, I did take all of yesterday off, even though it was spent doing housework and unpacking the last few boxes in the bedroom. Steve was very happy to see more socks. :)

Here is the larger front flower bed. The retaining wall doesn't look at high as it feels when you climb up and down it! The front yard is on quite a slope. As you can see, I have plenty of room to add more plants to this bed. I took this last week so none of the new things we bought are in yet. too bad you can't see the couple of onion plants that have flowered and look like aliens trying to phone home. :-) Steve just went out and turned on the sprinklers so it is time to truly start my day. I'm going to scrub the bird poop off of the deck railings. Gross, but I love all the birds we have around here. So does Sophie!

Can you believe I am up and Steve is still asleep? Actually not so surprising considering all the yard work he did yesterday. Sophie came in with her soft meows around 6:30 since Daddy had been home for 2 days so that meant it must be a day for him to go to work. I didn't fall back to sleep but he went back to snoring almost immediately. So now we are out in the living room in the recliner with a heating pad on my hip and with Sophie as a purring cat fur ruff. :-)

I did yard work too - hauling the rock Steve dug out of the front yard "pit" we made for Baby Blue, a little blue spruce tree. (I name everything and plants do need to be talked to - it encourages growth.) Steve dug up chunks of brick along with the rock, as builders are not known for cleaning up after themselves. He dug through very hard clay soil and lots of rock to make a hole big enough for Baby Blue. So I hauled planters full of rock and junk across the street and down an incline to the little run-off area that is all rocky anyway. Then I watered and talked to the bushes and flowers in our beds. We also bought a couple of wild strawberry plants that have wonderful runners but do not bear fruit (darn!), a couple of smaller plants Steve picked out that I can't remember the name of, and a plum tree for the front large bed. They are in their spots, watered, but still need to be transplanted. While reading through the bed/container gardening magazine I bought during out endless waiting in Home Depot I realized the "unique" hosta I have been babying is a weed! So is the shamrock looking plant, which the magazine said is one of the prettiest weeds, but still a weed. Hmmm - maybe I can do a weed garden! I seem to be doing well keeping them alive. I have a couple other varieties of flowers weeds in there too. Let's just say I did not inherit my mom's green thumb, but I do love plants and flowers. Sadly, I know next to nothing about the ones that grow in Kentucky flower beds. I just thought they were perennials the builder put in. So, it will be off to B&N before long to find a book on Kentucky gardening!

The exciting news is we bought lilacs! :-) Steve did get the pit dug for the larger lavender one next to the back deck, but we had used all the top soil for Baby Blue so the lilac is still in the pot in the hole. Haven't named her yet. She has one large fragrant blossom already, which made me miss my parents. Dad seemed to know when the first blooms came out anywhere in Point Mills and off we would go to pick a bouquet for Mom. He took great pleasure in being the one to find the first lilacs blooming, the first arbutus, and the first wild strawberries. And I took great pleasure in bursting into the kitchen, smelling of homemade bread and whatever else Mom was baking on her wood stove, with an armload of blooming lilacs. We stopped for lunch yesterday with the plants in the car and when we got back in it smelled of lilacs and I was transported back to my childhood for just a moment as I breathed in the smell I so love and means home to me. I didn't realize what a Northern plant a lilac is until I read White Lilacs by Caroline Meyer, in which a white lilac means as much to an African American family in Dillon, TX (really Denton, TX as this book is based on a piece of history that Denton and Texas Woman's University should hardly be proud of) as the lavender lilac tree in our front yard meant to me growing up. I love the cover of the new paperback edition http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780152058517&itm=1. A black girl holds a tiny lilac plant in her hand. Lilacs do not typically grow in hot climates as they need a hard freeze and those that do often do not bloom. But, after living in Denton, TX and slip-sliding my way to classes at TWU, both on foot and via car, I can say it gets cold enough to freeze! Teenage Rosa Lee's family has a white lilac bush that does thrive and bloom in Freedomtown, the black area of Dillon/Denton, which is about to be turned into a park and the families who live there forced to relocate to a swampy area outside of Denton. I was in my PhD program at TWU when this book was published and Caroline Meyer came to campus and spoke to a predominantly black audience about the difficulties she encountered during her research for this book and the sad fact that there is just a plaque in the ground in the city park where Freedomtown once stood. The story of this sad historical event is told through the eyes of Rosa Lee and her family. A wonderful book and I always have a copy in my collection. I gave my signed copy to Mary. The sequel Jubilee Journey has also recently been reprinted in pbk. and is told from the point of view of Rose Lee's great granddaughter Emily Rose, who has grown up in affluent bi-racial family living in Connecticut where racism isn't an issue in her private school. She learns from experience and the stories her great grandmother tells during her visit to Dillon just how different things are in Dillon, TX, both today and in the past. A real eye-opener! Meyer is best known for her tween/teen the Young Royals historical fiction series as well as other YA historical fiction titles such as Loving Will Shakespeare, but I am partial to her contemporary titles, including the 1995 Drummers of Jericho, which addresses prejudice and the issues of church vs. state. Pazit, fresh from a year in a kibbutz, leaves liberal Denver to live with her father and his new family in a "Bible belt" suburban town where the marching band director is insisting they play hymns at the games. When Pazit refuses to be part of the band's forming a cross during half-time at the football game, she finds out just how outsiders in these small towns can be treated. If you have not read any Caroline Meyer, visit her books - wonderful all the way around and very teen and tween friendly. Where the Broken Heart Still Beats: The Cynthia Ann Parker Story is beloved by many and a heartbreaking read. Captured at age 9, Cynthia Ann is the wife of a Comanche chief when she is "rescued" and returned, against her will, to the settlement. This one came to mind as Steve and I watched Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee last night. The tears rolled down my cheeks as I watched the movie based on the book in which Dee Brown documents the horrific manner in which the Native Americans were treated from 1860 - 1890. I read it when it came out back in the mid 1970s, but I was too young and lived in such an insular environment it didn't mean much to me then. I need to read it again. Aidan Quinn plays the Senator who truly believes he is helping the Indians. He had his agent ask if he could play a role in this movie as the book had affected him so deeply. It shows in his performance that he knows this "story" well.

Steve just came through grumbling and mumbling. I think he is more than a bit sore and he is off to the golf course later this morning. All that walking will loosen him up a bit. I'll have the house to myself! :-) The other day, on one of our nursery trips to look at plants, he took me through the new subdivision going in on the golf course they play on. Good grief! We couldn't afford one of the garages on the houses. One of the houses has 5 garages and the covered multi-level balconies in the back make it look like a fancy hotel on the golf course. Sure, I drooled over them, but I am quite content with our 3 bedroom ranch! I have no concept of having that kind of money. Ignorance is bliss! :-)

Time to go check on Steve - after a few grumbles it is quiet again. He probably went back to sleep!

Wow! It is Friday already. The Memorial Day weekend is upon us. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this as it is supposed to be in 5 days from now, since today is only the 25th. Yesterday our wireless connection was acting wonky so I couldn't get onto the Internet. Instead of staying home and having withdrawal I decided to run errands. Finally got down to the closest public library on Richmond Road. Not very large YA section, which they call Teen, but a friendly staff. The computers were mostly engaged but there was not a soul in the Children's section. The offerings were older titles, but that's okay for right now as I was looking for titles to look at in relation to the Margaret A. Edwards Award. Can't talk about what I'm reading - bummer!

Also made a trip to Half Priced Books and they had a clearance cart out front. Ending up with an armload of books before I even got inside! I lent my copy of No More Dead Dogs by Gordan Korman to a student and never got it back so was delighted to find a copy for 50 cents. It is difficult to find humorous YA fiction. How can you not love a young teen who refuses to lie - even about a book he is supposed to love and hates. Why do all the dogs die at the end of these books he wants to know. :-) Made me think of an experience I had with Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls years ago in Alaska. I was doing a long term sub in a 6th grade classroom that most substitute teachers wouldn't touch because it had all the rowdy boys, including one who always wore a black leather jacket with studs on it. It was this kid that came forward and gently took the copy of this book away from me, handed me a Kleenex, and told me to sit in his desk - he would read the rest of the chapter. I always cry when the dog dies! The connection that this group of tweens and I made was incredible. They'd stop me in the halls of the HS where I later became the librarian and ask me if I remember crying. I even had them stop me in the mall to talk about that incident. None of them will forget that book. I was digging through the clearance paperback rack in the YA area of Half Priced Books and was chatting with a mother and her home-schooled tween as they looked for books. I came across a copy of Summer of the Monkeys, Rawls' title that doesn't get the attention it should. I suggested it to the mom and it went into the pile of books in her arms. :-) It is laugh out loud funny! A group of circus monkey get loose and 14-year-old Jay wants to capture them for the reward. He has it already spent in his mind, but catching those monkeys is more difficult than expected, even with Grandpa's help.

We changed our mind at least twice about bedroom furniture since I wrote that I thought we had made up our mind! But, last night we actually bought a set. The Edwardian style four poster bed is gorgeous as is the man's chest (looks like a chifferobe to me!) Steve seems to think it will all fit in our bedroom - I sure hope so! I was in shock over the final total, so we had to go to Olive Garden for dinner and a glass of wine. I didn't know that Olive Garden has great little pizzas - I have to eat pizzas without cheese, but I don't mind as the sauce and veggies keep their taste rather than being overwhelmed by the taste of cheese. I'd always been a minestrone and salad girl at Olive Garden - think I've changed my mind. I love their pizza!!

Yesterday I also went to Michael's and found the cutest little boy angel squatting to look at a snail on his hand. Steve has a wicked sense of humor and told me he thought he was doing something else in our flower bed! Add that to his comment about the Celtic looking cross I added to the bed a few days ago looking like a tombstone, and it appears clear that we don't think alike about yard ornaments! He is just going to have to chill though - the yard is going to be angelic whether he likes it or not. Just makes me feel good to see them.

Now that I can get online I have some work to do that isn't as much fun as blogging.

Another early morning in the Clark household, thanks to a very noisy cat. I think she was letting Steve know what she thinks about the new "rule" in the house that we don't leave the back door open for her. I tried to explain to her that it is "Daddy's rule" but she isn't listening to me - she assumes it is my fault and woke me up this a.m. to prove her point! We are going to find a storm door with a cat door! I'm the one home with her during the day while she gives me the major evil eye because the door is not open. Especially while Steve's Roomba was running around the house - she hates vacuums of all types, but that one really freaks her out.

Was just looking through the wealth of Rembrandt paintings on http://www.abcgallery.com/R/rembrandt/rembrandt.html I will admit right up front I am not a connoisseur of classic paintings and Rembrandt's are too dark for my taste, but my interest was piqued by Lynn Cullen's I Am Rembrandt's Daughter. This very controversial for his time Dutch painter is brought to life through the eyes of his daughter, Cornelia. She is also the daughter of his housekeeper who he never married, although their relationship took a financial and social toll as he was shunned by the wealthy patrons who once flocked to his studio. Cornelia, at 14, is responsible for keeping the dirt poor Rembrandt household going and there isn't much to work with beyond moldy cheese and dry bread. But Rembrandt doesn't notice as he is a very intent painter, sometimes add just a brush stroke or two during a several day period, which frustrates Cornelia, especially when she is the model. Cullen's imagination brought together a rich Amsterdam merchant's fictitious son and Rembrandt's daughter in a budding romantic relationship until the plague strikes the city again and Cornelia discovers just how selfish the love of her life truly is and she sees the man who has loved her and stood by her and her father during the worst of times with a much more realistic set of eyes. An absolutely fascinating book. Hand this one to the art teachers you know - maybe they will even share it with their students. A fun way to learn about a master artist - through the eyes of his teenage daughter.

Time to finish up some grading and then run errands. Need to find the closest post office. Stamps went up again!

Only a bit after 7 a.m. and I have already had my reading/kitty time. Was ready to get up when Steve's alarm went off about an hour ago. I was exhausted yesterday and ready went to bed early. My hip was really acting up. Saturday afternoon was spent weeding and helping Steve lay down a new layer of mulch in our front yard flower beds. Steve even bought a few new perennials to add color. Our front yard is a slope so the large flower bed is surrounded by a retaining wall and in climbing up and down while weeding and hauling off the empty mulch bags I aggravated my hip. But it was worth it - the brick red mulch looks wonderful and brings out the color of the pansies and other flowering bushes and plants. We bought a cool solar light butterfly that I hope looks the way I want it to at night. If it does we will buy some more and put them in the bushes in the front.

Steve was off golfing all day yesterday so I was doing laundry and basic stuff around the house until I made the mistake of pigging out on BBQ Baked Lays chips with lunch. Bad idea! Who would think there would be whey in them? I didn't even think to check the ingredient panel. I have been eating the regular BBQ Lays for years, but the baked ones are clearly a no-no. Whey is high in lactose so I got sicker than a dog and was laying on the bed with the chills and a very upset stomach, feeling sorry for myself when Steve got home. We were supposed to go check out Burke's furniture before we make up our mind on bedroom furniture. I think we have made a decision now that Steve cut out pieces of cardboard to lay on the bedroom floor to give me an idea how much room the pieces would take. I have no sense of size and the chifferobe seems massive in the store. Lots of drawers and shelves - which we really need. :-) Unless there is a set that "blows me away" in Burke's we have made a decision. Thank goodness - we have looked at more bedroom furniture styles than I thought possible.

On a trip to Lowe's to get more mulch I was listening to Elizabeth Peters' The Last Camel Died at Noon and realized part of the reason I love the Victorian era Amelia Peabody mysteries is because I have learned so much about the early archaeological endeavors in Egypt. And, a lot about Egyptology in general. In this particular title, early in the series, Amelia and Emerson, along with then 10-year-old Ramses are abducted and taken to a Shangri-La like community hidden in a desert oasis. The inhabitants live much as the ancient Egyptians did and the outsiders who happen to find their way into the community do not have the option to leave. Peters' research just into the clothing the early Egyptians wore is incredible. Descriptions are so rich I could see prim and proper Amelia's face as she saw the diaphanous clothing she was expected to wear. Only Amelia would wear her split skirt and shirtwaist underneath! :-) Historical mysteries are a genre that rarely raise an eyebrow and I do think teenagers would enjoy the series even though the characters are hardly young adults. Teens will delight in Ramses's antics as he grows up in the series, especially when he blends into the Egyptian communities with his array of disguises. Ramses is a "hottie"! :-)

I'm listening to The Today Show as I type this. Mike Lupica was on the show Friday morning and chatted with Matt Lauer about his sports novels, specifically Summer Ball, which came out this month and is the sequel to Travel Team - basketball books. Very relevant right now when teens are about to get out of school and those outdoor courts will be filled with guys and girls of all ages playing pick-up games. I need to find my copies of his books!

All for today - need to start working on the handout for the full day workshop on booktalking next month here in Lexington. Which means I have to start opening those boxes of books in my office.

Woke up by a quietly meowing alarm clock around 6:15 this a.m. It was so cute - Sophie was quietly meowing to let Steve know it was time to get up. She did her job - got us both up, got her Mama/kitty time while I read and now she is asleep in her bed. Another cool day with possible thunderstorms. Only 43 degrees - seems odd after the high 80s we had earlier this week. High of 65 today, but I doubt that. Sunny for the weekend though. Good reason to stay inside and finish up a few things. Listening to the Today Show as I type. Don't miss Katie at all! I love Ann Curry and Al Roker!

Tried a new recipe for a taco skillet type dinner last night. Seemed to be a hit with Steve but my favorite part was the "kitchen sink" salad. I love to make big salads with lots of stuff in it - found the shredded broccoli, cauliflower mix for slaw is a perfect addition to a regular salad - add crunch, along with carrots, snap peas, mushrooms, etc. I am not a big salad dressing person so I love the salad spritzer type dressing. Steve is in heaven not to have to cook dinner hardly at all. I told him to enjoy it while I was in the mood to cook as I am not always in that state of mind. Guess it is this house and the kitchen I love. Tonight is leftovers as I haven't figured out how to cook for two yet. Still cooking for four as I did when the kids were little.

Finished Kelly Easton's Hiroshima Dreams this morning. Such a gentle book. I was curious about this author as this book is such a poignant coming of age story. So I went to her Web site - http://www.kellyeaston.com/books.html and saw that she is also a life coach, a career choice somewhat based on her very unhappy childhood. She commented on how she writes for teens and children because she never really had a childhood. Hiroshima Dreams somewhat reminds me of An Na's A Step From Heaven in the sense that it follow a girl's life journey from early childhood through her adolescence, but it has a bit of a psychic flavor as Lin is able to predict things that will happen - as simple as her best friend's brother's sculpture falling to the floor and as important as the whereabouts of a kidnapped autistic child. Lin is the daughter of an Irish Catholic father and a Japanese mother who turned her back on her own culture due to her mother's deep immersion in culture. Lin learns about what it means to be Japanese when her grandmother comes to live with them. I love the multicultural/racial nature of this book. Lin's best friend is black, the boy she adores is Italian, and their neighbor is Portuguese. I related to the relationship between Lin and her grandmother - it pulled at my heartstrings and caused me to deeply miss my very Finnish gramma as I read of their close relationship. My gramma lived with us for a number of years. She was a central part of my life while growing up. I can still see her with her walker trying to clean up puppy pee on the floor before my mom saw it. It was my puppy, of course! Hiroshima Dreams is a wonderful feel good book for middle school.

All for today.

Since I my heart was back in STT this morning, thought I'd include a picture of the YA section in the small one room library in the Montessori School out on the East End of St. Thomas, USVI. There were only a handful of YA books when I started working with Montessori to build a YA collection and this was several months later and the teens were in second heaven. I would go back there and just smile! :-)

Have been awake since a bit after 5:00 due to the wind and rain. It also woke me up earlier in the night and I had to smile as Steve immediately got up and went to leave Sophie in. He won't admit he worries about her, but he does. :-) I was so intent on reading while Steve was getting ready for work I didn't even realize he was in the bedroom until he flipped the lights off and teased me that it wasn't noon yet. I have been known to sleep in really late, but not that late!

I should have known it was going to rain as I had my car washed yesterday. It was covered with bugs from the last trip back from Greenville. But, we really needed the rain. Steve mowed yesterday when he got home from work. I was out on the back porch window shopping yard ornaments/furniture in a catalog and chatting with Earl, our elderly neighbor. He was giving me advice on what to plant as the soil has lots of clay in it and the area between our houses tends to get the rain runoff. I was teasing Earl I was going to look for swamp plants to put there. And that reminded me of picking what we called cow-slips in the marshy area near my Gramma's house. They had pretty yellow flowers. And Dad taking me for walks to find the long stemmed wild violets that grew in patches. They were the most gorgeous purple. And the wild lady slippers that grew on the 40 acres my Dad owned. They were a beautiful orchid color or a pink and sometimes a white. They were so special they made me want to whisper. We never picked them - the joy was in finding them and just smiling at their wild beauty. I spent a lot of time in that 40 acres of woods with my family as they cut wood from for our furnace, Mom's kitchen wood stove, and the sauna stove. I grew up with the smell of wood smoke. Perhaps that is why I prefer having a gas fireplace!

I read Geraldine McCaughrean's Cyrano yesterday. At 114 pages it is a quick read, but a delight, starting with the attention getting cover with Cyrano's nose right in the center. A wonderful way to introduce this French play by Edmond Rosand, written in 1897 and still popular today and brought to screen many times, even a modern version with Steve Martin as Cyrano. McCaughrean stays true to the plot of the play while bringing Cyrano and Roxane to life for today's teens. Such a touching love story. Flavor of the Week by Tucker Shaw is a modern version of Cyrano, with a chubby teen cooking for his best friend as he woes the girl that the future chef loves. Both would appeal to girls without a doubt, but if booktalked from the male perspective, these could both appeal to teenage guys as well. FYI - it is due to Rosand's play that we now use the word panache to mean more than a feather in your hat. :-)

Now to finish up the summer reading lists for Montessori. My body may happily be in Kentucky but a part of me is still back in that tiny library on St. Thomas. I loved it when the teens came in and went back to their small section of the library and I could booktalk with them. :-)

Never, ever let your email go without deleting listserv messages each day! I have spent days/hours trying to find the messages I need to answer in the avalanche of weeks worth of listserv messages I didn't get to during the move and while finishing up the end of the semester paperwork. I even found a couple of weeks' old message from a student I had years ago at Sam Houston - what a delight! :-) It is treasures like Jamie's message that keep me sane as I work my way though the mess.

I am taking a break from that for a bit since I found the message from Mary with this pic of her and the boys. It is so cute! I am getting very anxious to see little Kegan next month. Scott and Mary are in the middle of remodeling their bathroom so decided a trip up there this month was probably more stress then they need right now.

I also took a break and went grocery shopping a bit ago. What fun! We have a large Meijer near us and I had wandered through parts of the store but not the grocery section. I was in awe over the variety of foods, especially organic and health foods. Living in the islands for almost 3 years has me appreciating fresh produce and full shelves. And, the frozen foods were in packages you could actually read - not covered in a thick layer or freezer ice proving how many times it had thawed and refrozen.

And, yesterday we went window shopping at couple of furniture stores and I found a Tuesday Mornings! I found an angel yard ornament that Steve rolled his eyes over, but I love it. That store has a little of everything in it. One never knows what will show up on their shelves. Too bad I have no idea how to get back there. I am so directionally challenged it isn't funny. Perhaps, for the pocketbook, it is a good thing I don't know how to get back there. :-) All the shopping opportunites are incredible!

I spent last evening browsing through my Mother's Day present from Steve - a large coffee table size book, The Story of Hollywood: An Illustrated History by Gregory Paul Williams. It is filled with wonderful b/w photographs of movie stars and the buildings, including the libraries that were burned and demolished as Hollywood grew. I started reading it after I got through all the pictures and it goes all the way back to when a group of Native Americans lived in the area and the Spanish Catholic priests came. This is a book I am going to savor. I only found one picture of Cary Grant in the whole book, but I still love it. The woman we were out to dinner with the other night said her cats were named after Hugh Grant and Tom Cruise. I just smiled and said I wasn't much into the male actors of today. If I were to choose a Grant, it would be Cary. :-) However, I am a Richard Gere fan because he does romances I like, including Autumn in New York, which is on right now and I am somewhat watching out of the corner of my eye. I have never been a Wynona Ryder fan, but in the last two days I have encountered two of her movies. I watched a good portion of Girl, Interrupted last night, which stars Ryder and Jolie, neither of whom are favorites of mine, but the movie certainly held my attention. It is based on the memoir of the same name that addresses the author's 17 months in a psychiatric ward. The book received excellent reviews and after seeing the last portion of the movie I want to read it. I remember reading Joanne Greenburg's I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, which is still in print and read by teens today, when I was a teen and was totally drawn to the book. I was fascinated by the idea of being that close to madness and being able to rejoin the "regular" world again. Mental illness fascinates teens as the mood swings of puberty can certainly feel like a form of madness!

Back to dealing with email.

Happy Mother's Day to one and all. Steve left me chocolate filled crescent rolls for breakfast before he went golfing. :-) My daughter Mary and family sent the most beautiful irises that beautify the coffee table. And Christine, my favorite young mother who is the librarian now at the Montessori School I worked at in the islands sent an e-card. Monica will be calling this afternoon. So, this Mom is happy. My girls have remembered! :-)

I had a lazy morning of tea and chocolate and the newspaper in bed. I'm reading William Nicholson's Seeker, the first book in the Noble Warriors series. Three very interesting young characters join together to discover what the weapon is that the kingdom of Radiance plans to use to destroy the Nomana, a group of warriors who protect the meek and the One and All god. The Wildman is the most interesting of the three as I can see him dressed like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. Basically he is a pirate who steals what he wants and thinks he can become a noble warrior and "steal" their peace for himself. The Seeker is the gentle one - he was supposed to become a teacher but wants more than anything else to become a Noble Warrior, even more since his older brother Blaze has been cleansed and sent out of the community. Morning Star is a thinker who can see the emotions people are feeling as colors that surround them. She is seeking her mother. The three of these 16-year-old together will be a force to be dealt with.

Haven't had as much time to read as I would like - life just keeps getting deliciously in the way of reading. :-) For example, we went to a Legends minor league baseball game Friday night. The weather was wonderful and the between innings antics of the mascots were very funny. Granted, the players on both teams were not great, but I enjoy baseball when the innings go fast and these did! Lots of strike outs and foul balls. More went into the stands than out in the field. Roger Clemens' son plays third base, but he sure isn't a batter. The little kids were so much fun to watch as they ran around with their baseball mitts on, hoping to catch a ball.

Tuesdays are not a day to try and sleep in. The trash truck comes by before 6 a.m. and then just when I start to fall back to sleep Steve's alarm goes off. And, that triggers Sophie to begin talking, which she does until she has us both awake. Then she goes back to sleep! If I try to go back to sleep I then get woke up by the truck that picks up recyclables. So, it is a good morning to curl up in bed and read - which I have been doing.

The trip back home from Greenville on Saturday was a tiring one as it rained most of the way - sometimes hard but mostly just enough to make the spray from the trucks a pain as far as visibility goes. Lots of people on the road too, making travel even more difficult. I had such a tension headache when I got home I just sat while Steve made yummy chili and we watched the Kentucky Derby on TV. Dominican, my favorite, was way back in the running so I wouldn't have won anything anyway. I crawled into bed and gave my headache over to Tylenol P.M.

Sunday we went window shopping for bedroom furniture. I think I found the suite I want, but we have a few more stores to check out first. Then we spent some time in Lowe's looking at landscaping plants. I think we are going to put in a couple of Japanese maple trees since we both love them. Not sure what else but it did get me in the mood and I weeded the flower beds in front of the house yesterday. All we have right now are pansies, which are not a favorite of mine, as far as flowers go. We have lots of work to do on this yard, but that's the fun of it. Steve gave me landscape software so I am going to start playing with that to see what I might come up with. Would like to put a swing in one corner of the yard with lilacs or roses near it.

I am sure we have all heard the saying, "Once in a blue moon" about how rarely, if ever, something happens. Guess that is what made me pick up Hila Feil's Blue Moon - a paperback reprint of a 1990 Gothic style mystery set on Cape Cod. I had to chuckle when I realized the teenage girl was an au pair, which certainly has a racier connotation in teen literature today with Melissa de la Cruz's Au Pairs series, which is set in the Hamptons and has rich teens involved in activities very adult in nature. I read a couple of them and that was enough for me, but I am sure teenage girls find these a guilty voyeuristic pleasure. Kind of like watching Paris Hilton's antics because you are disgustedly fascinated. Back to Blue Moon, which is a beautiful coming of age story about naive 17-year-old Julia whose parents have divorced and is shipped off to take care of the 8-year-old stepdaughter of a self-centered soap opera writer. Molly is the exact opposite of her outgoing blond stepmother - she is dark and quiet and observes the world around her with big sad eyes. Julia learns Molly's mother drowned - suicide, perhaps. Molly is sure her mother's spirit haunts her family home and she is very upset when her stepmother begins to remodel the home. Weird things take place like paint refusing to dry and mysterious footsteps appearing in still wet floors. Julia and Molly are inseparable until the mysterious Sean asks her to sit for a portrait. Although she knows he is too old for her, Julia falls for him and ignores the guy her own age who is right in front of her. Add fog banks, a village that now resides under the sea, and a young girl searching for her mother in her old sailboat and the Gothic theme swirls around the reader. A delightful "safe" read for the romance and/or mystery reader 12 and older.

What a busy few days. The drive over from Lexington on Wednesday was a delight. Partly because I had gotten my spring semester grades done and I was in a good mood about that, but mainly because I am listening to The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. No wonder she received a huge advance for this first novel - it is fascinating! Henry is born with Chrono-Impairment, a condition that sends him traveling through time, even arriving where he already is and interacting with himself. But, so he doesn't affect the time period in which he arrives or leaves, he comes with nothing and leaves with nothing, including clothes, which make some of his travels more than a bit interesting. But this is much more than a time travel book, it is an enduring love story between Henry and Clare, who he meets when she is only six, but knows one day he will marry her. Clare grows up accepting that Henry arrives naked in the secluded meadow on her family's South Haven, MI property. Henry helps her with homework and plays chess with her as they wait for her to grow into a woman. When he is isn't with Clare, Henry works a normal job as a librarian in the Newberry Library in Chicago. Many of his time travels take him back to the library at night so he keeps an extra set of clothes in his office. The beauty of this book is the quiet joy Henry and Clare find in each other, no matter what time periods they are in together, but the here and now is the sweetest. I have a little over a CD left to listen to and I suspect I may end up crying before I am done.

On a lighter note - I have Emily Gravett's Wolves next to me on my desk in the office, where I am wrapped up in a heated blanket because it is so darn cold in here! I am glad I work from home most of the time. BRRR!! The cover art in itself made me pick up the book. It is off white with a funky looking bunny on the bottom looking up at the title. Then I chuckled in delight as I read the "reviews" on the back - "Every burrow should own this!" - The Daily Carrot. "A rip-roaring tail." - The Hareold. Gravett has me chuckling before I even open the book. And then I am thoroughly captivated by this quirky picture book as rabbit is at the library to check out a book on wolves from West Bucks Public Burrowing Library. :-) There may be few words, but what is happening around rabbit as he has his head burrowed in the big red book on wolves is hilariously wolfy! Let's just say rabbit learns a lot about wolves, including what one of their favorite foods just happens to be. Don't worry - "no rabbits were eaten during the making of this book." The publisher information lists it at ages 4-8, but this one will delight the adult reading it with their little one as much as it will the child, if not more! This one stays in my "gramma collection" to read to my grandkids. But, do buy it for your primary level library - the kids will love it!

This afternoon is our tea and snacks gathering with our graduates and then the ceremony itself at 7:00. Wish it had been earlier as I would have driven home tonight, but that is too late. I didn't care much for driving through the mountains in the dark like I did when Sophie and I drove home for the first time. So, tonight is girls' night - we are going to watch Sleepless in Seattle, which I haven't seen in years. All I can say is that I wish my hair looked like Meg Ryan's in that movie. I am not a big Tom Hanks fan and never have been, but I love Meg Ryan. My favorite movie of her's is one that didn't get much attention, I.Q., with Ryan as the brilliant niece of Albert Einstein, delightfully played by Walter Matthau. It is a laugh out loud fun romantic comedy with Uncle Albert playing cupid. Also love French Kiss with Kevin Kline. We have our own copy of this one and my stomach hurts in sympathy as Meg Ryan's lactose intolerant character, Kate, pigs out on delicious French cheese while on a train and suffers greatly for it! Hey, I just saw a Meg Ryan movie listed on B&N I haven't seen - Flesh and Bone. Blockbuster here I come when I get home! :-)

Now back to sorting books in my messy office as I prepare for lots of fall semester workshops.

Just looked at the pictures of the Lipizzaner Stallions from last night. None of them came out good enough to keep. They had the stadium lights down and used flood lights, making pictures from where we say just blurs of bright light. It was a great show, with amazingly well trained horses. To basically go from a stand to all four feet off the ground, with a rider on his back, is pretty darn impressive. It was so cute to see all the little girls down on the floor pretending to be horses during the intermission. Lots of them left with a stuffed Lipizzaner. I remembered the Marguerite Henry novel about a young boy Hans and he desire to work with the stallions. Sadly, The White Stallion of Lipizza is out of print, but there are lots of used copies available on B&N and Amazon.

Steve headed out to his first day volunteering at Habitat for Humanity. Too bad it is such a chilly day. I was grateful he turned the heat on this morning when he got up. So Sophie and I have a quiet Saturday to ourselves. Just watching the birds out the window has tired her out - she's fast asleep in her bed. I was going to go down to Educator's Saturday at Barnes and Noble near us but we didn't get Steve's car picked up yesterday. Will do that after he gets home today. Wow! Just got a phone call from the sales woman - had to give her a credit card number to hold the car as someone tried to buy it out from under us.

I have a copy of Titanic: The Ship of Dreams in front of me - Scholastic's paper engineered title that is a mix of fictional narrative by a young boy on the ship, information/data about the ship and other events of the time period, as well as flaps to lift and a handful of elaborate pop-ups. The one of the Titanic itself that folds out and up won't make it through but a couple circulations in a library, but it is a great title to have for in-library use. The fictional narrative is based on an actual young survivor of the disaster. Elementary and MS age readers will enjoy exploring the flaps and reading the information, but from a librarian's perspective these books don't hold up under use. At $18.99 I'd buy it for a young reader who is interested in the Titanic, but would not put it in the circulating collection of a library.

Okay - now to work on summer school syllabi!

It's Friday and I am almost caught up with grading paperwork! We are going see the Lipizzaner Stallions tonight. This is their 37th year of touring. I was browsing the web site http://www.lipizzaner.com/lipizzaner_frameset.asp and saw they even have a place to buy horses. It is a good thing we don't have room for a horse! I had an Appaloosa in Wisconsin and though I am an awful rider, I loved her - she was more of a big pet, which isn't a good reason to have a horse - they need to be ridden, at least she did. I sold her to a barrel racer and last I heard Velvet was doing great.

Other good news is I should be getting my car back to myself this weekend. :-) I can jump in the car and head off to Half-Price Books and B&N any time I want. And, I may even go explore the big mall across town. Steve has finally decided on a car after driving lots of them. It is my favorite of the bunch too - a very pretty dark blue Saab convertible. I still like my Santa Fe better though - I can see everything from up high. And, we can fit even 3 sets of bookcases in my car with the back seats down - you can barely get into the backseat of his car. We are supposed to pick it up today or tomorrow. Looking forward to weekend drives with the top down as we explore Kentucky.

Was looking through some of the picture books I brought with me from my office at ECU and had to stop and read Delilah D. at the Library by Jeanne Willis. The illustrations by Rosie Reeve are an absolute delight. Her facial expressions for this little, very opinionated girl, with an even more vivid imagination, will bring a smile to any reader's face, but especially to a librarian's. I remember little girls like Delilah D., who loved to tell stories and get the other kids involved. They would get so involved they forgot it is imaginary, as is Delilah D.'s homeland - "a tiny little island between Jafrica and Smindia." The librarian had never heard of it and, heaven forbid, they forgot to put it on the world maps! I like Delilah D's idea of what should occur in a library - trapezes to swing on to reach high books, and a man walks around the library delivering cupcakes. Library Anne is dealing with Delilah D. well but this is when she remembers that there were days she wished she were an astronaut. :-) An absolute gotta have book for primary level libraries and a wonderful book to use to introduce rules in the library with kindergarten. The other reason I love this book is Delilah D. reminds me very much of our granddaughter Allyson, who has as vivid of an imagination! :-)

Decided I could take the time out to blog since I am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in relation to grading. It is hard to believe this semester is basically over. I drive to Greenville next week for graduation and that's it. I'm teaching summer school which starts in May so I won't have much of a break, but the grading frenzy will be over for a bit.

It is a dreary day after a night of thunder and rain. Even Sophie is curled up on her bed - she knows what you are supposed to do on days like today. Too bad our fireplace doesn't work yet. It looks very pretty, but the gas line is not in so we need to do that before next winter for sure. Yesterday was so hot and muggy we turned on the air conditioning and today feels like fireplace weather. Steve did get the garbage disposal in while I was in Greenville last week. I am very glad I was not here as it took several trips to Lowe's and he basically re-plumbed the entire area under the sink. Little quirky things the builder did, or didn't do, like put in the wiring for the garbage disposal and not the disposal, have us bemused. Put in a fireplace, but not the gas lines. We have screens, and extras in the garage, for every window in the house except for the master bedroom window. But I absolutely love this house and the area we live in so I can't complain too loudly.

After reading Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes I needed a softer read! Picoult's novel is not written for teens so the multiple narrators in the book include the parents of the boy who did the shooting. My heart bled for them as I read their disbelief and pain. And the distant mother, a judge, whose daughter was one of the survivors, and the childhood friend, of the shooter. So many perspectives - none of them easy to read. However, I believe this book should be in high school libraries and discussed with teens. I shook my head as I read about how it was expected and accepted in the popular group for them to harass the geeky kids. They saw it as "part of their job" to stay cool. This is a book I will not forget, especially since I finished it the day of the Virginia Tech shootings.

The kinder/softer book I chose to read is Babyface by Norma Fox Mazer. It was written back in the mid 90s and Harcourt has brought it back in an attractive paperback format. If the original hardback isn't in MS/JH libraries, the paperback should be added. Babyface is a very immature 14-year-old who is just now coming to the realization that her parents are not perfect. Most of us remember when that occurred to us in relation to our own parents, but for me it was much younger than fourteen. But, Toni, called Babyface by her parents, was sheltered from the reality of her dysfunctional family. Her parents had been ready to divorce when they found out about the pregnancy, 15 years after their first daughter. The oldest daughter, Martine, bears the emotional scars of living in a household fraught with anger, fighting, and discontent. She vividly remembers her father hitting her mother. It only happened once, but that one time left emotional scars that impact every relationship she has had with a man. While staying with Martine after their overweight father has a heart attack, Toni's naive view on life is burst by Martine and Toni begins to leave childhood behind and see the world around her, including her domineering best friend Julie, as they really are. One of the best coming of age novels I have read. Yes, there is angst and turmoil, but no one is raped or murdered and the language is mild. Just want I needed! :-) My favorite Norma Fox Mazer book is Out of Control which addresses the aftermath of a sexual harrassment incident in the school hallway, from the perspective of the girl and the boys involved as well as other teens at the school. A real eyeopener, but then again, that is why I love Mazer. All of her books make you think!

Sorry it has been a week since I wrote. What a busy week it has been. I left for Greenville on Wednesday and had 9 hours in the car to listen to a book and settle my emotions down. It worked. I listened to Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries - the first 3 books - and found myself laughing out loud. I loved the movies and was surprised that Mia is a tall skinny blonde and that her father is very much a part of her life. The grandmother figure is also very different - no way would Julie Andrews play her as brassy as she is, with her eyeliner tattooed on, a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. The scenery between Lexington and Greenville is stunning - such beautiful countryside. I am glad I was able to drive both ways in the daylight this time. The mountains are much less stressful when you can see the road farther ahead than where your headlights shine.

Had a great time on Saturday morning at the NCLA Intellectual Freedom Committee and the NC School Librarian Assn. Intellectual Freedom Workshop. I had the pleasure of being on a panel with Pat Scales, who received the SIRS/AASL Intellectual Freedom Award back in the 1980s for a wonderful proactive program at her school where she discussed the edgy books with both parents and students. She had wonderful advice for the participants. I loved how she reminded them that free choice also includes the student's right to reject. We also discussed AR and Lexiles a bit and how inappropriate books show up in elementary school collections because the reading level is 4.0 but the subject matter is certainly for teens. Her example was Perks of Being a Wall Flower by Steven Chbosky. A wonderful book, but certainly YA due to the content and the teen language. The concept of sitting back and watching events and relationships unfold around you is one teens know well. A must have book for older YAs, grades 10-12. It isn't censorship to remove that book from an elementary school collection and send it on to the HS librarian, it is good professional judgement. It is not uncommon to take over a position and discover a few titles that were bought for the reading level, not the content - especially now with the collection being determined by AR in many schools. Not only was the content of the panel presentation great, I was able to meet ECU students I had, have, or will have in courses.

I arrived back home Saturday evening and have been on the go ever since. ECU must have been doing some work on the network on Sunday as I couldn't get into either my email or Blackboard to grade so I spent the day unpacking the rest of the boxes that came in or ones I couldn't reach in the pile in my office. We went to Sam's and bought double bookcases for my office. That was an experience in itself as they couldn't find them so I sat inside and waited and Steve sat outside in the car, near the pick-up lane, and waited. I just happened to look up and realize they had brought them to the front but no offer to help us load them. That was fun - my shoulders still know it. There was a lady behind up picking up a heavy yard ornament and no one was around to help her either so Steve helped her load it into the back of her truck. Clearly service is not a big deal at Sam's! Not like Lowe's here in town - they were wonderful with helping us load Steve's grill.

On to grading!

I write this blog with a heavy heart this morning after reading more about the Virginia Tech shootings. Mary told me about it yesterday afternoon when she called as I normally don't turn the TV on until the evening news during the weekdays so I didn't know what had happened. I decided I didn't want to know more until Steve got home and I wasn't here alone. I remember how scared I was when Mary called the morning of 9/11 to ask me where Steve was, knowing I was going to say in his office, which was in the World Trade Center. The abject fear set in when she told me to turn the TV on and I saw the second plane hit. I thought I had lost yet another loved one and wasn't sure I could handle it. I don't think I breathed again until I found out Steve had missed his plane and was still in Houston - they turned his plane around on the tarmac.

As I watched the news last night I relived the hours I waited to find out if Mic was alive or not, knowing that the chances were slim. I know how the Virginia Tech students' parents felt as they tried to find out if their child was one of the dead or wounded. First it is raw fear, then we go into some type of auto pilot, at least I did. I found out a 2 a.m. that Mic was missing while hiking in New Zealand and I went in and taught my classes that day. It wasn't until I called New Zealand at 2 a.m. the next morning to ask if they had found Mic that I learned he had died in a fall and they had found his body. That was when I wished my body and mind could go on auto pilot like it had the day before. It did not. The parents of the students who died are in my prayers as are the students' siblings and everyone else who loves them. No parent should have to experience the pain of a child dying. The pain doesn't go away, the scar tissue on the heart just deadens the pain a bit and you learn to live again, but questioning why you are still alive and your child is not. And incidents like this tear off the scar tissue and the wound is raw and for me it is April 1998 again.

I am sorry I cannot write about the book I just finished reading yesterday morning, before Mary called. It is Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes, about a HS shooting where 10 are left dead and many more wounded. Too real to write about at the moment. Hold your kids close, no matter what their age.

This is my foreign exchange daughter Annika and her husband Nicke outside the pyramids in Egypt. Annie came to live with us in Alaska when she was 17. I was hoping she would teach the kids and I Finnish, but she speaks Swedish! She quickly became another daughter to me, and we have been close ever since. Anne and Nicke were married in the islands, with Steve and I as witnesses, last summer. Anyway, Egypt is a favorite vacation spot for Finns as it is only a 5 hour flight for them. I had to laugh when Annika wrote that the guys who basically "threw them up on the camels" and took the picture kept Nicke up on the camel until he paid them an exorbitant amount of money. He threw such a fit when they let him down they gave some of it back. Never try to trick a Finnish man!

Now I know I need to start taking more pictures of Sophie and writing down her antics in more than this blog. I just read in the ALA Direct electronic newsletter that Vicki Myron, Director of the Spencer Iowa PL just received a $1.5 million book deal for the story of Dewey Readmore, the library cat. See his life story, which made me smile on this gray and dreary morning: http://spencerlibrary.com/deweybio.htm However, my Sophie is cuter than he was and she can match all of his antics and she was a stray kitten left in an abandoned building. Hmmm - a retirement writing project - give her a few more years to entertain me. :)

I woke up this morning to a car accident - crashing sounds and horns beeping, etc. - but it came from my kitchen! I came staggering out of bed at 6:30 not sure I dreamt it or what the heck had happened. Apparently Steve has his sound quite loud on his laptop, which is on the bar in the kitchen and he opened something up this morning that sounded like a car wreck! I think he was worried I was going to be more than cranky about being woke up but I just grabbed a diet coke and curled up in bed and read for a bit before I took him to work so I could have my car. No, he has not made up his mind about a car yet. Wish he would! Not sure my sending him URLs to cars at local dealerships yesterday helped or just irritated him. The good news is I had breakfast in bed - guess he figured that would ease some of my grumpiness about being so rudely awakened.

Heard on the radio news on the way back home this morning that Kurt Vonnegut died last night at 84 years old. I haven't attempted to read one of his 14 alternate universe novels since I was in high school. Perhaps at this point in my life I might appreciate them more. Guess I will have to get one of them as an audiobook so I can listen to it on the drive back and forth to Greenville.

Not sure I would call it an alternate universe, but I certainly was intrigued by Gracehope, the under ice colony in Greenland, in Rebecca Stead's debut novel First Light. This is a great MS/JH novel - not only because it is a wonderful coming-of-age story but because it has a focus on global warming. There are a number of good nonfiction books for teens on global warming, including Al Gore's YA edition of An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming, but basically no novels. I did a search on B&N and could find nothing - a few adult SF novels but nothing like this. Twelve-year-old Peter is excited about his trip to Greenland with his glaciologist father and scientist mother until he realizes how boring it really is. So he starts exploring the area with one of the sled-dogs, dogs that later pull him out into a blizzard. While lost he finds a red circle in the glacial ice that looks very much like the mitochondrial DNA his mother has drawn on a piece of paper. Curiosity is killing the cat and Peter heads back out onto the ice to find the red circle again. At the very same time Thea and Mattias arrive on the surface, having found the tunnel out of Gracehope, a colony hidden under the ice whose residents have special gifts and intelligence much beyond the normal human. Mattias' fall into a crevasse results in Peter meeting the cousins and helping them back down the steep tunnel into Gracehope where he is fascinated by the lights in the ice and how self-sufficient they are. Of course, there is a link between Peter and the colonists, which is why his parents have been searching for Gracehope for many years. They know that global warming is destroying the icecap and eventually, Gracehope with it. An entertaining novel with science and fantasy woven into a grand, though very chilly, adventure.

All for today.

I may have gotten up at 6:00 with Steve yesterday but I sure didn't today. I still don't feel like I woke up all the way and it is 2:30. I think the rain and wind makes me "creakier" than usual. And, moving is doing a number on my joints. I have climbed, squatted, reached, bent, and turned my body in more ways in the last couple of weeks than I have in the last couple of years. And, I haven't lost a pound in the process. I am sure that has nothing to do with our eating out more than we should because either I can't find the right pot, not that I tried that hard, or am too tired to even think about it. Thank goodness I made more than one meal's worth of my yummy spaghetti. No cooking tonight either! :-)

Noticed in Monday's Lexington paper that cartoonist Johnny Hart, the creator of B.C., died last Saturday. I had no idea that cartoon had been around since 1958. I wonder if someone else will pick it up or we have seen the last of the delightful stone age characters. He has always brought a smile to my face, sometimes bemused and sometime a grin, but always made me think. I just went to B&N online to check to see if I could order a compilation and they are all out of print. They were published in the the late 1980s and early 1990s. But, I did find a couple of in print collections of For Better or For Worse strip by Lynn Johnston, which is also one of my "always reads". So You're Going to be a Grandma! is one I should have, but with 5 grandkids latter I am not quite at the point Elly, the grandmother in the strip, is with her first. I love this strip because the family changes and ages just as a real life family does. Teaching: Is a Learning Experience would be a great gift for new teachers as it covers Elizabeth's first year of teaching in a northern village in Canada. This strip has been around since the late 1970s and won tons of awards. When I was getting my MLS at the University of Hawaii my Mom used to write me long letters so I felt less lonesome and she always sent me cow related cartoons from The Far Side by Gary Larson. I still smile and think of Mom when I see those crazy cartoons - granted, they aren't favorites of mine, but those cows have sentimental value! Mic collected the Garfield collections. Comic strips have been a part of my life since I was a little kid as my parents always got the newspaper and we all read the comics.

Graphic novels have become the rage as of late, but in realty we have been reading comic strips in graphic format for years. Sadly, many parents and educators have seen this long term involvement with characters as not reading, but just think about how much character development goes into the ongoing strips. They are no different than the series books we read, or those by a favorite author because we love his/her style of writing. High School librarians may want to take a look at The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006, edited by Dave Eggers and illustrated by Art Spiegelman and An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Comics, and True Stories by Ivan Brunetti. We need to read them first so we have some foundation knowledge as well. :-)

Now to go break down boxes - of yeah, have to unpack them first! The movers are coming to pick up the boxes Friday afternoon.

Thought I'd share this cute pic of my Sophie. Not sure what she was looking at outside, but it sure had her attention. Maybe it was that kamikazi bumblebee that dive bombed me last week! She has discovered how much fun a dime can be when knocked off the counter onto the tile floor in the middle of the night. She's been playing nightime dime hockey, much to our dismay, but you can't help laughing at how smart and sassy she can be.

Good morning from beautiful sunny Lexington. In the 30s still this a.m. but such a pretty view out of my home office window. We have an area designated for a walking path and park-like area so they can't build houses across the street so I look out at trees and grass rather than at the front of other houses. Right now the view is obstructed by the recyclable bin but I am waiting until it warms up a bit to haul that back into the garage. We drink so much Diet Coke that we easily fill up the bin in a week's time, but I like living in a city that requires you to recycle.

We are still car shopping for Steve. Nothing definite as of yet, but the test driving is fun. Well, test riding on my part - this is his car, after all. He got the idea that one car was not an option after I came right out and said so! :-) We had only one car on St. Thomas and unless I wanted to drive him to work in the a.m., which doesn't sound good to this non-morning person, I was stuck at home. I didn't mind that on the island as once you saw the touristy stuff there was nothing else to do. But in Lexington there are at least 3 different bookstores and all kinds of other things to explore!

We had a quiet Easter Sunday unpacking and making a ham dinner together. Then watched a bit of TV while I updated addresses. Mary called and I could hear Michael hopping around the house from all the Easter candy. I am still having dark chocolate bunny ear withdrawal as Steve didn't give me a chocolate Easter bunny and there were no kids or grandkids around to bite off bunny ears from! I know I can't be the only one who only likes the ears. I think I could make a fortune if I came up with a yummy coffee flavored foiled wrapped dark chocolate bunny ears Easter box of chocolates. :-)

Hardly a spring time book, but I just finished reading Vivian Vande Velde's All Hallow's Eve: 13 Stories. I love her horror short stories and YA novels. They are scary enough to be fun but not gruesome and bloody like the adult horror of Koontz and King, which I have read some of, but it is a bit intense for me. I pick and choose of theirs what I read. The creepiest story in this collection is the one about the adopted teen who hates her parents and insists on going to visit her biological parents on Halloween, dressed as a princess. You know, their little princess has found them at last! They are in costume as well when she arrives, dressed as Raggedy Ann and Andy and welcome her in but they are hardly innocent "dolls" - they are vampires. Mom bites her on the neck and then spits out her blood because she has their blood in her so they can't feed on her. Nor can they turn her into a vampire so she is worthless to them - just like the bunch of other babies they gave up for adoption. They shove her out the front door. She drives back home to her other parents, but rigor mortis has begin to set in. Creepy, creepy, creepy!! This collection is right up there with her earlier collection, Being Dead.

That's it for today. :-)

Not a great pic, but this shows our yesterday snow flurries from our deck, looking out the backyard. What I love about this house is that it looks like we have a huge green area behind us because we are the middle house at the end of the block so we look up between all the houses. Sophie has all kinds of places to explore, if she ever would get over being a wuss! She will only go outside if I am out there. It may have something to do with Mommy screaming and dodging a huge bumblebee which was most certainly chasing me the first day we got here! I know - I'm a wuss too! :-)

We have snow on the ground! I enjoyed the snow flurries yesterday but poor Steve, with his still thin island blood, was chilled to the bone. However, it was his idea to go stand in line for a collector's bottle of Kentucky bourbon at 8:30 in the morning. He already had his ticket and came home to get me out of a nice cozy bed where I was reading a new Vivian Vande Velde collection of deliciously scary horror stories. After we came home to warm up and have breakfast we decided to run some errands - more shelf liner for the kitchen and bathrooms - and then Steve decided we were going to be true Kentuckians and we headed to the Keeneland Race Track for the opening day of the horse races. I was bundled up in a long wool coat, gloves and a hat and still froze my bippy sitting up in the stands - except for when I was jumping up and down and screaming for my horses, which never won! Thank goodness we were only betting the minimum, $2 on a horse, as I picked mine by the name I liked the best. Not a good way to win money, but that's not the point for us. It is just fun to watch the horses and people watching is... interesting to say the least. It had to be in the low 30s and there was young woman in a tube top! We left after the 4th race and it had begun to snow as we walked back to the car and snowed the rest of the afternoon and evening, much to Sophie's dismay. She had never seen snow before and wasn't about to go out on the deck with white stuff covering it!

Well since I am in a horsey mood this morning I have been thinking about my favorite horse books. When Mic was in upper elementary school he went through a Walter Farley phase and read every single title in the Black Stallion series. I didn't have the heart to tell him that the book was written in 1941 and that Walter Farley was no longer alive when he wrote to him. I guess Random House felt the same way as they had a "form letter" that they responded with. Mic was delighted to get a letter from his favorite author so I just let it be. What I really like about these books is that it is a boy and his horse. Many of the horse books are "girly" books. Wish I had remembered Island Stallion as it is set on a Caribbean island. I had students in the Virgin Islands who were into horses. There was a small horse track on St. Thomas, which was in very sad shape and the same horse always won, but the West Indians loved the races there too. There was a group of women on the island who rescued the race horses when they were past their prime for racing. A very sad situation. Keeping a horse on a Caribbean island is not exactly cheap. And land is at a premium.

Sadly, Rodman Philbrick's Fire Pony is out of print, but it is also a great horse book for guys. Reminds me a bit of Tex by S.E. Hinton with a younger brother idolizing an older brother who has more than a few problems. Eleven-year-old Roy's older brother Joe "rescues" him from a foster home and they end up on the Bar None ranch, where Roy hopes they can settle in. But Joe has a fascination with fire which is going to put an end to their idyllic days of working horses. Philbrick is better know for Freak the Mighty and The Last Book in the Universe, which are also great MS level books, but we all have a favorite by an author and Fire Pony is my favorite Philbrick book, but I admit I haven't read all of his novels.

Steve is making yummy breakfast burritos and the aroma of coffee is wafting by my nose from the kitchen so I'm headed for my next caffeine fix. Already had my Diet Coke for the morning.
:-)

I have muscles that ache I didn't even know that I had! Moving literally hurts! Monday I was up at 7:00 cleaning, packing and waiting for the movers who didn't show up until after 10:00 when they were supposed to be there at 8:00. I went up and down the stairs more times than I want to think about hauling stuff down to the car. My final trip down was around 4 p.m. with Sophie in her kennel and we hit the road. Driving through the mountains of West Virginia at night was interesting to say the least. Sophie was wonderful until about an hour and 1/2 out of Lexington when she had enough. She started out quietly fussing but by the time we pulled into the driveway at 12:30 she was caterwauling. I think I was happier to see her out of her kennel than she was! Was back up early Tuesday unpacking the car and putting away what we had already brought over along with putting down shelf liner in the kitchen. Only break was to go out to eat - yummy bison burger at Ted's. We stopped for more shelf liner at Walmart and a quick trip into Lowe's where I drooled over red bud and Japanese pear trees. Can't wait to start working on the yard. Yesterday was spent totally on my feet with the movers arriving at 8:30 along with the very cold weather. I was numb by the time they left as the door was open the whole time. Didn't sit down until Steve got home from work and moved a couple of big boxes so I could get to my recliner and put my feet up. It was trying to get out of the recliner after I relaxed a bit that was difficult. But, nothing like how sore I was this a.m. I am staying off my feet and catching up on email and grading today. The unpacking is going to have to wait for a day or I won't be able to walk!

I finished listening to Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi. I am glad I stuck it out even though it was hardly one of my favorite books, but I learned a great deal about the Muslim culture and how women are treated. The analysis of novels by Henry James, Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Austin and others didn't do a thing for me other than when she related the characters to the young women who took her "class", which she held in her home after she quit teaching at the university. There were times I felt like I was back in my English literature classes in undergraduate school years ago and found myself losing interest, but it was worth mentally pinching myself to stay with it, waiting for the "good stuff" when she talked about her life and that of her students and others in her life.

I had found a CD audiobook of Mary Higgins Clark's Mount Vernon Love Story for next to nothing on the sale rack at Barnes and Noble and it kept me entertained through the mountains while I drove. Changing CDs was an experience though! As I listened to the introduction to the novel by Mary Higgins Clark, I realized I had stumbled onto the first book she wrote in 1968 then titled Aspire to the Heaven: A Portrait of George Washington. It had long been out of print but her fans brought it back into popularity and it is available again. Her research base for this novel is clearly evident as is her respect and love for the characters. She brought Martha, who her family and loved ones knew as Patsy, to life as well as Washington himself, who had been in love with his best friend's wife for years. A delightful non-threatening way to learn about the man who was our first president. The teenage girls who like her mysteries will be surprised by this one. It will be the historical romance readers who will enjoy it most.

Back to grading!

Woe is me - I think I may becoming a morning person! I was awake before 7 a.m. and I can't even blame it on Sophie or the sun as she was still asleep when I woke up and it is dreary and gray today. I tried to snuggle in my down pillows and force myself back into delicious sleep, no such luck. All kinds of things relating to books, my classes, and our new house were scampering about in my head. So I gave up and got up. Well, not completely - I am sitting in bed with the laptop, a Diet Coke and a Luna bar. And, I have a very perturbed cat sitting next to me giving the laptop the evil eye because it is in her place!

Went to dinner with a couple of friends last night at a really cute little Italian restaurant, Atavola, that I didn't even know existed. I am not much into Italian due to the cheeses but I had scrumptious mahi and rice that were lightly flavored with citrus and coconut milk. Great food and good company, what more could you want for a Saturday night? Came home and caught the last part of the Jodi Foster movie, Flightplan, where her little girl is kidnapped and hidden on a plane. Very interesting - would like to see the entire movie. Foster is one of my favorite actors and my favorite of her movies is Nell, about a woman who was raised in a remote cabin by a mother whose speech was affect by a stroke so Nell speaks the same way. Beautifully done movie and a stunning performance by Foster.

Now I want to talk about a not so stunning book, but one that has stayed with me - Night of the Bat by Paul Zindel. As I was trying to fall back to sleep this a.m. I started thinking about our personal connection to books and why what we abhor or delight in has so much to do with our life experiences. And, we are as likely to remember a book we detested as much as one we loved. Not that I detested Night of the Bat, it just hit too close to my "fear factor". I grew up in a house that had bats in the attic - literally. My parents tried everything they could think of, including pouring DDT down the insides of the walls, but nothing deterred these bats. And, in the heat of the summer they would find their way through cracks and crannies and end up flying around our house. I was terrified of them and the way they would swoop down at you. There were more than a few nights of my screaming my head off and one of my three older brothers chasing it around upstairs with a broom until he killed it and then it being slipped into the woodstove to be incinerated. I can close my eyes and hear the flittering of their wings and the chittering in the walls at night as they left for their nightly feeding on the mosquitoes that were in abundance. To this day I am terrified of bats and they are such small little things, but so darn ugly! So you can imagine how I was feeling as I read Zindel's gross-out book about a mutant bat in the Amazon jungle that is the size of a small car and intent on sucking out your brains. I thought it might be therapy for me to read this. So there I was, laying on my stomach reading, safe and sounds in our big king sized bed, when Steve came quietly in behind me and touched my foot to get my attention. Oh boy did he get my attention! I let out a scream that would have matched Drew Barrymore's little girl scream in ET in its volume and intensity. So, what are the chances of me ever forgetting this book? Zip!! The writing is mediocre and the characters are not well developed, but the fear 15-year-old Jake has as the huge bat is advancing toward him hits too close to home for me. Why books stay with us can be very personal!

From a librarians point of view, I would have all of Zindel's gross-out books in my MS and HS library because they are quick and easy reads and will meet the needs of the readers who like horror and an adrenalin rush. All you need to do is put one of them face out and you have teens' attention. The Night of the Bat has a closeup of a bat's face/mouth, with saliva dripping from its fangs. The paperback cover of Reef of Death is of the mutant sea monster - less scary to me than the hardback which shows the legs of a swimmer with the monster coming up from below. Now that is creepy!

I know - I'm weird. Who wakes up thinking about bat books. I am sure it had to do with the fact that one of my students had Zindel's book in a bibliography that I recently graded, but what is somewhat disconcerting is that I have read hundreds of much better written books since I read Zindel's bat book that I have forgotten. That personal connection to a book can make you remember even the ones you most certainly could have forgotten!