Someone Call Mark Teague!

How Do Dinosaurs Use the Library?

How do dinosaurs use the library?

Do they come in boisterous, angry, or wary?

Do they stomp their way to circulation

Demanding or starting an altercation?

Do they visit the children’s room with their child

Then proceed to ignore it and let it run wild?

Do dinosaurs print off some stupid chain letter

Then leave without paying, though they ought to know better?

If a dinosaur has an overdue book

Does she sneak in and hide it in some remote nook

Then a couple days later does she harry the clerks,

Insisting they look harder and calling them jerks?

Do they think any of this works?

No, dinosaurs wouldn’t behave in that way.

They finish a book and return it next day.

They cheerfully own up that they owe a fine

And pay it all up without even a whine.

If they make a copy, they pay for it quickly.

They don’t come in sneezing and coughing and sickly.

Before coming in each dinosaur gave

Their child a brief talk on how to behave.

They write to their congressmen.  They lobby for funds.

They bring the staff cookies (well, maybe just once)!

When they’re good to us, we just want to do more.

Thank you, thank you, Dinosaur!

Greek Letters Don't Scan Well

Light From the Ancient East Or The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco Roman World by Adolph Deissmann
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Deissmann has done what I consider to be typically German research (involving the painstaking collection of material from disparate sources and comparing minute detail - all of which can probably be done these days in seconds with computers) and made it interesting.  He studied the use of common Greek used at the time of the writing of the Gospels as it appears in papyri, stone inscriptions, or ostraca to evaluate whether the Gospels contain neologisms or if there were some prior usage of phrases and vocabulary.  Being that sort of person myself (German extraction - I think I can make fun of us Squareheads - and the sort who combs the Iliad for each killing, lists it, then sorts the information by verb usage and weapon used), I found that fascinating.  It wore thin when he ended with descriptions of what he felt would be a necessary project to create a lexicon and some flowery stuff about religion.  Note where my interest flagged.
This Gutenberg Project edition (read on the Kindle) was an unfortunate mass of intriguing gobbledygook that I was tempted to correct (being almost able to read the German footnotes), but it has none of the Greek available in an intelligible form.  Not that my Koine Greek is anything worth speaking of (I've only had 7 weeks of Ancient Greek and some unofficial study), so I would not really be able to make the comparisons even if Greek characters had been available.  It would not be useful for the serious student.
I am sorely tempted to find out how you can correct these Gutenberg files.  It would be incredibly tedious, time-consuming, and unrewarding financially - which means it's right up my alley.


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Requiem for a Humanist

The Clue Bible: The Fully Authorised History of  "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue", from Footlights to Mornington Crescent by Jem Roberts
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A thorough, if repetitive, study of the history of the antidote to panel games, this read is full of familiar gags.  It takes a similar format to From fringe to flying circus: Celebrating a unique generation of comedy, 1960-1980 and covers much the same people as it starts with the college shows and works its way through ISIRTA and beyond.
If you are looking for sexy photos of Samantha, forget it.  She's apparently not giving out - photos, anyway.
It was all very amusing until I came to the death of Humph at the end and I cried at that and at the description of the funeral, where they played the recording of him playing "We'll Meet Again."  Oh, gosh!
This is all the more touching because Tim, Graeme, and Bill brought me and my husband together.  Okay, maybe it was Alison Bean, but we've already thanked her.


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The Wrong Way to Woo

The Power of Persuasion by Shelagh Watkins

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm not a huge fan of Jane Austen, in fact, I think the zombies improved Pride and Prejudice or, if not the zombies themselves, the kicking of Darcy into the fireplace, which was so richly deserved.  Consequently, Beth Durban's disdain for F. William D'Arcy, the overweening critic at the newspaper, seems to me equally richly deserved.

The style of writing in this novel of modern manners reminds me of some of Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh stories, with meandering digressions and flashbacks giving a snapshot of Beth's travels and past.  Her wanderings take her to places I know as well as to exotic locations: Chichester and Singapore, Boston and New Zealand.  Her life is so full, it's not surprising that romance was not her focus.

I did sort of wonder if it was paranoia that kept D'Arcy popping up.  Was it all in her head?  Is there anyone named D'Arcy in the real world?  And, if there is some man saddled with the name D'Arcy, can't he be forgiven for hating Jane Austen?



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Reminds Me of an Old Boyfriend ...

The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery by Wendy Moore

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was an interesting book, if a bit dry and lacking in illustration.  Hunter's controversy-bedecked life is an interesting one.  He was both admirably correct and terribly wrong on many counts, but relied on his own observations and testing and not on prevailing opinion.  His minute studies of anatomy (thanks to wholesale body-snatching and a ruinous collecting of animals) led him to the conclusion that life on earth evolves.  His study of fossils eroded away any idea that one forty day flood was responsible for the amount of life contained within.  His written work on this idea of the development of life was never published because a fellow scientist suggested he amend "thousands of centuries" to "thousands of years" because it might incite the rabble in those revolutionary times. 

His conservative methods were rejected by other surgeons, he died in debt, his brother-in-law published Hunter's work as his own and then burned the papers, but his legacy lived on through his museum and his students. 

He was not a pleasant man, but he was driven to understand and to share his knowledge, even if what he knew tomorrow was different from what he knew yesterday.  He was not so hidebound that he could not correct even his own conclusions.  A lesson for all of us.

Note: my copy had a different cover. I wish I'd had one with his portrait, so minutely described by the author but conspicuous by its absence in the book.



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A Series of Impossible Events

Ape House by Sara Gruen

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book was so disturbing that I just skimmed it.  I have a problem with the innocent and helpless being put in jeopardy, even in fiction.  I know this is just my problem; I'm dealing with it, okay? 
The premises behind this book are so horrific to me as to be impossible to believe: firstly, that someone who wants to air a reality animal show would pretend to be an animal rights terrorist group, create a front page story of explosives and mayhem to effect the transfer of bonobos from a research facility to this ridiculously public display ... as if no one would notice?  Or that a man would conspire with this group, leading to the disfigurement of his fiancee, let her fish and plants die while she was in hospital, and still want to get back together with her although he's obviously a horndog who would screw anyone.  Why would that person care one whit for her? 
All my complaints aside and despite the speed read that glossed over quite a bit, it was an exciting read.  Somehow, however, I just knew Amanda would go through an apotheosis that turned her into a clean freak.  The mother's finding of the sex toys and zippy-bagging them was ... humorous.  I find it hard to believe that a writer in California would be subjected to the same pressures as an actor, but it is California after all.  If it was meant to be humorously satirical, it just wasn't funny enough.




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Plump and Juicy Mystery

Too Big to Miss by Sue Ann Jaffarian

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Disclaimer: I'm fat, middle-aged, and a former paralegal.
I devoured this in one day.  Most of the ickier bits (the death is a gritty one that's revisited through retrieved screen captures) I skimmed over.  Jaffarian has created some interesting characters, many of them plus-sized which is nice to see.  The mystery was a good one and there is a spot of romance, where Jaffarian falls into the fatal blunder of making the sex "the best [Odelia] ever had."  Writing like that makes me want to bang my head on the desk.  Every now and then I run into an author who has the ovaries to write that the sex was "pretty good ... and worth repeating to see if it got better."  If it's the best, chances are it will only go downhill, you know.  Real life says that sometimes it's really, really good and sometimes it's adequate and sometimes it knocks off socks you weren't even aware you had on. 
Odelia's cherished friend and mentor in the plus-sized world has committed suicide.  She did it on an internet camera, making it fairly obvious what happened ... or did it?  Odelia has her suspicions but the police have called it suicide.  Then Odelia discovers that her friend had many secrets in her life, each more shocking than the next! No! You don't say!  Ahem.  Was one of them the incredibly handsome but poisonous man who came to the funeral?  Or the little man who attacked him, blaming him for the death? 



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Whatta Croc!

Sample clip art for 5 hungry crocodiles

I've got a mess o' crocodile stories coming up for a storytime I'm doing next week as a special program for a Rotary Club Family Lunch, and I thought I'd share a few of my treasures.
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I got the flannelboard poem of "Five Hungry Crocodiles" from Story Place.  I found the black fish in MSPublisher and right-clicked on it, selected Format Picture, then the "Recolor ..." button and I was able to make five fishies in different colors to print off, laminate, and either glue scrap felt or sticks or whatever you choose to the back.

You could use that or "Five Little Monkeys" - where they tease Mr. Crocodile.
Five little monkeys sitting in a tree,
Teasing Mr. Crocodile, "You can't catch me!"
Along came Mr. Crocodile, quiet as could be and SNAP!

Four little monkeys ... etc.

Eileen Christelow has a book version where they don't get eaten, but, I mean, what's the point of that?!

If you want a nicer ending, try Crocodile and Hen, a Bakongo folktale retold by Joan M. Lexau.  There are two versions of this - different illustrators.  One is an easy reader.  Crocodile learns how he and hen are brother and sister, so he can't eat her, however fat and delicious-looking she might be.  I do this one with puppets.

I also do the Monkey and Crocodile story with puppets and foam balls as mangoes. Monkey is fairly fainting with desire for the mangoes he sees ripening on an island in the middle of the river, but he must get past Crocodile.  After convincing Crocodile to take him across in exchange for his monkey heart (the best and most delicious part of a monkey) which he claims to keep in the mango tree, Monkey throws a hard, unripe mango down to Crocodile, who chokes on it.  For older children, I go on to the part where Monkey has now run out of mangoes and faces starvation if he can't get back.  He persuades Crocodile that he's ready to be eaten for being such a baaaaad monkey, but to swallow him whole because he's afraid of being chewed up (or that whole drown-and-tuck-under-a-log-in-the-water-to-soften-up-for-snacking-later for the zoology-obsessed children).  Claiming he's going to run and jump in the crocodile's mouth, he has Crocodile open his mouth so wide he can no longer see, and then jumps on his back, using him as a springboard to the mainland.  Oh, he's a baaaaad monkey!  Crocodile overacts a bit on the choking, but he's such an emo, ya know?

There are a couple of fun crocodile songs, both of which I plan to use.  One is the familiar Crocodile Song with the hand gestures and the other I found on YouTube billed as The Most Annoying Song Ever (which intrigued me immediately).  It's from a German tv show, but English translations are available.

I'm finishing up with making a Schnipp-Schnapp-Schnappi the little crocodile puppet.

Schnipp-Schnapp-Schnappi, Schnappi Schnappi Schnapp!

Teensy Rant

I'd like to talk about decimals.  I'll start with the "Our children's room non-fiction collection is so small that I don't see the point of going out three spaces, much less four."  I understand that there is a jobber who does all this work for us so we don't need the MLIS's cataloging in-house and that company apparently can't discriminate between juvenile and adult collections (maybe without charging more), but still ...

Next up: Y'all, decimals are just like money.
Which is worth more: $90 or $97?
Let's put some numbers in front.
Which is worth more:
$56,790 or $56,797?
$567.90 or $567.97?
Okay, take that zero away.   [Occasionally the jobber puts the zeros in, but they're supposed to leave it out.]
Which is more: 567.9 or 567.97?
What if money were broken into even smaller pieces?  Let's look at this. 
Which is worth more: $900 or $912?
How about 567,900 or 567,912?
Which is more: 567.9 or 567.912?
Here are some trickier ones.
What's worth more: $970.40 or $970.04?
How about 970.4, 970.04, and 970.004?
Or 970.1, 970.004, 970.4?
That was easy, wasn't it?  So, tomorrow when I go to shelve some books, I don't want to see 398.209 coming after 398.24 or smack in the middle of the 398.2s.  Ithankyew.

Next week: The Alphabet.

Hold the Mayo

A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Audio-version.
Perhaps this was annoying because the child-like voice with the excruciatingly plummy accent of the reader grated on me.  It's a tone of voice very popular in theatre because the nasality is very penetrating and projects really well.  Nine cd's of it is very wearing.
On to the story - Why do I expect things in mysteries to make sense?  What sort of infant baptism holds a fragile child by the ankle and dunks them like Achilles?  Why would a murderer hang a body from a statue when leaving it where it was would hide it longer while hanging it would expose the murderer to a bigger chance of being discovered?  Kill, hang the body, leaving the weapon in place?  Oh yes, yes, people under stress do strange things.  Usually, they just run away though, or wipe their fingerprints.
And if Flavia only wears dresses, she must give the villagers a lovely view when she rides Gladys with her feet on the handlebars.
I was surprised by the amount of blood that came from a non-fatal head wound.  Not that I'm a forensics expert or anything, but ... who would have thought the old woman had so much blood in her?
The first book in this series annoyed me by having poison ivy in an English garden.  I keep asking Brits about that and get no clear answer.  I suppose it's far-fetched enough having an 11 year old genius-chemist.
The family conflict is getting old.  You know, I only had one older sister who did things like tie me to chairs so I wouldn't bug her when her friends came over, but even I think this family is out of control.  And the father needs a good smack up-side his head and a torch put to his stupid stamp collection.
What is my problem?
I really appreciated the addition of Porcelain (not sure of spelling because this was the audio) when she behaved with good sense, cutting off exploration of a dark place or fetching help when the plot called for it.  But how old is she?  She has no parents, so where does she live ... besides "London"?
Next time I will read the book (I will keep reading them) because the turn of phrase is good.


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Manage the KIDS?

In all the years I've been doing storytimes, I haven't had nearly the amount of trouble with kids that I've had with the adults that come into storytime with them.  This doesn't mean I don't want them in there, just that I wish they would use some common sense.
Problem #1: Cell phones.  They forget to turn their cell phones off. The cell phone rings during storytime and the adult steps over the children on the way out, talking all the way.  Solution: Start each storytime with the Cell Phone Song:
    I went to the storytime with my mom,
    But she left
    Her cell phone on.
    The cell phone rang
    And she took the call.
    Now we're not allowed back in at all.*
And have the kids pretend to take out their cell phones, turn them off, and put them back in their pockets while glaring meaningfully at the adults.

I also have a sign that used to be posted on the wall (but now that we're in a new library, we can't put anything up until it gets all grungy and lived-in again).  The idea was that if the cell phone rang, the tiger would come out and eat the phone ... and anyone holding it.

These aren't the exact signs - but you get the idea.

Problem #2: Adults talking during storytime, daycare providers/teachers doing their work, or texting.  Rather than shame authority figures in front of their charges, I have a sign I hold up that has the "No cell phones" on one side and the "Please model good listening." on the other.  I may need to flash both.  I do mostly pre-school storytimes, so they can't read and the adults get the message.  If they don't get the message, some day, some day, I may just resort to public shaming.

The best storytime experiences I have had were with groups that had adults who participated.

* This song has more verses that involve restaurants and airlines and gets progressively vitriolic.  I hate cell phones.  Even though I own one, I rarely turn it on. Be in the moment, people!

The Slippery Slope

Not Just a Witch by Eva Ibbotson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Ibbotson writes in the simple declarative sentences of someone telling a bedtime tale ... and then guides the reader gently by the hand into horror.  Because it's a children's book, all has to turn out for the best.  In the meantime, the most unimaginable cruelties can take place. 
There are two witches who were best friends in witching school but had a falling out and went their separate ways.  Because they are "good" witches, they try to do good.  This seems to consist of finding very bad people and either turning them into interesting animals (that are now "nice" so they must be cared for) or to stone. 
If you are a child, this might make sense, and two out of the three children who get involved are happy to help.  The third child, a very very smart Asian girl, is reluctant, but she loses her reservations when a white supremacist comes to town.  Ah, how easily we respond to fear! 
We can also be gulled by love, which steers the witches blindly into cruelty on a mass scale. 
If the actions in this book seem horrifying, they are told in a fairytale style, softening them and making them seem palatable until the little snowball runs out of control and the avalanche ensues.  This is a cautionary tale.  It's about right and wrong.  And Ibbotson has very clear ideas what constitutes right and wrong.



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Fully Rounded Pig

Death in the Truffle Wood by Pierre Magnan

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


First of all, I'm appalled by the cover.  How do I know this takes place in France?  Perhaps by the man in the horizontally striped boating shirt and the red beret?  Where's his baguette?
Alyre has a prized Trüffelschwein who indicates clues everywhere but is ignored.  Alyre is proud of his beautiful but unfaithful wife but, as he apparently loves the pig more, he doesn't let it bother him much.  He is more upset when someone throws a stone and injures the pig. 
Hippies who come to his town tend to disappear, so Laviolette is sent to look into the matter semi-unofficially.  He prefers to stay at small boarding houses and hang in the background observing.  The local police cooperate with him.  He investigates.  Magnan manages to make it all come off sort of quirky.  Maybe it's the pig.  Maybe it's the very nearly humorous grotesqueness.  It stoops to the "get everyone in the room and make calculated insinuations to see who blinks" wheeze then builds to a climactic if ridiculous chase scene.  And it has a nicely cynical coda.  All in all, it was worth reading.



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Bertie Wooster Writes a Thriller

The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hugh Laurie manages to mix humor with thriller, but I think I need less thrill in my life.  I am assured by my husband, who used to work for a US defense contractor, that while it is true that footage from the Gulf War is used to advertise military hardware, etc., no one, but no one, would develop a prototype helicopter or anything for the military without first being paid by the military and this hasn't happened since Abraham Lincoln took a consignment of rifles with interchangeable parts.  This takes a load off my mind.

Thomas Lang finds himself forced to become an international terrorist in this plot-with-more-twists-than-a-twisty-turny-thing.  As an Amurrikin, I am horrified to think that 1) the good ole US of A would sponsor terrorism for any ... ruh-roh, 2) that anyone would think that would even be a plausible ... aw, shee-it, and 3) Why doesn't everybody love us?! [Breaks down and sobs.]

Sprinkled herein are many witticisms about modern life as well as metaphors about sex stretched tighter than sausage casings on Lance Armstrong's thighs.  It's so easy to see the goofy side of Hugh Laurie in the lead role, right up until he starts killing people.  And he seems to know an awful lot about guns.  This does seem to be running backwards: a Brit going on lovingly about guns and an Amurrikin with a growing horror of them and descriptions of death, but it'd be a funny old world if we all ran to type.

I don't blame the author for hitting the US too hard.  In fairness, the Brits seem to be complicit in the scenario and the baddies are described as renegade CIA.  There's plenty of blame to go around.  Lang's background even includes his tour of duty as a servant of the oppressor in Northern Ireland, which goes to explain his military acumen as well as a reminder that the Brits don't always get it right either when dealing with terrorists.  Or at least it reminds me, since I seem to be one of the few that remembers IRA terrorism at a time when everyone else in this country seems to think terrorism was invented by a different religious group.

But, as I said, this was a bit too thrilling for me.  I've been typing this review for some few minutes and my heart rate is still up.  Other folks might find this tame, but it was a rollicking, riveting read and should satisfy the tastes of most people who aren't as namby-pamby as I.


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Dear Parents

Dear Parents of the cute children who come into the Children's Room of the public library,

Get this through your heads: we are not School.  Although committed to "lifelong learning" in our mission statement, this is just a ruse to make Reading For Fun more palatable come funding time.  Your lovely child slogs for nine months each year through the soul-crushing graded readers, the No-Child-Left-Interested required curricula, and, my personal bugaboo, the Dreaded Accelerated Reader tests.  Don't make summer just another opportunity to make reading a deadly chore. 

Do not:
Insist your child read only at or above her reading level during the summer.  No one really likes the Tiger Mom.
Tell  your child something is too old or too babyish for him. 
Shame your child by remarking in front of the entire library that she "didn't finish the books she checked out last time," so she can't have that many this time.  Books are not brussel sprouts. They don't go bad if they aren't read.  The only reason to limit books is if they tend to get lost.
Ask the librarian to back you up on your opinion of the books.  Hell's bells, I'm a 57 year old married woman!  I don't have the same tastes as a nine year old boy.  Okay, maybe I don't necessarily have his tastes.  Maybe he doesn't like the Three Stooges and comic books - ahem, I mean Graphic Novels.  Oooo, look! Captain Underpants!

Chances are, if your kid can relax during the summer and read something she enjoys (for a change), she might decide that reading isn't the big drag it was during the school year.  Who knows, it might make a big difference in her life.  So lay off the kids.  If you insist on riding their backs even in summer, just make sure it's something other than reading, like piano lessons and science camp until it runs out their ears.  There's nothing sadder in this room than seeing a kid be told he can't have a particular book for some reason.  Worse yet, making him come up and shuffle his feet while he tells me that he can't have that book.

Oh, and about complaints I've heard about Junie B. Jones - get over it.  You think your kid doesn't know bad language or behavior when she sees it?  [I'm still trying to figure out what Junie B.'s "bad language" is.]  You haven't taught your child what kind of behavior you expect?  He doesn't know the difference between fiction and reality?   Perhaps you just need to develop your sense of humor.  I understand that if you lack one, you might find the rest of us behaving irrationally.  Just think about it.

Maybe Wodehouse Ripped Off Lomax for Spode

The Seven Dials Mystery by Agatha Christie

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I read this book many years ago as a teen when I was in my Christie phase.  I remember being annoyed with it because it appeared to be ripping off P.G. Wodehouse.  There were the typical Wodehousian characters in situations where people were actually being killed!  Re-reading it this month, I decided it was more an homage to Wodehouse.  And even though I'd read it before, I guessed wrong.  That's what's so wonderful about having a poor memory; a few months/years later, and it's almost a whole new book! 

If you read this, look for the characters comparable to Jeeves and Wooster and to Lord Emsworth.  If the subtleties don't pop out at you, Lord Coote's secretary, the Efficient Bateman is clearly the Efficient Baxter.  Of course, Baxter would never have the nickname "Pongo," but there is a Pongo Twistleton in Wodehouse.

Christie says she was intending something lighthearted (aside from murder, of course, which is not that frothy) and while she isn't Wodehouse, she does succeed.  There are several charming and humorous scenes, such as George's proposal to Bundle and Lady Coote's demeanor at the bridge table.  If you obsess too much with the Wodehouse connection, as I did in my early read of the book, you might find the murders and genuine danger incongruous.  Taken by itself, though, it's a cracking read.



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The Art of Storytime

Marf and friends at the old library.

You think you've told everyone that there are no storytimes in May at the library.  It has been this way all the 17 years you have worked here. People who have run Head Start for all those years should know that too.  So, you're sitting at the Children's Room desk, minding your own bidness and a woman comes in.  You ask if you may help her because a) you're polite and helpful and b) adults aren't supposed to wander freely in the Children's Room.  No, she doesn't need help because she's just waiting for the Head Start group to arrive for their "field trip."  (Parents often accompany the group to help monitor, but arrive separately.)
You think you know for certain that no group was scheduled for today because, well, it's May and you don't do storytimes in May.  There are exceptions, so you check with your supervisor.  She calls the Head Start office and learns that the bus has already left.

This is a job for SuperStoryteller!

Drat!  I put the books I used last week away.  What was I thinking?  I'm not usually this tidy.  No matter!  I'll just wander in the picture books and pull out a couple I like.  I just made some new flannelboard stories (thanks to Flannel Fridays at Mel's Desk); it would be fun to use a couple of them.  And we top it all off with The Animal Boogie!

I chose Two of Everything by Lily Toy Hong because I just love that story annnnnnnnd, Oooo! Can't You Sleep, Little Bear? by Martin Waddell because adults can relate to that.  Also, I have some puppets for it, if I can find them in time.  These books have nothing to do with each other.  So much for always having some sort of theme!  I have less than 20 minutes to pull this together.  If I had more, maybe I could have made a theme package.

I looked at the new flannelboards and chose the "Five Bottles of Juice" and "Blue Car, Blue Car."  This may be a colorful storytime!

Our Storytime space

The new library's storytime room is in what we call The Rotunda.  It's a round space, and the acoustics are fairly lively.  I'm a loud person and I have to pull back in here.  The purple thing* stores big books as well as holding them for you.  Mostly I use it to prop up the books I'm going to read.  The dragon rug is from Highsmith.  We bought it after seeing it at the Charlotte ImaginOn Children's Library.  I wanted to set up a creative play space in our children's room.  For storytimes I prefer to sit on a small chair.  We do have that rocking chair that was originally purchased for our Parenting Corner, but I find I can't do what I want in a big chair that moves.  Fortunately, the child chairs are weight rated for someone my substantial size.

The bus arrives, the children file in, and I start with the "If you're happy and you know it" song.  Then I launch into my first book, Two of Everything.  The first book I read gets the special treatment.  I point out the author and illustrator and we sing the songs:
The author writes the book,
The author writes the book,
Hi-ho, librario
The author writes the book.

The illustrator draws,
The illustrator draws,
Hi-ho, librario
The illustrator draws.

Then I read the book.  When old Mrs. Haktak falls in the pot, I stop and ask them what they think will happen.  Afterwards I ask them what they would put in the pot to make another one of.

Next is a flannelboard.  We sing "5 bottles of juice on the wall" and with each color I ask what kind of juice that might be.

I show them the book Can't You Sleep, Little Bear?  Then I tell them how much I really love the story - but it's more fun ... with puppets!   I pull out the big bear puppet and the baby bear puppet (whose Folkmanis tag I'd removed minutes before) and do the whole thing  in my lap.  I have some props I made for a puppet show of this years ago that I adapted for the flannelboard by sticking velcro on them: three lanterns and a big moon with stars attached with floral wire.  There's also a small book I made, The Koala Code by Dan Braun, for Big Bear to be reading.  The favorite part of any story I do seems to be the snoring.  Well, whatever works!

Next is the Blue Car, Blue Car flannelboard.  They shout the names of vehicles and colors out to me.

And it was all finished off by The Animal Boogie.  We get up and dance to the song.  I have this at the end of all my storytimes now.  I like having something that I do every time so that they have that to look forward to.  They're usually good and jazzed up by the end, so we all sit down and I pull out my Goodbye Couplets, pictures of animals on sticks.
See you later, ... alligator (I give them time to give me the rhyme).
In a while, ... crocodile.
In a blizzard, little ... lizard.
In two shakes, garden ... snake.
Time to scoot, warty ... newt.
Let's meander, ... salamander.
and Hit the road, hoppy ... toad!

And I tell them that this is the last, absolutely the last, full stop, storytime until summer starts.  And unless their director says something to them, they will never know they were unscheduled.  I make a policy of this in my private life as well.

* I don't know where the purple thing came from so I can tell you not to buy that model.  The display panel somehow comes off the track (it slides back up to be flat on top) occasionally and the panels inside that are supposed to keep the big books upright ... don't.  They fall out of their slots at the slightest pressure.  Although it was a good idea, it was poorly executed.  That's a shame because I love purple.

The Holy Art of Lying

Forged: Writing in the Name of God by Bart D. Ehrman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


If you've read the rest of Ehrman's oeuvre, there won't be a great deal more in this book to sink your teeth into.  Right now I suspect Ehrman's a popular New Testament exegesis factory but even a factory turns out good material, even if it all starts to look the same.  He does, however, footnote everything.  He gives you the location of his source material in English so you can check up behind him.  He does not make things up (as colorful as Borg and Crossan's book might have been, they made stuff up, just showing how easy it is to extrapolate, infer, and they produce a factual lie) and it doesn't lose anything for being relentlessly factual because of Ehrman's easy-going, highly readable style.
A better title for this book, though, might have been "Forgeries and Other Bare-Faced Lies."  Ehrman stretches the definition of "forgery" to the breaking point over Acts. Perhaps the title as it stands is the last punch pulled.  Ehrman's gloves are off (as my husband pointed out) as he makes no bones about lies perpetuated in the name of an alleged "Greater Truth."  Normally we call such lies "Fiction," or perhaps "Politics As Usual."  At no time does Ehrman deny the existence of an historical Jesus.  All he's saying is that the people who were inspired by his story fibbed about some things.  And if they fibbed about who wrote what or made up false attributions, what else might they have fibbed about, eh?
The last chapter of the book does make a person think about Lying.  Do you side with Augustine, that a lie is never excusable?  Do you permit small social lying?  Where do you draw the line?  To get a child to take its medicine?  (To get my mother to the hospital to have her tonsils taken out, my grandmother told her she was going to get a pony.  My mother felt utterly betrayed and refused to lie to us kids about anything like that.)  Is a lie permissible to save someone from eternal damnation?  It might depend on how hard you believe in that damnation to make you think it's not just okay, but imperative, to lie in the name of Truth.



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Fresh As the First Time I Read It

Something Fresh by P.G. Wodehouse

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I dearly love this book and its author, so take that into consideration when you read the review.  I also used it for a dramatic reading in college (just happened to see the notes for that in my paperback copy) and managed to get through what I thought was the funniest part without breaking up.  To my best recollection, the listeners did not fall over in paroxysms of hilarity, but I may have been numbed to their reaction in order to get through it.

Yes, it's as funny as it was the first time. 

The Hon. Freddie Threepwood is engaged to Aline Peters, but his father (Clarence, the third Earl of Emsworth) has just "stolen" her father's prized scarab in a typical fit of forgetfulness. He now wants to retrieve some letters he wrote to Joan Valentine when she was on the stage but his go-between, R. Jones, has decided to milk more out of him than the 500 pounds he didn't need to give Joan because she said she threw the letters away.  Joan is an old friend of Aline and promises to help her retrieve the "stolen" scarab, however, Joan's new friend, Ashe Marson has been hired by Aline's father for the same dark purpose.  George Emerson fell in love with Aline on board ship and is using his friendship with the Hon. Freddie to get close to her again.  Got all that, or do you need a diagram?  They all convene (save R. Jones) at Blandings Castle where they land under the beetling brow and jaundiced eye of Freddie's father's secretary, the Efficient Baxter.

Wodehouse tackles the theme of equality of the sexes with a deft hand one would not expect from an author of that time period (ah, but it's comedy, so he can get away with that).  Sadly, it's not developed fully and it does wobble at the end when Joan succumbs to Ashe's petition for marriage.  We don't get to see her fall in love with him the way we see him fall for her and her sudden craving for dullness in place of adventure doesn't ring true.  We do get to see Aline fall in love with George and we are with her when she does.  She is obstinate in her keeping the engagement to the Hon. Freddie in the face of George's high-handedness, but begins her melt when he realizes that it rightly doesn't work to badger the one you love into loving you.  Her subsequent interview with her fiance gives her the opportunity to view what life would be like married to a complete ass.  The romance of living in an English castle among the peerage loses its appeal. 

One of Wodehouse's earliest successes, Something New (or Something Fresh) introduces the third Earl of Emsworth and the gang at Blandings.  It is also rich in over a dozen Biblical references and about 40 other literary and Classical references (at least according to the annotations I found online).  Unlike the Bertie and Jeeves stories, it is narrated by what is normally called an omniscient narrator, but you can see an inkling of Bertie in the narrator's casual forgetfulness as well as the Biblical saltings (Bertie having won a Bible verse contest of some kind in his youth).  The novel also demonstrates the winning formula Wodehouse finally developed and delightfully abused for another 70 books or so: something needs to be stolen (whether scarab, silver cow creamer, painting, manuscript, or necklace) and returned to its true owner, true love will out, and the Hon. Freddie and his chinless comrades will never get married.  Although Wodehouse admitted to writing the same story over and over, it's the details of characters, the lovely language, and the absurd slow-motion description of slapstick that make each successive novel something fresh.



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Only 47?

47 Rules of Highly Effective Bank Robbers by Troy Cook

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


The title captivated me and once I got beyond the gore, the senseless violence, the incest, the anti-social behavior, the "guy humor" - I relaxed and enjoyed the story.  It was a quick read.  Tara was raised by her father to be a bank robber.  One of those 47 rules is No Crying because she blubbed after accidentally shooting him in the foot.  Tara needs excitement in her life, and so does Max, the son of a local sheriff.  Max doesn't need Tara's help to get in trouble, but he decides having her in the mix adds spice to life.  Unfortunately, her father doesn't approve of her choice in men - ever.  The book is peppered with unforgettable characters (whose names escape me at the moment, but names were never my strong suit) on both sides of the law.  Cook toys with the concept of good and evil, so don't expect any black and white distinctions here.  You have good cops and bad, and good bank robbers and bad, good psychos and really, really bad ones.  You want to root for the robbers, but if you're like me, you feel guilty about it. 



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