Alas, alas - my library did not get me the next Caldecott book in time for my Monday read! WHATEVER SHALL I DO?

Well, fortuitously, next week's book is one that I already own and love and have in fact posted about before: Ox-Cart Man, written by Donald Hall and illustrated by Barbara Cooney. You might think that I would have run out of things to ( Read more... )

To the illustrious President Snow ( Read more... )

I have actually already posted about most of the movies I saw in March! Go me! But here are a couple that got left behind.

Muppets from Space: This movie is delightfully weird, as befits a Muppet movie. Gonzo has always wondered what he is… and when his breakfast cereal starts spelling out messages for him, at last he has the opportunity to find ( Read more... )

For my March reading goal - "a book that's more than 600 pages" - I chose Isobelle Carmody's 1100-page doorstopper, the long-awaited finale to the Obernewtyn series, The Red QueenAnd I made it! I slogged my way all the way through to the end, finishing up the last fifty pages this afternoon ( Read more... )

If, like me, you read the title Touring America by Automobile in the 1920s and all but swoon with joy - and swoon again when you realize that this is a primary source, a diary that a woman named Hepzy Moore Cook write during two early American road trips with her husband (one to Yellowstone and the other through the South) - then this is the book ( Read more... )

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Mockingjay. D: D: D: TEARS FOREVER.

I also finished Miss Read’s Miss Clare Remembers, which I enjoyed very much for the sort of bird’s-eye view of English history that it offers. Miss Clare is reflecting on her life as she waits for a friend to visit, which covers everything from the 1880s to the 1950s, although it ( Read more... )

I just finished Mockingjay and OH MY GOD, I'M SO UPSET RIGHT NOW. I put off reading the second half of the books for weeks because I knew I was going to be upset, and forewarned really ought to be forearmed, but I'm still so upset about everything.

( Spoilers, not in any sort of order )

We've reached another Caldecott book that I'm familiar with from childhood! (And in fact we'll run into quite a few of them for the next twenty years of Caldecott books or so.) My parents actually owned Peter Spier's Noah's Ark, so I was quite familiar with it, although I must say it never was a favorite: the ark gets awfully dirty from having so ( Read more... )

To the illustrious President Snow:

We can neither confirm nor deny that we became aware of District 13’s existence because President Coin enrolled in our correspondence course. Our student list in confidential, and frankly, we’re embarrassed that you even asked. Surely your District 13 spies can uncover that information for you.

Surely you have ( Read more... )

I first saw The Philadelphia Story back when I was in high school and it totally blew me away. Katherine Hepburn! Cary Grant! Jimmy Stewart! The actress who plays Tracy Lord’s (Hepburn) little sister Dinah, I don’t know who she is but she is hilarious and I love her. The entire scene where she’s putting on a show for the newspaper people who have ( Read more... )