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Author/Illustrator: Sebastian Meschenmoser

There's not much to be said about this beautiful book that isn't already covered by Elizabeth Bird (as is usually the case), so make sure to read her review. The story is a simple one about forest friends who put off hibernation to stay up and wait for their first snowfall. While waiting, they hypothesize about the nature of snow based on the limited information at their disposal. It's a cute story to be sure and it captures the essential wonder that can come with discovery of the world around us.

I would go into more detail, but the interplay between the illustrations and the pacing of the text is so pitch perfect, it'd be hard to do it justice without spoiling the book. I've only seen two books from him, but Meschenmoser is already one of my favorite illustrators, so if you haven't seen any of his stuff yet, get thee to a library/bookstore! (and check out 7-Imp's feature on him to see some more of his amazing artwork).

Something I will say about the book is that it does a great job of allowing the child to play the role of, for lack of a better phrase, the arbiter of reason. As the furry friends throw out one misguided theory after another, the young reader is pushed from amusement into bemusement, which is a more complex form of humor. They'll be able to shake their heads and, with a wry smile, think something along the lines of "Silly animals, one day they'll realize how wrong they were... when they're older and wiser like me."

This is a rare space for a child to occupy because for the majority of their day they are the inexperienced ones fumbling to make sense of the world. It's a subtle form of role playing which is key for socioemotional development. (Just watch a kid parenting a doll or playing house and you'll see that pretending to be an adult is more than just putting on oversized clothes, they're trying on oversized emotions and roles that preview and help prepare them for the world that awaits.) Waiting for Winter gives the child this kind of temporary "promotion" in the hierarchy of reason... which is quite an achievement for a picture book that is also darned funny.


And speaking of winter, DC is about to get hit by another record snow today. Woohoo!

Author: Robert Munsch
Illustrator: Michael Martchenko

The moral of The Paper Bag Princess is a welcome and subversive take on your standard fairy tale fare. A pretty princess loses her clothes and realizes in the end that she doesn't need all those pretty clothes to be a princess. She emerges stronger, more independent, and wielding a new vision of femininity that serves her well as she battles dragons, close-minded boyfriends, and the wedding industry.

Unfortunately, I think the message of this book may have been too subtle because the moral seems to have been lost on some of our modern day princesses. Whereas the original Paper Bag Princess shed her clothes in a bold act of defiance, bravely discarding the trappings and confines of traditional femininity, today's female royalty are shedding their clothes for an entirely different reason.

The phenomenon was thoroughly examined in Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, and will be further explored in Almeta Grayson's new book Paper Bag Princess, which profiles the disturbing trend of sexual exploitation as a route to fame. (exhibit A: Paris Hilton; exhibit B: Kim Kardashian).

From Publishers Weekly: "These sobering portraits force the reader to question a society that not only encourages this brand of sexploitation, but rewards it with prime time TV deals and endless magazine covers. A well-balanced but jarring social critique, Paper Bag Princess will change the way you watch TV... and how you see the world."








Note: This started out as a standard satirical post, but I have to admit that I am legitimately disturbed by this. Maybe it's because I'm getting to the age where the idea of fatherhood is not just a distant and abstract concept, but I consistently find myself flipping through the TV saying to myself (or my wife), "Our children will not watch TV. We are moving to a remote cabin in the woods where E! cannot find us." Call me a prude, but the idea of raising a daughter in a world where sex tapes are a legitimate path to stardom scares the sh!t out of me.

A Lighter Note: For a more thorough discussion of the actual Paper Bag Princess, see Fuse #8's profile of the book, which came in at #70 in her Top 100 Picture Books List.

A few weeks ago in Poland, a 14 year old boy reconfigures a remote control and used it to take over the local mass transit system. This has been covered in the media as an amusing case of precocious delinquency, but should be taken much more seriously. This is only the beginning.

We all knew this day was coming. We have passed the tipping point and kids are now WAY too smart. Or rather our society has reached a point where technological advancement is so fast and so furious that the only ones mentally flexible enough to keep up are children. Especially when you consider the speed at which government bureacracy travels, is it a surprise that a tech savvy kid could overtake the Department of Transportation which is probably still using computers from last century? And if one lone punk could take over a transit system, what will an army of these kids be capable of?



(Above: The scene of the crime. The young boy sits on the fence, taunting the helpless passengers by waving the remote that controls their fate. )


The unrelenting conveyor belt of progress ensures that one day we will all live in a world that is beyond our ability to understand... we are all just one Mac Convention away from being obsolete.

So, what will the revolution look like?

One thing is for sure: the revolution will not be televised. It won't even be Youtubed or live-blogged. The truth is we have no idea what form the revolution will come in, because it is beyond the ability of our feeble age-crippled minds to even imagine what tomorrow may bring.

But if I had to guess, the coming revolution will be defined by one phrase: Militant Anarchy. These prepubescent geniuses have been honing their skills with a heavy dose of video games, which serve as a comprehensive curriculum for social dispruption. Games such as Halo and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (actually, anything with the name Tom Clancy in it) teach the virtues ruthless militarism. Hyperkenetic games such as Grand Theft Auto glorify the chaos that is social anarchy. And now the Wii is going to take these video game dorks and whip them into shape. It's like having a boot camp in your living room that trains the perfect soldiers for the perfect army of tomorrow.

Our only hope is to conscript these prepubescent geniuses into the service of our country by giving them full reign over the Department of Transportation or the Department of the Interior. Let them use their preternatural skills to repair our bridges and generally re-awesome-atize our nation's crumbling infrastructure. It's our only hope. We must harness their powers for good, otherwise we'll find that we are on a fast train to nowhere... and that train is being remote controlled by some punk kid with peach fuzz.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Holy Cow, all I want to do is read some books about a British ballet dancer. Why is this so hard? When last we chatted, I had purchased Drina books 1-6, and ILLed 7-11. I recieved emails letting me know that all but the last one, Drina Ballerina, were in. So, before class I went to the library to pick them up...

They've all come from Trinity College in Dublin (?!) which has a "library use only" restriction on all of them!!!!! ARGH!!!!

Anyway, here's a poem. According to My Classical Chinese Book, it's a Tibetan Folk Song. The translation is by yours truly.

Qile River,
Flowing under Yin mountain,
Heaven seems like a yurt,
A basket canopy over the wild prarie.
The sky is azure.
The land is vast and vague.
The wind blows through the grass, bending down to show our cows and sheep.

I hadn't thought about this in years until I read the following passage in The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth by Sun Shuyun, which I reviewed here.

The book is quoting Sangluo, a foot soldier on the Long March who stayed in Tibet when the army crossed it...

On the plateau it was like another world. At first, it seemed peaceful, no planes pounding us, no Nationalists chasing us. But then it was just peculiar. No people, no houses, no roads--just grass, grass, grass up to the horizon, empty of everything except the occasional river snaking through the plain. Event he sky was different, so close, if you shot a bullet it would pierce it. Bright blue like porcelain...

It took 10 Buddhist monks 2 days to create a sand mandala. Enter the two-year-old...

(thanks to http://www.neatorama.com/)