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VIDEO 1: Claudette is back!

VIDEO 2: What’s Your Favorite Thing About Dragons?

VIDEO 3: What Should be Claudette’s Battle Cry?

VIDEO 4: What’s do you like about dragons?

VIDEO 5: How would you fight a dragon?

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They were midflight when the trouble started. Raine had tried not to think about the deep disquiet that had settled in the pit of his gut when he and Sierra had boarded the plane. He had tried to concentrate instead on them simply taking their seats and had pushed the horrifying notion that something was going to go terribly wrong to the side of his consciousness. Clairvoyance was not among his many talents. For all that it was he was capable of, he could not see the future.

Sierra was all too happy to chatter somewhat aimlessly about cakes, food and decorations. She didn’t even care that Raine was only really listening with half an ear. She was completely involved in planning a graduation party for Renee and had successfully blocked out most everything else.

Elizabeth was supposed to be there, too. She had planned on taking time off of work to come and see her sister graduate from college. Elizabeth had chosen differently than her sister in life. While Renee had furthered her education, seeking a degree in neuroscience of all things, Elizabeth had thrown herself full tilt into the adult world immediately upon graduating high school. Sierra could not be any more proud of either of her daughters and she wasted no time bragging about them both to anyone who would listen.

Raine had seen the various consequences of his choice to keep moving the kids around after that fateful night at the mental institution all those years ago. After about six years of them moving around all the time and never staying in one place for more than a year, he and a “Higher Authority” as he liked to call them had reached a tentative agreement. He would not wreak havoc where ever he went, and they would leave his family alone to live and grow as was their right. They really had no other choice, he reflected bitterly. The girls and Sierra had grown tired of moving around from state to state to try to “keep under the radar” and he was ready to settle and live in the same place for awhile, as well. They needed stability in their lives and he knew the “Higher Authority” could keep them running forever. The “Higher Authority” knew that all Raine had to do was think it and they would be cleaning up frightful, massive messes that would have been all that would be left of a few good men. Tentative truce, indeed.

The years of moving around had taken their toll on the girls anyway. Elizabeth never stayed in one place for very long and Renee placed too much importance on staying in one place. Both girls had taken it too far to extremes. Elizabeth refused to even sign a lease on a place of her own, preferring instead to rent rooms where she could simply move in and out at will. She never dated any one man for very long and always spent most of her extra money running from party to party. She called it “the fun life” while Raine thought of it more as wandering aimlessly.

Renee had worked tirelessly during her college years and now had most of the money she needed to buy a home of her own. She had even gone so far as to state that she would never move again once she had the house she liked. Raine had asked her about it once being a worried father and she had said that she just wanted to wake in the same bedroom every morning for the rest of her life. It wasn’t that he could blame her, for he understood all too well. It was simply that he saw in her an uncompromising nature that could well make her life lonely and solitary and even though she had always been the introverted type, she would regret it later in life.

Raine thought about all this while he listened to Sierra talk about different foods for a graduation party and whether or not she might have it catered. He also began to see the flight attendants begin to urge passengers back to their seats. Their outward calm was unshakable, but the tension around their eyes was unmistakable. Their voices as they talked to one another were low and tense and here and there, some of them had darting gazes. Raine knew something was going on, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Then a voice came over the intercom, filled with forced calm and cheer and Raine felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. The voice stated that they were flying through some turbulence and the next few minutes would be a bit of a bumpy ride but that everyone could rest assured that they would be free of it very quickly and the rest of the flight would be smooth as silk. Flight attendants worked to secure passengers and then themselves. No one seemed to notice the slight temperature change in the air or the fact that the lights burned brighter for a moment.

Raine worked to try to control himself. He knew better than anyone else just how disastrous a loss of his self-control could be. More than once, he’d left people nearly dead when he lost his ever tenuous hold on his instinctive power. Sometimes, he simply couldn’t control it and the effects were devastating. Houses leveled, buildings crumbled and people driven utterly insane by the intruding presence in their heads. He’d rather just try to hold onto his errant talents and leave others safe.

He took deep breaths while the plane began to shimmy. Sierra stopped talking and looked at him with a vaguely alarmed expression and said, “It’s getting warmer in here, Raine.”

He tried to manage a small smile for her sake which probably looked more like a pained grimace and continued to breathe deeply. The plane dropped by several feet and then leveled again and some of the passengers stifled cries of alarm.

The lights flickered and temperature in the air rose by several degrees. No one but Sierra and Raine paid any attention to the flickering lights. No one thought anything of it. They were the only ones who knew what was going on and Raine fought with everything he was to try to stem the tide of power. Sierra began to kick him in the shin to try to shock him out of it. Sometimes it helped and others it didn’t. Sometimes it stopped him cold and sometimes, Sierra just earned an angry husband and a bruised foot for her trouble. There really was no telling what would happen.

Find it on Amazon at Inheritance (The Evolution Chronicles Book 2)

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Charlie and I had the FABULOUS opportunity to meet Ellie McDoodle, Mo, Ben-Ben, Josh, Lucy, Mr. Brendall, and many other Ellie McDoodle characters yesterday when we popped in to surprise the performers during the Tech Week rehearsal for the stage play at Binda Performing Arts Center on Kellogg Community College's campus.
It was a thrill to see the characters alive on stage.
I'm so excited about the performance this Saturday.
If you're near Battle Creek, Michigan, come by and see it!
Two performances Saturday April 21, 4pm and 7pm.
Click here for all the official information for it or scroll down to the end of this post.
Thank you SO much to Miller College Children's Theater Project and Jenny Andrews for making this happen.
Thank you to the excellent script writer, Jack Wentworth.
Thank you to the fabulous What A Do Theatre and Zac Thompson for directing and managing the play.
And thank you to the performers and their families for making time in their busy schedules to take advantage of an opportunity to experience professional theater, with all its demands and rewards.

The best part of it all? The next Ellie McDoodle book, which I am writing right NOW, is about theater. This production is great inspiration and research!

Here are the performers for Ellie McDoodle: New Kid in School
Adapted for stage by Lakeview High School student Jack Wentworth
Directed by Zac Thompson.

Cast List

Ellie McDoodle...........Anna Harrel
Mom / Whittam...........Ghevon Sebastian
Dad / Brendall...........Anahita Suifollahi
Josh...........Derek Whitesell
Risa...........Kailen Roop
BenBen...........Kessy Cook
Travis...........Avery Beck
Lucy...........Kylie Ohrt
Mo...........Cassandra Galonsky
Marla...........Ariana Saifollahi
Zoe...........Tyree Jones
Sammy...........Kelea Gaskins
Joey...........Naomi Todd
Alex...........Taren Todd
Lisa...........Bailee Goff
Sarah...........Hannah Slayton



The performance will be held at the Binda Performing Arts Center on Kellogg Community College's campus on Saturday, April 21, 2012, at 4:00 and 7:00 p.m. Tickets may be purchased in advance by calling Jenny Andrews at (269) 967-1374 or at the door prior to each performance.  Adult tickets are $8.00; students K-12 $4.00; children 5 and under are free.

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NERDS (Book 2: M is for Mama’s Boy) by Michael Buckley

Review by Chris Singer

About the author:

Michael Buckley is the author of the New York Times bestselling series and Today Show Al Roker Book Club pick The Sisters Grimm. He has also written and developed shows for Nickelodeon, Disney, MTV Animation, the Sci- Fi Channel, the Discovery Channel, and VH1. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Alison, and son, Finn.

About the book (from the publisher):

NERDS combines all the excitement of international espionage with all the awkwardness of elementary school, and the results are hilarious. A group of unpopular fifth graders run a spy network from inside their school. With the help of cutting-edge science, they transform their nerdy qualities into incredible abilities! Their enemies? An array of James Bond–style villains, each with an evil plan more diabolical and more ridiculous than the last.

My take on the book:

The second book in the NERDS series starts right where it leaves off, with a storyline featuring around NERDS team member Duncan Dewey. Duncan bears the codename of ‘Gluestick’ due to his propensity for eating paste. Like all of the NERDS, Duncan has nanobyte upgrades. His upgrades allow him to stick to any service.

In this story, readers get to meet Duncan’s family members who know about his secret agent duties with NERDS. Like Book 1, there is an important mission for the NERDS, but the backstory centers around the theme of fitting in and believing in oneself. It’s an excellent theme to explore with middle readers, many who will find themselves relating to and finding a lot in common with Duncan and his family.

Young readers who enjoyed Book 1 will once again dive right into this action-packed story and will be clamoring for Book 3 in the series. Parents will have fun reading along as well and will definitely get a kick out of Buckley’s clever and entertaining story.

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Spaceheadz 2 by Jon Scieszka (Illustrated by Shane Prigmore)

Review by Chris Singer

About the author:

Jon Scieszka is the creator of Trucktown and the author of The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs!, the Time Warp Trio series, Caldecott Honor Book The Stinky Cheese Man, and many other books that inspire kids to want to read. He has worked as an elementary school teacher and is the founder of a literacy initiative for boys (www.guysread.com

).

About the illustrator:

Shane Prigmore is currently a development and story artist at Dreamworks Feature Animation. He was a principle character designer on the stop motion feature CORALINE. Shane lives in California.

About the book:

The campaign is going well. The SPHDZ word is getting out. 1000′s of kids have signed up to say they are SPHDZ. But things haven’t gotten any easier for Michael K. The SPHDZ are still trying to blend in to our Earth culture, but not very successfully. They’re still mixing up Thanksgiving, cartoon plots, holidays, and commercials. This makes it especially hard for Michael K. to both hide the SPHDZ from Agent Umber and accomplish the SPHDZ Mission. He’s forced to enlist the help of fellow fifth graders, Venus and TJ.

When they (Michael K. and the SPHDZ) are given the assignment to write and perform the school play, Umber thinks he’s closing in on the aliens…the kindergartners playing the turkeys.

My take on the book:

Like the 1st book in Jon Scieszka’s Spaceheadz