Mark Peters, the genius behind the blog Wordlustitude in addition to being a Contributing Editor for Verbatim: The Language Quarterly, a language columnist for Babble, and a blogger for Psychology Today, is our guest blogger this week. Below Peters encourages us to make old words hip again.
Did you hear about the nude pictures of Lindsay Lohan and Roger Clemens drinking a human growth hormone/grain alcohol smoothie?
You have? Then let me tell you what my brother’s nanny has been up to with your father’s mechanic in the gazebo. (more…)
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My 10-year-old friend Nicky is the quintessential bribable reader. When I went shopping with his mom and older sister recently, Nicky patiently spent several contented hours in a corner of a shoe department, burrowing into The Titan’s Curse, the latest volume in Rick Riordan’s Olympian-themed Percy Jackson series. Nicky’s mom had sagely bought this hefty tome for him in anticipation of our shopping spree.
For Nicky’s generation, multicultural includes imaginary worlds. Brought up on Harry Potter and undaunted by huge page numbers, he loves books in series. “The Lionboy series [by Zizou Corder] is one of my favorites,” he emailed me. “It’s about a boy who got scratched by a leopard when he was a baby. Ever since then he has been able to speak with cats. After his parents were kidnapped his journey takes him all over the world, including his native continent, Africa. He soon finds out that it’s very hard to get 5 circus lions from France to Africa at the same time he’s trying to save his parents from a mysterious corporation before they get brainwashed.”
Nicky will be busy with Deathly Hallows for the next few weeks, of course, but until he gets hooked on a series, how does he decide what books to read? “This might sound weird, but I usually choose a book by its cover. If the cover looks interesting, I read the summary.” Nicky promises to glance up from his latest read from time to time to comment again for PaperTigers on books he loves. Meanwhile, for a list of series books for kids, click here. And here, for Stephen King’s lovely goodbye to Harry Potter.
Yes, we’re getting geared up for the last Harry Potter too. At least I am. We will be starting No. 3 as a bedtime story once the holidays start… That’s a great list of book series - I would just add the Chrestomanci series by Diana Wynne Jones: I think they’re great!
I love Harry Potter and can’t wait to read the last book in paper, bound format. At Shen’s Blog, we’ll be discussing how fantasy (including Harry Potter) connects with multicultural children’s literature. Please feel free to stop by: http://www.shens.com/blog