By: Ronni A. Hall,
on 12/15/2014
Thank you to my Aunt Ellen, who gifted me with an early birthday present, a gnome house. The gnomes that live in my kitchen will love it. Perhaps, they will do the dishes for me now.
Uh oh, the Dental Twins, Frank and Justine are eyeing the home. They aren’t too keen living on the cold windowsill.
Frank investigates.
Could be a war between the Dental Twins and the Kitchen Gnomes. Stay tuned…
By: Stacy A. Nyikos,
on 4/14/2014
Kid Lit Reviews welcomes Angela Shelton, author of The Adventures of Tilda Pinkerton Book 1: Crash-landing on Ooleeoo. Kid Lit Reviews generally does not delve into articles for authors unless there is something of interest to the young reader. Today will be an exception. Ms. Shelton is writing on the importance of the teacher-writer [...]
By: Laurie Halse Anderson,
on 12/16/2011
By: Jacqui Robbins,
on 3/2/2011
Aging Aegeans: An Anthology of Poems About the Greeks Getting Ancient
Calypso broke her hip, so
Ulysses got pissy.
Medea's urea was high.
Helen started smellin'
Ariadne got a bad knee.
Medusa got gray snakes and died.
Cassandra alone
Never did moan
Even though her predictions got hazy.
The moral of the story:
Aging is gory
and it helps if you're already crazy.
By: Laurie Halse Anderson,
on 8/20/2010
--
Sometimes you just have to push the silly button. Maybe that’s why it is time for the annual Pimp My Bookcart competition.
Last year’s winner was a Good Humor-themed cart created by welding students at Harlem High School.
If you need to smile, check out all of last year’s winners.
Two more smile makers come to you courtesy of Jim Averbeck and Kristin Clark Venuti. Jim interviews people at the American Library Association Annual conference every year. Then he and his minions go home and put together really fun videos.
Here is one of this year’s videos, with fashion statements by authors, which in itself is a hysterical concept because we spend our days in our pajamas, most of us.
And another, in which you can see how completely useless I am at game shows.
(More videos from this year’s ALA can be found on Jim and Kristin’s website.)
Ready…
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh. Otherwise they’ll kill you.” Oscar Wilde
Set… relax. It’s Friday. Summer is winding down. Life is good. Smile.
Today’s prompt: pure silliness. Your character wakes up and can no longer speak any human language. Can’t write either. But she can still understand what the people around her are saying. And she can understand everything said by any animal or insect within fifty feet of her.
Write a funny scene in which she tries to figure out what is going on. Build the absurdity of her situation by piling on misunderstandings and pratfalls. Make yourself chuckle.
Scribble…Scribble…Scribble…
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By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 12/1/2009
How do authors chill out after they make their revision deadline? Let me count the nerdy ways:
1) We find a too-good-to-be true deal on an all-in-one printer, order it in haste, and then worry obsessively when it's delivered while we're gone to the North Carolina mountains for Thanksgiving and it (temporarily) disappears from our front doorstep. We hug our neighbors when we find that they have rescued the box from the rain and have our purchase safely stored for our return. We superstitiously "christen" it by printing out a poem as the first "print job," and then play with the features on our dream machine (it can print graph paper! it can wirelessly connect with my laptop! it can download pictures from a Bluetooth camera--if I had one!) and wish we writers also came with a "Remove Red Eye" button for those late writing nights.
2) We write villanelles with our Poetry Sisters, agreeing that we must use the words "friends" and "thanksgiving." We don't have to use iambic pentameter, but we do. We don't have to fiddle with it lovingly, but we do. We know that other people would think this homework, but we consider it fun, right up there with paging through food catalogs that sell gourmet bacon and licorice from Australia. We count the days until this Poetry Friday when all seven Poetry Sister villanelles will be revealed at once...
3) We read lists. We love ones with titles like "Over 200 movies about the writing life" (compiled by author Susan Taylor Brown.) And "Bookish Holiday Gifts: A Selection of Finds From Etsy."
4) Instead of cleaning our desks, we blog about silly things (in a list format, of course.) Then we go clean our desks. Really. We do.
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By: Matthew Cheney,
on 11/9/2009
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Returning now to work on the aforementioned J.M. Coetzee essay, which is once again insisting on going in unexpected directions requiring more reading. (Paul de Man's "Autobiography as De-Facement" this morning. I know you're jealous.) No more blogging till it's done. Bad me.
By: Jacqui Robbins,
on 9/23/2009
Ever walk down the street and see something that is in no way supposed to be silly, but it strikes you in a punny way and makes you giggle? And then the rest of the day, you're thinking of silly puns and stories about it and giggling to yourself at inappropriate moments? No? Oh. Hmm.
Anyway, this week, while pondering the Thursday News of the Absurd Will Someone Please Write This Book Inspirational Moment (TNoftheAWSWTBIM), I saw this:
And I thought, "Yes. I AM a giant, hardy mum." And I giggled. And then I thought of Hagrid, and his giant hardy mum. And then I wondered about the Hardy Boys, and what their mum was like.
And then I thought of the Hardy Boys being trapped somewhere, in danger, until the ceiling crashes open and their giant Hardy mum saves them.
And then I thought, "No, this is a picture book." Something along the lines of Liz Rosenberg & Stephen Gammell's Monster Mama, but even goofier. A crowd of giant, crime-fighting hardy mums who are also Boy Scout Troop leaders?
What do you think? Please tell me you don't just see flowers.
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 6/15/2009
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 5/28/2009
By: Stacy A. Nyikos,
on 5/19/2009
My oldest hit the double digits this Friday, and oh, what celebrating there was!
I was all ready for that. I'd made one cake, bought another, wrapped the presents, gotten the house ready for the onslaught of ten year who would pour into it the next day. We were ready to celebrate.
What I wasn't expecting was the trepidation. Not mine. Hers.
DD: Mama, should I be excited?
Me: (trying to hide surprise) Sure. You're turning ten. That's a big deal.
DD: I don't want to get older.
Me: Why not?
DD: I like being nine. I want to be nine for forever.
Me: Really?
I didn't totally get it. I was one of those kids who was nine going on nineteen. So come Saturday night, I went into the slumber party/night of silly 10 year old fun trying to catch glimpses not only of the allure of kiddom she sees but of its magic.
You know, I must have been blind as a kid. There was a Jupiter Jump, cookie cake, water balloon fights, sleepover with ten girls, movies - The Indian in the Cupboard, Hotel for Dogs, Marley and Me - gummy bears, popcorn, donuts, swinging, and laughing. Oh, was there laughing!
Most of all, there was abandon. Abandon to swim in it all, in the moment, in the fun, the silliness, the excitement, and the total exhaustion.
What was I thinking trying to grow up so fast??
I understand now why she is worried about getting older. Worried about losing that part of childhood and all that goes with it.
She's a smart kid, smarter than her mom. Hopefully, some of adulthood will eventually appeal to her. But after Saturday night, I get why there's no hurry getting there. There's so much to see until then. I'm glad I get to see it with her.
By: Jacqui Robbins,
on 5/13/2009
With apologies to Eric Carle.
In the light of the moon, a little writer sat at her computer.
One Sunday morning, the warm sun came up and pop! The little writer had a fabulous idea for revising her chapter book.
Naturally, she decided to look for some food.
On Monday, she rewrote two chapters and ate some celery. But she was still hungry.
On Tuesday, she rewrote another chapter, and ate a turkey sandwich. But she was still hungry.
On Wednesday, she wrote 500 words, and ate a slice of pizza. But she was still hungry.
On Thursday, she wrote a few emails and a boring blog entry, and ate a bowl of pea soup and a roll. But she was still hungry.
On Friday, she wrote no words. She ate a hunk of Argentinian skirt steak with a side of homemade potato chips anyway. But she was still hungry.
On Saturday, she wrote a to do list and a check for the overdue water bill. She ate one slice of swiss cheese, one pumpkin pie, three of her kids' juice boxes, fourteen Bunny grahams, one coffee shake, one Snickers bar, and 14 glazed donuts. And a water buffalo with chocolate sauce.
That night, she had a stomachache. Also, she decided her chapter book stunk.
The next day was Sunday again. The little writer ate through one bunch organic red kale. It was disgusting and didn't make her feel any better. But she also wrote a new scene, which did.
Now she wasn't hungry any more, and she wasn't a little writer anymore either. She was a big, fat, inspired writer.
She made a small closet called an "office" in her basement. She holed herself up inside of it for three days.
Then she ate her way out through the drywall, and...
... she had a beautiful first draft.
By: Jennie,
on 4/1/2009
Yesterday, Amanda over at A Patchwork of Books made the statement "I think glitter should be reserved for picture books, but that's just me."
I just left the following comment:
Glitter is a magnet for girls 2-6th grade. I could get them to read anything if a glittered up the cover.
By which I meant "if I glittered up the cover."
It's a statement I stand by, but which books would be most hilarious if we glittered them up? Glitter it to the point where, to quote MotherReader, "By the time I had finished reading the book, my hands looked like I had bitch-slapped Tinkerbell."
Get your thinking caps on and send me your most hilarious responses! It has to be something at a 2-6th grade reading level and really shouldn't be glittered.
I'm thinking maybe glittery Hatchet? (Which would be easy to do, because you just make a picture of the Hatchet all silver-glitter.)
What about Adventures of Tom Sawyer? (Glitter up a river? Or white glitter on the white-washed fence?)
What do you think?
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 3/20/2009
By: Jacqui Robbins,
on 11/11/2008
In which I explain why some of you saw my superhero name briefly this weekend.
It was bad enough when The Mighty Thor and I sat down at the Golden Compass website to discover our daemons. Thor got a snow leopard. Sweet, eh? Yeah, mine was a raccoon. Dissatisfied, I took the whole thing over. Raccoon again. So my daemon, my alter-ego, the reflection of the inner Me, is a rat in a mask.
Sunday, I was revising avoiding dishes screwing around on the internet and came across the Superhero Name Generator.* And got this:
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 9/9/2008
Yearbook Yourself.
P.S. I apologize to all those who planned to get work done and now will not, due to playing with this. Could we call it "research into character development" and leave it at that?
Or...on second thought...is there a decade that you feel more at home in than this one? Discuss.
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 9/2/2008
Part IV in my (sometimes silly) series of gift ideas for readers and writers.
Limited edition Rat Fink pen (Aren't all writers ratting out something or someone---if only ourselves---when we put pen to page?)
8 days a week planners (Now that's handy. Why didn't I think of just adding an extra "someday" to my work week?)
Melting Snowmen cannister set. (Show, don't tell? Okay, I'm pushing it with this idea, but I wanted to show you these!)
Hyperbole is the BEST thing ever! T-shirt (Isn't it, though?)
Thanks to Velocity for the first three items, the Mental Floss store for the last one.
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 6/9/2008
It can't be Monday, can it?
Some of you read for 48 hours.
Some of you began to set summer goals.
Some of you launched campaigns to save hyphens and Capital Letters.
Me? I sweated, wrote, and looked at T-shirts:
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 5/29/2008
How are revisions like being kissed by a cow?
Please leave your answers in the comments because as desperately as I would like to relate this post to writing or books, and as neck-deep in revisions as I am at this moment, and as recently as I have been quite close to some Holsteins---even I don't know the answer.
I just wanted to post this picture from my recent trip to Tennessee.
All that's missing is my devilish laugh.
Oh, wait! I thought of something bookish: Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type.
But you can do better. How, I ask you again, are revisions like being kissed by a cow?
By: Sara Lewis Holmes,
on 2/7/2008
Remember that series Liz and I did on "The Exercise of Writing"? It has given this blog a new cachet. I'm now found by readers who search on:
"hooter girls in a giant grocery cart"
"aerobic string leotard"
"Push ups are not helping"
I'm sorry about that last one. Perhaps if you tried doing them in a string leotard inside a giant grocery cart?
By: Laurie Halse Anderson,
on 12/23/2007
I tinkered with the lyrics, you know the tune.
Everybody sing along!
On the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
12 months of a patient husband
11 wandering characters
10 journals overflowing
9 thousand emails blinking
8 parties tempting
7 overdue library books
6 social networks friending
5 miles on the treadmill!!!
4 kids doing laundry
3 long to-do lists
2 pots of coffee
AND
1 killer novel deadline
What is your version of the song?
By: Tricia,
on 6/26/2007
By: Tricia,
on 5/13/2007
By: Tricia,
on 5/3/2007
Thanks for that!
nice. welcome back, coach!
word verification is "holeatte" -- there's humor there, I just know it...
Missed you, Miss Jacqui, and this post shows why!
Thanks, all. It is good to be back.
funny!