You Learn Something New Everyday

Two weeks ago a good friend of mine and her husband were here from Ireland and spent an afternoon with me and the kids. My friends lovely Irish husband inquired about what nine year old daughter has been reading lately. She was happy to report that aside from her beloved Roald Dahl of course, her current favorite author is Eoin Colfer. She raved about the Artemis Fowl books and recommended The Legend of Spud Murphy for his young nephews. She and I kept pronouncing the author's name as if it is pronounced "Ian." When my daughter showed my friend's husband the books, he congratulated her on her wonderful taste in books and then informed her that Eoin is pronounced like "Owen." Who knew? Hayden politely thanked him for this information, but when he left, she told me that she "Ian" Colfer and so "Ian" is how she will continue to pronounce his name, at least as long as we are here in the United States. Then she went back to reading his The Supernaturalist. She has since finished and wants me to read it.

In other mother-daughter book news, I've finished Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, and I've been selling it to anyone with ears. My daughter took the bait, but asked me to check the print not CD version out of the library for her as she "can't imagine where she would find seven hours to listen to it." I did, but I think she will be missing out on Gaiman's fantastic reading. His voices and accents only enhance an already fabulous story.

It's cold out there today. At least it is here in New Jersey. I hope you can carve out some time to curl up with a good book in a cozy spot today.

While I'm Not Reading Important Literature

That's right. While I am not reading the literary classics that I should reading to prepare for my soon to commence paid employment, my nine year old daughter is polishing off about a book a day this summer, including H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man That girl needs more household chores! And she needs to stop putting her mother to shame by making her so proud!

Thanks A Lot!

I'd like to send a big fat thank you to my friend Anne for recently recommending a book to me. Hopefully you read that thank you with lots of sarcasm. Anne never told me it would make me cry. Let me back up and tell you that I probably only wear makeup one day a week. It's not a specific day of the week, it's usually just whichever day of the week I am going to be seen by the greatest number of people. I'm lazy and not very good at applying makeup, but as I get older, my nose keeps getting redder and redder which is making me look like I've hit the bottle a bit too much over the years. This is ironic, as I drink alcohol even less frequently than I wear makeup. So one or two days a week I slap on some foundation, mascara, and lipstick before heading out the door. Back to Anne. At a St. Patrick's Day party this year, she mentioned a picture book, Mars Needs Moms!, she had read by Berkeley Breathed. You remember him from Bloom County and Opus. Anne described it as not necessarily a book for new moms but for the one who's been at it awhile and realizes that her relationship with her child might not be perfect but that's okay. She failed to mention that if I picked it up from my library, had it in the car and happened to read it in the fifteen minutes that I arrived early to volunteer in my son's classroom (on my weekly cosmetics day) that I would go into the classroom looking like a raccoon with a WC Fields nose. Like I said, thanks a lot!

Sarcasm aside, Mars Needs Moms! is a great picture book. It is very different in style and story than anything I've read in awhile. Young Milo doesn't see what's so special about moms. They force a kid to do chores and eat healthy foods, and they have lame senses of humor. Milo gets himself in trouble, is sent to his room, and dreams about Martians who come to Earth because they need moms. Martians , you see, are born motherless out of the ground, but, "They needed driving to soccer! And to ballet! And to playdates, parks, and pizza! Plus cooking and cleaning and dressing and packing lunches and bandaging boo boos!" Some Martians kidnap Milo's mom which is when the story gets really good in my opinion. It's about love and sacrifice and imperfectly wonderful relationships. I guess I should thank Anne with less sarcasm because I'm so glad I read it!

It Always Comes Back To One of These Guys

For hundreds of years, people referenced the works of William Shakespeare in their everyday lives. If someone they knew displayed jealousy, they talked about the green eyed monster. A panhandler might inspire one to recommend being neither a borrower or lender. So many young men have been called Romeos over the years. Fortunately, Jerry Seinfeld stepped in and took some of the burden off the Bard. Stuck waiting for Chinese food or searching for your car in a parking garage? Say to your companion, "This reminds me of a Seinfeld episode." How many times have we heard "Yada Yada Yada" or a guy described by his "spongeworthiness." Of course the height of this was while the show was still airing new episodes, but now that it is in syndication, Americans still allude to "Seinfeld" frequently. I just finished reading Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin, and the Soup Nazi makes more than one appearance in the text of that cookbook. For years, I used to say that for every human experience, there's a "Seinfeld" episode. That may have been a bit hyperbolic. Then my children started watching "SpongeBob Squarepants." If it is ridiculous, funny, or frustrating, and has happened to a human being, it has made its way onto that program. Not a day goes by that one of my children doesn't begin at least three sentences by saying, "This is just like when SpongeBob and Patrick..." All of that makes sense to me as there are about a gazillion episodes of "SpongeBob Squarepants," "Seinfeld" ran for years, and as we all learned for one English teacher or another, Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays and a series of sonnets. It is beginning to amaze and exhaust me, however, that my six year old son can connect Star Wars to every aspect of his life. Star Wars! There's only, what, like a half dozen of those films. He's not old enough to read the novels. "Oh, look at that teddy bear; it looks just like an ewok!" "You are driving like Han Solo." Heaven forbid I walk out of the house with too much lipstick ("You look just like Queen Amidallah") or uncomed hair ("Now you look like Chewbacca."). Recently on this blog I wrote of how Ethan compared the Skin Horse in The Velveteen Rabbit to Yoda. I can't tell you how easily a kid can work the phrase "the dark side" into conversation! The worst part of this Star Wars referencing? It's contagious. Last night, I left the kids with my parents and met my husband for dinner and a show at Carnegie Hall. It was a lovely, classy adult evening, unlike the usual ones spent in sweatpants helping kids with their homework and shouting at them to get back in there and flush the toilet. There we were, nicely dressed and chatting quietly before the show in our seats in Zankel Hall. It is the lower level of Carnegie Hall and somewhat modern looking. My husband indicated the black ceiling with all sorts of metalwork and lights and asked me if I thought it looked like the underbelly of a Star Wars spaceship. I could have smacked him. But then a third of the way into his performance, the classical guitarist, John Williams, who had been playing beautiful pieces of Spanish and Italian classical music, told the audience that he is sometimes confused with the composer John T. Williams who wrote the Star Wars theme music. Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk, everyone chuckled. I just elbowed my husband. Every dogstar will have its day I suppose. It makes me wonder, back in the 1600's were there many mothers of pint sized groundlings saying, "Enough already with the Othello talk"?

Alien Abduction!

One day last week, as my children and I drove from errand to errand, it was nothing but the constant kvetch I hear in my sleep and will most likely still hear in the grave: "It's not fair!" That particular day's injustice was that my daughter went to see WALL-E in the movie theater with a friend several weeks earlier and my sons still haven't been to see it. "It's not fair. It's probably going to be gone from the theaters soon! You promised. Wah! Wah! Wah!" Soon after I loudly declared something along the lines of "tough luck," we were in a Borders bookstore picking up a present. I must have zoned out in the cookbook section and someone abducted my sons and replaced them with alien mutant android clones! There is no other explanation for what I heard the older one say. "This is even better! Mom, can we buy this WALL-E book? I promise I'll read it to Ethan." Can we? For $3.99, I bought the book, ended the kvetching (that day's at least), and saved probably 30 bucks and 3,000 calories in admission and buttered popcorn. It's more than 72 hours later and the alien clone boy is finished with the book and willing to settle for renting the movie when it shows up at Blockbuster.

Conversation Starter

While on vacation last month, I read and enjoyed Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl. Since then I picked up Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident, and I'm enjoying it even more. What is really interesting and pleasant about these books is how it they work as a magnet for ten to fifteen year olds. This demographic doesn't (in my experience) generally strike up conversations with women my age. However, in the past few weeks, as I've sat at swim meets, our local lake, and our library reading it, kids of that age group, seeing the cover, have felt compelled to say things like, "Isn't that a great book" and "You should read the next one." A ten year old girl struck up a conversation with me today after seeing the book poking out of my bag. She highly recommends that I read Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony. I have to say that as much as I have enjoyed the humor, action, and characters in these books, I've enjoyed these interactions with random kids as much or more. Who knew?!