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Books = Gifts

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This year I had decided to make books the theme of my Christmas gift giving.  We have an independent bookstore that I will support by shopping there and I’m compiling my list of ideas before I go.  Last night I found the website, http://www.booksequalgifts.com/, and was excited to see a site with links to good gift ideas, a book sweepstakes, and this fun video
America’s book publishers are proud to debut a holiday video featuring Elmo, Martha Stewart, Jon Stewart, Barbara Walters, Dean Koontz, Maya Angelou, Mary Higgins Clark, Kathie Lee Gifford, Bill O’Reilly, Christopher Paolini, Frank McCourt, Arianna Huffington, Deepak Chopra, Julie Andrews, Cesar Milan, Carol Higgins Clark, Alec Baldwin, Deidre Imus, Jim Cramer, Nora Ephron, Dan Brown, Judy Blume, Jonathan Lethem, Scott Westerfeld, Rachael Ray, and John Lithgow sharing their reasons why books make great gifts.
I hope you will all join me this year in supporting authors, booksellers, and publishers by buying books for gifts 🙂

Queen Vernita’s Visitors by Dawn Menge, an Aunt Betty review

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Queen Vernita's VisitorsAuthor, Dawn Menge – Illustrator Bobbi Switzer

Reviewed by Aunt Betty

It was a fun read for me.  I would like to have been one of Queen Vernita’s visitors!  The story is such a great learning tool especially for Kindergarten – 2nd grade.  A child could pick up a lot of spin off ideas furthering their knowledge of the seasons, days and months.

Queen Vernita related a lot of cool everyday fun ideas for young children.  Being a ‘queen” I was impressed with the fun activities that included things she could do with her friends inside the walls of the castle, out on the grounds, or in the village.

The illustrator gave great insight with the drawings as to the characters personalities and the world around the oceaneer.  I was only disappointed there were no roses around the castle as was mentioned in the story, although the ivy was shown.

I was pleased to know Queen Vernita and her friend, Debbie, read books together.  It warms a librarians heart.

The counting of days in each month, I liked.  It encourages the child to learn them for his/her own self.  A teacher, librarian or parent could follow up on some of what was brought out in this fine story.

I liked the ending when each of her friends let Queen Vernita know how anxious they were to come for another visit when their month came around again.  The sparks of friendship glowed in this story.

My Aunt Betty has been an elementary school librarian for 24 years.  This is not surprising because she loves kids and kids appreciate her enthusiasm.  It is because of her that I enjoy a close relationship with my 7 cousins (later, 9).  She always had all of us over for sleepovers and other outings.  All 9 of us would cram into her Rabbit for trips around town.  You never see that anymore

I asked around for words to describe Aunt Betty and these are the words that came back the most…Happy, Caring, and Thoughtful.  As for me, my top three choices are Fun, Kind, and Full of Life.

My Aunt Betty as Guest Reviewer

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My Aunt Betty has been an elementary school librarian for 24 years and I thought it would be fun if she reviewed children’s books now and then for my blog.  In the next few days I’ll be adding a page for her with fun facts and a photo or two.  Feel free to leave her comments 🙂

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  We threw my mom a surprise 60th birthday party on Saturday and had around 30 people.  So, it was a wonderful holiday weekend.  Now it’s time to start getting ready for that other little holiday we have coming up.

Our Weekend in DC

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We just returned home from a long weekend in Washington DC to find that our computer no longer works and this laptop keeps disconnecting, so I will post tomorrow when I have access to a better computer!  We spent our 10 year wedding anniversary on Friday in Arlington, Virginia, where we first met, fell in love, and made 2 1/2 years of wonderful memories.  More tomorrow.

Banned Books Week, day 6

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I wrote a post on Sarah Palin’s involvement/noninvolement in banning books as mayor of Wasilla.  I thought it would be a timely post during Banned Book week and on the eve of the Vice-Presidential debates, but after reading it was not sure if I wanted to open up a political can of worms on my tame book blog. 

I am editing myself to this…Palin did not ban books.  Palin may have wanted to ban books, but it never progressed that far.  This issue is very important to me because there is no more basic freedom than the access to information.  I think the fact that it was brought up as an issue is a good thing.  I think it made more people aware that libraries are always fighting off the threat of censorship and we all need to be aware of the dangers of erasing opinions that are not our own.

My West Virginia weekend

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Last night we arrived home at 10:30pm from a weekend in West Virginia to a dark house.  It seems that while we were enjoying beautiful weather Hurricane Ike moved all the way to Ohio and took out trees and power.  Lucky for us, it is back up.  Eight of us stayed in a cabin and the men went whitewater rafting while us two gals hiked, shopped, and took in the area by foot, car and boat.  It was more beautiful than I expected.

new river

We were having a wonderful Saturday until Ohio State lost (and that’s kind) to USC.  The campground showed the game outside on the big screen and there were many unhappy Buckeye fans that night. 

Since there were three guys in the car with me I chose comedy cds for some entertainment.  We listened to the Blue Collar Comedy Tour on the way down and the Blue Comedy Tour Rides Again on the way back home.Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, and Ron White each took a turn entertaining us.  If you need to pass some time in a car full of guys these cds are a good choice, and I even got them from the library.  The second one was a little more mean spirited at times than the first, but still funny.

Philip Roth class

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Today was my first Philip Roth class.  We are reading American Pastoral first and were to have read the first 100 pages today.  I can’t go too much into the book because I haven’t finished reading it yet, but wanted to tell a little about the class itself.  It’s a continuing education class from a local university, so there is no credit or grade given.  You take the class to learn about something new. 

I had American Pastoral in my ‘to read’ pile and thought there was no better opportunity to read it and learn.  There were 20 people in the class and I was by far the youngest.  But, even if I felt a little conspicuous I was not alone since there is also only one man in the class.  Most of the discussion was taken up by the setting of the book, growing up in the 1950’s and I enjoyed the many perspectives of the class.  I did not grow up in the 50’s and certainly do not speak for a whole generation, so, I’ll have to wait and see if I have anything of real value to add.  To be honest, I really did enjoy hearing everyone else’s take on the decade, the war, the culture.

Our instructor loves Philip Roth.  The most interesting thing I learned about him today was the fact that he writes standing up due to severe back pain.  Virginia Woolf also wrote standing up.  Does anyone know another author who writes standing up?  I can’t even imagine it really. 

If you have a chance to take a class and learn something new you will be better off for it.  It’s not just the subject matter you learn, but also the knowledge that everyone in the class has to share.