MotherReader

I’m not going to take long on the Obama thing, but I have to mention the three references to reading or children’s books in the informercial last night. Yes, three.

In a speech segment Barack says, “No government program can turn off the TV set or put away the video games or read to your children.” The emphasis was his, as well as mine.

Then Michelle Obama talks about how Barack has his thing that he does with each of his daughters, “and for Malia it was reading through every single Harry Potter book, and they got through all of them.”

Then the segment about the family in Kentucky starts with showing the dad reading a bedtime story to his little girl.

Not bad for books and reading, huh?

(Okay, I have to add something. I went to find the video where Michelle and Barack talk at a party about reading Harry Potter, which I found. But it led to another video titled — I kid you not — “Barack Obama Reads Witchcraft to His Children.” You have to laugh, right? The video features Michelle talking about Barack reading the books, but starts with a text statement, “Does Barack Obama oppose Harry Potter like most Christian parents?” Most Christian parents? Really? So I suppose that the huge Pottermania that has spurred on the children’s book industry for almost ten years can all be credited to Jews. You’re welcome.)

I just got back from an Obama event. What a rush. It was a town meeting held here in Northern Virginia, and I brought my two daughters. Unfortunately, I did not bring my camera, to my now crushing disappointment. I left it home because it doesn’t take decent pictures when you are far away from the subject. However, when you are so close to the subject that you could toss a Nerf ball to him... well then the camera would have been handy.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Oh, and did I mention that my cell phone wasn’t charged because it hasn’t been working, so I didn’t charge it? Of course, it would have done fine taking pictures of someone famous and perhaps presidential three feet away from me. You know, if the battery hadn’t died.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

But let’s focus on the positive. We did get there early and did get nice seats behind and to the right of Obama. We saw him in profile most of the time, but because it was town-hall style he did face us sometimes. The speech was interesting — not soaring rhetoric, but more down-to-earth policy. He did have some nice elements of humor in both his scripted remarks and his responses to questions.

There was one question in particular of interest to us book lovers, and that came from a woman who asked what Obama would say to young writers. He was surprised by the question, which he admitted was one he hadn’t heard before, but didn’t hesitate to answer. He referenced his two books, and specifically mentioned how he wrote them himself, along with many of his speeches. With a light inflection, he said, “In terms of getting a job, knowing how to write is a good thing.” He talked about how he kept a journal, and how it was important for teaching him not only how to write, but also how to think. But my favorite part was when he said, “Over the course of four years I made time to read all of the Harry Potter books out loud to my daughters. If I can do that and run for president, then you can find time to read to your kids. That’s some of the most special time you have with your children.”

If the entire remarks come online later, I’ll copy that whole section rather than relying on my scribbled notes on a volunteer application form. (I did find this video about him reading the Rowling books.) But I was too excited about a potential president that really cares about reading and writing to wait. Also exciting personally — the yin to the yang of leaving the camera home — Obama walked right by us, and my younger daughter got to shake his hand! Shake. His. Hand. My older daughter debated waving the copy of Harry Potter that she had brought along to read during the wait, but since it was book five, we decided that its extraordinary size might cause it to be seen as a weapon by the Secret Service agents if she wielded it over her head.

No introduction, just some interesting posts I noticed tonight.

Winner of the longest list title award — enjoy “First Day of School Read-Alouds with Global and Multicultural Perspectives” over at Choice Literacy (with thanks to A Year of Reading for the link).

It’s no surprise to me, but Seven-Imp bloggers love Knuffle Bunny Too. Read their joint review of Mo’s book and the new Sis book here.

Books need bookshelves, and after seeing the Corner Spacesaver Bookcase at Target, I almost 1-clicked it, I like it so so much. Thanks to Semicolon for the link, and for reminding me not only of the wonderful book sculptures that I had seen, but also that I hadn’t seen them all. Now I can.

In a Harry Potter mood? Talk about the last movie and the diversity of characters — or lack thereof — over at A Wrung Sponge. If you’ve been distracted by summer fun, maybe you haven’t chimed it at the discussion over at Scholar’s Blog Spoiler Zone, but there’s still time. You’ll find an original perspective over at... well, Original Content, and Cheryl Klein, Potter editor, posts her thoughts on the last book — as do more than a hundred commenters (thanks to Miss Erin for pointing it out).

Oh, and it makes me disproportionately happy to mention that John Green licked a cat.

So many goodies to share, so little time before I go to work.

You heard it here first... you know, maybe... but a sixteen-year-old translated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into French and put it online. He’s kind of in trouble, but I’ve got to admire the determination. And what’s the deal with the French publishing the ending of the book but running that article upside down? Silly French people.

In the Potter vein, if you want somewhere to go and talk amongst yourselves about the book, head to Scholar’s Blog Spoiler Zone and spill your guts. Also on Potter, I was surprised that my quoting the phrase “who doesn’t know Hogwarts from genital warts” didn’t get more of you to check out Defective Yeti’s hilarious post from the point of view of the Amazon warehouse employee. I mean, I just used the words “genital warts” in my blog. Do you realize what that’s going to do to my keyword searches? The least you can do is read it.

If NerdFighters (do you think that word is actually a CamelCase?) donate to the campaign of Daniel Biss or to the Foundation to Decrease WorldSuck, John Green will entertain us. At two hundred donations he says, “I will find a cat, lick it, wax two limbs of your choice while drinking a thoroughly blenderized Happy Meal from McDonald’s.” I don’t care much about the waxing or the Happy Meal, but I deeply love the idea of him going up to a neighbor and introducing himself by asking to lick their cat for a videoblog. The donations are so close. We can make it happen. Oh, and blogbuddy Kelly Fineman makes an appearance in a later video. You go, girl! If you adore Brotherhood 2.0, check out the fabulous article written by Little Willow. Her piece was also part of...

The Edge of the Forest, where I contributed a self-interview about the 48 Hour Book Challenge. Extra props to Kelly for her work getting up another great issue even after computer crashes and scheduling problems galore.

I heard from more than one place that The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar endorses Junie B. Jones, but I’m giving the nod to Bookshelves of Doom because, man, that chick has been a posting fiend lately! Anyway, at the SPOGG Blog (what wouldn’t you give for that name), they talk about the recent blast on the books by The New York Times and support Junie B. Take that, naysayers! Personally, I am highly in favor of Junie B. Jones books, and wrote about it here.

Speaking of Junie B., remember how I said I was going to send Barbara Park my article and write her a letter for Tell an Author You Care Day (Week)? I didn’t know where to send it, but her publicist saw my post and told me that I could send the letter to her attention. Of course the email was in my new, exciting MotherReader email and I kinda had forgotten I had that new thing. But the lovely publicist forwarded my article and website on to Ms. Park, and she was thrilled with what I wrote! That makes me so happy in my heart! As it turns out, in the summer laziness I’ve been feeling, I hadn’t sent the letter yet, so I’m going to get it out of here and in the hands of my writing idol soon. Soon. Yes, soon!

On the topic of laziness, I feel the need to apologize. I thought that with less on my plate in the summer I’d be more focused, but that has not been the case. I’ve neglected to respond to emails, including forgetting that I had an entire separate email account. I didn’t send my check for the Kidlitosphere conference. (It’s in the mail!) I have books I was totally going to review, but I’ve slacked off. Generally, I just want to say that it’s not you, it’s me.

Oh, and my beach visit was lovely. We only spent one day at the ocean, but what a day. Often we see dolphins offshore, but this time they were really close. In fact, a pair of them swam about three yards away from my eleven-year-old daughter! I went running in to join her, but with my glasses on I couldn’t go deep enough. Stupid bad eyesight. Still, extremely cool.

I think I did a decent job of wrapping up my favorite Harry Potter posts from the kidlitosphere, but I totally missed one outside our area of expertise until today. See, I haven’t been reading my Just For Fun blogroll, and that is a punishable crime. My funny favorite blogger Defective Yeti has a hilarious post from the point of view of the Amazon warehouse employee. Please, go and read it.

Need a sample? Well, the phrase “who doesn’t know Hogwarts from genital warts,” pretty much cracked me up. (Oh, while you’re there, check out his take on the CNN/YouTube Democratic Debate. If you’ve ever looked at comments on YouTube, you’ll lol.)

Many people were talking about Deathly Hallows this week, meaning that I was quite right to stay off the Internet. However, catching up has been a long process. Chiming in on posts a week late also feels rather lame — though I did it anyway. Here were some of the highlights for me found in the Kidlitosphere.

The “Welcome Back Potter” video cracked me up. Will the kids today get it? Probably not. Sigh.

I didn’t join the Potter parties, but I was glad to read about one at Book, Book, Book, and how fun to share in the excitement of Miss Erin at the midnight release, complete with a photo essay. Book Moot’s post about the magical quality of One World/One Book made me read the first chapter of book 7 on the release day. I wasn’t done with book 6 yet, but I wanted to be part of the day when everyone was reading one particular book.

I loved skimming back through the book following Interactive Reader’s commentary. Like reading along with a buddy.

I was ready to talk about it, or to hear what others were saying, but where to go? Thanks to Bookshelves of Doom who left her post spoiler-free, but opened the comments for everyone to share their thoughts.

For the shortest review, I turn to Emily Reads who then bestows her haiku crown (though let’s hope on loan only) to another Emily who has broken down the plot points of the book, yes, in haiku.

Two reviews I couldn’t live without seeing — after having read the book naturally — are from The Horn Book and the marvelous Fuse#8. Fusie goes spoiler-wild on hers, which I appreciate, as it gives us a chance to discuss the book. I mean, really, is anyone out there reading reviews of the seventh Harry Potter book to decide whether or not to read it?

After reading the 4,100 pages of the Harry Potter books in a week and change, I had to agree with the idea of more and better editing talked about here at The Longstockings. Also, you can catch a look at two Longstockings out on the town, decked out for the festivities.

Oh, and don’t forget that the book discussion will take place soon at Scholar’s Blog.

In other, unrelated news, I totally spaced on the latest Carnival of Children’s Literature, but you can catch it at Saints and Spinners. Also, only deeply interesting to me perhaps, but I’m a CamelCase. It’s true — read about it here.

Tomorrow, more Potter thoughts and I challenge your allegiance.

I’m back online. I missed you guys so much! No, really. It felt so incomplete to only be posting occasionally and not reading your blogs. I was like Paris Hilton without her drink on.

I finished the seventh Harry Potter book on Friday morning, but then hit a batch of “real world” things to do that kept me off the Internet until now. I was almost finished with Deathly Hallows on Thursday night; at about 11:30 p.m. I was drifting off and thinking, “Maybe I can just take a little nap here on the couch and then wake up and finish the book.” Fortunately, the mom in me took control and sent me directly to bed.

In the morning, I had to get the girls ready for day camp and I had to be at work at 10:00 a.m. When they left, I had an hour to get ready for work and then read. But being that showering is so overrated, I went with extra deodorant and reading until the last possible minute. And then I read the last thirty pages at the Information Desk at work. What? Do you blame me? Later that day, I reread the last hundred pages at a more relaxed pace.

So what wisdom, what insight did I take away from my ten-day, 4100-page, Harry Potter reading extravaganza?

Those books are too fucking long.

Okay really, I liked the first three the best for their balance of fun and adventure. The fourth heads darker, for sure, but still has lots of lighter elements to it. Maybe the section on the World Quidditch Cup was a tad lengthy, but the kids love their Quidditch, so I’ll let that go.

The fifth book must come with its own dementor tucked in the jacket flap, because reading it I felt all the joy being sucked away. I mean, what a downer! There’s world suffering on the horizon, and no one will listen. The administration is corrupt. The majority of the people are misled or uninformed. There seems to be no hope in getting the truth to light. Come to think of it, maybe I would have found this book easier to handle if we weren’t in the middle of the second Bush administration.

The sixth book comes back with more action and hope. Rowling cleverly employs the author’s mantra of “show, don’t tell.” She has Dumbledore show Harry the missing back story through the pensieve. Personally, I think Rowling got off on a technicality, but still a good book.

The last book keeps the action for the most part, but with large stalling sections. I’m not going to say much more about it for now, except to say that it’s going to make a great movie. Kind of like Return of the Kingmeets Die Hard.

Speaking of movies, I also watched three of the movies this fortnight. The first two I had seen pretty recently anyway. The first three movies are able to stick pretty close to the books. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire turns the first two hundred pages of the book into about ten minutes of movie. Pretty impressive, but you can’t cut that much without losing lots of subtleties and changing plot points.

Bill and I saw Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix on Saturday morning; we came out with different views. Bill thought the moviemaking aspect of it was very well done and was extremely impressed with Daniel Radcliffe as an actor. For me, having just read the book, I was put off by the number of changes they made to simplify the storyline. Of course, the book was immense, so they had to make cuts somewhere.

Today I’m going to wrap up my Harry Potter immersion with a try at the video game that my daughters have mastered. I’ll also be visiting some blogs to join Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows discussion. Then of course, there is the small matter of how many household chores must be neglected to read all those books. All those very, very long books.

Come back tomorrow for new and almost-intelligent insight. Be ready to take sides.

Finished the new Harry Potter? Not me. And I don’t want to hear a thing about it. Not even a seemingly innocuous statement that “it’s good.” Nothing. As an example of my conviction, here is a conversation with my husband:

Bill: I finished the Harry Potter book.

Me: Great. Hold it, when did you read it?

Bill: I brought it to work and finished it at lunch.

Me: Oh.

If the father of my children can’t tell me anything about it, then surely no one can. I made the rather foolish decision to read all the Harry Potter books before the new one. Foolish mainly because I started a mere week ago. It’s a bit overly ambitious, but overly ambitious is my middle name — which, incidentally, makes filling out forms a bitch. Anyway, I’ve been staying off the Internet and — at great personal sacrifice — specifically off Jacketflap, which I’ve come to love for its convenient book blog reader. I’ll be posting this week, but it will be a Potter-free zone. In fact:


So, seen any good movies lately? The girls and I went to see Hairspray and we loved it. I’m a huge fan of the music and the play, and the movie didn’t disappoint. It was fantastic! They toned down some of the innuendo and made some changes to make it a notch more realistic. It’s still most definitely a movie musical, though, and subject to its own rules of believability. Actually, it’s like Live Free or Die Hard is only subject to the rules of Action Movies — and by those rules, LFoDH was also a great ride, almost worth the insane price of admission. There was another movie I was planning to see next weekend, but for some reason the name has slipped my mind. There’s a dark-haired boy and a girl, and another boy and something about magic...

Today I have an original summer poem, but it’s not really my poem — it’s yours. I took all the entries so far for my Summer Contest and pulled them together into one poem. It involved a little tweaking, a few interesting line breaks, and some added imagery. I’m not a great judge of these things, but I think it’s pretty good.


Keep submitting your ideas for enjoying the summer, and I’ll pick someone at random to win the book Cassie Was Here. And I’m sure I’ll come up with something to send off too. (Pssst. Anyone have something cool I can send to the winner?)

Summer

Eating watermelon off the rind,
and spitting out the seeds.
Floating on your back
in the nearest body of water,
and gazing up at the summer clouds
as they drift from one animal shape
into another.
Sitting on the screened-in porch,
a breeze blowing,
reading a great book
for once
ignoring
all the things to do,
knowing there will be
more time
more time
tomorrow.
Eating lemon chills at the zoo,
or taking time for a book shopping spree.
Bouncing on a soft springy tundra,
rolling down a hill,
and eating blueberries
right off the bushes
the way the bears do.
In the far, far, north,
gliding on the deck
when it’s midnight
and the sun’s
still shining.
Scrunching toes in the sand,
playing with the little crabs,
collecting tiny shells,
and hoping for
the perfect sand dollar.
Seeing forward to the point,
when the book
is abandoned,
and the blanket is grubby,
and you still can’t force yourself
to leave the rhythmic
soughing
and sighing
of the sea.

Not bad, huh? Mentor Texts & More is doing the Poetry Friday Round-Up this week and is also collecting reviews for an upcoming Picture Book Carnival.

I’ll be reading me some Harry Potter today, tomorrow, and Sunday. Or so it seems. Apparently, it is harder to read at a baseball game than one might think. So I’ve got some catching up to do. Please be sure to see the song that Hank Green did at Brotherhood 2.0 about waiting for the Harry Potter book. It is really amazing. I made it my business to suggest it to MuggleNet and the Leaky Cauldron and GalleyCat and a few other places. Why not do the same in the name of the NerdFighters? (Oh, if you are not a Brotherhood 2.0 watcher, I should mention that NerdFighters as a name is from the vblog. It’s not like I’m getting some complex or something. On the other hand, I did bring a book to a major league baseball game, so perhaps I need to admit something to myself.)

Okay, so I got a little distracted. Sue me.

Anyway, I’ve done some good work with Tell An Author You Care... uh, Day. Except for like the day part.

1. I wrote a snail mail letter to Barbara Park with a copy of my article about the glory of Junie B. Jones for young (and older) readers. I’ve been trying to find somewhere reasonably direct to send it, but I guess I’m giving up and going with Random House in general. Wish my letter luck in finding her! If I’m telling any authors that I care, that’s for me to know and you to find out.


2. I wrote, by somewhat copying my MotherReader posts, Amazon reviews for The Thing About Georgie and Clementine. I chose these two books because I bought them for the girls’ teachers, and so I got an email from Amazon asking for a customer review. Seemed timely and goes right into the next step.


3. In some way, I feel that I fulfilled this option by purchasing two great books to give to two great classroom teachers. But just to cover myself, I also preordered the new Harry Potter for my husband. Yes, my husband, because he’s more anxiously awaiting it than I am.


4. I’m still working on the author profile aspect; almost there. Hopefully tomorrow.

Oh, and in relation to my third thing above — you know, about how the Harry Potter book is more for my husband than me? Well, I’ve done something wacky and decided to read all the old HP books again before reading the new one. Now, lots of people have been rereading, but I suspect most of them started before, say, Tuesday. With a full work day tomorrow, and four more looooong books to go, things don’t look good. But I suspect that my obsessive personality will force me to stick to it.

Why, oh why can’t this stick-to-it thing work with exercising? Oh right, because I hate to sweat, but I loves to read.