MotherReader

Huzzah! It’s time again for a Threadless sale. Their highly creative, often artistic t-shirts are selling for ten or twelve bucks — an absolute bargain for a book lover to make a statement like this:


The Best Channels since 1465 is just one of the many cool shirts featured. On the reading end, you might add Brainy Rainbow to your collection:


This Book Lover is a natural for me, with both a giraffe and books:


Or on a completely different note, you could share some feelings about couplehood with Love is Love:


This is the time to stock up, because sizes sell out fast. Along with the fourth selection here, I bought the lovely Secret Lake for me and Squinjas!, the humorous portrayal of ninja squirrels trying to steal scout cookies, for the tween. What Threadless shirt do you love?

We came, we saw, we designed the T-shirt. Buy one of the many varieties of styles at CafePress.

What luck! I didn’t know what I was going to write about today until Threadless extended its sale. If you don’t know about Threadless T-shirts, you owe it to yourself to take a look. Seriously. They have most interesting, artistic, unique T-shirts out there. The designs come from all over the world, and are voted on by the members to see which ones get printed. I find several shirts a year that I can’t resist at full price, like this Choose Your Own Adventure-themed shirt.


During the Threadless $5 and $10 sales, I have to stock up. Of particular interest to the writers and book lovers are at least three designs featuring the slogans:

Plot, it builds character.

Shakespeare hates your emo poems

MOVIES: Ruining the Book Since 1920
Sizes are limited during the sales, so don’t procrastinate. Already a fan? Well then, what’s your favorite Threadless shirt?

Hold on, people, it’s a sale at Threadless! What does this have to do with MotherReader and/or books? Well, MotherReader ordered five shirts for herself and the family (and is enjoying talking in the third person, thank you very much). As for books, there’s this shirt for illustrators or this shirt for poets... and of course this shirt for classics buffs was donated as a prize for the 48 Hour Book Challenge. Personally, I’m going with the word find shirt and kicking myself for not thinking of the concept myself. But I’ll enjoy wearing it.

With one email, you too can be a prize contributor to the 48 Hour Book Challenge just like Threadless. No lie. Send me an offer at motherreader AT gmail DOT com — you know, with the right symbol replacements.

Okay, this shirt totally rocks. See if you can pick out some of the “Twenty Renowned Authors of the Classics” starring in Attack of Literacy. Shakespeare and Twain are easy, but is that Jane Austen?

This fantastic shirt is a prize donated by Threadless for the 48 Hour Book Challenge. Thanks to our (one) corporate sponsor! There will also be signed books, handmade journals, gift cards, jewelry, and more in the winners’ prize packages. Remember, some prizes will be awarded randomly to participants in the challenge, so you don’t have to read the most or read the longest to win something. Now is the time to block off the weekend of June 6th–8th and sign up to read like you’ve never read before. Unless you participated last year, in which you’ll read somewhat like you’ve read before.

I was pretty sick yesterday and am not really up to writing a post today, so it seemed like the perfect time to let Threadless stand in for me. My favorite T-shirt shop is having a $10 sale, and this shirt seems like a great Poetry Friday submission: the Poet-Trees.

Personally, I’m fond of the shirt that says, “The internet was closed, so I thought I’d come outside today,” which is here. I also like “MOVIES: Ruining the Book Since 1920,” which is here. So enjoy the Poet-Trees, and then head over to Threadless and do some shopping.

The Poetry Friday round-up is over at Miss Rumphius Effect.

This morning I was very excited to see Rebecca Stead’s book First Light as the suggested book in the Washington Post’s KidsPost section! For my money, this place in the paper is much better for a kids’ book than the official book pages, so like, “Yeah, Rebecca!” I really liked First Light — not to mention the author herself — so I’m glad to see the book get some buzz. Remember how I mentioned the Al Roker book club call, Rebecca? You may want to prepare.

In other book news, Fuse#8 alerted me to the presence of a book trailer for Robin Brande’s book Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature. Very cool. I really enjoyed the book, but Bill reviewed it because he won the coin toss. Let me add to his review that I particularly like the humor throughout the book, which kept a heavy topic from taking over the tone. For instance, a description of a yoga position that “can only come in handy if you ever want to shave your own back.” One more thing: I think that the opening paragraphs set up the book so perfectly. Here they are, as a MotherReader bonus, so you’ll check out the trailer, the review(s), the first paragraphs, and get yourself this book — now available at a bookstore near you (or at Amazon, duh).

I knew today would be ugly.

When you’re single-handedly responsible for getting your church, your pastor, and every one of your former friends and their parents sued for millions of dollars, you expect to make some enemies. Fine.

It’s just that I hoped my first day of school — of high school, thank you, which I’ve only been looking forward to my entire life — might turn out to be at least slightly better than eating live bugs. But I guess I was wrong.

In completely unrelated news, my favorite maker of T-shirts is having a sale through tomorrow. Many of the fantastic Threadless styles are on sale for $10. I’ve talked about the Haiku shirt, the Shakespeare Hates Your Emo Poems shirt, the I’m a Noun! shirt, the Spoilt shirt, and now I’ll point to the Stupid Raisins, Stay Out of My Cookies shirt. It has no literary connection, but it makes me laugh.

I had meant to write about my vacation to Niagara Falls because it was fabulous. Maybe later. For now I’ll give you my favorite photo from the trip. It’s a baby Beluga whale at MarineLand, and it’s waving goodbye to summer. (Click on the photo for extra cuteness.)

Okay, so I was going to share some deep, existential thoughts on Potter that would challenge the core of your very being and force you to examine the way you perceive not only your view of children’s literature, but of life itself. But I’m backing out on that mission. The time doesn’t feel right.

Instead, I’ll direct you to my favorite spoiler of all time, this T-shirt from Threadless. In an artistic, and often vague way, it names some of the great spoilers. You know, like “Rosebud was the name of his sled.” There’s a Harry Potter reference right smack in the middle. I had to buy the shirt, even though I’m not sure if it’s totally cool or totally mean. The hubby and I will take turns wearing it and taking the heat.

There’s something I’ve seen in the world of mommy bloggers called Love Thursday, and today I’d like to contribute to that tradition.

Love is…

... knowing you are supposed to wear your haiku T-shirt when you go into your fifth grader’s class to read, because you’re reading poetry and because you promised fifth grader you would wear it, but then you spill tiny drops of makeup on the chest and the drops of make-up are very noticeable and might stain, so you wash them off but get a little overzealous and end up getting half of the shirt soaking wet, but since you have to wear it in ten minutes you throw it in the dryer, not realizing that ten minutes is not going to be enough because when you take it out, the shirt is still pretty damp, but you’ve got to leave so you wear it anyway because you said that you would.

A Haiku T-shirt will be among the prize packages in the 48 Hour Book Challenge, with thanks to Threadless for the donation.

Cool prizes to offer? Scroll down to the ever-exciting “Email MotherReader!” button and make me an offer I can’t refuse.

Omigod! I have almost fifty people signed up for the 48 Hour Book Challenge! Most are from the kidlitosphere. Some are reading moms and kid lit lovers. Some of the bloggers are old friends. Well, old in blog time, which is anything more than six months. Some blogs are new to me, like Nonfiction Readers Anonymous. (Oh, nonanon, you don’t have to read the 48 hours straight. Just challenge yourself to read as much as you can in a 48 hour window during that weekend. Great blog name, btw.) I’ll be visiting some of the new-to-me blogs next week, once I get my other project finished. But great turnout, people! Keep the sign-ups coming!

I have some great offers of donated prizes, but could certainly use more. It would be best if it were book-related, but anything can be book-related if you really try. You may not be able to top these (ahem, fake) prizes, but it’s not like you can’t try. Roger is actually in for one “stoked,” which is like a little prize for everyone.

On a related note of donations (I hope), the famous haiku shirt has been reprinted over at Threadless. I kid you not. Thanks to Check It Out for letting me know, and for apparently nagging them endlessly until they reprinted it. Now we can all work on the reprint of I’m A Noun!, the shirt owned by MotherReader and her two kids, for the hippest mother/daughter outfits ever.

Our own Fuse#8 went and got herself published in the Horn Book, with an article on kit lit blogging and a list of recommended sites. Mega-tastic! (Note: after googling that term, it turns out it may not be in the slang vernacular after all. It’s more like I made it up. Which, actually, might make it even funnier if it appeared on the Horn Book blog.)

In a MotherReader rarity, I plan to post again today. My April book reviewing — or book sharing — was a little light, and now my reviews are backing up like a public toilet at RFK Stadium (Go Nats!)

Time-Out Tuesday brings you this lovely offering from Threadless, where for a limited time, many T-shirts are ten bucks. For a tenner, I’ll probably pick up this shirt, even though I’m not fond of yellow. I’m very interested in another shirt emblazed with the simple phrase, “I’m a Noun!” Unfortunately, the haiku shirt is not available at this time, but they have many other hip styles, including the literary “Shakespeare hates your emo poems.”

If you’re coming to Bar 9 tonight in lovely NYC, look for me wearing this T-shirt. Say hi.

Thanks to [BB-Blog] for today’s Poetry Friday entry.

I’m ordering this shirt today.