Not exactly what I want to be reading, but I promise I will be digging into, and hopefully finishing, “What-the-Dickens”, tonight!
library
Remember That Story About The Tooth Fairy?
You know, “What-the-Dickens”? That guy. Yep. I’m still reading it. Except I haven’t picked it up in a week. Since about the time my 1st college class started for my MBA. So, I don’t know about you, but I find this completely unacceptable. So I will find a way to manage my time to include my recreational reading and blogging, and tell you how this story ends. Patience is a virtue, right?
More to come, sooner rather than later (fingers crossed)!
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Tuesday’s Thought For The Day!
True Statement!
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Puzzle Me This!
Maybe you remember my post of my “Bizzare Bookshop” puzzle earlier? Here’s a picture of it; it is now hanging on my bedroom wall.
I also had two more puzzles to complete. I love puzzles almost as much as I love books, so to be able to do puzzles of books is a-m-a-z-i-n-g for me! Ravensburger makes the best puzzles, ever. And believe you me, I have done my fair share of puzzles.
The next one is finished, and hanging on my bedroom wall. This one is “World of Words”. This took less than a week.
The one in progress is “Sanctuary of Knowledge”, which is taking me already two weeks….I did this one last year and one of my girls took it and put it in their room. Fair enough. I have just really been struggling to sit down and work on this: holidays, back to work, MBA classes started……
And the toughest, but my favorite Ravensburger puzzle? “The Last Supper”. A very close friend of mine from church bought this for me and my girls. 3000 pieces. Took us all 6 weeks to complete it but it has been hanging on my kitchen wall for over two years and I love looking at this. Every. Single. Day.
What do you think? Are you a puzzle solver?
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Friday Fun Facts!
J.D. Salinger (Jerome David)
Born: 1-1-1919
Died: 1-27-2010
Wrote: The Catcher in the Rye, published in 1951, as well as 3 other novels, including short stories that appeared in The New Yorker. He was drafted into the Army and served from 1942-1944. He was hospitalized after suffering a nervous breakdown after the war. Mr. Salinger lived a very private life, last published a book in 1965, and gave his last interview in 1980.
Odd Fact: Mark David Chapman, the man who assassinated John Lennon, was found with a copy of the book at the time of his arrest and later explained that the reason for the shooting could be found in the book’s pages.
Quote: “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
I have to be completely honest and say I have never read this book! I am ashamed to even say that, but I guarantee after reading the synopsis of this book, I will own it before the weekend is over.
What did you think of this story?
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He’s In Trouble Now !
So our little friend What-the-Dickens is finding himself in a messy situation. He is hell bent on finding McCavity, a huge white cat that tried to eat him. It’s the first living thing he saw, and he is bound and determined to find this McCavity, give her a gift, and ask to be her pet.
Sounds reasonable to me.
So on his journey, he manages to be adopted by an out-of-tune rust-throated grisset (a bird of some sort). She snatches him from the ground, but when her babies won’t eat him (they prefer worms of course) she plops him in her nest with the others and flies off to find food for all of them. As timing would have it, What-the-Dickens peeks over the edge of the nest and sees McCavity walking past the tree. She sees her lost dinner, and up the tree she goes. The birds fly the nest, and What-the-Dickens falls out, discovering his webbing helps slow him down from a fall. Once again, he has lost sight of McCavity, and he’s off again, searching for this cat so he can be her pet.
At what is the start of his career as the Tooth Fairy, What-the-Dickens passes the zoo, and an enormous lion with a toothache, knowing it must be a relative of his beautiful McCavity. Not knowing the lion is drugged up on morphine for his surgery the next day to remove the tooth, What-the-Dickens tries to find out if he knows where McCavity might be, ends up in his mouth, and discovers the infected tooth. Surely this huge cat will help him on his way if he removes this tooth, right?
So remove it he does, lucky to not be eaten, and getting no further help, heads off with the tooth as a present for his future owner, and the start of a career under his belt.
What’s up next for What-the-Dickens? Hard to say, but surely there is more trouble heading in his direction!
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What-The-Dickens: AKA The Tooth Fairy
Are You Familiar With Gregory Maguire? Have you read Wicked? If you have, then you’ve read Gregory Maguire. Being a huge Wizard of Oz fan, I have of course enjoyed all of the books in the Wicked Series (Except the last one, I haven’t read that yet). Gregory Maguire has a way of taking common fairy tales that we are all familiar with, or other stories we think we know, and giving them his own unique twist; taking you on a journey you never expected.
Do you like Cinderella? You want to read “Confessions of an Ugly Step-Sister”.
How about Snow White? Then you would love “Mirror, Mirror”.
“What-the-Dickens” is a story about the tooth-fairy. It revolves around Dinah Ormsby, her older brother Zeke, their 2 year old sister Rebecca Ruth, and their just showed up on their doorstep distant cousin Gage. There isn’t a definite time frame, or year that this book seems to be set in. The back story on the family is the parents disappeared, Gage shows up. On page 5 we read that “the Ormsby’s were trying the experiment of living by gospel standards, and they hoped to be surer of their faith tomorrow than they’d been yesterday”. This is also a family who lives with no cable television, internet service, or visits to the mall.
This isn’t your run-of-the-mill tooth-fairy either. He is what would be called a Skibbereen, or Skibberee. “His arm webs were filmy, nearly transparent, and his skin was suggestible, like water. I suppose his circulation worked on a capillary system; his coloring could shift from pale to dark and many shades in between” (pg. 20). He sounds kind of like a dragon fly to me.
So are you interested? Good. Because I have just started this book, and “What-the-Dickens” (yes, that is his name) seems like he has a lot of trouble coming his way. I can’t wait to share it with you!
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Tuesday’s Thought For The Day!
“So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
go throw your TV set away,
and in its place you can install,
a lovely bookcase on the wall.”
― Roald Dahl
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Cinderella At The End!
For more information on the author, go here: http://cinderellaatemydaughter.com
Cinderella Ate My Daughter, by Peggy Orenstein. If you are a Mom, Grandma, or Aunt to girls, this is an excellent book with lots of facts and some interesting stories.
The end of the book was in the time frame of when Tangled was about to be released by Disney (2010ish) so even some of the statistics I am going to share with you may have increased exponentially since the release of this story.
Shocking, almost impossible to believe, statistics:
The Global revenue Disney experienced from their Princess franchise in 2000: $300 million. In 2009? $4 billion.
The percentage of children ages 8-12 who regularly used eyeliner doubled between 2008 and 2010. Doubled. DOUBLED. What in the world is an 8 year old doing wearing eyeliner?
Nearly half of girls between 6 and 9 regularly use lipstick or lipgloss. (I do not know the number surveyed so it is kind of hard to tell you what the halfway point is, but for me I would have to say 1 out of 2 is one too many. My 9 year old uses chapstick. Plain, colorless, flavorless, chapstick).
Age of Barbie target audience when she was released in 1959: 9 to 12 years old. Age of Barbie target audience today (2010)? 3 to 7 years old.
In 2009, 12,000 Botox injections were given to children between the ages of 13 and 19. (I have absolutely nothing to say about this. I am just dumbfounded).
In 2008, 43,000 children under the age of 18 surgically altered their appearance. (HOW and WHY is this even possible? Unless if it is a life-saving, necessary surgery or a surgery to stop a child from being bullied, i.e. noticeable birthmark that gets them teased, the Doctors doing plastic surgery on children who aren’t finished growing should lose their license to practice, and the parents should just lose their parental rights.)
Between 1996 and 2006, the percentage of children under the age of 12 admitted to the hospital for eating disorders rose 119%.
Between 2000 and 2004, there was a 70% drop in the number of female college freshmen listing computer science as their major.
The age at which children express brand consciousness? 24 months.
I know everyone raises their children differently, and dependent on a person’s upbringing, it may be perfectly normal to allow your 16 year old to have plastic surgery. I have just voiced my opinion about how I feel as the mother of 4 daughters, and my intention was not to offend anyone. But I will certainly not ever apologize for the fact that I find it ridiculous and absurd that any girl under the age of 19 would be allowed to have botox injected. Exactly what is going on with your face at younger than 19 that needs to be fixed?
Good Gracious, I pray for strength, knowledge, and always being able to stay one step ahead of these girls I am still raising to be women, in the hopes of not only keeping them safe, but making them strong, intelligent women.
(Orenstein, Peggy, 2011, pgs 205-206)
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Unsouled – Neal Shusterman – almost finished
I am midway through Unsouled. I thought with all of my free time I would have been finished by now. Not yet, but hopefully by Monday night!
This story seems to be starting to tie up some loose ends about mid-story, so I am thinking this is likely only a 3-book series. I am not sure if I am happy about this or not; I’ll let you know when I get to the end!
Everyone also seems to be in a place (location) at this part of the story that they do not want to be. Emotionally as well as physically.
Cam is bound and determined to do what he needs to do to earn Risa’s love and respect. Conner and Lev have finally caught back up with each other, at a reservation that Lev has a history with. Starkey is travelling the country with the remaining storks from the Graveyard, blackmailing their way to Nevada, and a harvest camp they plan to rescue every teen from.
An interesting couple of paragraphs in the story:
“In this case blackmail for blackmail was the right move, and the man caves, just as Starkey had known he would. Even the hint of harm to his precious children was too much for the man. Incredible. It never ceases to amaze Starkey how far society will go to protect the children it loves and to discard the ones it doesn’t” (Shusterman, N. 2012, pg. 109)
“‘You want to know the real reason unwinding keeps going strong, Miss Risa Ward? It isn’t because of the parts we want for ourselves-it’s because of the things we’re willing to do to save our children.’ She thinks about that and laughs ruefully. ‘Imagine that. We’re willing to sacrifice the children we don’t love for the ones we do. And we call ourselves civilized!'”(Shusterman, N. 2012, pg. 173)
Food for thought, and the central theme to this series. One never really knows what they would do to save someone they love, until they have to make that choice, do they?
booksandopinions.com 