BookLust

The Waldo Ultimatum

Freakin' hilarious!

Thanks to Crooked House for this gem!

BiblioQuotes 7

"The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books."

– Katherine Mansfield

Random Readings 16

     Jane settled down on the bench and prepared herself for a long wait. She had brought along a box of tissues for her lingering sniffles plus two books. One was Magic by the Lake. She'd just gotten to the part where Katharine was stuck in the oil jar in Ali Baba's cave, and although this was the fourth time Jane had read the book, she was excited to read what came next. This is what made a book great, she thought, that you could read it over and over and never get tired of it.

– from The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

(A charming and delightful story, I might add. A real breath of fresh air amongst the glut of  YA 'issue' books out there)

Fightin' Words 2

A delightful barb to start your weekend right.

He leads his readers to the latrine and locks them in.

– Oscar Wilde on George Moore

Silly Poetry Friday 31

The little poem I'm posting today isn't actually silly at all, but I like it, and wanted to share. It may be familiar to some of you, especially if you're a garden-lover. It was my mom who recently reminded me of this lovely gem – as a way of nudging me into working in my garden to forget some of my troubles. Thanks, Mom!

The poem is a well-known stanza from God's Garden, written by Dorothy Frances Gurney. I'm certainly not a religious person, but I figure an agnostic can still appreciate religious poetry, can't they? And for your visual entertainment, I'm posting some images from last year's garden, as was well as one pic from the garden this year so far. Ok, the poem:

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God's Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.

And looky! My Rhododendrons bloomed this year! Woo-hoo!

Kids Are Authors!

A couple months ago I was invited by the folks at Scholastic Educational to be a part of an amazing school program. I must confess that I had never heard of Kids Are Authors™. Basically, it's a picture book competition open to all elementary schools across Canada. Every year groups of three or more students (with some direction from their teacher) participate in writing and illustrating an original picture book. A number of finalists are chosen from the entries, and then Scholastic Canada invites local authors, illustrators and librarians to choose a grand prize winner and up to three honour award winners from the final entries. So I was one of the lucky people asked to be a judge! The other judges involved this year were the authors Marsha Skrypuch and Joanne Richter, and librarian Rosemary Renton.

The final judging took place two weeks ago. It was an amazing experience, I must say. That was the first time I'd ever actually been to the offices of Scholastic Educational in Markham (which, by the way is in another country as far as I'm concerned, since I had to take TTC to get there. Two and a half hours on trains and buses! Oy). That place is huge. Everyone involved in this project was very helpful and friendly (we even got a delicious lunch! Yum). And now I have an idea how editors must feel when they are looking over submissions of picture book manuscripts. It's really tough to make judgments, because all of the stories had strengths, and all of the illustrations were really quite impressive. But us gals worked really well as a team, and in the end we were all in agreement as to who the winner should be. Can't mention the winner yet, but as soon as it's official, I'll write a post about it for sure.

The winning school will receive a cash prize of $1,000, by the way, as well as a commemorative plaque. The three Honour Award winners will receive a $100 cash prize and a plaque, too. But the best part is that the winning entry will be published and distributed by Scholastic Book Fairs and sold as a bona fide picture book! The money made from the sales of the winning book goes back into supporting the Kids Are Authors™ program, and any extra cash made is donated to various literary organizations.

Dang, I sure wish this program was around when I was a kid!!

Pants on Fire!

Here's a little illo job I did recently – just an updated illustration for the cover of Gordon Korman's 1997 book Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire. The story (which I admit I have yet to read) apparently involves a girl who is compelled to make up big fat lies to impress her friends. There is a goldfish and a supposed nuclear toilet bowl in the story, too, just in case you were wondering...

Getting an opportunity to do any kind of illustration work for the much revered Canadian children's author Gordon Korman is pretty exciting – kinda like setting one's pants on fire, I suppose.

Write On, Baby...

Some of you might know that I've got a weakness for black and white cards that are somehow related to the subject of books or writing. Naturally I could not resist this little beauty!

(Of course as cute as this photo is, personally I'd go postal if I caught any little kids playing with my precious Underwood...)

Silly Poetry Friday 30

Yup, late yet again. At least I'm consistent! Consistently silly, that is...

So I'm wondering, what do all you folks think about all the movies that have been made in the past few years, on Dr. Suess's books? I'm thinking of movies like the recent Horton Hears A Who, The Cat In The Hat and The Grinch. Did you watch them? Did you like them? Me, I could not watch them. Nope. Not ever. In fact...

I could not, would not, on a boat.
I will not, will not, with a goat.
I will not watch them in the rain.
I will not watch them on a train.
Not in the dark! Not in a tree!
Not in a car! You let me be!
I will not watch them in a box.
I will not watch them with a fox.
I will not watch them in a house.
I will not watch them with a mouse.
I will not watch them here or there.
I will not watch them ANYWHERE!

Well, you get the point. I did see the trailers for all those movies, and they just made my skin crawl. Why in heaven's name would you mess with such a good thing? Well, apparently that's what good ol' Dr. Seuss was thinking, too! Mind you, I do believe he shuffled off this silly mortal coil a while ago, but somehow, courtesy of The Onion, they managed to get in touch with ol' Mr. Geisel, and this is what he had to say:

Stop Making Movies About My Books

On the fourteenth of March, in towns nationwide,
In every cinema, multiplex, on every barnside,
Gleamed another adapting of one of my books,
CGI-ed and digitized by another sly crook.
Horton, my favorite—look how he's been treated!
Stuffed with tinsels and tassels and promptly excreted!
The puns! And the filler! The script fees you must save!
While I tumble and grum-humble around in my grave.
Did you learn all but squat from The Cat In The Hat?
Please tell me you fired the prick who made that.
I would have stopped writing, maybe sold Goodyear tires.
If I knew one dark day I'd costar with Mike Myers.
And Oh!
Oh, dear! Oh!
My poor Grinch, what they've done!
They crammed in live-action and snuffed out all the fun!
It's icky, it's tacky, it's awkward, it's wrong.
The Whos look like ferrets, it's an hour too long.
What a rotten idea to spend millions destroying
This masterful tale kids spent decades enjoying!
But still you keep making them!
Just how do you dare?
Sell my life's work off piecemeal
To every Tom, Dick, and Har'.
Why it's simply an outrage—a crime, you must judge!—
To crap on my books with this big-budget sludge.
My books are for children to learn ones and twos in,
Not commercialous slop for Jim Carrey to ruin.
Have you no respect for the gems of your youth?
To pervert them on screen from Taiwan to Duluth.
Even after you drag my last word through the dirt,
I know you, you pirates,
You'd cut out my heart for a "Thing 1" T-shirt.
For eighty-some years I held you vultures at bay,
knowing just how you'd franchise my good name some day.
Not yet cold in my grave before you starting shooting
the first of my classics you'd acquired for looting.
Mrs. Seuss, that old stoofus, began selling more rights
to Dreamworks, Universal—any hack in her sights.
First The Cat In The Hat and then this, that and Seussical
without a thought to be picky, selectish, or choosical.
So to Audrey, you whore, you sad sack of a wife:
Listen close. Pay attention, for once in your life.
You give Fox In Sox to those sharks who made Elf
And so help me, I'll rise up and kill you myself.
No Sneetches by Sony—
No One Fish: On Ice—
Burn that Hop On Pop II script not one time but twice.
Don't sex up my prose with Alyssa Milano…
And no Green Eggs And Ham with that one-note Romano!
This must stop! This must end! Don't you see what you're doing?
You're defiling the work I spent ages accruing.
And when it's dried up and you've sucked out your pay
There'll be no going back to a simpler day,
When your mom would give Horton a voice extra deep,
And turn the last page as you drifted to sleep.
Instead you'll have boxed sets, shit movies, and… well,
You'll have plenty to watch while you're burning in hell.