Miracle got her name because, as her grandmother Gigi tells her, she was born from a dead woman.  Miracle’s father, Dane, was a prodigy and published his first novel at the age of 13.  Miracle likes to spend her days helping Gigi with her work as a medium, practicing dancing, and sitting in her father’s company.  One day, as Gigi is conducting a seance to contact Miracle’s dead mother, the Ouija board tells them that Dane is gone.  They rush to his room in the basement to find that he’s melted; all that’s left of him is a pile of clothes.

Dancing on the Edge explores how our family shapes who we are and what we believe.  Miracle strongly believes in the symbolism of colors and numbers, in auras, portents, and omens.  She starts to question her beliefs when she first meets her Granddaddy Opal and he tells her, “If your mama was dead when you were born, then you was never born."  I picked up this book because it was a readergirlz recommendation in May for Mental Health Month; throughout the course of the book Miracle loses and finds herself again.  By the end of it, I was sniffling and tearing up.  That is the mark of a good book.

Books Read: 1
Pages Read: 244
Time Spent Reading/Reviewing: 3.25 hrs

(You can expect longer reviews of most of my 48 Hr Book Challenge Books in the coming weeks.)

…

Interesting Tidbit: Two of the Challenge Participants were students in the split level 3/4 classes where I did my student teaching; they weren’t MY students as I taught level 4 and my mentor teacher taught level 3, but they are still in that “my former student” brainspace.  They happen to be on the list of top 10 coolest former students.  (I’ve only had about 200 students so far, being somewhat new to this whole teaching thing, but still.  Top 10 out of 200, not bad at all.)  I hope I can convince them to participate in the Pirate Challenge when it comes around.

My official start time for the 48 Hour Book Challenge is going to be 9:30 am.  I will go from 9:30 am today to 9:30 am Sunday.  There will be a few interruptions, mostly sleep I think.  And eating.  And probably a little house cleaning.  But not too many.

Have fun, all!

More pirate poetry for you today.  Today I have Sea Fever, by John Masefield.  I first encountered this poem on a gorgeous Captain Jack Sparrow wallpaper, and was not aware of its source.  I was delighted to find it today.

I MUST down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking
And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking.

You can read the whole poem at Bartleby.com.

The round-up is at HipWriterMama.

Pirates have been on my mind a lot lately, more even than usual, and I will be issuing a Pirate Challenge once the 48 Hour Reading Challenge is over.

 

I'll be participating in Mother Reader's 48 Hour Book Challenge starting tomorrow.  I'll begin at whatever time I happen to wake up or after I finish reading The Phoenix Dance, whichever comes first.  I'll probably take breaks for eating, making sure my boyfriend hasn't died of boredom while I've been reading, and this sort of thing, but I am hoping to spend most of tomorrow and Saturday reading.

Sound like fun?  To sign yourself up, go to the original post.

I don't have a booklist/pile set up, but here's what I expect I'll be reading tomorrow:

Dancing on the Edge, Han Nolan
Wildwood Dancing, Juliet Marillier
The Various, Steve Augarde

After that, it becomes a competition between Capt. Hook, my stack of borrowed books, and the books I bought at the library sale.

So come join us!

Now that I'm reading lots of kidlit blogs, I find myself needing to make lists, all the time.  

I find books that I need to read because they relate to the ancient Mediterranean, which is my area of expertise  (I so long to have a classroom so I can reward students for hard work by giving them time to read fiction from a library of class-related books that I keep on a shelf.  But instead, I have a cart, which does not have enough room for the books.)

I find books that are not out yet, which I want to give as gifts.

It's so exciting and a little overwhelming, too.

Do you find yourself needing to keep track of lots of lists of books?

I guess Good Reads is the place to do this, isn't it?

This week, I've been thinking a lot about gender and societal expectations.  It started with Vivian's post, "Girl Power, At What Price?" at HipWriterMama.  In that post, Vivian wonders how the pressure to have, do, and be everything is affecting girls today.  It continued as I tried to sum up the first several chapters of Celia Rees's Pirates! for my roommate, and I mused about how common it is to have a story where a wealthy girl loves a man below her station, but it rarely seems to go the other way.  It continued when I read Becky's review of At the Sign of the Star.  Meg Moore, the main character in the book, dreams of a life where she can do more than just wifely tasks like sewing and mending.

All of this came to a head in my mind this morning, when I started thinking about what it means to be a woman, and especially what it means to be a strong woman.  I know I'm saying nothing new here, but it saddens me to think that roles that have been traditionally assigned to women are often rejected as "not enough."  I don't mean to say that people should settle for something in life that doesn't satisfy them.  What I find disconcerting is that when women seek to take on traditionally male roles, they often explicitly devalue traditionally feminine roles in their speech and actions.  When some women suggest that managing households is an inferior task to being out in the world, I feel as though they aren't really helping "the cause."  I'm having trouble expressing myself well here.  I suppose what I'm getting at is that I feel women should choose the work that fulfills them most and that they find most valuable.

This brings me to this week's question:
In what ways do children's and young adult novels shape readers' notions of gender roles?  How can and do they present more options, especially to girl readers, for how to spend a life?

I'm looking here for titles, trends, and examples of literature where girls get to choose who they are going to be, or that explore when and why they don't get to choose who they are going to be.  We have resources like Jen Robinson's 200 Cool Girls of Children's Literature and readergirlz.  What else is out there?  What has shaped the women we are now, and what will shape the girls of the future?  What role does children's and young adult literature play in affecting boys' and men's views of women?  How can we show girls the myriad of possibilities open to them without coloring their view of which possibilities are best?

What do you think?

On Thursday, TadMack at Finding Wonderland issued a few Most Egregious Misuse awards.  She focused on punctuation errors.  I myself hate finding extra apostrophes places, and often find myself wanting to take a red pen to signs.

It’s not just punctuation that is the problem, however.  Misuse of words is rampant, as well.  I recall once in high school a classmate of mine called something a “gregarious error."  She was the subject of much mockery.  You see, it’s always better to use the word that best communicates your meaning.  Sometimes you want a less common word for this, because its meaning is more specific than that of other words.  (See how I avoided putting an extra apostrophe in “its”?  It would have been very embarrassing if I hadn’t.)

In some cases, however, I think people use odd words just to sound more educated, or because they are bored with their usual vocabulary.  This is not okay, if they don’t know the meaning of the words.

For example:
While catching up on my kidlit newsletters I came upon an article about a new line of children’s nonfiction books.  In this article, the publisher of these books was quoted as saying their illustrations “provide an infinitesimal range of perspectives."

Let’s take a look at “infinitesimal,” shall we?

From m-w.com:
 Main Entry: ²infinitesimal
Function: adjective
1 : taking on values arbitrarily close to but greater than zero
2 : immeasurably or incalculably small <an infinitesimal difference>

I don’t think one would want to publish non-fiction that provided only an infinitesimal range of perspectives.  It would be very limiting, wouldn’t it?

A Fuse #8 Production is an awesome blog.  I’ve known this for a while.  Just today, I read a recnt post of Betsy’s that pointed me to my new favorite blog:

The Longstockings!  At The Longstockings, eight writers in striped socks talk about all kinds of exciting things.  I’ve not read any of their books, but the blog has me thrilled and wanting to run out and pick them up.  My TBR piles, if combined, would probably be as tall as I am, so it’ll have to wait.

In honor of Script Frenzy, I’m posting some soliloquies from my favorite scriptwriter - Wm Shakespeare.  He was a Taurus, you know.

First, from Hamlet II.2:

O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann’d,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn’d defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across?
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i’ the throat,
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha!
‘Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-liver’d and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave’s offal: bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!

From The Tempest I.1

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

From As You Like It II.7
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

From A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V.1
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

Script Frenzy is in full swing. Can I knock out 667 words before midnight tonight? I think I can. That's something like three and a half pages. I'm "pants"ing it, as writers say, meaning I have a concept but no outline. I've got a beginning and an end, and the middle will be the exciting part. I apologize if, for the next month, it seems as though I should change this journal's name to scriptitans (which is a real Latin word meaning "writing eagerly and often"). I think we'll be okay though. I can't tell you what I'm writing except to say it's a play. Other than that, it's a secret. Sshhhh! (If you really care to know about it, you can e-mail me, and I'll decide whether to let you into my elite cadre of people who know. Right now I think that cadre includes Little Willow and no one else.)

I shall not be neglecting my readerly duties. Work is (at last) winding down. Unemployment during the summer months is a sad thing, but if you budget for it, it can be awesome.

Things to Come:
A Thinking Blogger Award post (Thanks, Kelly!)
Reviews of the books on my Read in 2007 list
Commentary on other kidlit stuff, depending on what I find in my inbox and publications
Interviews!
My 48 Hour Book Challenge Posts