Environmental Book Club

How does a cookbook fit in with my interest in environmental books that provide an immersion in some kind of natural  experience? Pam McElroy, one of the editors of The Green Teen Cookbook, Recipes for all Seasons Written by Teens, for Teens, (Laurane Marchive is the other) writes that "When it comes to food, going green" is, in great part, about shopping seasonally and buying locally. That's a lifestyle, a daily experience. McElroy also says, "Our eating habits form such an important part of our daily lives that questions of what we eat are transformed into questions of who we are. We don't say, 'I eat a vegetarian diet.' We say, 'I am a vegetarian.'"

This cookbook actually includes essays. In my experience, you have to be a bit of a foodie to read essays on cooking, and I don't know how many teenagers have that much of a commitment yet. But I very much like that editors McElroy and Marchive respect their potential readers enough to include them. They also do some neat things with taking the same recipe and changing it according to the seasons and the availability of fresh ingredients.

The recipes here include basics like French toast and tuna salad, swing into your more veggie type things (fried tofu with peanut dipping sauce), and take a shot at what some of us think of as more demanding fare (risotto with arugula pesto). The Green Teen Cookbook is a classy work that takes its subject seriously while also recognizing that people need to know how to cook regular food.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

Time Management Tuesday: The Write Jar As Motivator

I was able to sneak onto Blogger this morning and check my e-mail, but I'm having trouble getting other places on-line. (The new modem is here in the house. We're hoping to get it out of the package tomorrow.) I'm cobbling this post together with the help of my iPhone, which can zip me around the Internet.

I heard about write jars at the 10-Minute Novelist Facebook page. Vickie S. Miller's blog post What's Your Reward? #Writejar describes how it works. Write jars are similar to swear jars or any other kind of system you create to either fine yourself for a behavior you want to avoid (swearing) or pay yourself for a behavior you want to encourage (writing).

I believe that in the case of write jars, this would be considered an external support for willpower. You're using something outside yourself, a money reward, to help you stay on task. (Timers are also external supports.)  I'm not aware of any research on how well monetary support works, and given my crippling Internet problems this week, I'm not going to be able to hunt for any. That will be another blog post. Vickie had only been using a write jar for a couple of weeks at the time of her post, so we won't know for a while how it ends up working for her.

If I were going to try this, I think I would use a simpler system than Vickie is. Keeping track of the different cash amounts for the different types of writing would be unwieldy for me. But like anything else related to managing time, everyone should fine tune systems to suit their own needs.

This Week's Most Interesting Ditched Item 

 

I just tried to upload a picture relating to my October purge, but that's not going to be happening. But it was a Swiss cowbell. I kid you not. We had a Swiss cowbell here. Brought back from the Land of Heidi by in-laws a few decades back. I mention that because I want to make sure everyone knows that I wasn't responsible for bringing it into this country, just into my house. I was able to unload it on my sister-in-law. 

Edit: Yes! The new modem has returned us to our normal mediocre Internet access! So I am able to present you with the cowbell that is no longer in my house. I would  hate to run into the cow that was able to wear this thing around its neck.

What Did I Do To Offend The Internet?

We're having serious Internet problems Chez Gauthier. In fact, I'm posting this quickly right now while we have access. (Sometimes we can get to some sites but not others, sometimes we can do nothing.) Posting may be spotty for a while until the new modem arrives and, presumably, works. If it doesn't, this could go on longer.

And, yes, I have a computer guy. How do people who don't have one manage?

Kidlitosphere News

I have not been staying on top of the Kidlitosphere Central news. I've been aware of it, just not passing it on in a timely manner.

As it turns out, this year's Kidlitcon is taking place today and tomorrow in Sacramento, California.  Those of us who aren't there can follow what's going on with the #kidlitcon hashtag on Twitter.

We have less than a week left to nominate this year's books for the Cybils Awards. You can already check out the books nominated to date. I'll be trying to read off the lists later this year.

I believe that I'm now caught up. For now.

Environmental Book Club

I've said before that my idea of an environmental book is one that immerses readers in some kind of natural experience. I'm not sure that Lifetime, by Lola M. Schaefer with illustrations by Christopher Silas Neal,  really does that. As the Kirkus reviewer said of it, "Is this book about the natural world? Counting? Statistics? Solving math word problems?" But the natural world is in there.

I can't say I know a lot about math. But what seems to be going on in Lifetime is an introduction to the concept of counting as well as the recognition that counting things is part of life. This isn't a traditional counting book, as in "1 papery egg sac," "2 caribou," "3 alpacas." It's just about counting. You can count the number of antlers a caribou will grow and shed in a lifetime. (10) You can count the number of beads a rattlesnake will add to its rattle. (40)

There are all kinds of animals out there, and you can count things related to them.

Hmm. Maybe there is an immersive experience here, one in which we take a human created activity and apply it to the natural world that animals live in.

Gail Gauthier Visits James Thurber or Pictures From My Vacation!

Yes, I'm still talking about my vacation. Have I mentioned that I had a great time?

While planning this thing, I decided that I wanted to visit an author's home. Pretty much any author. Seriously. I googled Ohio and authors.

And guess who was born in Ohio and whose early home is open to the public. Yes! Jimmy T! Well, we have more of a Mr. Thurber and Who? kind of relationship.

James Thurber was still a very big deal in my school days. I was quite excited about hitting Columbus and visiting his house. I own three Thurber books and reread what some call his autobiography (I think it's more a collection of memoirish essays, myself), My Life and Hard Times,
in the car last month. No, My World and Welcome To It was a television show.

This is me standing in front of the home Thurber and his family lived in during the My Life and Hard Times period. Sigh. I am wearing the sweater I lost on the road. Hard times, hard times.

Thurber House is a terrific spot. The Thurber House organization both preserves the past and maintains an active present with all kinds of literary and educational programs.

Each room has only one modest sign giving information. But it was terrific information about living in the house. For instance, this is a Victorian era building, but the Thurbers were living in it post 1900. Victorian front parlors were changing by that time, I read. People were using them for more than company. Kitchens and dining rooms were the spots in a home that were most impacted by style changes. And in James' room there was a sign describing how the women's magazines of the era advised mothers to decorate their sons' rooms.

Do you know any of those families that likes to go through museums pointing at things and saying, "We've got one of those at home...And one of those...And look! I've got that thing. But better?" Yeah, I come from one of those. And I married into another.

This sewing cabinet to the left that I saw at Thurber House? I've got one just like it in my office. It came from my mother-in-law who had two of them. Came from some other family member, I'm sure. At the Thurber House, they have a sewing machine on top of it. I use mine for holding stationery. I call it the stationery cabinet. The younger members of my family don't even know what the thing really is.

Then this table to the right, which the Thurber House people have a typewriter on? Interesting story. These things are known as library tables, by the way. I don't know why. Anyway, ours was in my mother's house when I was growing up, but one of my sisters doesn't remember it. Then my understanding was that the table came from my grandmother Gauthier's house. But no one else in the family has any memory of that. Which is why it is appropriate that I should be the one to have the table. No one else.           .

We're using it for a changing table now.

So, anyway, the Thurber House is great. And those educational programs I mentioned? I learned that James Thurber and I had relatives with similar taste in furniture.

Time Management Tuesday: Less Stuff To Spend Time Taking Care Of, More Time To Do Other Things

Earlier this year, I heard about the Environmental Disorder study, which found that a disorganized environment can undermine impulse control. Lack of impulse control is what leads one to hunt for pictures of George Clooney's wedding instead of working. In August I read that owning a lot of stuff is time consuming because you have to take care of it. And then just last month I read that one paragraph in Overwhelmed about the Danes not buying and saving a lot of stuff. And, according to Overwhelmed, the Danes are good with time.

The Plan For October

I'm a big believer in managing all our time, not just our work time. Hunting through piles of possessions... shoving things out of the way...if stuff both undermines self-control and takes up time, then stuff is something I'd like to have less of. So this month, I'm following the example of Joshua Fields Millburn who got rid of a possession a day for thirty days. I started last Wednesday.

This isn't that big a stretch for me, to be honest. We've kept a "church tag sale" box and a "library book sale" bag for years. I'm not talking about something I'm going to find painful. I have been concerned, though, that because we try to unload regularly, I won't have 30 days worth of meaningless material to offload on relatives or the community. However, this first week I could have done more than one item a day, and one day I did.

This means that, like so many others, I'm living with pileup that may be impacting my control and costing me time I'd like to use on other things. Like writing, for instance.

I will, of course, issue a report on how my month goes. Hmm. A month. That's a unit of time. A long one, but a unit nonetheless.

This Week's Most Interesting Ditched Item

When my kids were little, I asked for these walkie-talkies for my birthday because I read a book that suggested to me that we could use them for playing hide-and-seek. I think we used them once, which is why they look like new. Not only is my heart not broken to see these things go, the drawer they were in had a wealth of other junk I can get rid of. (I just want to go on record as saying I wasn't the one who saved all those swizzle sticks.)

I could end up with an empty drawer in my kitchen by the time I'm done.

In Case You Want To Get Your Young Ones Started On Shakespeare

While I was on vacation, I happened upon some copies of Shakespeare Stories by Andrew Matthews. I'm kind of a sucker for kid versions of the Bard's work, though I can't claim to read many of them. I seem to like to know they exist.

Earlier this year, Matthews wrote Top 10 Shakespeare Books for Children for The Guardian. He places Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare at the top of the list. I have a copy but still haven't opened it since I mentioned it back in 2010.

Promo Friday: To Blog Or Not To Blog

I've been blogging for twelve years. As far as I'm concerned, there is no question as to whether or not I'm going to blog. I do have doubts as to whether new writers should start blogging now, though.

When I started, I found six children's literature blogs on-line. Now, between review sites and children's/YA authors, I'm guessing there are thousands. Just look at the litbloggers who have registered with Kidlitosphere Central. And the writer bloggers who have registered with it. Oh, and here are some more bloggers with Kidlitosphere Central. And how many children's lit blogs of all kinds are out there who haven't heard of Kidlitosphere Central? Yet we're all competing with one another for readers.

The number of blogs has escalated. The number of readers, not so much. Many blogs that have been around a while have seen a decrease in activity. Blogging is like publishing. You hear about bloggers with readership that skyrocketed in just a few months. But then there are all the others.

Kirsten Cappy of Curious City, which does "theme-based marketing for children’s authors, illustrators, and publishers,"  is well-known in New England, if not the country. She is definitely a fan of blogging for writers. In her blog post, SCBWI Whisper Pines, she answers questions from participants in last winter's Whispering Pines Retreat. Over and over again, she says things like, "Gosh, my answer is always to blog" and "I hate to sound like a broken record, but I guess if you have very limited time and have to focus on one thing, it would be blogging deeper."

Actually, she's kind of encouraging, making points that a blog post has the potential of reaching more people than a public appearance and is out there waiting for people to find it while an appearance is done and over. I don't know how often that happens, but right this minute I'm kind of pumped up.
 

Vacation Reading

I blew through the two most recent issues of The Horn Book while riding in the car off and on for more than two weeks last month.

The July/August issue was also the annual awards issue. This is never one of my favorites, but this year it ran an article by Elissa Gershowitz called Newbery 2014 that was essentially about books that didn't make the cut. It has just a little bit of the tone I saw this past year in articles about why the hell Tatiana Maslany didn't get an Emmy nomination for every clone she plays on Orphan Black. Usually the awards coverage in The Horn Book is incredibly respectful and, um, maybe just a little bit warm and fuzzy? I liked this change of pace.

Reviews I found interesting:

A Girl Called Fearless by Catherine Linka. I was reading the review and thought, Gee, this sounds like The Handmaid's Tale. The reviewer thought so, too. That's not a bad thing.

The Shadow Hero by Gene Luen Yang. Because it's by Gene Luen Yang.

Hi, Koo! by Jon J. Muth. I liked the panda.

The September/October Horn Book carried a story on Robert McCloskey by Leonard Marcus and Folklore vs. Fakelore by Jane Yolen.

Reviews:

The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher by Dana Alison Levy. Maybe The Penderwicks for guys?

Very Little Red Riding Hood by Teresa Heapy, illustrations by Sue Heap.  A toddler Red Riding Hood. Hahahahahah.

Edward Hopper Paints His World by Robert Burleigh, illustrations by Wendell Minor. I like art books. I saw a couple of Hoppers at the Carnegie Museum of Art, though, and I was kind of disappointed. Does Minor do him better?