She MUST take after her mother!

I was driving my 13 year old daughter to her drum lesson last night. I missed the teacher's house, so I pulled down a side street to turn around. There was a sign on the side of this narrow road. I'm sure you've seen it before...



My daughter asks me, "What's that sign mean?"

Shocked, I ask her, "What do you think it means?"

With a straight face, she responds, "There's no electricity."

This can't be MY daughter!

Scholastic Names Trends in Children's Books for 2010

1. The expanding Young Adult audience
2. The year of dystopian fiction
3. Mythology-based fantasy (Percy Jackson followed by series like The Kane Chronicles, Lost Heroes of Olympus and Goddess Girls)
4. Multimedia series (The 39 Clues, Skeleton Creek, The Search for WondLa)
5. A focus on popular characters - from all media
6. The shift to 25 to 30 percent fewer new picture books, with characters like Pinkalicious, Splat Cat and Brown Bear, Brown Bear showing up in Beginning Reader books
7. The return to humor
8. The rise of the diary and journal format (The Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Dear Dumb Diary, Dork Diaries, The Popularity Papers, and Big Nate)
9. Special-needs protagonists
10. Paranormal romance beyond vampires (Linger and Linger, Beautiful Creatures, Immortal, and Prophesy of the Sisters)

Vampires

I still enjoy a good vampire story. I do. THE PASSAGE, for example, was great.

But... if vampires ever "jumped the shark", as they say, it was probably right after this moment in history.

Charles Dickens and Goodyear Tires

It's been a busy, busy weekend. Fun, hectic, crazy, tiring.

Anyway, last night I took the family (+ two boys for my 16 year old daughters) to Stan Hywett Hall here in Akron Ohio. If you're not aware, Stan Hywett Hall is the former house of Frank Seiberling, the founder of Goodyear Coorporation. It's a huge house and grounds that they decorate for Christmas.

  

   


What I didn't know was that Charles Goodyear (who invented volcanized rubber and who the Goodyear Corporation is named after) was a friend of Charles Dickens. And a collector of prized first editions of the author.

While we toured the house, they had several signed first editions by Charles Dickens displayed for viewing, including A Christmas Carol.





People kept staring at me while I sort of went nuts when I saw them. So cool!!!!