Minecraft Versus Building Worlds Through Great Books

Ha, ha!  Made you look!  Or at least I hope so.  This is partly an experiment to see if I will get more views merely by putting the name of a popular and addictive game in my title.  I'll let you know in my next post if it works.  And you thought only foxes could be crafty!

I took this picture, which is why I'm not in it...

PRINCESS:
So, I've been away for a while in Spain.  I did some reading on the plane, as the movie was terrible and the earphones wouldn't stay in my big ears.  Mom said I didn't miss much. She had given me two of her favorite classics to read, and also brought along a paperback that neither of us had read.  We were very cozy and companionable while reading those books, just as I know you are when you are reading with someone you love.

We begin with "The Phoenix and the Carpet" by E. Nesbit, but Mom says we could start with any of her books.  "E" stands for Edith, a singularly ugly name in my opinion, but who am I to talk?  I curse whoever named me Princess.  Five brothers and sisters live in England at the beginning of the last century.  I gather that children then got to gallivant around without anyone paying any attention to what they were doing, as these children have all sorts of adventures without leashes or fences.  They start the book by burning a hole in the nursery carpet, and then are punished in the same way that our little one is punished here - one parent takes away a privilege and the other forgets and gives it back.  The next day a new carpet is purchased, and inside it is an egg, which is put on the mantelpiece.  Later, again unleashed, the children knock the egg into the fireplace, and before they can pull it out something amazing happens.  It hatches into a Phoenix!  Crikey!!!

MOM:
This is a fantasy with old-fashioned charm but an amazingly modern appeal.  E. Nesbit is so funny, the children she has created are full of squabbles and laughs and mischief.  Their adventures with the magic Phoenix are wondrous, but they are also full of little disasters.  You will laugh reading about them, I know you will.

When you create a world with Minecraft you keep adding on to what you first created.  One thing leads to another, and that's a lot of the fun, and you are also picturing your world in your brain as you create it on the screen.  When you read a book by a great author you picture the world they created through their words, but you are using your own experiences to fill it in. What you are picturing will be different from what another reader would be picturing, but with the same basic structure.  Now add another layer.  Suppose a writer loved a favorite author so much that he or she decided to write their own fantasies in the same spirit.  That is what happened with Edward Eager, he modeled his wonderful series on the books he loved by E. Nesbit, but he wrote them 50 years later.

PRINCESS:
Boy, her part was boring, wasn't it?  You just want to hear about the books.  So we read "Half Magic" by Edward Eager.  Another silly person name.  Anyway, there are three sisters and a brother on a summer vacation.  They get E. Nesbit's book "The Enchanted Castle" out of the library and then wonder why exciting things like that never happen to them.  Well, they're in for a surprise!  They find a magic thing on the sidewalk, almost as good as the squirrel pelt I found in the bushes behind the firehouse tonight (which I didn't get to keep).  But it's only half a magic thing.  So when they start figuring out that it is magic and experimenting with making wishes things go hilariously wrong.

MOM:
Yes, my favorite part is when Martha wishes the cat could talk, because she is lonely and needs companionship!

PRINCESS:
Stop interrupting!  So the cat suddenly starts talking, but she is saying things like, "Azy ooselfitz!  Powitzer grompaw!".  Plus she won't stop talking, and she is driving the children crazy.  You get the idea, wishes can only half come true, and it takes the children the whole book to figure out how to say the wishes so they won't backfire.  So funny!

MOM:
Amazingly coincidental, but the paperback book we brought on our trip, "Any Which Wall" by Laurel Snyder, turned out to continue this trail of authors, E. Nesbit to Edward Eager.  There is a quote from Edward Eager's "Seven Day Magic" at the beginning of the book, and as I read further I saw the similarities.  A group of children with time on their hands and very little supervision, finding a crack in the mundane fabric of their everyday world.  Magic seeps through and changes their lives, this time in the form of a huge wall in the middle of an Iowan field, and a little key found in the dirt.  And their adventures

PRINCESS:
Blah, blah, blah.  What she's trying to say is that the fun lies in the unleashedness of it all, running free and having adventures.  They each get a wish, and each wish goes a bit astray.  When things go wrong they have to use their brains and bravery to make it right.

MOM:
Magic is a tricky business, with no guarantees.  But like all things worthwhile, you'd rather have it than not, no matter how problematic.  And finding magic is a matter of keeping your eyes and heart open, and believing that it is possible to find it anywhere.

PRINCESS:
I find magic every day, it arrives twice in my bowl, once in the morning and once at night.  And squirrels are magical all the time, with their quick escapes and ability to disappear into thin air.  Books are magic, taking me to other worlds in my fuzzy head.  If you happened upon this blog entry because you typed "Minecraft" into Google, try picking up a book instead.

 Gratuitous picture of a Spanish cat cleaning its butt - right before I chased it!!!

Wordless Adventures for the Imaginative and Minuscule

Do you like my use of the word minuscule?  I recently got my paws on a Thesaurus,

which originally I thought was a type of dinosaur.  It's not!  It's full of pages and pages of words, and if you are a dog with a blog, you need all the help you can get thinking of new ways to say things.  After all, my world is very limited.

My minuscule person, the-one-who-plays-with-my-ears, liked these three books.  She especially liked them because she is learning to read and that makes her tired and cranky.  These have no words, so you can "read" them using the picture-walk method alone.  I am going to share my take on these three new books.

Link to book in SAILS Network

"Hank Finds an Egg" by Rebecca Dudley is a visual delight. She is an artist of many skills, and this is her first picture book.  The setting is Storywood Forest, the main character a little soft creature named Hank.  Even using my sniffing skills I could not tell what kind of animal he was, he just smelled like new book pages.  He finds an egg that belongs in a nest way up in a tree.  He tries, but can't return it to the nest, so cares for it during the night.  My favorite image is of his cozy campsite.  Will this book have a happy ending?  You bet!  Take it home and enter this magical world, seemingly free of cats but full of amazing detail and sweet kindness.  The author has a blog, www.storywoods.blogspot.com.

Link to book in SAILS Network

Link to book in SAILS Network

"Journey" by Aaron Becker is like "Harold and the Purple Crayon", with extra gravy on top.  Red is the special color, setting a young girl free from her drab apartment in the city where everyone else is too busy to play with her.  A red crayon makes a red door that opens on an incredible squirrel's paradise with lanterns.  I didn't see any squirrels, so they must have known I was coming and hidden in the huge trees.  From here the adventure gets more and more outrageous and exciting, and there is danger, too.  But a friend appears to save the day, and real life becomes full of promise.

Wow, I am really using this Thesaurus a lot for this entry.  I bet you think I'm a pretty intelligent dog, despite my inability to learn even the most basic commands, like "sit".

The last book is called "Inside Outside" by Lizi Boyd.  The only characters are a young child and a black dog.  Mom or Dad must be nearby, but they are never in the way.  Using the Thesaurus, I know to say "the color palette is very limited, giving a cohesion to the action as we make our way through the seasons."  There are cutouts for the windows so you can see the seasons change outside, and watch as the playroom changes also.  If you are a tired parent who allows too much TV because you are overwhelmed, but you feel badly about it and want to make a change, take this book home!  Watch the little child use nothing but his imagination and what he finds around him to explore and create, see how the parents let him draw and build and paint.  They don't worry about the mess, or about him getting wet in the puddles, or about that cat sleeping in a bowl on the counter, or even the mice participating in the art!  Let go of your ideas of a perfect house, because the perfect house is your child's brain, allowed to grow unfettered!  And I think that dirt and dog hair are part of that perfect expansive environment!  So there.

Holly Black, or, "Where Have My Bones Gone?!"

Do you like books about friends?  What about books with kids doing adventurous things, maybe things that  are a little dangerous, things that could happen only in books?  Do you like spooky?  Well, if you're hankering after a book that contains all of those things you need look no further than Holly Black's new book, "Doll Bones".  I shiver just thinking about that doll, and the way she moves on her own.  9 and up is probably a good age to read about what happens in this book.
What does this have to do with bones?  You'll never guess, so I'll tell you just a little!  A girl in the past met a tragic end (it involved a squishy, flattening experience - much like the mole from my last entry).  Her heartbroken father did something really gross and she ended up becoming a part of this doll that three friends, the hero and heroines of this book, find years later.  They have a dangerous and crazy adventure without parental permission, which you should never do!  It makes for a great, adventurous, and spooky story though.

Well, I for one am never going to do that to any bones, no matter how beloved!  It's downright frightening!  I like to sniff at bones, and chomp on them, and dig holes for them, maybe taunt the cats a little...

I guess besides chewing on bones you can also use them to help solve mysteries and crimes!  I didn't know this until I read, "Bones Never Lie: How Forensics Helps Solve History's Mysteries" by Elizabeth MacLeod.  I didn't even know history had mysteries.  Gosh, I don't even know what history is!

Anyway, this book is so interesting for extra-intelligent dogs and children ages 9 and up.  There's lots of pictures of bones and body parts, and true crime stories involving famous dead people like Napoleon and King Tut and Grand Duchess Anastasia.  How did they really die, and who probably killed them?  Find out about what amazing technology is now being used to solve old cases and new.  I think I'd become a dog detective if I had opposable thumbs.  Maybe I can help just by sniffing and gnawing at the bones.

Don't worry, you can still enjoy books about bones if you are 7 and younger.  Lisze Bechtold wrote a book called "Buster & Phoebe: The Great Bone Game".  This one is not scary, but it does have a little bossiness, some bullying, some lying, some subterfuge.  Turns out not all dogs are upstanding citizens!  Buster is a good boy, and is my favorite color for a dog.  Phoebe is older, with super curly ears, and she does not behave in a virtuous way.  The 'bone game' is not very fair, and let's be honest, Buster is not the brightest bulb in the dog universe.  However, he has heart, and he wins the game in a very satisfying way at the end.  I love the pictures, and there's lots of them.

If you are in preschool and you feel like being spooked just a little try "Skeleton Hiccups" by Margery Cuyler.  Skeletons are definitely a little scary, but seeing one trying to drink water upside down to get rid of hiccups is hilarious.  You also get to bark along to the silly hiccup sounds.  This one is a good read right before Halloween, which I just know is probably one of your favorite holidays because of all the candy.  I like Thanksgiving, you can probably guess why - turkey bones!

I Have Got to Get Out More!

JUST BEFORE THE UNFORTUNATE ACCIDENT

After rolling on a flattened mole on my nightly walk I jumped up to snuggle on Dad's pillow and noticed a pile of books.  They were sort of the same size, but all had very different covers.  Then I noticed a name was on all of them:  Margaret Read MacDonald.  If I were to look her up on Wikipedia I would probably find a lot of information about her, but I am a dog so I am not going to do that.  I will make some guesses about her.

1:  She has been writing for a long time.  I can tell because her hair is grey like Grammie's.
2:  She likes folktales because that's what all of these books are.
3:  She has either traveled a lot or done a lot of reading.  I will tell you how I know later.
4:  She likes an occasional muffin.  I can tell because she is roundish like a muffin.

How do I know she has either traveled or read a lot?  Because these books all take place in different countries!  This is also how I know that I need to get out more.  I didn't even know there were different countries.  All I know is this little messy house full of love and scratched-up upholstered furniture and the streets around us.  Admittedly I am surrounded by tantalizing squirrels and rabbits, but that does not an exciting life make!  Now I know about other countries and I am going to secretly plan some vacations to places where they eat sausages.  Don't tell Mom.

Here are my observations about these books:

Fat Cat: A Danish Folktale
Cat can't stop eating!  You should see the inside of his stomach with everyone in there.  And no, it is not your typical food.  Remind me not to swallow anyone holding sewing scissors.

NOT A GOOD IDEA!  KEEP AWAY!

The Great Smelly, Slobbery, Small-Tooth Dog:  A Folktale from Great Britain
Land of Kidney Pie and other savory meats!  None in the book, though.  Despite the slobber the dog is lovely and the pictures are amazing.  The lesson of the book is that all dogs, no matter how slobbery, should be called "Sweet as a Honeycomb".  Oh my gosh, he's not even a dog!!!  I feel gypped!

HOW TO SOLVE THE BREATH PROBLEM

Mabela the Clever  (from Africa)
Another cat - not a nice one, if such a thing exists.  Unlike the mole I rolled on the mouse heroine is very smart and saves the day.  If you are near any especially nefarious cats watch out for the Fo Feng!


The Boy from the Dragon Palace  (from Japan)
A poor flower seller is granted wishes but gets too greedy and loses everything.  The moral is:  just because a child is dirty and is constantly picking his nose doesn't mean you should forget to say thank you when he brings you good luck.  At least I think that's the lesson, I was frankly a little grossed out.

How Many Donkeys?:  An Arabic Counting Tale
Learn to count in Arabic!  This funny tale is short, with a man who goes from unlucky to lucky again and again in a very funny way.  If you're at least as smart as I am you will probably get the joke.

WAHID DONKEY

Too Many Fairies:  A Celtic Tale
I couldn't find the country of Celtic on the map.  "Arabic" was elusive as well.  I'm confused.  Anyway, if you complain about housework you might get a visit from helpful fairies that then go wild in your house and don't want to leave.  Sounds good, you think, but you'd be wrong.

I just found a hacky sack so I must go!  Perhaps I'll see you at a sausage stand in some foreign land.

What the Schnoodlewacket Is a Cupcake?

So many books are about cupcakes these days.  What happened, did everyone decide to write about them at the same time?  I don't even know what they are, and since no one seems to cook around here I can't find out.  They look like fat toadstools with fluffy tops.  I wonder if they come in chicken or beef flavor...

The cat keeps walking across the keyboard.  It's hard enough to type without thumbs, let alone when  an annoying cat is in front of your nose.  This is what he is typing:  &%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%*GGG.  I am grumpy now.

Back to cupcakes.  I found "Just Grace and the Trouble with Cupcakes" under Mom's side of the bed.  It is written by Charise Mericle Harper.  When I nosed through it I noticed pictures of a dog, so I decided to keep  reading.  It is like a diary with pictures.  That makes it a little easier for a dog to read, because the words are further apart and the drawings help me to keep my place when my whiskers get in the way.  Yes, I have whiskers, but they are not like cat whiskers.  They are better.
There's a girl dog in the book who came with the name Mr. Scruffers.  That is silly, but it did remind me of my own situation.  I came with the name Princess.  Mom seems to keep telling people, "I didn't name her".  What, is she embarrassed by my name?  She seems to really love me so I try not to let it bother me.  Oops, back to the book!

Just Grace has two exciting things going on - the Spring Fair and a visit from Grandma.  She can't wait for Grandma to meet Mr. Scruffers!  There is a disastrous picnic which leads somehow to delicious cupcakes.  Then Grace and her best friend have a fight over candy and cupcakes and the Spring Fair.  Owen 1 turns out to not be so bad and the Cupcake Mascot turns out to be someone Grace loves.  That's all I'm going to tell you because if you are a girl, even if your name is Mr. Scruffers, you should read this book.  Especially if you like books like "Ivy and Bean" and "Clementine" and "Not-So-Weird Emma".  After you read it please tell me what a cupcake is!

You might think cupcake books are only for girls, but you would be wrong.  I found another book on the couch and it was "Jeremy Bender vs. the Cupcake Cadets" by Eric Luper. First Jeremy does something horrible to his dad's boat.   He has to fix it before his dad finds out, so he needs money fast!  He and his best friend see an ad for a model sailboat race and if you win you get prize money, maybe enough to fix a real boat.  But you have to be a Cupcake Cadet, and a girl, in order to race and win.  You'll never guess who dress up as girls!  Lots of funny situations, and cupcakes too!  I still don't know what cupcakes are but I really enjoyed the book.

Huffing and Puffing or Just a Lot of Hot Air?

WOLVES

From this:

 To this:

Has anyone else noticed that wolves in books aren't as scary as they used to be?  I don't know much about real wolves, other than the fact that they don't eat foods with ridiculous names like "kibble".  They get to eat things called "deer" or "rabbit".  Plus they don't get yelled at when they pee on the rug.

It used to be that book wolves were always scary, like in "Little Red Riding Hood" or "The Three Little Pigs" the way they were originally told.  Now wolves are doing things like eating vegetables or learning to read, maybe even baking cookies for baby chicks (see "The Wolf's Chicken Stew" by Keiko Kasza, a fun book but not one bit scary!).  Maybe you like that better, but maybe you just want to be SCARED and have the hair on your back stand on end!! That can be a fun time sometimes, too.

Here's my wolf-scariness-rating for some books - the more chomps, the scarier it is.

Four Chomps:

"Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China" by Ed Young
From the glowing eyes on the cover, to the sharp teeth on the fifth page, and then the picture of the wolf in bed on the 11th page, this is spooky stuff!  Even the three girls look spooky, with their scared eyes, just like the cats when I'm getting too close...  (I got help counting the pages, in case you wondered)

Three Chomps:

"Little Red Riding Hood" retold and illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman
Sometimes he looks just a little goofy, but there's a real scare when he springs out of bed to snarf down Little Red, and the picture with the huntsman makes me feel a bit queasy.  Plus there's lots of black cats.  Brrrr!

Two Chomps:

Are these scary?  I'm not the brightest dog on the planet, so I'm not sure.  Parts of them are.  Maybe you are smarter than a dog and can help me figure this out.

"Wolves" by Emily Gravett
Bunny goes to the library, gets a book about wolves.  Bunny starts to read.  Danger, Bunny!  Watch where you're going, check your surroundings, pay attention!...  Oh, too late!

"Wolf's Coming" by Joe Kulka
Tasty animals hear a howl, warn each other that "Wolf's coming!", run for shelter.  Faster, faster, it's getting dark, there's now drool and a large spider, Wolf is peeking through the window...  You'll need to check out the surprise ending for yourself.

One Chomp:

"The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs" by Jon Scieszka
Got one chomp for the picture of the sandwich, and the pigs' butts.

Just Plain Silly:

"The Wolf Who Cried Boy" by Bob Hartman
"Why can't we have Boy tonight?" asks Little Wolf at dinner, but it turns out in these modern times it is just too hard to find Boy to eat, and Little Wolf does not like the foods Mother Wolf is making.  When he smells her cooking Three-Pig Salad it is just too much!  He pretends he sees a boy and by the time Mother and Father are done looking dinner is ruined and they have to have snack food for dinner.  This trick works a few more times, but then Mother and Father find out he's lying!  So they decide to ignore him the next time, and guess what happens?  I'm not going to tell you, but it has something to do with Troop 7.  So don't do any lying and eat what your parents put in front of you.

"Mr. Wolf's Pancakes" by Jan Fearnley
If a wolf asks you to help him make pancakes don't be rude, and if you are rude, don't ask for any pancakes when you smell them cooking, or SNIPPITY! SNAPPITY!

And don't forget "The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig"!

These Are a Few of Mom's Favorite Things

Remember how I told you I live with two librarians?  Dad does some boring computer library stuff - whenever he tells me about it I just glaze over.  But Mom is the one who brings home all these great books and reads them herself after The-Little-One-Who-Plays-With-My-Ears has finally gone to bed. These are some of her recent favorites:

"Crooked Kind of Perfect" by Linda Urban.  Girl desperately wants piano, gets organ instead.  Learns to play anyway, enters crazy organ contest, meets amazing people and has funny, fabulous time.  Does she finally get her piano?  Read it and find out!

"Eight Keys" by Suzanne LaFleur.  Elise lives with her Aunt and Uncle because her parents died when she was young.  Now she is twelve and mysterious keys are appearing in strange places.  They go to eight locked rooms in the barn.

"Hidden" by Helen Frost.  Darra and Wren end up at the same camp.  Years before Darra's father stole Wren's family car while Wren was in it.  What happened then, and what will happen now?

"One Year in Coal Harbor" by Polly Horvath.  Sequel to "Everything on a Waffle".  Quirky characters fill up this little town that Primrose now calls home.  Will Uncle Jack and Miss Bowser ever get together?  What will happen to Ked the foster child?  One of Mom's all-time favorite authors.

"Ungifted" by Gordon Korman.  Donovan Curtis is horribly accident-prone.  When he mistakenly ruins the Middle School Gym (read the book and find out how) a lucky mistake sends him off to the Gifted School and away from the very angry School Superintendent.  Donovan's story is so funny.   Good read for boys.

"Guitar Notes" by Mary Amato.  Tripp Broody, the disgruntled, rebellious guitar player, exchanges notes in a shared music practice room with Lyla Marks, the "perfect" cellist.  An unlikely friendship develops.  Good read for boys.

"One for the Murphys" by Linda Mullaly Hunt.  Carley Connors leaves what she knows for a foster family.  Emotional and affecting, with no easy answers.

"Three Times Lucky" by Sheila Turnage.  Mo was found floating down the river during a hurricane.  She is raised by the Colonel and Miss Lana in the tiny town of Tupelo Landing, NC.  Detective Starr comes to town, there is a murder, and the trouble begins.  Lots of eccentric characters make this a touching and funny story.

"My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece" by Annabel Pitcher.  An unusual book, beautifully done.  Jamie's family falls apart after one of his older twin sisters is killed in a terrorist attack.  Five years later Jamie hardly remembers her and feels guilty for not feeling the pain the rest of the family is feeling.  When he meets Sunya she is like a ray of sunshine, but she is muslim and therefore his family's "enemy".  Cathartic end that made Mom cry and cry.

"The Bully Book" by Eric Kahn Gale.  Eric Haskins is "chosen" as the 6th-grade Grunt, or victim.  It turns out there is a Bully Book and Eric is the first Grunt to try to stop the cycle.  Find out how he makes it through the year and ultimately outsmarts the book.  Good book for boys.