Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Apologies all around
Have been poking about in the settings in the hopes of switching comments to a thread format (still no joy) and have just discovered I've been forcing everyone choosing to leave comments to provide a word verification. Apparently that's the default. I'm sorry. So very, very sorry. I hate those things. Especially here on blogger--I never seem to type them correctly. Never. Seriously, it takes me at least 5 tries. The evil setting is gone now, so bring on the bots!
Monday, January 26, 2009
It's THE GRAVEYARD BOOK for the win!
Consider me giddy.
Neil Gaiman, one of my mostest favoritest authors ever, has won the Newbery Award for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. Read more about his reaction here.
THE GRAVEYARD BOOK is the delightfully spooky story of a young boy who fortuitously toddles into a graveyard one night only a few short steps ahead of a mysterious killer who's just murdered his family. Adopted by the graveyard denizens, the boy is renamed Nobody Owens (Bod for short), and raised up right by ghosts, a vampire, a werewolf, and a witch.
Past Newbery winners have been criticized for their lack of kid-appeal and their lack of age-appropriate content. (Me, I never could finish Park's A SINGLE SHARD or Kadhota's KIRA-KIRA, despite repeated attempts.) Despite the somewhat dark nature of Gaiman's latest, I think it's going to have a huge following, especially in those most particular of readers, tween boys. Me, I gave it to my 12-year-old nephew for Christmas.
Go check it out now. The audio, read by the author, is amazing, too.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Hollow Fields v.1
Okay, so I lied about not providing actual content. Being on vacation has given me an opportunity to catch up on my reading and I feel compelled to share an actual review.
Hollow Fields v. 1
ISBN 9781933164243
written & illustrated by Madeline Rosca
published by Seven Seas Entertainment
Our story thus far: our plucky almost 10 year-old 5th grade heroine, Lucy Snow, has arrived by mistake not at Saint Galhat's Academy for Young Ladies, but at Hollow Fields, a school for budding young Mad Scientists. Once enrolled (Lucy really should read contracts before signing her name to them) Lucy realizes that en suite bathroom or no, her new school is quite a bit more than she bargained for. Rather than devoting their time to reading, writing & arithmetic, Hollow Fields students spend their days learning the fine arts of grave robbing, killer robot design, live taxidermy, and cross-species transplantation. (Yes, the latter is exactly what it sounds like. Pigeons and cats should never be crossed, I'm just saying.) Academic competition is cut-throat as each week, the student with the lowest grades is removed (often by force) to the old windmill on the premises, never to be seen again... With only her faithful stuffed dinosaur and the questionable mentorship of the clockwork Dr. Bleak, Lucy is determined to escape Hollow Fields and rescue her classmates.
This title was the first winner of Japan's International Manga Award and caused quite a stir at its debut in 2007. I'd argue it's not manga ('cause I'm all about the nitpicky semantic arguments), but OEL (original English language) manga as its creator is Australian. Given that it was originally written in English, the narrative and dialogue flow quite a bit better than a lot of the translated Japanese titles available today. Despite it's decidedly non-Japanese origins, it certainly LOOKS like manga (b&W, big eyes, overly expressive facial characteristics, and excessively cute characters) and is sure to appeal to teen manga fans.
Why teens you say? The protagonist, after all, is quite young. And the title is most often compared to HARRY POTTER. I'd argue that given the sinister setting, the fairly sexualized female teachers and staff of Hollow Fields (I will never, ever understand manga's obsession with French maids. Never.), and the conservative nature of my community that this is a better fit for the teen collection than the children's area. Although there are great number of 5th graders out there who'd undoubtedly really enjoy it. To me, the tone and storyline are much more in keeping with Eoin Colfer's ARTEMIS FOWL series or Catherine Jinx's EVIL GENIUS than with HARRY POTTER. We have a truly evil collection of adults, a (thus far) mostly evil collection of fellow students (all of whose parents except Lucy's are currently employed in the Mad Scientist/world domination field), a gruesome curriculum, and a number of missing-presumed dead (or worse) students. Despite the cute characters, the story has a lot of dark undertones.
That being said, I couldn't put it down. I find the overly naive, klutzy and, dare I say it, somewhat stupid Lucy to be quite charming. (Hmm, it would appear I've just described a young Bella Swan.) Lucy's got a lot of courage, determination, and drive and I sincerely hope that in future volumes she brings Hollow Fields to its knees. Hollow Fields the place is also extremely intriguing--who knows what lurks within its clockwork walls? From the outside, it would appear to be an abandoned factory, but appearances as we're learning in this series, can be extremely deceiving.
Finally...MAD SCIENTISTS. A school for MAD SCIENTISTS. How can this fail to appeal?
Hollow Fields v. 1
ISBN 9781933164243
written & illustrated by Madeline Rosca
published by Seven Seas Entertainment
Our story thus far: our plucky almost 10 year-old 5th grade heroine, Lucy Snow, has arrived by mistake not at Saint Galhat's Academy for Young Ladies, but at Hollow Fields, a school for budding young Mad Scientists. Once enrolled (Lucy really should read contracts before signing her name to them) Lucy realizes that en suite bathroom or no, her new school is quite a bit more than she bargained for. Rather than devoting their time to reading, writing & arithmetic, Hollow Fields students spend their days learning the fine arts of grave robbing, killer robot design, live taxidermy, and cross-species transplantation. (Yes, the latter is exactly what it sounds like. Pigeons and cats should never be crossed, I'm just saying.) Academic competition is cut-throat as each week, the student with the lowest grades is removed (often by force) to the old windmill on the premises, never to be seen again... With only her faithful stuffed dinosaur and the questionable mentorship of the clockwork Dr. Bleak, Lucy is determined to escape Hollow Fields and rescue her classmates.
This title was the first winner of Japan's International Manga Award and caused quite a stir at its debut in 2007. I'd argue it's not manga ('cause I'm all about the nitpicky semantic arguments), but OEL (original English language) manga as its creator is Australian. Given that it was originally written in English, the narrative and dialogue flow quite a bit better than a lot of the translated Japanese titles available today. Despite it's decidedly non-Japanese origins, it certainly LOOKS like manga (b&W, big eyes, overly expressive facial characteristics, and excessively cute characters) and is sure to appeal to teen manga fans.
Why teens you say? The protagonist, after all, is quite young. And the title is most often compared to HARRY POTTER. I'd argue that given the sinister setting, the fairly sexualized female teachers and staff of Hollow Fields (I will never, ever understand manga's obsession with French maids. Never.), and the conservative nature of my community that this is a better fit for the teen collection than the children's area. Although there are great number of 5th graders out there who'd undoubtedly really enjoy it. To me, the tone and storyline are much more in keeping with Eoin Colfer's ARTEMIS FOWL series or Catherine Jinx's EVIL GENIUS than with HARRY POTTER. We have a truly evil collection of adults, a (thus far) mostly evil collection of fellow students (all of whose parents except Lucy's are currently employed in the Mad Scientist/world domination field), a gruesome curriculum, and a number of missing-presumed dead (or worse) students. Despite the cute characters, the story has a lot of dark undertones.
That being said, I couldn't put it down. I find the overly naive, klutzy and, dare I say it, somewhat stupid Lucy to be quite charming. (Hmm, it would appear I've just described a young Bella Swan.) Lucy's got a lot of courage, determination, and drive and I sincerely hope that in future volumes she brings Hollow Fields to its knees. Hollow Fields the place is also extremely intriguing--who knows what lurks within its clockwork walls? From the outside, it would appear to be an abandoned factory, but appearances as we're learning in this series, can be extremely deceiving.
Finally...MAD SCIENTISTS. A school for MAD SCIENTISTS. How can this fail to appeal?
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Lo, I am being thwarted
I spent the better part of two hours (two!) last night trying and failing utterly (utterly I say!) to change the template on my blog. (And for any PTB reading this, please note, that was two hours at home on my own time and therefore perfectly reasonable.) I found scads of free templates but downloading them proved problematical. Apparently blogger prefers .xml to .html. So I found .xml templates. And then discovered uploading them wiped my widgets (which I'd only found with Sonia's help--Thanks Sonia!), profiles, and all sorts of things. Grrrr. Arrggghhh.
No worries, I said to myself. (After I'd removed my head from my desk where I'd been repeatedly thumping it.) I used to mess around with webpages in my misspent youth (that would be my late twenties, for anyone keeping track). I'll just take a peak at the source code and cut and paste to my heart's content. Woe! It would appear .xml is more...complicated than what I'm used to. I can't even recognize where the various elements begin and end in the code. This is going to be more of a challenge than I'd originally anticipated.
I'm missing livejournal at the moment. For me, it was much easier to set up and manipulate the journal than it is this blog. I couldn't even format my userpic properly--the source file was too big, and nothing I could do on my dinosaur desktop could make it sufficiently small enough to appease blogger. For those of you keeping track at home, I emailed it to a friend in Seattle (Hey, look, I've got a toolbox after all!) who did something sneaky with it using his Mac (all the while pointing out the vastly superior nature of all things Mac to PC, I might add) and mailed it back to me.
So my challenge for the next week during Learning 2.0 hiatus is to learn more about how blogger works and rather than creating actual content (Content? We don't need no stinking content!) change the look of this blog a bit. After all, it's not how you feel...it's how you look.
Stay tuned as I scour blogger's helpfiles in an attempt to learn new tricks, solve the puzzle that is .xml, and solve that great mystery of the universe: "What is a widget, anyway, and do I really need it in this blog?"
No worries, I said to myself. (After I'd removed my head from my desk where I'd been repeatedly thumping it.) I used to mess around with webpages in my misspent youth (that would be my late twenties, for anyone keeping track). I'll just take a peak at the source code and cut and paste to my heart's content. Woe! It would appear .xml is more...complicated than what I'm used to. I can't even recognize where the various elements begin and end in the code. This is going to be more of a challenge than I'd originally anticipated.
I'm missing livejournal at the moment. For me, it was much easier to set up and manipulate the journal than it is this blog. I couldn't even format my userpic properly--the source file was too big, and nothing I could do on my dinosaur desktop could make it sufficiently small enough to appease blogger. For those of you keeping track at home, I emailed it to a friend in Seattle (Hey, look, I've got a toolbox after all!) who did something sneaky with it using his Mac (all the while pointing out the vastly superior nature of all things Mac to PC, I might add) and mailed it back to me.
So my challenge for the next week during Learning 2.0 hiatus is to learn more about how blogger works and rather than creating actual content (Content? We don't need no stinking content!) change the look of this blog a bit. After all, it's not how you feel...it's how you look.
Stay tuned as I scour blogger's helpfiles in an attempt to learn new tricks, solve the puzzle that is .xml, and solve that great mystery of the universe: "What is a widget, anyway, and do I really need it in this blog?"
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The 7 1/2 Habits
For those of you reading from home who aren't actually part of SCLD's Learning 2.0 project (Look Ma, I made a blog!) and can't be bothered to watch the tutorial, here are the (drum roll, please):
7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners
1. Begin with the end in mind
2. Accept responsibility for your own learning
3. View problems as challenges
4. Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
5. Create your own learning toolbox
6. Use technology to your own advantage
7. Teach/mentor others
7 1/2. Play
Some of these come very easily to me--play, accepting responsibility for my own learning (I've got a library card and I know how to use it! Beware my google-fu!), viewing problems as challenges, and having confidence in myself (I WILL figure out how to paste things under the cut, oh yes indeed I will!). Others...not so much.
In particular I struggle with #1--beginning with the end in mind. While I've usually got an idea of where I want to go with something, how I'm going to get there isn't necessarily so clear. I'm not very good at setting deadlines for myself, or following through. (Hello, my name is Cindy, and I'm a procrastinator!) I tend to breezily skip from point A to point G.
I also struggle with using technology, Yep, that would be #6. Sure, I can make boolean operators roll over and beg. And I've successfully downloaded mp3 audiobooks to my mp3 player. Which I bought specifically to see if I could do it. (Hello Habit #2--I learn through doing.) But if you can't connect your laptop to our wireless network, or you're having trouble with your digital camera, or your Nintendo DS, or even your cell phone, I'm not your girl. I've limited my tech knowledge and skills to what I've got at home. That, BTW, would be 35 mm film and a dinosaur of a desktop that doesn't have a CD burner and is still running Windows 2000. Some of the things our customers do completely baffle me because they're outside my realm of experience and they're not something I can easily replicate on a staff PC or my computer at home.
Which is why I'm really excited about Learning 2.0. This is allowing me an opportunity to play (I'm good at that!) with new tech (Hey look, a toolbox!) and try out some new things. I expect to come away from this with skills that will benefit not only our customers but also me when I finally get that laptop I'm saving up for. Good times ahead people, good times.
7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners
1. Begin with the end in mind
2. Accept responsibility for your own learning
3. View problems as challenges
4. Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner
5. Create your own learning toolbox
6. Use technology to your own advantage
7. Teach/mentor others
7 1/2. Play
Some of these come very easily to me--play, accepting responsibility for my own learning (I've got a library card and I know how to use it! Beware my google-fu!), viewing problems as challenges, and having confidence in myself (I WILL figure out how to paste things under the cut, oh yes indeed I will!). Others...not so much.
In particular I struggle with #1--beginning with the end in mind. While I've usually got an idea of where I want to go with something, how I'm going to get there isn't necessarily so clear. I'm not very good at setting deadlines for myself, or following through. (Hello, my name is Cindy, and I'm a procrastinator!) I tend to breezily skip from point A to point G.
I also struggle with using technology, Yep, that would be #6. Sure, I can make boolean operators roll over and beg. And I've successfully downloaded mp3 audiobooks to my mp3 player. Which I bought specifically to see if I could do it. (Hello Habit #2--I learn through doing.) But if you can't connect your laptop to our wireless network, or you're having trouble with your digital camera, or your Nintendo DS, or even your cell phone, I'm not your girl. I've limited my tech knowledge and skills to what I've got at home. That, BTW, would be 35 mm film and a dinosaur of a desktop that doesn't have a CD burner and is still running Windows 2000. Some of the things our customers do completely baffle me because they're outside my realm of experience and they're not something I can easily replicate on a staff PC or my computer at home.
Which is why I'm really excited about Learning 2.0. This is allowing me an opportunity to play (I'm good at that!) with new tech (Hey look, a toolbox!) and try out some new things. I expect to come away from this with skills that will benefit not only our customers but also me when I finally get that laptop I'm saving up for. Good times ahead people, good times.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Welcome to my secret underground lair!
Hello and welcome to my blog. I'm not entirely new to the blogging scene--I've been livejournaling (and failing to post in and subsequently deleting my livejournals) for years. I'd originally intended to title this blog "My Secret Underground Lair," but alas, it was already taken. The current title comes from a line my brother and I swear used to be in this scene from that 1966 cinematic masterpiece, Batman: The Movie. Repeated viewings (Yes, repeated. What can we say? Adam West is good campy fun.) on DVD seem to indicate our memories are faulty, but we cry conspiracy and are sure someone must have edited it out. (Fear the Pro-Shark Lobby, for they are mighty and they are many.)
Once I've finished my Learning 2.0 and 43 Things homework this blog will be home to comic book and graphic novel reviews, hence the nods to both Batman and Spider-Man. I intend to focus on kid-friendly books, though there'll be occasional rants and raves about teen and adult titles, too. My not-so-secret-plan-for-world-domination involves throwing graphic novels at my co-workers in such numbers that they eventually realize resistance is futile and join me in the fervent belief that "comics are cool."
Once I've finished my Learning 2.0 and 43 Things homework this blog will be home to comic book and graphic novel reviews, hence the nods to both Batman and Spider-Man. I intend to focus on kid-friendly books, though there'll be occasional rants and raves about teen and adult titles, too. My not-so-secret-plan-for-world-domination involves throwing graphic novels at my co-workers in such numbers that they eventually realize resistance is futile and join me in the fervent belief that "comics are cool."
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