sprite writes
broodings from the burrow

June 10, 2010


game time, a night in, and a morning with friends
posted by soe 10:31 pm

Honestly, I feel like time is whooshing past me at a ridiculous pace. How is it already Thursday? And, yet, time is inching along. How is it only Thursday?

But the important thing is it is Thursday. Time for three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Rudi and I happened to have baseball tickets for the night that rookie phenom Stephen Strasburg was set to make his major league debut. The kid was only drafted last year and is barely old enough to have celebratory champagne dumped over his head. I admit that I fully expected the weight of an entire region and the rush to bring him up from the minors to cause him to self-destruct part way into the first inning, but I was wrong in my misgivings. Instead, while he started out throwing a fair number of balls and although he did give up a two-run homer, he set a new club record for strikeouts in a game (14), gave up nary a walk, and clinched a win in front of a raucous crowd of 40,000+. And all in less than 2 1/2 hours!

2. Rudi and I are dragging a bit, so we spend the evening coloring.

3. Friends invite me to join them for a weekday morning outing. I’m delighted to accompany them in their mischief-making.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world?

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ten on … late wednesday night
posted by soe 2:37 am

So, I meant to post my Ten on Tuesday yesterday — y’know, when it was Tuesday. But life got in the way both yesterday and earlier today and now is when I find myself with the time to sit down and respond to this week’s topic:

10 Favorite Children’s Books

I tried to come up with picture book-type books, but I had a hard time recalling too many, so I morphed over to chapter books. Some of those may border more on the YA classification, but it’s a fuzzy boundary anyway.

  1. Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss (Most important book I’ve ever read.)
  2. The Please and Thank You Book by Richard Scarry (Richard Scarry is so good he can even make mannerly lessons fun.)
  3. The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg (My high school French teacher first read this to us when we were seniors, and I hope someday to track down a copy in French to read to myself at the holidays.)
  4. Snow White and Rose Red by the Grimm Brothers (I remember borrowing this several times from the library at my elementary school.)
  5. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (When our public library was about to be dedicated, the children’s librarian came to our elementary school and read this to us.)
  6. The Trixie Belden series by Kathryn Kenny (It was actually a great relief to me to discover that these books, like Nancy Drew or the more recent Warriors series, are written by a publishing collective. I loved a great many of these (particularly the first ten or so), but periodically come across a dud, like the one I bought last year. Anyway, Nancy might have had the budding adult independence, the handsome college quarterback boyfriend, and the convertible, but Trixie was more instantly relatable with chores and schoolwork and annoying brothers. Plus, she had a clubhouse and the rest of the Bob-White Gang.)
  7. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Still one of my favorite books of all time. Who didn’t want to be Jo?)
  8. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (Ditto. Plus Anne holds up so much better in her sequels than Jo did in hers.)
  9. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (This book has to rival Little Women for being the most frequently re-read book in my life.)
  10. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (Meg, Charles Wallace, the witches… The concept of tesserecting. Physics. Honestly, this book is what gives me any hope for science.)

Wow! I thought that would be so much easier than it was. I had to leave out so many favorites — The Little House books, Heidi, The Secret Garden, Eight Cousins, Ballet Shoes, the Lord of the Rings trilogy…

I also remember liking a series of picture books my brother was fond of, but which I can’t remember any title or author details. But it’s about a little old man and a little old woman who get married. And in another book they drive their old-fashioned car in a rally of sorts. (I could be muddling the details. They might not be in the same series, but I believe are by the same author/illustrator. Ringing any bells for people? Dad?

Finally, leave your own list in the comments. I still read kiddie lit with alarming regularity and would love to check out what’s been important to you.

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