Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Time: Sunday, 12:45 p.m. 36.75 hours in, 11.25 to go.

Books Finished: 3. Finished Magic’s Child in the wee hours, and then read The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder between 8:30 and 10:45 a.m..

Pages Read: 802 (page count adjusted to reflect that I’d already read the first 27 pages of The Egypt Game at work the other day).

Time Spent Actually Reading: 11.25 hours.

Today is hard. I thought the weather was supposed to be all gloomy and wet all weekend, but no. It’s sunny. 70 degrees. Birds are all, like, chirping and stuff. Probably butterflies, too, doing their little fluttery thing. Flowers. Bees, wiggle-dancing about where the good pollen is. Maybe rainbows. Hell, maybe unicorns and leprechauns and shit, how would I know? I haven’t left the apartment in almost 24 hours.

I think I have to take my next book outside if I’m going to carry on. Semper Fi, ya’ll.

Many, many thanks to Sean Qualls for our 7 Kicks illustration this week. This is “Dizzy on Stage” from the fabulous Dizzy by Jonah Winters, published last year (Arthur A. Levine Books). Finally reading this book was one of Jules’ 7 Kicks last week, and we wondered, hey, could we get an illustration from the honorable Mr. Qualls for next week’s list? And here it is! Make sure you don’t miss his site (we were torn between putting up a Dizzy photo or one of the other fabulous non-children’s-lit-related pieces of art work you’ll see there if you click on “illustrations”).

Scott Magoon’s already committed to the illustration for next week’s list! Excellent. Can’t wait to see that one . . .

Okay, let’s get to the lists then. Here’s our usual intro for any new people: It’s time for another installment of 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks. For those new to our series, this is where we all stop in every Sunday to report seven (more or less is fine) Good Things that happened to you (or that you read or saw or experienced or . . . well, you get the picture) this week. Absolutely anyone is welcome to contribute, and your lists don’t have to be book-related. Read the rest of this entry �

Time: Sunday, 12:25 a.m. 24.5 hours in, 23.5 to go.

Books Finished: 1.75. I’m on page 222 of Magic’s Child by Justine Larbalestier.

Pages Read: 545

Time Spent Actually Reading: 8 hours.

Fielded long phone calls from mother and sister. Read solidly through early evening, then fell victim to an accidental nap. Probably due to overly-fatigued eyeballs. Had an interesting dream, in which I helped Roger Sutton repaint an apartment that had been trashed by squatters while we listened to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” I am sure this means something.

Have decided Little Willow isn’t human. Some kind of supernatural reading mutant. Further evidence: she can eat corn after oral surgery. Am now focusing competitive energies on Leila at Bookshelves of Doom. She’s hardcore, but not as scary. Also, her sister sounds like mine.

At some point, I seem to have turned into the nerdy Bridget Jones. If I start recording calorie counts, please intervene.

Time: Saturday, 4:45 p.m. 16.75 hours in, 31.25 to go.

Books Finished: 1. Ironside by Holly Black. (Awesome. More on that later.)

Pages Read: 323.

Time Spent Reading: 5 hours.

Math is hard. Little Willow is kicking my ass.

On to the next book.

First, I forgot to mention why I’m Book Challenging solo. Jules really wanted to participate too, but she has a storytelling gig today. Break a leg, Jules!

Second, the Progress So Far: not great. I kicked this off at midnight, having just watched a movie and had a late dinner with the husband. Including beer. I took a book to bed with me, but fell asleep before I’d actually opened it. An inauspicious beginning, but I tried to catch up this morning. I read Ironside by Holly Black between 9:30 to 12:45, then had to tap out to make lunch for self and husband, eat lunch, drive husband to subway station, and shower.

Score so far: out of 15 hours, I’ve spent 3.25 reading, and have 226 pages under my belt. Not awesome. And I made the mistake of peeking around at other contenders blogs to see how they’re doing. People: have you SEEN how much Little Willow’s read? I knew she was going to be serious competition, but DAMN.

It’s now 3:00. Husband (i.e., distraction) is safely on his way out of town, I’m brewing coffee to make Mexican Cocoa, and I’m about to get back in the ring. Can’t let Team 7-Imp down. Gots ta represent, yo.

Good morning. It’s now Saturday, a few minutes past midnight, Eastern time. I’ll be participating in MotherReader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge from now until 12:01 a.m. Monday. I have a huge stack o’ books, and I’m ready to play.

May the best reader win!

{Note: Today’s Poetry Friday round-up is over here at HipWriterMama}.

What a lovely surprise! Yesterday I received a gift from friend and former Cybils Poetry Nominating committee member Elaine of Wild Rose Reader. It’s a signed copy of Twist: Yoga Poems by Janet S. Wong, illustrated by Julie Paschkis. How sweet is that?

If you haven’t already perused this lovely little title, you need to treat yourself. Each brief free-verse poem is inspired by a specific yoga pose, and uses child-friendly imagery to link the name of the pose to the body movement. “Cobra,” for example, “pushes… up from damp soil. / She lifts herself higher, / to dry out her heart.” It’s a great concept, and I think a child who is beginning to learn yoga would enjoy Wong’s ability to personify the poses.

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As you probably know, the 2007 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children’s Literature were announced this week. We were pleased to see the list of winners and honor recipients and were in happy agreement.

Fiction and Poetry Winners:

* The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party (Candlewick) by M. T. Anderson — co-reviewed here at 7-Imp (followed by our recent-ish interview with Anderson)

Picture Book Winners:

Fiction — * Dog and Bear: Two Friends, Three Stories (Porter/Roaring Brook) written and illustrated by Laura Vaccaro Seeger — reviewed here by Jules

Nonfiction — * The Strongest Man in the World: Louis Cyr (Groundwood) written and illustrated by Nicolas Debon Read the rest of this entry �

It’s summer in Lynne Rae Perkins’ new picture book, in which a family takes a trip to “the old family farm. No one lived at the farm anymore, but our grandparents were spending the summer there and we were going to visit them.” The story, told from the perspective of one of the two young children in the family, is packed with the child-centered detail for which Perkins is known (and, as usual for Perkins, by bringing us the idiosyncrasies of one particular family, she manages to bring us the universal). Getting things rolling right away on the title and CIP page, Perkins shows us that the children have some pretty vivid ideas of what this vacation could be (“maybe we will stop at a motel with a pool”). The boy dreaming of mountain climbing and the father dreaming of butter tarts, we see how “vacation” can be defined in wildly different ways, depending on the family member. And, pulling out tiny cameras and notebooks for the children before the trip begins, the mother provides our young narrator with some tools that can be used to bring us, as readers, a multi-media (her photos and notebook writing) account of their vacation and that can be used as a receptacle for her memories.

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Here are two co-reviews of two books by two first-time novelists (one, a proud member of the Class of 2k7, and the other, a proud member of The Longstockings). And we know that practically everyone else has covered The Thing About Georgie — particularly, around the time that Lisa Graff conducted her entertaining blog tour — but we’re just now getting to our review. Better late than never, right? . . .

This, Rose Kent’s first novel, is about fourteen-year old Joseph Calderaro, who was borne of a Korean woman but adopted as a wee babe into an Italian family. Considering himself “an ethnic sandwich,” he isn’t too terribly caught up in identity issues (he’s mostly consumed by the worries typical of children that age — girls, friendships, school, etc.), but when his teacher assigns a project in which the students must write about their heritage, he starts to become more aware of the holes in the story of his biological family and birth. His parents have little information about his birth, and his father almost refuses to discuss it, emphasizing that he became part of their Italian family and heritage the day they decided to adopt him. Read the rest of this entry �