Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a quick and fun
punctuation game based upon Lynn Truss’s bestselling grammar and punctuation book
by the same name. The title of the book is based upon this joke,
A panda walks into a restaurant. He orders a
sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other customers.
A waiter who survived the gunfire asks the panda, "Why did you do that?"
The panda pulls out a book, a poorly punctuated wildlife manual, hands the book to the waiter.
The Panda exists the restaurant, saying 'I'm a panda. Look it up.'
The waiter turns to page in the manual that describes pandas and discovers the explanation.
"Panda - large, black and
white bear-like mammal; native to
I guess that joke is supposed to teach us that poor punctuation is not a laughing matter, to pandas anyway. Take the test and let me know your score.
I must still be on a sugar high from my recent post on my favorite blog prompts book. How else to explain this post and my cyber-quest for a Domino Sugar kid's cookbook I remember from my not-so-recent childhood (umm...let's just say, back in the days when white sugar was an essential part of a nutritious meal.)
It all started last Friday when I was reading the newspaper and saw an advertisement for an old cookbooks website. I immediately flashed back to my grandmother's kitchen, the smell of her famous chocolate pecan pie baking in the oven.
Minnie Mo (doesn't everyone call their grandmothers that?) was the world's best baker and so she went through a lot of sugar bags, enough so that she could send in enough labels to obtain the cookbook for me.
Anyway, I loved that book (probably because it reminded me of Minnie Mo) and wondered if any vintage cookbook websites had it, so off I went on a sugar-crazed cyber-search. Sadly, no such luck.
I even googled "Domino Sugar Cookbook" which gave me links to the Domino Sugar website. I didn't find any information on that vintage cookbook, but I did find a link to their kid's page, Dominoland. It was just okay, but did nothing to satisfy my sweet tooth for that memorable cookbook.
So, I will keep searching for that wonderful recipe collection, but in the meantime, here is a list of the kid's cookbooks (in order of preference) that I currently have on my kitchen shelf:
What sort of cookbooks do you have in your collection and which one is your favorite?
This past week's "BookWorld" column in the Washington Post's Sunday Source had an informative review of Internet Safety books. The one that stood out for me (and that I promptly ordered on Amazon.com) was titled "What in the World Are Your Kids Doing Online?" by Barbara Melton and Susan Shankle (who on the acknowledgments page give a shout-out to their agent, Jeff Kleinman, a gentleman who I had the great pleasure of meeting 7 years ago and who generously agreed to read an early draft of my novel-in-progress, Hunting Prayers, and provided me with wonderful insights for revisions) But enough with my gratuitous name-dropping, let me get back to the book.
While the majority of Internet safety books that I have come across are written for parents and teachers and cover vitally important information about the dangers of the internet, Melton & Shakle's book blurb instantly stood out as being different.
"Though less headline-grabbing than predator talk...more thought-provoking in it's attempt to describe how the Web's mores affect your child's development. With an underlying view that there's good here as well as bad."
We all know that the internet is here to stay and no matter what restrictions parents and teachers place upon the family or school computer, kids are going to keep going online. So along with arming adults (whether techno-wizards or techno-illiterates) with the information needed to keep kids safe online, someone has finally come out with a book that gives a solid case for just what is so GOOD about the internet. In fact, the authors go out on a cyber-limb (rooted in the sound research of developmental psychologist, Erik Erikson) to suggest that the "industry" strategies for six- to twelve-year olds
"is probably the stage where Cyberworld is most in tune with children's developmental needs."
Wow! You mean that the internet can help a kid develop competency? That's a daring concept.
As for blogging, the authors are unabashed fans of weblogs, suggesting that parents "encourage them--with a few well-chosen words of warning."
I am certainly not going to diminish the dangers of Cyberspace, but along with taking necessary precautions against cyber-bullies and predators, parents and teachers have an obligation to appreciate the 21st century medium for its tremendous benefits and influence and to find out just what in the world good kids are doing online.
I have just returned from SCBWI conference in NYC and came away with so much writing inspiration. All of the speakers were phenomenal, but my absolute favorite was Susan Cooper, author of "The Dark is Rising" sequence.
Here's is some advice she had for young writers:
These may seem too simple, but the manner in which Ms. Cooper delivered these nuggets was truly inspiring as she talked about her youth in England during the Blitzkrieg where she would watch the London night sky on fire from the bombing, how she and her schoolmates collected shrapnel from the craters in her school playground, and how her sense of good and evil became much more complex when she considered the deaths of innocents from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All of these impressions and more from her childhood inform her writing, becoming the "subconscious hauntings" where she receives her story ideas .
Writing is often inspired by a strong interest in something--maybe it's dragons or dinosaurs or computer games. For 13 year old Nancy Yi Fan the fascination was birds (she has always loved birds and has three pet birds). So she set out to combined her interest in birds with a desire "to express the importance of peace and freedom" and began to write a novel about battling birds. After she got the idea for the book she spent all of her free time writing. Her parents and school teachers encouraged her and her friends would read her early drafts, never doubting that one day their friend would be a published author. After a year of hard work, Miss Yi Fan's novel, Swordbird," was published by HarperCollins and immediately soared onto the New York Times best-seller list. Do you have an interest that could give your words wings?
The Weekly Reader Online (thanks to sandhyan of twg.org list-serve for this delicious tip) is not just for readers, although great writing comes from great reading, but writers will find oodles of goodies. Their Kids link doesn't offer many writing opportunities for the young writer, but searching their Teen section pulled up some tasty tidbits suitable for elementary school kids as well. If you like the Rotten School book series, you can help R.L. Stine finish his online story.
Here are a few WR contests (Warning some of these contests have Nov 06 deadlines, so write fast):
