He was shortish. And oldish. And brownish. And mossy. And he spoke with a voice that was sharpish and bossy.

My absolute favorite children's book of all time is being made into a full-length animated film.  Its plot and message were almost singlehandedly the basis for my curriculum as a science teacher.  It contains powerful and insightful lessons for not only children, but all of us.

The Lorax will be out sometime in 2012 and will feature the voice of none other than Danny Devito.  I couldn't have dreamed up a better fit myself.

Counting the days until I can introduce MY LITTLE BOY to this gift from Dr. Seuss.

They Will Shine Out of Your Face Like Sunbeams

I adored all of Roald Dahl's books as a child, but I really loved The Twits.  Gotta love the take home message of the book.

Most Targeted Books

This just bothers me.  To Kill A Mockingbird is one of the most memorable and educational books I've ever read.  The Color Purple, The Catcher in the Rye, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower are also great.  Can't say I've read the others.

Click here to see an interactive version of this graphic. 

Six-Word Memoirs

So would you believe me anyway?
James Frey

For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.
Ernest Hemingway

The miserable childhood leads to royalties.
Frank McCourt

Acting is not all I am.
Molly Ringwald

Life is one big editorial meeting.
Gloria Steinem


And some lesser-knowns that I like...

Found on Craigslist: table, apartment, fiance.
Becki Lee

Alzheimer's: meeting new people every day.
Phil Skversky

Normal person becomes psychotic on Twitter.
Robin Slick

Yale at 16, downhill from there.
Anita Kawatra

Lost virginity in white van. Irony?
Tricia Van der Grient

Friendship test: Willingness to be inconvenienced.
Gay Talese

And here's a good collection of Six-Word Memoirs on Digital Life from everyday folks.

Must Have Book

"Featuring over 150 suicidal pets!"

A Special Story from Katrina

I came across a review recently for a children's book called The Two Bobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship, and Survival. I haven't read it yet, but the story behind it intrigued me.

The authors of the book heard a story about a dog, Bobbi Dog, and a cat, Bob Cat, on Anderson Cooper and had to write a kids book about it. Bobbi Dog and Bob Cat were two pets left behind in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. They both had bobbed tails (hence the nickname Bobbies) and were best friends. They were brought to a shelter after a construction worker found them:

The construction worker told us the dog and cat showed up and
started hanging out with his dog. Because they were both very
thin, the worker began feeding them. The man said he tried to
pick up the cat a couple of times but the dog would growl. He
said he also found out that if he tried to separate them, the dog
would “bark her head off.”

The shelter volunteers noticed the dog was very protective of the cat and had to keep them in the same cage in order to keep the peace. It took them a while to figure out that the cat was actually blind and the dog had been leading her through the perils of New Orleans after the hurricane!

Eventually, both animals were adopted by a woman in Oregon who operates a 50-acre ranch with a therapeutic equestrian program for kids. What a happy ending.

I'm excited to read the book. It has the potential to carry many meaningful messages to children - unlikely friendship, loyalty, cycles of change in nature, and the kindness of strangers. I like that it is based on a tragedy but illustrates an example of something positive that came out of it.

One of my cousin's family members experienced a similar "animal miracle" when he was finally able to return home to his house two weeks after Katrina and found that his dog had survived on none other than....toilet paper. Wow.

Here is a picture of the real Bobbies:

It's Summer - Time to Read For FUN!

Ahh, summer's here. Time to relax at the Springs with a good book. The only problem is, the only reading I'm updated on at the moment is on the subjects of Human Capital Theory, Quantitative Methods for Management, and Mental Health Care in Texas. I think I've had my share of those topics. It's TIME TO READ A BOOK FOR FUN!!! This has already been the topic of conversation between several of my fellow student friends, and I thought we should all share our recommendations of some good summer reading. If you can, just add a comment to this post with 1, 2, or 100 tasty books you think others would like. Please!

So here's my list of favorite summer reading (you'll notice no non-fiction on this list...see above).

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
This is a story set in India around the time of its independence from Great Britain. It is so beautifully written and also very educational. I have an affinity for stories set in India, and this is one of the first and best that I've read. It's a love story, a war story, and an arranged marriage story all rolled into one.

She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb
I finished this book in one afternoon on a beach in Vanuatu. That says a lot considering I could've been diving or snorkeling...I really couldn't put it down. I was completely impressed by the male author's ease at writing with a woman's perspective as she goes through life changes, body image issues, etc. Wally's books really stick with me - I also loved I Know this Much is True (about a set of twins, one with mental illness) and Couldn't Keep it to Myself (stories about women living in a prison in NY and what brought them there).

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
This is a simple fable about a boy going on a set of unexpected adventures. It's really just a metaphor for life and its curve balls. I read it when I had just moved to Australia and really identified with the main character as I travelled to random places I never expected to see and picked up new hobbies I hadn't thought of before. After reading this book, I read some others by the author (a hugely successful Brazilian author), one of which was a fictional story set on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Wouldn't you know, four years later, I found myself walking the Camino. I love to think about how this simple book made me more open to new things.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
"My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."
I took a writing course for teachers a few summers ago, and these first two sentences of this book were used as an example of a great hook. It's a sad book, but so beautifully written and hard to put down. Susie tells the story from heaven. It follows life for her family and friends after her death.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
This book is an absolute show-stopper and you must read it now if you haven't. The fact that Chris, his mom, and myself all loved this book will prove its universal appeal. Cal, the main character, is transsexual, but it's not just a book about that. The book goes back two generations, starting on an island in the Mediterranean and ending in Detroit. The character development is fantastic, but what also struck me about this book is the huge amount of research the author must have done to write it. The descriptions of Detroit and the Greek island are fantastic. Oh, and it also has a killer hook: "I was born twice: first as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck
A man, a dog, and a vehicle. What else could you want for summer reading? It's especially fun to read about places you've been and compare your version of them with Steinbeck's, which was written in 1962. I've read it several times now, and it always leaves me wanting to see more of our vast country.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
Roy is another Indian author I really enjoy. The story is about twins and their Indian family and hardships they go through. I highly recommend it, although I can't articulate at this moment what exactly makes it so memorable. All I can say is that it's one of those books that stands out in my mind, even though I read it 11 years ago. And it won the Booker Prize, so it can't be that bad. :)

The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup, and a Spool of Thread by Kate DiCamillo
Okay, this one is a children's book, but I loved it so much and so did the two classes of 5th graders I read it to. The main characters: a poor little mouse named Despereaux, a princess named Pea, Roscouro the evil rat, and Miggery Sow, the poor servant girl. The coolest thing about this book is that the author refers to the Reader throughout the story. ("Reader, can you imagine your own father not voting against your being sent to a dragon full of rats?"..."Reader, as the teller of this tale, it is my duty from time to time to utter some hard and rather disagreeable truths. In the spirit of honesty, then, I must inform you that Mig was the tiniest bit lazy. And that she was not the sharpest knife in the drawer." It's funny and it has adorable illustrations too.