JuniorBookWorm.com

Lily is Back

    Lily is back and she is all in pink. Can a blue kangeroo bare it? He tries hard but only being pink will save him from the exclusion. Only after scrubbing up in pink icing
does blue kangeroo convey to Lily his torment. Lily is compassionate and dresses in blue to make her point.
    Being excluded and trying to fit in is a recurrent theme in many children's childhoods. Emma Chichester Clark shows that being sensative to other's differences is really important. Her message to children is gentle. Her message to parents could spark valuable conversations between them and their listeners.
As always, Chichester Clark's drawings are superb.

Happy Summer

We just got back from a couple of days in Venice and then up stream to the Dolomites. We stayed in the tiny town of Castelrotto in South Tyrol where Italian is hardly heard but they still serve a primi course of pasta before the secundi. It was gloriously hot. We swam in a pool with a view of amazing prehistoric mountains. We walked half an hour to a lake where we went boating and swimming. We took strenuous hikes for 6-12 year olds and we all slept and ate well. Hotel Cavallino D'oro was charming, the staff, gracious and the food (as I have mentioned) plentiful and delicious. It is surprisingly inexpensive. We waited a year to go because Rome's football team took over last summer during the week that we had marked out to be there.
    While we were there Noah was reading his third Robert Rankin, Nostradamus Ate My Hamster, having already read and loved The Witches of Chiswick. Sam was reading The Fourth Horseman and was recommending it to anyone he met. Alice has started reading the first Harry Potter, which is really sweet. Amos decided not to bring any knew books and was at the mercy of the others. I was reading a book my mom recommended called Gestures which is out of print in England eventhough the author, Bharbra, was English. It takes place in Venice and Amsterdam and was compelling. Tim was reading the Charter House of Palma and loved it. He read this Stendhal to the children and also really liked it, if the vocabulary was a challenge. He found it very funny, which is a quality we both love about Anthony Trollope. So, I assume I will be reading it later this summer after reading my book club book, the latest Ishiguro and On Beauty by Zadie Smith. That's all for now. Enjoy the sun while it lasts.