Maria's Mélange

Yes, I'm writing and posting this from my phone. Technology rocks! Good news! I got a home cooked breakfast - sausage and eggs- and I didn't have to cook it! Bad news! No Keurig means I waited 35 minutes for the coffee to be ready. No worries - no Bothans had to die to get me the caffeine I needed to survive. Good news! No primping required. It's all little boys and the dads that wrangle them. No one cares that I'm stinky and my hair is all tangled. Bad news! I'm stinky and my hair is all tangled. Good news! No waiting for the bathroom. With a dedicated "women's bathroom" - and only one other mom in attendance - I never have to stand in line. Bad News! I have to walk five minutes in the cold morning air to reach that bathroom. Don't get me started on the shower. (I mentioned that I'm planning on staying stinky, right?) Good news! The sounds of nature are loud and beautiful. Trilling birds, hooting owls, and burbling creeks. Bad...

This post is part of the blog hop for Teach Mentor Texts What is it that is so appealing about Post-Apocalyptic and Dystopian adventures? It certainly isn’t the depression of having a world collapse, leaving only a handful of survivors. It can’t be the oppressive government regimes, bent on taking away all vestiges of free choice and self-determination. No, what makes both of these genres appeal to me is the focus on the human spirit; the scrappy unwillingness to let go, to give up, to just stop trying and die. Here are a few of my favorites. I’m skipping the “Young Adult” bracket because so many others here have done an excellent job sharing those books. Upper Middle Grades: In this age bracket, it’s important to be cautious about the details of the disaster and the struggles of the adults. It’s equally important to have a main character that kids feel strongly connected to. City of Ember   This is the perfect introduction to the genre pairin...

 WOW!! Thirty one days. We did it! Thanks to the wonderful Slice of Life friends, and our hosts - Two Writing Teachers.  So long, and thanks for all the fish. - Douglas Adams  (But just until the next post, right?)  This is a short post, because I’m hoping to also post from the “field”. I’ll be camping with my cub scouts. Yep, I'm a "den mom". I'd like to say I make the shirt look good, but it's just not true. Yet I talk a good talk about being a strong woman as an example for my sons, so I try to make sure I walk the walk as well.  I’ll be cold, tired, and dirty. I’ll eat food that is horrifically bad for me.                 Hello, s’mores!I’m looking at YOU! I’ll be stuffed into a fluffy sleeping bag,                 Hoping I don’t need to leave the tent in the middle of the night to pee....

 We're nearing the end of the March Slice of Life Challenge - hosted by Two Writing Teachers ! Blogging Joys and Frustrations! First, let me thank all of you who stuck with me through all the crazy blog issues. Up, down, up, down – I’m getting a headache! Click “publish” – will it appear? Will the link work? When will the blog finally decide to show my post to the world… and when will it randomly decide to take the link back down? Quick – post it on Tumblr instead, even though I can’t figure out how to get the images to appear. Thankfully, my loving husband decided to throw in the towel on my old blogging service and move me over to Blogger. I still have access to my old site so that I can move my other posts over here, and I intend to get them all over here so they are together. The comments won’t show here, but I still treasure all the things everyone had to say about them. I use Disqus as my commenting engine, so I still have those comments – they just won’t show up...

This is my 29th post for the March Slice of Life Challenge - hosted by Two Writing Teachers . Stop by! Several others have commented on their "One Little Word" focus for the year.  When they started talking about it on Twitter in early January, I gleefully ran to the link and pondered my word. Of course, in my ferret like ability to stay focused on one thing for any length of time… “Oooo…. Shiny!” Umm… what was I saying? Right, the one little word. I can’t locate the link right now, but rest assured there were hundreds of possible goal words to choose. I considered, hemmed and hawed, and then promptly forgot all about it. Before it jumped back out of my distractible little mind, though, I’m pretty sure I settled on the word  “Create” . As I think back over this month, and all the words I’ve spewed forth in my daily Slices, I’m even more positive that was what I selected. Positive, of course, because that means that I’ve actually accomplished a lot ...

This is my 28th post for the Slice of Life Challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers . Stop by!   This is also the first post of a series - Batty About Books. Today Kathy and I discuss part one of Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. A tweet is sent out to the Twitterverse, “Anyone want to be book buddies?” That tweet, by Kathy Burnette (a.k.a. @thebrainlair) was where it all began. A flutter of tweets, replies, and DMs commences. Then a Google Doc. What did people do before all this technology? Can you imagine your book club being limited to just those people you’ve actually met in person? Say it isn’t so! Along the way we also discovered a common love for the amazing Barbara Gordan – otherwise known as Batgirl. The rest, as we like to say, is history. We exchanged reading lists. Several people had been insisting I give Graceling a try, and Kathy was gracious enough to reread it so that I could move it to the top of my pile. This, our inaugural Batty About Books postin...

 I'm writing every day in March as part of the Slice of Life Challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers . I can't believe it's already the 27th!  “You can’t change the world if you only change the girls” - Me I saw Hunger Games over the weekend with a friend and thought it was a wonderful adaptation of the book. Yes, there were things I would have done a bit differently. Yes, it was hard to have the same emotional impact as the book, when you can't "hear" the internal debate of the heroine. Overall, though, I thought it captured the soul of the story. There have been a lot of reviews out there of the Hunger Games movie, though. This one isn’t a review of the movie. It is a commentary on the power of having such a strong female lead out there for all to see. So… What REALLY makes me happy about this book and movie adaptation? Girls have a powerful role model. Yes, I’m a huge fantasy fan. I adore the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, even t...

This is what I read this past week, which I link to the Teach Mentor Texts weekly post. Stop by and add to your "Must Read" list!  Old and New  (this post is also a Newbery Update!) I’ve completed another two Newbery Books as part of the Nerdbery Challenge. Huge thanks to Colby Sharp and John Schu for getting the challenge going! This will also count as my “It’s Monday” post… I’ll just tack on a little bit on the end, since I didn’t get a lot read this week. Waterless Mountain (1932) I enjoyed this story. I’ll state up front, I don’t know that much about Navajo culture. Yet I found that the stories embedded in this tale were intriguing, and made me want to learn more. So even if they weren’t accurate, I think that’s a win. I liked the family, and I enjoyed learning about this boy on his way to realizing his dream – becoming a Medicine Man. It was a quick read. Yes, there were numerous times when the narrator disrespected the culture of the “...

I'm writing every day in March as part of the Slice of Life Challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers . Stop by! I’m not in the mood to write at this very moment. Yet I am, diligently, sitting at my computer and tapping away at the keys. As Jane Yolen told me (and I ignored for years), writers need to get their Butts In the Chair. I need to write my Newbery Update. I need to jot down my thoughts about Graceling for my Book Buddy. I’ll do these things, and I’ll enjoy them. Just not this very moment. Ideas flutter like fireflies. I gaze at them Wistfully. Energy depleted - I capture them in a jar. Perhaps tomorrow They’ll light the way.

 I'm writing every day in March as part of the Slice of Life challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers . Stop by! I started working on this post as a poem (you can see my abandoned attempt at the end). It needed to be explored in prose instead. I dropped Connor off with a friend today, to head out to a birthday party. As he darted off with barely a backward glance, I was reminded of all the moments – all the firsts – which I’ve experienced as a mother. While I know that there are so many more to come (he’s only ten); for some reason today’s goodbye made me feel particularly nostalgic. I was blessed with an easy pregnancy and a long but relatively easy labor. Connor was also an easy baby. He slept well, ate well, and gifted us with uncountable goofy faces. (Most of which were caught on camera – which I’m sure will be a great source of embarrassment to him when he starts dating.) We called him so many silly names as an infant, and sometimes I forget and still use them in f...

I’m using my Tumblr again for my March Slice of Life Challenge because my other blog again appears to be on the fritz. *sighs*   (moved it here to my Blogger so everything is together - 3/28) (Not much “craft” to today’s post…. But lots of great reading ideas) As my students finish up during state testing, they pull out a book to read. State testing time is one of those wonderful times when they are free to read anything they want. There are no assigned novels, and no real homework. My darlings are in fifth grade, and all are very strong readers. On Wednesday I decided to take a glimpse around the room to see what they would be reading purely for pleasure. Out of twenty students: Four were reading Harry Potter. Several were reading the series for a second or third time. Books one, three, four, and six were represented. Four were reading graphic novels. One was reading one of my Bone volumes, two were reading George O’Connor’s Athena , and one was reading his Zeus...

 I'm writing every day as part of the March Slice of Life Challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers . Stop by!  “So, you are on that Twitter thing, huh?” followed by an eyebrow raised in my general direction. Yes, I’m on Twitter. Okay, I’m also slightly addicted. Yet I firmly believe that Twitter is a blessing and a boon in my life. Let’s see if I can come up with ten reasons why I love Twitter. (After all, I’m pretty sure I haven’t done a top ten list yet). 10. Breaking News . For some reason, Twitter seems to have the ability to break any big news within seconds of its occurrence.  I don’t watch the news. I don’t listen to news channels. Last year, during our start of the year inservice days, my school building started to shake slightly. We were all told to exit immediately. I hopped onto Twitter. Sure enough, my feed was filled with East Coasters commenting on feeling the earthquake, links to geological sites that had information about the earthquake, and Wes...

I'm writing every day in March as part of the Slice of Life Challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers . Stop by!  The wind moans. Winter approaches like a wolf. Slowly creeping nearer; nearer. Unnoticed, unremarked Suddenly darting through yellowing grasses, she pounces on her shivering prey. Her twitching ears are the dying leaves dangling and dancing to the wind’s frenzied tempo Her amber, glowing eyes a Jack o’ Lantern’s flickering flames or the harvest moon gazing down. Reminding us all that winter is coming. Ah, the process of a poem. First, let it be known that this poem is based on an activity I made my third graders do. We read a poem titled “Winter Horses”, which was filled with lovely simile and metaphor. As part of our interaction with the text, they needed to come up with another animal and season pairing, and use the model of the poem to create their own. I decided to be a good role model, and complete the writing alo...

I'm attempting to write every day in March as part of the Slice of Life Challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers . Stop by!  I guess it’s that time of the challenge – time to sit back and take stock about how it’s been going, right? I was leery of committing to the challenge. Several friends on twitter were already in the Tuesday slice (and, I’m assuming, have done the monthly challenge before). I questioned them for a while, and kept thinking that maybe I would just dip my toes into the Tuesday stream once March had ended. Then I thought about it some more, and chatted with another friend. This friend is a F2F friend, so we actually heard one another’s voices! (Hi, Jessica!). I’m a “lapsed writer” – and Jessica actually gets paid to write articles. At the very last minute we texted each other and said, “What the heck? Let’s go for it!” What concerned me? I thought I’d have nothing to say . Heh. Clearly, I’m quite fond of the sound of my own voice… err… keyboard. I...

Be sure to check out the other posts in this meme at Teach Mentor Texts . Of course, that might lead to an out of control wish list… but worse things have happened. Hmm… not sure why, but I got through more this week than last week! Graphic Novels and Comics Zeus – by George O’Connor. This is a fabulous, gorgeous book! While it's about "Zeus", it really tells the whole tale of the start of creation - according to Greek Mythology - and how Zeus rescued his siblings (with the help of Metis, of course). I often think of Zeus as a bit of a "jerk", so it was nice that this book focused on the start of his journey. Amazing art, full of action. Bone vol 4 (Dragonslayer ) by Jeff Smith. I’m still adoring this series. This is the last volume that I already own… I’m already twitching because I want the next. Womanthology : Heroic– I’m only about 10% through, but I’m adoring this anthology. Have you ever heard of Kickstarter? This book was p...

I'm attempting to write every day in March as part of the Slice of Life Challenge hosted by Two Reading Teachers . Stop by! This post is cross posted with the Nerdy Book Club blog. I'm the guest blogger today! Check out their awesome blog filled with amazing information from people who love to read.  “Wait!” I can hear the outcry now. “This is the NERDY book club site!” Hear me out, my fellow readers. I absolutely claim membership in the Nerdy Book Club. I’ve been a card carrying member since my earliest memories. No - even before that. My mother tells stories of my father reading to me from his anatomy textbooks as an infant. Maybe that’s where it all began. You see, I was an oddball – a geeky reader who just happened to be of the feminine persuasion. Maybe the melody of my father’s voice reading medical school textbooks did it, or maybe that’s just how I would have turned out anyway. My fondest, sweetest literary memories revolve around science fiction and fantasy...