Posh KidLit Costumes!!

During my 1 Year Blogiversary Celebration, I really wanted the girls from Kidsmomo to write a guest post for us! It wasn't in the stars last month, but we managed to arrange a Halloween Guest Blog Swap! How exciting! I am writing over on their blog, and they are writing here! You are about to learn about Polyvore.  Poly-what? Polyvore. It is an online space for people to create fashion collages. So cool! I am not much of a fashionista, but this looks like fun! You have to register to make a board, but you don't have to register to look around. Nancy and Karen from Kidsmomo have created some fun Polyvore collages to inspire your Halloween costume! Enjoy! And be sure to head over to Kidsmomo and read some great book reviews! Thanks, girls!

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Halloween is just around the corner, and you know what that means… Candy! Chocolate! Sugar! Nom nom nom! Oh, yeah, and costumes too.

This year, we’re thinking about recycling our outfits from LeakyCon and dressing up as Hogwarts students:

Of course, there are tons of other kitlit characters you can be for Halloween, and that got us thinking – and designing!

Thanks to the website Polyvore, you can clip and grab images of clothing from across the web and create your own inspirational fashion collages. With Halloween in mind, we channeled our inner Cinnas and came up with these costume collages for some of our favorite children’s book characters:

Katniss, Girl on Fire

(from The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins)

You’re fierce, and you know it. Put all those scantily-clad nurses and French maids to shame.

Percy Jackson, Son of Neptune

(from Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan)

If you encounter any demons while you trick-or-treat, just slice them with your pen.

Annabeth Chase, Daughter of Athena

(from Percy Jackson and the Olympians and The Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan)

As described in the book or as depicted in the movie – either way, Annabeth is always ready to kick some butt. That Greek battle instinct will come in handy if anyone gets between you and your candy corn.

Claudi Kishi, Middle School Fashionista

(from The Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin)

If anyone can appreciate a holiday dedicated to junk food and dressing up, it’s the BSC VP!

Slappy, the Living Dummy

(from the Goosebumps books by R.L. Stine)

We couldn’t come up with a clever caption for Slappy because it’s creeping us out just to look at this guy. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to find a well-lit room full of bunnies and rainbows…

So, what about you? Have you ever dressed up as a kidlit character? Leave a comment and let us know how you pulled it off!

And now that we’ve addressed the apparel, let’s get on to the traditional candy bartering, shall we: Trade you this box of raisins for your chocolate bar? 

-- Nancy and Karen

Nancy Tsai and Karen Wang are the forces behind Kidsmomo.com, an independent website for readers ages 8-13. Kidsmomo covers new and favorite children’s books through podcasts, videos, author interviews, book giveaways, and blog posts, and kids are also invited to submit their own book reviews to share with their peers. Nancy and Karen can be reached at contactus@kidsmomo.com.

Why Children's Books?

 It is the last night of my 1 Year Blogiversary Blowout. I am amazed and overwhelmed by the fabulous posts, comments and number of visitors. I think I should just host other bloggers all the time because I have had a blast! Thank you to all of the people who have dropped by to say hi and enjoy a great post or two. Today, my final post comes from Danielle Smith, who I first met as The1stdaughter of There's a Book. Her site is a wonderful resource for parents who are looking for fabulous books to share with their children. Danielle knows how vital books are in the lives of kids and she is able to write about them in a way that lets parents know exactly what to be reading. Danielle has been a very loyal follower and contributor to Book Talk Tuesday. We share links and resources regularly on Twitter and Pinterest. Danielle has been an important part on my virtual learning community! Thank you for writing this post for me... I can think back to all of the pivotal times on my life and I know exactly which book I was reading. Books have shaped my life and I am a better person for all of the times spent devouring books. 

 First of all, Happy 1st Blogiversary Kelly! The Lemme Library has quickly become one of my regular haunting grounds, and I say that because I'm unfortunately guilty of the crime of lurking. That being said, I've thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Kelly through her wonderful reviews, Book Talk Tuesday, on Twitter and absolutely on her often quirky fun pins on Pinterest. It's been a fantastic time getting to know you and I can't wait to see what comes in the next year for you!

Why Children's Books?

Truthfully, I agonized over this post. I simply could not narrow down what to talk about, but that's very typically me. I'm a bit all over the place, what with chasing after two toddlers all day and attempting to manage the schedule of a very busy new attorney (my hubby). That being said, you'd think it would be a given that I'd choose to blog about children's books seeing that both my kiddos read non-stop but it's not that simple.

See, much like Jonathan and Tom I was a bit damaged by reading and re-reading "Children's Classics" in school and subsequently stopped reading until close to the time my children were born. I know, it's a tragedy. Not that I stopped entirely, but certainly I wasn't eager to pick up The Scarlett Letter again (and probably never will).  Then, my children happened.

It began with books like Trucks Trucks Trucks by Peter Sis and Trucks by Byron Barton. Yes, there was a definite "truck" theme in our home the first two years of the Turkeybird's life. During which I suddenly felt the need to explore beyond my prejudices and his obsessions. What began as a need to discover more books for my son to devour, as he was already reading at eighteen months, quickly became a venture into the "ghost of children's books past". 

What I quickly discovered was that children's books have influenced my life from the start and I never let them go, literally. In a box my mother keeps for me there's a worn copy of Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish that is actually the one and only theft of my lifetime. Yes, I "borrowed" it from the library and never returned it. I'm sure the librarians out there are shaking their heads at this point, but I do apologize and would add that I have paid for a replacement since then. The point is though that I loved this book enough to hide it under my pillow at night, to read it during every spare moment & potentially get into "big" trouble for not returning it.

It's the love for Amelia Bedelia as well as a later reading of Socks by Beverly Cleary that still burns bright within me. Those are the books that I discovered made me the reader and lover of books that I am today. Now, the real question for me is which book will burn brightest for my sweet Turkeybird and Littlebug when they reach my age? Will it be the infamous Trucks Trucks Trucks or a later chapter book like Bink and Gollie by Kate DiCamillo or anything else we pick up over the next few years? 

Whichever book burns brightest for my children are the books that matter. The books we read under a blanket with flashlight in tow. The characters that rescue us from a hard day at school or home. The journeys that help us to remember we are children. Those are the ones that count and will forever have a place in our hearts. And that...is why I choose children's books.

Never Too Busy To Read!

Of all the famous, published and well-known guest bloggers I have been lucky enough to host this week, none of them hold a candle to my next guest. Addy Smith is a sixth grader at Lemme School, but she could be a freshman in college. She is an amazing young lady. She reads like crazy, and reads all sorts of great books. We have been known to have 45 minute conversations about which faction we would choose if we were Tris. We have gotten caught up in our discussions of why we think Gale is so much better for Katniss than Peeta. And these conversations are some of the best I have ever had about books. Addy knows her stuff and can articulate her opinion better than girls 10 years her senior. But she isn't only good at reading- she is a whiz at math too and she is tech savvy. She is a caring big sister and someone I trust to look after the little tykes in the library when I need her. She is dependable and has a good head on her shoulders. She is funny and witty and I truly love spending time talking with her. You would think that a kid that has all of this and a bag of chips going for her would let it go to her head- and be smug and snooty. No. Not Addy. She is down to earth and she knows where she is going in life. I adore this girl and I know she will do big things with her life. I know she has her heart set on being a obstetrician (she told me that 6 years ago when I first met her in kindergarten), but don't be surprised if she is President of The united States one day. Don't be surprised at all. Thank you Addy for taking the time out of your very busy life to write a great blog post for this old lady. : )

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Are people too busy for reading these days?

I know I've got trumpet, piano, guitar, chores, sports, plays and school.  (Don't forget pestering your siblings it's a big part in your day!) But I ALWAYS make time for reading!

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't make time for reading! I always have a HUGE list of books that I want to read (thanks to Mrs. Butcher and goodreads) and I often find myself wondering "why can't I read faster?" Well that's because there are TOO many books out there that I have yet to read! 

As a younger child I had people in my life that always made time for helping me read and boy am I glad that they did! 

Here is a video of me reading to my grandma  when I was 5!

Make sure that YOU find time to foster the love of reading for those special people in your life. 

And that to-read list won't be getting any shorter by me sitting around on the computer! 

So, Happy #1 to the #1 blog!

Librarians and Chocolate Cake

In honor of my 1 Year Blogiversary, I have a GREAT week of guest bloggers lined up! Check back every day this week to see what I have in store for you! My very first guest is author Kirby Larson. Kirby won The Newbery Honor Award for Hattie Big Sky. Her newest book is The Friendship Doll. Thank you Kirby for your post, and thank you for your online friendship! I am so glad that cyber-fate brought us together!

I am so pleased to help celebrate both the first birthday of the Lemme Library blog and a truly amazing librarian, Kelly Butcher. She has not only been an enthusiastic cheerleader for my books, she has even given me blogging lessons, especially in how to manipulate graphics. Despite all the coaching, I will never be able to create images as cute as the ones Kelly does. My particular favorite is the one she created of my famous light sword battle with fellow author, Tom Angleberger:

I love librarians, for reasons you will discover below, and am happy to honor this library blog’s first birthday even though, sadly, there is no cake.

 

People often ask me why I became a writer, a question that I can easily answer: books saved me. I grew up in a home with lots of love but little money and we moved nearly every single year as my dad searched for new ways to support our family of six. This took place in the olden days when people didn’t move around much so, at each new school, I was an oddball from the get-go. In addition to being the new kid, I was the new kid with a really bad home-permanent, cats-eye glasses and a name that would make any bully think he or she had won the lottery: Kirby Miltenberger. (My folks might as well have painted a target on my forehead!) As a kid, however, I soon learned that, no matter where I went, I could quickly find a friend in the school library, between the pages of a book.

Books allowed me to imagine myself tracking a thief, like Emil in Emil and the Detectives, or eating all the pancakes I wanted while bench-pressing horses, ala Pippi Longstocking, or even jetting to a distant planet, as did the children in Eleanor Cameron’s Mushroom Planet series. My mother saved my report cards and most of them said something like, “Kirby rushes through her lessons so she can read her library books; she needs to pay more attention to schoolwork and less to stories.” Soon, it wasn’t enough to simply read stories; I wanted to create my own (after I did my homework, of course!). And that’s what I’ve been doing since I was about eight years old.

I gave up permanents ages ago, now wear contacts instead of glasses, and thankfully married a man named Larson so I don’t read to soothe a lonely heart as much as I once did. But I still could not survive without a library. Of course, I use them to check out delicious reads--like TomAngleberger’s Origami Yoda, KarenCushman’s Alchemy and Meggy Swann, Barbara O’Connor’s How to Steal a Dog, Gary Schmidt’s Okay for Now, or LindaUrban’s Hound Dog True--as I always have. But I also use them to track down the name of a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco in 1919 or to find out when the term “waterwings” was first used or to read the New York Times from 1890. As a writer of historical fiction – as a writer, period!—I consider my library a tool of the trade, just like my keyboard, thesaurus and special assistant, Winston the Wonder Dog. 

The best part of any library is its librarians. On the outside, librarians may look like ordinary mortals, but underneath their “Too Many Books, Too Little Time” tee-shirts, they wear superhero costumes. Somehow they can do the same keyword search I have tried ten times and actually come up with what I was looking for. They know where to find old maps, how to load the microfiche machines, and what magic words are needed to request a book through interlibrary loan. And they get as excited as I do about finding just the right fact to make my stories sparkle. And, maybe most importantly, they work very hard to place the right book into the hands of a reader. Because of that, they are as ferocious as a tiger mom protecting its cubs when it comes to protecting our rights to read. Librarians are the wizards of these modern times and I wouldn’t want to live in a world without them.

Especially if there is chocolate cake.