1. If your character could be played by any actor, who would it be?
A young Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper from Torchwood). Or somebody else equally awesome and equally Welsh.

2. Does your character have a specific theme song?
 No, but she’s fond of the band Chameleon Circuit and I can see her knowing all of the words to the track Teenage Rebel. I also listened to my ‘death scenes’ playlist a lot while writing her.

3. What’s their worst childhood memory?
Visiting her parents in a mental hospital – she hated that.

4. If your character had a superpower, what would it be?
Lol, she already does. Kind of. She’s a Shifter, so she can Shift stuff (like time! which is awesome. and also matter and stuff). She wishes she had the Watcher’s gift of turning things invisible, and thinks pyrokinesis would be cool.

5. If your character crashed on an island with a bunch of other people, how would your character help the group survive?
She’d Shift them all to somewhere else. But I can imagine she’d just Shift herself and abandon them.

6. Are they married? If not, do they someday wish to be?
She’s like nineteen. I should hope not. I doubt she’ll ever get married, not after what I did to her at the end of Returning, but it’s possible. When I’m all famous and stuff, if you guys want to write fan fic in which Wyn gets married, go ahead. I shall read it and laugh.

7. What is a cause they would die for?
Pretty much anything. She doesn’t care very much.

8. Would they rather die fighting valiantly, or quietly at home?
Fighting. She doesn’t want to die with tubes in her.

9. If someone walked up to them and told them they were the child of the prophecy, would they believe them?
Yeah, probably. She’s egotistical, but more than that, she’s had enough weird things happen to her for that to seem pretty normal.

10. Do they prefer the country or the city?
 Country because there are fewer people, though it’s easier to hide in the city.

These questions come from Further Up and Further In, whose blog I found via Charley R!

There are new questions every month(?) and… stuff. Yeah. Head over there, ’cause I don’t know what I’m doing and am just trying to cover up for my lack of inspiration for posts.

Then I took the children out for a walk in our new (used) double stroller. It’s a three-wheeler, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to like it, but it’s a winner so far. At least I have a way to go on walks with both kids now. No more excuses not to get exercise!

Supper was steak, Greek roasted vegetables, and chocolate mousse. Gabriel came home with sparkling elderflower fizz, soft goat cheese, and smoked gouda with three kinds of crackers for a late-night treat. That man has good taste!

In summary, V-day 2012: small gifts, exercise, good food, and thanksgiving that we still love each other.

These two still love each other, too.

What was YOUR favorite part of February 14?

The month before I met her, she decided suddenly to refuse to take her meds. Her parents were a little uneasy I’m sure. Her mother had heard of Truehope years before, and seriously started looking into it. One day at work, her mother was given a copy of the May 2005 Discover Magazine featuring an article about Truehope. She brought it home for Bronwyn to read. Bronwyn read it and her first thoughts were, ” I wonder how this Joseph guy is doing now?” and “Is it really possible for me to have a normal life too?” Feeling rejected and judged by people in Grande Prairie she decided to go online to find someone to talk to who could relate to her.

Meanwhile, my brother pretty much forced me to go online and meet a girl. So he set me up. That was’t normally something I would do, I’m just not like that. One day Bronwyn’s picture popped up on my screen. I decided to try talking to her. For some reason I felt compelled to initiate communication with her. I tried two more times after the first. She pretty much completely ignored me until the third day we were both online. She must have been bored and thought she’d humor me. So we chatted about nothing important. Then she asked me a question. “Where do you work?” I replied, “Have you ever heard of Truehope?” Having been primed for this moment by stopping her meds, and having read the magazine article, she said, “Yes, I was just looking at the website. I’m Bipolar!” She seemed to say it with such enthusiasm and trust. I think if I had been any other guy, I would have been freaked out and shut off my computer. As soon as she found out I worked at Truehope, she warmed right up and started talking to me for a change. She hadn’t yet realized that I was ‘the Joseph’ that she had been wondering about not longer than a week before. All she knew was that I was someone she could talk to. Someone who could understand her.

Finally we had the opportunity to talk on the phone. Man that was an amazing experience! We talked about everything from bipolar to the weather, for probably five hours. From then on we had many more online or phone conversations. I was falling hard for her, and I desparately wanted to be with her in person. So we arranged a weekend visit. I was living in Magrath at the time so I drove about 10 hours up to Grande Prairie. It was interesting driving all that way to meet this beautiful woman you HOPE is waiting for you at the other end! But all doubts aside I drove a long way, and it was totally worth it. She was very lovely indeed! It was almost like one of those love at first sight experiences.I brought her a bottle of EMPowerplus. She says I was her knight on a white horse coming to rescue her. I met her wonderful family, and felt her mother’s concern for her.

We were able to spend some time alone. One of those moments was walking through the lovely Muskoseepi Park in GP. I loved being there with her. I noted to myself how easily we connected, I could talk about anything with her. I felt that same ease from her as well. Her hand was so soft in mine, I was smitten. During that walk I picked a flower from a nearby bush, and put it in her hair. I didn’t think too much of it, she had beautiful hair. But Bronwyn said that was ‘the moment’ for her. She knew this was the start of something wonderful. Unfortunately that weekend had to end at some point. It ended with her and I driving in separate cars. She had to work and I had to to go back to work ten hours south of there. At our last intersection together we waved and parted ways. What I didn’t know at the time was that Bronwyn had turned around to follow me and say goodbye one last time. The only problem was that she never caught me in time. She drove after me but gave up, turned around and cried. As sad as I was to hear this after, this was when she realized that she loved me.

Weeks passed and Bronwyn was taking EMPowerplus and not feeling so bipolar anymore. She got well. She became a glorious woman without a mental illness. She was and is forever grateful to me for this.  I was able to drive up and steal her away for a week. This time the drive south was much more fun. We were finally together again and we talked about life and sang our hearts out to music. Since she was only visiting my family for a week, I wanted to ‘seal the deal’ before she left. I bought her a beautiful ring. A couple days before she was supposed to leave, I took her to a lovely place with a waterfall (she loves waterfalls). I walked her over to some big rocks at the bottom of the falls and we sat down. I proposed and she said yes! We embraced and I stole a kiss. It was a moment I will never forget…

From then on life has stayed in fast forward motion. We eloped about a month later (which was the most romantic thing ever), and planned a reception for a couple months later. Here we are now six and a half years later, still married with four wonderful children. Life shows no sign of slowing down. We have had many rough moments in our marriage to work through. But mostly it is the happiest fairytale come true. We laugh together and cry together. We keep each other sane in an insane world. We’ve both been there… I am grateful everyday for my sweetheart.

Pelifics is Eirik Seu Stokkmo, a Norwegian that produces sexy disco and house music heavily inspired by 80s pop music. Yesterday, his new EP Lifetime, EP Vol. 1 dropped on Canadian label Brilliantine. It’s quite bad that I’ve not heard of this fellow Norwegian, but I guess you can’t be up to date on everything. Well, thanks to the Greek blog La.Ga.Sta I’m now officially a fan.

Lifetime Ep, Vol. 1 was a huge surprise to me, as it’s really tight produced filled up with 80s synths and lots of bass. An even bigger surprise to me was that the EP features vocals from beautiful Bronwyn (Electric Youth) and Human Life. That is really impressing.

If this is not to become the best release of February, I’m not sure what would be. Listen to the whole EP below!

Watch out from more music from this guy. He will be releasing Vol. 2 in March. Meanwhile, buy the whole EP on Beatport.

More from Pelifics on Soundcloud and Facebook!

Although many of our customers have been full of praise for The Hare With the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, I still approached it with some trepidation. I had read a couple of negative comments to do with ‘coldness’ and the authors ‘dispassionate’ voice and I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

That didn’t stop me though from indulging in the luscious, black, hard cover, illustrated edition that came out for Christmas!

The cover and front page photographs of the netsuke caught my interest, but it was the preface that hooked me.

This was going to be a family history rich with artists, culture, architecture and language with sojourns into 19^th century Russia & Paris and 20^th century Vienna & Japan. So many of my favourite topics rolled into one!

And lying quietly, in the background was the inescapable knowledge that this was also the story of a Jewish family living during dangerous and threatening times.

I loved it from start to finish.

It was delicious, engaging & glamorous. It was heart-warming and heart-breaking.

It was one man’s attempt to not only trace the origins of the netsuke now in his care, but to also understand himself. This is the story of a family that embraced their time in history. Each generation, each period comes to life richly. And the whole time the netsuke are there – to be handled, creating memories and stories to be passed down to the next generation.

As many of those stories as possible have been collected by de Waal.

Sometimes his voice is a little distant and rambling. It’s like listening to someone who becomes distracted by another train of thought. Who suddenly remembers he has an audience before bringing it all back together again.

This is not a ‘cold’ book.

I was moved to tears and found myself hugging the book to my chest a number of times.

Happy reading

 Bronwyn

Reviewer: Bronwyn

I loved this book as a kid, and love it even more as an adult. It comes under a genre called ‘literary nonsense’ and it’s not hard to tell why – with whimsical, anthropomorphic characters and perfectly nonsensical poems, this book brings your imagination to life. Wonderland is a figment of Alice’s imagination, and so I guess all the whimsy is supposed to be reflective of a 7 year old girl’s mind. It’s been a long time since I was that age, so I can’t remember if my imagination was that vivid or not!!

Being a bit of a maths geek, I’ve always been interested in the maths aspects of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – the most obvious bit being the deck of cards theme (followed up with a chess theme in Through the Looking Glass). Without going into all the technical aspects of mathematics hidden in the story, there’s plenty there to keep very high-level mathematicians busy for a long time (if you’re really interested, have a look here for some of the mathematical aspects).

My favourite part of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has got to the be the poems – many of which are parodies of other poems (such as Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat).

This is definitely a book that everyone should read before they die – I’m putting it in my Top 100 books of all time. It’s aged well – some of the language shows its age (the number of times Alice says something is ‘queer’ makes me giggle a wee bit!), but for the most part, it has very easy-flowing language that makes for a quick and enjoyable read.

As for reading it to children, since it is actually a children’s book… I wouldn’t read it to my 3 year old, not because it’s inappropriate (although, some may say that the hookah-smoking caterpillar is), but more because he’s likely to get bored at his age. Once a child is a wee bit older and at school, they would be better able to appreciate this book, I think.

A keeper in my bookshelf, that’s for sure.

To keep her occupied, and let her be helpful (and who doesn’t like free kid labour?!) I encouraged her to grab things off the shelf whenever possible.  This also allowed her a chance to practice her reading in a non-threatening environment, and try to recognize familiar brands etc.

We were almost done, and the store was very empty, so I sent her on ahead to get bananas.

“Get a bunch with 5 or 6 on it” I instructed as she ran off.

She returned with 7.

I inspected them thoroughly (I think that kids should be able to choose good quality produce at any age) and indicated that although they were a good colour there were too many brown spots.

She quickly returned with a second bunch.

“Too green” I countered.

I left her to scrutinize the remaining bananas while I threw more food into the cart.  She had been gone a little longer than I expected so I headed for the banana section.  That’s when I saw her, deep in conversation with a produce employee.  He was a guy about 17 years old, and I watched as he listened intently and walked all around the huge stack of bananas while she gestured and gesticulated what I could only assume were my previous instructions on Proper Banana Choice.  At one point she looked over at me and saw me watching her.  She indicated with a look that she had asked this guy to help…

She returned, triumphant, with a bunch of bananas.

“That man said these are the best bananas he has.  I couldn’t find the perfect ones, so I asked someone who worked here”.

I don’t know who was more proud: Bronwyn for having found the perfect bananas, or me, for witnessing my child engaged in such a grown-up solution.

Sigh.

Let me introduce you to this little story about a girl, who once was watching this movie that had a great soundtrack…..

She was watching Drive a couple of weeks back, which was a huge experience visually. What also came to her mind while watching this movie was the soundtrack. She had some or few expectations to it, but she didn’t even imagine it would come out so good! The soundtrack was simply beautiful, and what really stood out was College - Real Hero. Not only did she think it’s a great song itself, but the lyrics and especially Bronwyn’s voice really impressed her. Who was this Bronwyn, and not to mention how could she find more music from her? After some googling this mysterious Bronwyn led her to Electric Youth.

http://soundcloud.com/electricyouthmusic/college-feat-electric-youth-a-real-hero

Electric Youth sounded familiar, but where had she heard them before? Was it on a blog or on Soundcloud? Anyway answers were soon to be given….

Last fall I read one of those blogs, which I often tend to do, and I can hardly remember why I didn’t seem to find Electric Youth not interesting back then. Maybe because I was already into some other stuff, which I often am, but today I really can’t seem how I could overlook this great group. Yeah, that’s how I feel about this Canadian duo. Luckily, I know better today.

So let me introduce to those of you who don’t know this electro pop duo out of Toronto, Canada. 

Bronwyn and Austin, are to childhood sweethearts teaming up together making awesome electro pop, which sounds like it’s coming straight from the 80s (no kidding). 

With their first release Right Back To You they’ve released one of 2011′s best EP’s. The EP features 9 tracks: 2 originals, 3 remixes and 4 remix instrumentals. Be sure to buy it on iTunes.

Show Electric Youth some love on Soundcloud and Facebook.

HOLLY

And, yes, you can tell by the eyes.

I have never seen a picture capture what so infrequently passes over the face of a child: the ability to take on the characteristics of someone else.  It happened once when Holly was born and I looked at her face and saw my grandmother.  It happens more frequently when Josselyn makes a face and for a second I am transported back in time to when Bronwyn was that age.  But to have it on permanent record; proof that they are related; makes my heart content.  One day, I will show this picture to them.  Some day when they are older, and fighting, and hate each other.  And give them perfect proof that they are cut from the same cloth.  That we are all just extensions of each other.  Family sticks together.

As a child re-reading was a necessity. I was the eldest of 4 children and new books were only expected for birthdays and Christmas. So I read The Secret Seven, Famous Five, The Adventurous Four, Anne of Green Gables & Trixie Belden over and over again. I loved escaping into their worlds – worlds full of adventure, camaraderie and resolutions.

I was happy to borrow from the library, but it wasn’t the same thrill as knowing the book was mine to keep forever.

As an adult, I’ve also enjoyed revisiting favourite books like Pride and Prejudice & To Kill A Mockingbird. The pleasure is in rediscovering the feelings evoked, catching up with old friends and settling into a comfortable yarn.

As a teacher of young children I saw the benefits of re-reading. Re-reading helps young children learn to read themselves.

But that is not why young children ask you to read their favourite book over and over again.

They ask you to reread their favourite story because it is answering some deep unconscious need inside of them.

For months I would read the same book over and over again to one child or one class, until suddenly one day, the need was met and we could finally move onto another story. I had one class totally addicted to the Berenstein Bears ‘The Spooky Old Tree’. We read it for 6 months before the thrill of the fear wore off!

A number of years ago I had a big move to look forward to. I had to let go some of my books. So I decided to reread some of them to see if they were staying with me or being left behind.

During my 20’s there were quite a few books that felt highly significant and personal. I was curious to see if they still had the same impact in my 30’s. I was terribly disappointed to realise that the answer was a resounding no. A decade later, those oh so life-changing books seemed trite and irrelevant. The need had been met.

Two of these books were Frank Moorhouse’s Grand Days and Dark Palace. In my 20’s Edith was my hero. But in my 30’s she was just annoying!

Last month the final book in the Edith trilogy was released – Cold Light. I told Stephanie, the Random House rep, my tale about rereading the first 2 books. She insisted I try again now that I’m in my 40’s.

And I’m so glad I did. This is historical fiction at its best. Rich, entertaining and informative. Edith was no longer my hero or annoying. She was, and is, a fascinating character – full of complexities, quirks and insecurities. The books show her maturing and mellowing with time and experience. She learns that the idealism of youth needs to be tempered by the practicalities of real life and she learns the difference between what she would like to happen and what she can actually achieve. Much like the story itself of the League of Nations and the UN.

We reread books for many different reasons, but perhaps the main one is to discover the story anew, with more experienced eyes. To read the story at another level. We not only see the characters anew, but we see our own growth and maturity as well.

Happy (re)reading!

Bronwyn

I have no idea if this sort of thing will even find a market.  I emailed Evernight, pitching the concept to see if they think it might even be of interest to them since they don’t specifically address single author anthologies in their submission guidelines.  They emailed back within a few hours (Great publisher, by the way. I have nothing but good things to say about Evernight.) wanting to read some.  I emailed 3 stories (Bronwyn, Tasmin and Violet) with the Miss Lilith’s Guide to the Care and Keeping of Succubi introductory quotes.  I  dunno though.  A part of me is tempted to self-publish just to try it. Another part says it’s too big to try to tackle on my own, with Veronica’s help, of course.  After all, this has been my baby for a year.

All my other published stories were “stolen” from this master work and sold for other anthologies (then replaced with new stories).  If I don’t do something soon, I’m afraid I’ll start a new round of cannibalism only this time not replacing.

Stay tuned if you want to watch how the life of a concept plays out.

Now…I need to write about something OTHER than succubi.  My hubster says I should write a Naughty Fairy Tale for Evernight. If I do, it will be Guinevere and the Knights of Roundtable, where the heroes are Lance Knight and Arthur Knight (distant cousins) and they all live in Roundtable, USA.  Bwahahahaha.  Sounds like a bad porn movie doesn’t it.  I could make it interesting though…I could!

I’m listening to Bronwyn sing to herself as she plays with Duplo, her Christmas present from us. I didn’t know they’d be such a hit, but she’s been playing steadily with them ever since we gave them to her yesterday. We won’t tell her that the set was a thrift store find. She’s perfectly happy with it, and so are we.

We’re planning to sleep the New Year in. Doesn’t that sound exciting? Hopefully the neighbors have similar plans or else are invited far away for their parties.

Gabriel and I have spent a lot of time rocking, walking, bouncing, or jiggling Gregory to sleep–only to discover that often he goes to sleep perfectly well by himself, in his cot. Now for a way to get him to bed earlier than 10:30pm. No matter how I try, it seems he just can’t settle before then. But then he sleeps until 6:00 or 7:00, so I shouldn’t complain.

We celebrated four years of married life by going to Newgrange with Gabriel’s parents and sister, who were visiting us from Ukraine at the time. Newgrange is a burial mound/religious site that is older than Stonehenge, purportedly built a few hundred years after the Great Flood. (This is a must-see if you tour Ireland.) Each year at sunrise on winter solstice (the day that is also our anniversary), the sun shines into the entrance to the mound all the way to the back of the chamber. You can enter a drawing to be one of the few hundred allowed in to see it at sunrise over the few days this happens. We put our names in for next year. As it was, the day was cloudy, but we still got to enter Newgrange on winter solstice, on our anniversary.

Our Ford Galaxy van, which we love so much and which has made our weekly trips to church and back so much easier, has had the clutch go out and needs extensive repairs. At least it didn’t totally go out until exams were over. As it was, the first time it happened was to me on an early morning trip to the airport, the day of Gabriel’s last two exams. I couldn’t get it into gear, so Gabriel got a taxi to the airport (5:00am is too early for city buses) and drove it to the mechanic in second or third gear. Sometimes it would let him shift, but other times he’d have to turn it off, put it into second, turn it back on and immediately GO.

I mentioned airport trips. Living close to a major airport in a city with no other Mennonites means we get a decent number of overnight visitors heading to or from the airport. We enjoy it. One of Gabriel’s friends thinks we should have our own parking bay at the airport — not a bad idea considering how often we go there.

This story made me laugh out loud.

Another dog comes in first at the junior fiction level – One Dog and His Boy by Iva Ibbotson. This was the last book Ibbotson wrote before she passed away last year at 85. I devoured this book in one sitting and now I want everyone to read it.

My stand-out book for teens are Caragh O’Brien’s two books Birthmarked and Prized (no dogs in sight!). They jump on the dystopian bandwagon that the success of The Hunger Games has created. There is a strong, independent female protagonist in a tightly constructed action-packed drama. There’s even a little bit of romance! 

My Australian adult fiction pick is Bereft by Chris Womersley. I grew up around the Bathurst area so was instantly drawn to the location and characters of this fine award-winning novel. My favourite international fiction is one of the 2010 Booker short-listed titles – The Room by Emma Donoghue. It is a tough, heart-wrenching read but ultimately rewarding. 

My non-fiction favourite is a lay-down misere to the wonderful, the delightful, the inspiring  Mary Delany. The gorgeous biography of Mary, Paper Garden, by Molly Peacock is full of illustrations, flights of fancy and a generous love for her subject. (see earlier blog).

Last, but not least – my favourite classic. Sophie urged me to read The Secret History by Donna tartt and I finally did so over the Easter holidays….and I loved it. Absorbing and sinister, decadent and disturbing. A treat from start to finish.

The prompt for this month is How do you develop and relate to your characters? It’s quite a serious post after the funny one we had last month, so it’s going to take a bit more thought, but I’ll take you through my characters slowly. Sorry, this blog post is going to be about a thousand words long. I have a lot to say on this subject

First of all, and I know I won’t be the first to say this, my characters have a little bit of me. Jennie, who was the main character in my novel Watching, was very like me – so much so that while reading it, a friend send me a text saying, “Jennie is you, right?” She was musical, insecure, spent her lunchtimes in the library, talked to herself – our main difference was that she was ginger and had magic powers, and I’m not and I don’t.

Sometimes it’s harder to see. At first, Bronwyn was as far from me as physical possible. 19, with dyed purple hair, intent on destroying the world to prove she wasn’t a freak … come on? She’s never going to be anything like 15 year old me! But as I worked through Destroying and then Returning, our similarities came out. Even the simplest things, like her liking for Torchwood, made me fall in love with her that little bit more. By the end of that third book, she was almost my favourite character.

At the same time, my characters are better than me. Lenna’s strong and won’t give in. Jennie knows what she wants. Alys will forgive people whatever they did to her. Sean cares about others more than himself. Mel’s fearless and won’t hide from the world. Leah doesn’t worry about the consequences of what she does; she lives in the present. Cormac has a past of which anyone could be ashamed but he fights to redeem himself. Bronwyn overcomes her weakness, Alys, to do what she thinks is right.

The one character who doesn’t have one particular attribute that’s better than me was Alex. Alex, and I killed him. Alex, who was my favourite character that I’d ever created, who was flawed and broken and messed up and my friend hated him the whole of the first three-quarters of the book, and then in the last quarter she learned to see in him what I saw and she cried when he died. Alex was amazing. It broke my heart to kill him.

Alex was a bit unusual. He existed in various places in my head before he existed in Watching. In several stories I wrote, I had characters called Alex, and when at last I wrote that one novel he was formed out of all those little pieces of personality. I could never quite picture him in my head, though. You know people say they have a solid image of their characters in their head and it stays there? Well, I didn’t. I wasn’t even entirely sure what colour hair he had, although I’d said that it was black – the image didn’t fit.

I think that would have been his downfall as a character, because if even the author doesn’t know what he looks like the reader will never be able to imagine him. But then I met one of my friends, on tour with our orchestra, and I knew, suddenly, what Alex looked like. So, Andy, if you’re reading this, you may just have improved Alex as a character, because I now know what he looks like. Okay, so I’m still not sure on the hair colour. Maybe the bright red does suit him after all. What do you think? You’ve read Watching, haven’t you?

That’s the development of my characters done, and some of the relating too. But what do I do when my characters don’t have something of me inside them? How do I deal with them then?

Well, I’m going to use Bronwyn as an example.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, I posted about her way back in July. She was my antagonist who refused to follow the plot, my bad girl hell-bent on ripping a hole in the world. She resisted naming for about ten hours of solid trawling through baby name websites, and when I settled on Wyn, she refused to grow into it until I’d forced her to use it for about three weeks already (about the length of time it takes me to write 50k or so of novel). She fell in love with my protagonist, Alys; she almost forced Lenna to become a murderer.

Bronwyn was everything that I wasn’t.

And then I did what I used to do as a little kid. When lying awake at night (I’m a total insomniac), I roleplayed her situations. I put myself in her place and tried to act them out as though it was a film and I was playing her part. I got into her head and I understood her. Sometimes, I still wonder if I understand her too well. I kept a notebook by my bed and if I learned something about Wyn that I hadn’t known before, I’d write it down.

I saw how she reacted; I understood exactly how her body language worked in any conversation, and I knew what she thought about everything.

I understood her.

She became me, I’ll admit, but I also became her.

Want to follow the rest of the blog chain? Click here for a full list of participants – and don’t forget to go back and read those that have already posted!

Our baby girl is 18 months old now. So hard to believe.

Some things I want to remember about her at this stage:

• She is saying more and more words, but I would still say that speech is slow in coming. She says “bee” for airplane and blanket. Other words she says are: book, ball, Mommy, Daddy, baby, Grandpa, no, bath, drink, please, down, out, shoes, dog, duck, baa, and bus.
• She is walking better as the weeks go by, and without a limp this time around! Let me pause for a Hallelujah right here. It’s so GOOD to see. Her latest x-ray about two weeks ago showed that her hip socket is developing well. The doctor didn’t think she’d definitely need surgery in the spring after all. He wants to give the socket as much time as possible to develop on its own before intervening with surgery. Our next checkup is in four months when they’ll do another x-ray and see how the hip is looking then.
• Bronwyn has had a rough time this last month with adjusting to a new baby in the house and with teething. She is a slow, hard teether and has only two teeth on the bottom and four on the top. A few weeks ago I finally found two upper molars coming through, so at least we know all the grumpies have been for a good cause.
• She weighs 22 pounds. I don’t know how tall she is, but when she started standing a few weeks ago, we realized how much she’d grown over the summer.
• She loves taking a bath, riding her car outside, going to bed with her “bee” (blanket), wearing new clothes, her baby brother,  phones, colouring, and looking at books. Her favourite song is “Building Up The Temple.”

We love this girl to bits!

Happy Thanksgiving, you Americans.

love,

Jennifer

sing-a-long performance from

the author/singer of

THE WONKY DONKEY, Craig Smith

Craig Smith, the author of the best-selling and award-winning children’s picture book, Wonky Donkey is back in Australia to help promote another picture book, All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth. The picture book is accompanied by a sing-a-long CD sensationally performed by Craig Smith, along with a bonus original track, Toothless!

Smith has performed The Wonky Donkey and many other songs to more than 200,000 pre-schoolers and school children. He believes the move into children’s books was logical as his music and writing are borne out of the love of ‘story telling’.

Next Thursday 10th November at 10.30am Craig Smith will be giving a special sing-a-long performance of his best-selling books.

For more information call us on 9810 5613

The Paper Garden (see review below) was a very intimate and detailed account of Mary Delany AND her biographer Molly Peacock. I learnt a lot about an art form and a period of history that I knew little of beforehand. And I left it wanting to read more about Mary Delany as well as other works by Peacock.

I then read Helen Rowley’s bio on Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt.

Rowley completely takes herself out of the equation when she writes. But her style is easy and thoroughly researched.

I started the book with a rather romanticised version of the Roosevelt’s life & times and finished feeling slightly disillusioned. While I can admire and respect the good they did I’m not sure I would have enjoyed meeting them.

I left the book feeling rather appalled at the way they treated people especially the devoted folk who spent their entire lives helping the Roosevelt’s maintain their position in society & politics. I’m not sure I will be rushing to read more about the Roosevelt’s, but I do have another Rowley bio by the bed!

Next was a fictionalised retelling of Sonya Tolstoy’s life called ‘War and Peace and Sonya’ by Judith Armstrong.

The author used diaries and other relevant material to create her personal account of the Tolstoy’s marriage. I was fascinated by the insights into Tolstoy’s writing patterns but Sonya herself just annoyed me more and more as the book went on. She was a child bride who never grew up. Constantly petulant, jealous and needy. And sadly, I lost interest. I couldn’t bring myself to read any more excerpts from her diary or listen to another one of her harangues. I do admire the author though for persisting with such an annoying character!

Last but not least is Jeanette Winterson’s autobiography Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

I devoured her earlier novels in my younger days and felt I knew her story – the sad, lonely childhood, the hostile adoptive mother, her love of other women and leaving home at a young age to fend for herself. But, of course, that is only half the story. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit WAS biographical but it was also fiction and there was a LOT of stuff left out.

I’m only half way through, but it is heart-wrenching stuff. And inspiring.

Winterson’s hopefulness in the face of despair and her ability to write herself out of painful memories suggests courage and determination by the bucket load.

I’m already feeling the need to revisit some of her earlier work, but I wonder how I can justify re-reading something when I have some many new titles by my bed and computer?

Perhaps that is a topic for another day!

Bronwyn