June

With Memorial Weekend, and my birthday behind us now, this is the time of year when I think....crap, it is June already! What have I accomplished this year so far? Not as much as I had hoped, that is for sure! I comfort myself with the notion that many people are in the same boat I am in, however, it is not an extremely comforting thought. I did start this blog, that is something I toyed with in the past, and finally got around to....I suppose that is something, right?

I have started reading three different books.....but as I am not sure I will finish them all, or even two of them, I shall reserve talking about them for now. One that we own, and I have been meaning to read, I finally picked up because I recently watched the film version. This is Lakota Woman, by Mary Crow Dog. The film version stars Irene Bedard, and was a pretty well done film, I thought. Admittedly, I have only read small sections of the book, until the other day, when I decided to start from the beginning and read the entire thing. What a concept, I know.

I have some awesome picture books that I recently shared with kids, and so were brought to mind again. The first is a picture book by the wonderful Neil Gaiman called The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish. The copy we have here at the library has a cd so you can listen to Neil read you the story, which is fun. In this story, the boy swaps his dad, who mostly just sits reading his newspaper, for two goldfish (as the title would imply). The fun starts when his mother comes home from shopping and makes him swap back. He finds that he has to travel all over town swapping back many items from an electric guitar, a gorilla mask (a "really good gorilla mask"), to a pet rabbit called Galveston. The relationship portrayed between the boy and his little sister is perfect. My favorite, "when are you going to put the mask on?" after she has put on the gorilla mask. Anyone who has siblings will appreciate this book, as well as anyone with a sense of humor. Very funny, and well told story. The illustrations, by Dave McKean are quite fun also. I love the indignation of the mother, the indifference of the father, and the fact that no one complains when they have to swap their things back, they just do. This must happen with swaps quite often. I'm not sure I ever really swapped anything......hmm...maybe I missed out there....