Slice of Life: ALA Youth Media Awards by the Numbers

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the Tuesday Slice of Life (SOL) community.

Thanks to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Melanie, and Lanny

 for hosting this meeting place each Tuesday and nurturing our writing lives.

1

# of appointments rescheduled so I could listen to the live webcast 
of the ALA Youth Media Awards

1

# of award winning books that I own

2

# of award winning books currently checked out from the library

(prior to the award announcements)

I love Big Cat, Little Cat!
Hello, Universe, this year's Newbery winner, 
 just moved to the top of my WTR(want to read) pile.

2

# of books I picked up today after requesting them yesterday

I keep the library site open while I listen to the webcast 

so I can put books on hold as they are announced.

3

#of titles not ready yet (too many holds on them already)

4

# of award winning titles I've already read
Out of Wonder
Big Cat, Little Cat
A Different Pond
When a Wolf is Hungry

5 

# of titles I've heard about and wanted to read
(prior to the award announcements)
The 57 Bus
Eyes of the World
Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora
The First Rule of Punk
La Princesa and the Pea

6 

# of award winning titles I've previously 

checked out, caressed, and hoped to read

(but returned to the library unread)
Vincent and Theo
The Hate U Give
Grand Canyon
Lucky Broken Girl
Piecing Me Together
Hello, Universe

9

# of award winning books in transit

I'm not as greedy as it seems, our book club meets on the 27th of this month and I plan to share as many of the award winning books as possible with our middle schoolers. And no, I won't get all of them read before they have to be returned.

10

# of books I read in 2017 that I wish had received some award love
(While they didn't receive ALA YMA award love, I did discover some award love for some of my titles after I posted. Updates are in red.)

Train I Am

Beyond the Bright Sea

Refugee
(Just saw that Refugee made the
2018 Notable Books for a Global Society list.)

The War I Finally Won

Forever, or a Long, Long Time

Midnight Without a Moon
Wishtree
(Wishtree did receive some love -
Just saw Grace Enriquez's post at SLJ.
It's a Charlotte Huck Recommended Book & was included
as a 2018 Notable Book for a Global Society.)

Orphan Island
Georgia Rules

Can I Touch Your Hair? 
(Linda Baie pointed out that this book is a 2018 publication.)
So I'm adding one more book to keep my list to ten titles.
Dreamland Burning

Celebrate This Week: Snips of Joy and Pics of Boys!

Join us each weekend for Celebrate This Week with Ruth Ayres.

When we pause to celebrate, we find the joy.

 

   A week filled with moments to celebrate and remember.

Tea and treats and talk with good friends!

Loved reading this book that I won by commenting
on the winter issue of Talking Story!

This issue focused on The Cold War.
Spring issue focus will be prejudice.

Finding my favorite cozy sock!
It was in the rubber gasket
around the door of the washing machine.

Signs of spring and blue skies!

 

 

Service project for our church women's conference on Saturday!
We tied 66 fleece blankets for the Linus project.

Jack plays with Grandpa's talking birds!

 

Jack and Grandma at Island Books story time!

Teddy at gymnastics with Mom!

Teddy enjoys Saturday morning donuts with Dad
while Mom relaxes!

Poetry Friday: Moon Verse

Head over to Sally Murphy's blog,

for this week's round-up of poetic goodness. 
She's sharing terse verse from her dentist list. 

Thanks, Sally, for hosting this week!

When I wrote my Spiritual Journey First Thursday post, I got all wrapped up in moon shine. This week The Man in the Moon As He Sails the Sky and Other Moon Verse, a book I requested from the library arrived. Our system only had one copy of this book, published in 1979, in its Central Storage location. It's a sweet collection of twenty-one moon poems, collected and illustrated by Ann Schweninger. I'll share the first and the last poem in the book along with Ann's delightful illustrations.

The Man in the Moon as he sails the sky

Is a very remarkable skipper,

But he made a mistake when he tried to take 

A drink of milk from the Dipper

He dipped right out of the Milky Way

And slowly and carefully filled it;

The Big Bear growled, and the Little Bear howled

And frightened him so that he spilled it!

                                 -Anonymous

I see the moon

  And the moon sees me;

God bless the moon

  And God bless me.

       - Mother Goose

When I googled Ann Schweninger, I recognized many of the books that she has illustrated, especially the Oliver and Amanda Pig books. This book of moon verse is one that I want to own and share with my grandsons.

Slice of Life: Hooping it Up with the Huskies!

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the Tuesday Slice of Life (SOL) community.

Thanks to Stacey, Betsy, Beth, Kathleen, Deb, Melanie, and Lanny

 for hosting this meeting place each Tuesday and nurturing our writing lives.

After living in the Seattle area for twenty years, my husband decided this past year that we needed to go to a Husky football game and basketball game. I passed on the November football game by volunteering to watch Jack. However, basketball is one of my favorite sports to watch, so I joined the group for this past Saturday's game. My family warned me not to expect much from the Huskies who were playing 9th ranked Arizona. 

And were they ever wrong! I was thrilled to see that our seats were above the student section and the band since both of my kids played in the band in high school. "Animal Band" was the designation for the band at basketball games. Just hearing the band brought back so many memories of my kids' high school years. 

If you're wondering about the game, you can read all the details in this article from the Seattle Times, "Washington stuns No. 9 Arizona 78-75 with Dominic Green's buzzer beater." My husband certainly knows how to pick an exciting game!

Celebrate This Week: Jack's First Birthday!

Join us each weekend for Celebrate This Week with Ruth Ayres.

When we pause to celebrate, we find the joy.

 

   A week filled with moments to celebrate and remember.

We celebrated Jack's first birthday on Wednesday! Come stroll with me through a few of the pics from the day's celebrations.

Beginning the day 
with a birthday balloon!

Making some music 

while Grandma makes . . .

birthday waffles for a

lunchtime treat.

Reading my birthday books!

Playing with my recycling truck!

Check out that candle, Mom!

 Mom, is this little cake all for me?

First tastes of chocolate!

 Snuggling with Grandma and 

 new stuffed toy - Stan, the Octopus!

 Showing off my new

walking skills.

Poetry Friday: Passing the Laurel Wreath

Head over to Donna's blog, Mainely Write, 

for this week's round-up of poetic goodness. 
She's sharing beautiful poetry postcards. 

Thanks, Donna, for hosting this week!

I'm sad to realize that it's been awhile since I participated in Poetry Friday. Yesterday while I was out running errands, I heard a teaser about an upcoming interview on our public radio station, KUOW. I listened carefully and dashed into the house to find the radio station on my computer. I didn't want to miss this interview with Tod Marshall, our outgoing state poet laureate and our incoming poet laureate, Claudia Castro Luna.  Claudia was Seattle's first civic poet. When I saw her on NPR's NewsHour last fall sharing her project to connect poetry and place, I was inspired to write a Poetry Friday post with a link to her interview.

Our outgoing poet laureate, Tod Marshall visited IMS in the spring of 2016.  I saw him briefly at Poetry Camp in the fall of 2016 which resulted in getting my copy of Words with Wings autographed by Nikki Grimes. I participated in a poetry reading at Island Books in September of 2017 with Tod and other local poets. 

I love listening to Tod speak about the power of words and so I settled in for this radio interview with him and Claudia at my upstairs desk. I didn't have my writer's notebook and no time to find it, so I had to make do with notes carefully written on eighteen yellow sticky notes (which I've now transferred to my writer's notebook). 

I hope you'll listen to the interview, "The words that hold our souls inside them" hosted by Bill Radke. It's seventeen minutes well spent. You don't have to be a resident of Washington state to appreciate the power of words and personal experience and memory and story shared by Tod and Laura in this phenomenal interview.

Spiritual Journey First Thursday: Moon Musings

I am excited to join a community of fellow bloggers who write on the first Thursday of each month about our spiritual journeys. This month Donna asked us to share a verse or passage, a snippet of something that mentions the moon. My mind has been thinking ever since I received this prompt, and I found myself totally unable to limit myself to a snippet. You'll have to forgive me for my moon wanderings. I can't wait to read the posts from others in our community. Thank you, Donna, for hosting our February gathering. 

I'm awake early and searching my shelves and the internet and my mind for moon themed books and poems and memories.

I find . . . 

Five picture books - 

• Mama, Let's Make a Moon by Clay Rice with its delightful silhouette illustrations,
• Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
• Owl Moon by Jane Yolen (I discovered I have two copies. Time to gift one of them.)
• Two favorites from my daughter's childhood - The Birthday Moon by Lois Duncan and Eric Carle's Papa, please get the moon for me 

A YouTube video (Weston Woods) of a favorite book I can't find  on my bookshelf, Happy Birthday, Moon by Frank Asch (It's just a little over six minutes long.) I wanted to include this one because yesterday was grandson Jack's first birthday!

Two books of poetry- 

• One Minute till Bedtime, Ken Nesbitt's delightful anthology filled with moon images and quite a few moon poems

• Firefly July: A Year of Very Short Poems selected by Paul Janeczko and illustrated by Melissa Sweet with wonderful moon poems by Emily Dickinson, Alice Schertle, Bruce Balan, Anne Porter, Herbert Read, Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser

These beautiful words of praise from Psalm 136 -  
Give thanks unto God for all things, for His mercy endures forever.

7 To him that made great lights: for his mercy endureth for ever:
8 The sun to rule by day: for his mercy endureth for ever:
9 The moon and stars to rule by night: for his mercy endureth for ever.

Amy Sklansky's acrostic poem "Moon" that I discovered at the Poetry Foundation 

These concluding lines from from One Today by Richard Blanco and illustrated by Dav Pilkey -

"We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together."

And a treasured moon memory of the night that Linda and I chased the moon. Linda and I frequently texted each other when we saw a beautiful moon. On this particular night I drove to her apartment and convinced her to join me for a nighttime drive on the island. We laughed as the moon hid from us and then would suddenly pop out from the trees. This memory is a reminder to savor the moment because Linda died unexpectedly last year. I will always be glad that I dropped everything to chase the moon with Linda on that magical evening.