Folk and Fairy Tale sets/ Life Update

A post I wrote for the NaturalKids Team blog, which you may find here, highlights some folk and fairy tale-themed creations my fellow artisans have in their shops. There should be more next month, as the team is working on a "fairy tale challenge" right now. I'm kicking around the idea of making the sun, the moon, and the stars in personified form as part of a Seven Ravens set. I suspect many of our offerings will come from retellings by Grimm and Perrault, and I would like to break from choosing Western European stories without being a culture vulture.

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Speaking of fairy tale stories, summer is almost over, I have performances coming up next week, and I need to polish my new stories. I've enjoyed being at home out in the world with my daughter this summer. We can actually do things together now. My aunt jokes that Lucia was in "boot camp," because Lucia walked 4-5 miles and read two books every week day during the summer.

I'm training Lucia to do stair-climbing for The Big Climb next March, and yesterday, she stair-climbed 293 steps four times. That's 1, 172 steps. Meanwhile, I'm training to run my first 5k this autumn for Run Scared, while Lucia and her daddy walk the 4k portion (almost 2.5 miles).

Out in the world, I try to be low-key about my daughter's progression, but here on this blog, let me be braggy for a moment:

GO, LUCIA, GO!

(Pretend there's a scrolling marquee tag for that.)

We brought back science books

The House of Glee visited friends and family in Portland, Oregon, this past weekend. We went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) for the first time, and were impressed that the chemistry lab was an actual lab with chemicals and experiments, and the physics lab had a theremin and static electricity to play with. Bede and Lucia finally got to try freeze-dried ice cream, too.

The science section at Powell's Books now has its own building (along with math and technical books), which is new since we last visited Portland. It used to be that I could park myself in the science section while my daughter browsed the children's books. At Lucia's request, I got for her Jeff Kinney's The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book, which occupied her attention for the rest of the trip. I would never have guessed that Diary of a Wimpy Kid would be the book to turn her from someone interested in stories to an avid reader, but that was the book that first grade boys carried around last year. While I am a little tired of hearing about the "cheese touch," I am getting a kick out of the drawings she's come up with.

I'll admit that I went to town in Building 2 of Powells. I found a used copy of Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars, plus an out-of date but much enjoyed book both Bede and I pored over when we were children: National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe, by Roy Gallant. I also decided to capitulate to the purchase of a few science and math Basher Books, a series aimed for children and published by Kingfisher. The books provide overviews and explanations of basic science and math concepts as first person anthropomorphized accounts.* The House of Glee currently owns the following:

Chemistry: Getting a Big Reaction
Physics: Why Matter Matters
Math: A Book You Can Count On
Algebra and Geometry

I hovered over The Periodic Table: Elements with Style at Ada's Technical Books today, but made myself practice restraint. Funds aside, we've got plenty to read. Speaking of funding, I always get a little frenetic around the time of Seattle Public Library's annual furlough because of budget cuts. I hope my fellow Seattleites have stocked up.

*August 26 update: The problem with giving objects and concepts personalities (as in the Basher Books) is that one inevitably has to deal with the sex of the anthropomorphized subjects. In Physics: Why Matter Matters, when personal pronouns came up, they were male. My daughter notices. I notice. She can change the text to suit her, i.e. decide that Gamma Ray and Photon representations are female, but she shouldn't have to. Inclusive language would have been so simple.

KidLitCon teams up with Reading is Fundamental

KidLitCon* is joining up with Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), a nonprofit children's literacy organization. Colleen Mondor of Chasing Ray has the scoop:

KidLit Con teams up with RIF because it is the right thing to do


*From the website: "The “KidLitosphere” is a community of reviewers, librarians, teachers, authors, illustrators, publishers, parents, and other book enthusiasts who blog about children’s and young adult literature."

Neon Fairies with Hair I Wish I Had

In 2007, when Lucia was 4.5 years old, she received her Little One named Snowdrop from the Little One Meadow. The Little Ones were not dolls, the kindergarteners informed their parents.

I enjoyed hearing stories about what the Little Ones did in Lucia's Waldorf kindergarten, as well as their antics in the Little One Meadow. The first time Snowdrop needed a hair and dress refurbishment, I told Lucia's teacher with a straight face that Snowdrop had traveled to the Little One Meadow to meet up with Dahlia, the Little One's resident hair-stylist and makeover artist. Once Snowdrop came back with black hair, not brown, because that was the only wool roving I had Dahlia used walnut-juice as a temporary hair-rinse.

Dahlia never had access to these hair colors:


I recently put these Neon Fairies (or angels, if you like) in the shop, and gave their hair hues names inspired by those found on nail-polishes and hair dyes. From left to right, they are: Over-the-Brink Pink, Luna Moth Lime, Anime Blue, and Manic Mauve.

There's part of me that wanted to dye my hair bright blue or purple, but never wanted to do what it would take to get those vivid colors. Now, I content myself with giving the dolls the hair that I admire.

Little Lost Lamb

This is a picture of Smudge, my brother's stuffed-animal lamb that my mom bought at the PA Relief Sale years ago and dyed black (as well as the wool would take the dye). Smudge was based upon Little Lost Lamb, by Golden MacDonald (a.k.a. Margaret Wise Brown), illustrated by Leonard Wisegard. The link is to the Japanese edition.

When my mom misplaced her copy of Little Lost Lamb after moving across the country, I searched for a reasonably priced copy for her and ordered it. However, it went missing when I went on vacation, despite the vacation hold notice. I did all I could to locate the package, and even though the post office was sure it had gone back to the sender, the tracking information indicated that there was a good chance it was still in Seattle. Several days ago, our new postal carrier presented me with the package, which the previous mail carrier had tucked away in his truck during my vacation. Thus far, USPS has always given me a happy ending.

Even if you've never read the book, you know the story:

"High in the mountains where the green grass ends and the snow begins, the shepherd was singing.

Below him in the green grass huddled the sheep-- a great gray moving field of young lambs with their mothers. And in all that soft flock of moving gray was one little black smudge.

It was the black sheep born in every flock. A sweet little black lamb kicking up his stiff young legs-- leaping with the gray lambs in the small dances of baby animals."

The little black sheep goes wandering off, but,

"For all the the little black sheep cared, it was the sheep and the shepherd who were lost."

The shepherd boy must bring the sheep home, but a storm comes on, and the shepherd goes back out to look for his lost sheep. He finds the sheep, who never knew he was lost to begin with. The shepherd sings,

"Oh, wind, blow softly over my sheep
Away from the lion
And over the lamb
Blow softly.

Over the grasses
And pointed flowers
Blow softly.

Oh, wind, blow softly out of the blue
Over the white
And the black sheep too.
Blow softly."

That is the story of Little Lost Lamb, by Golden MacDonald. In many ways, it is the story of my youngest brother, too, who died on August 8, 2003. I think of him often. This anniversary did not sting like the others. I will always feel his loss, but it's not as sharp as it was the first seven years.

Note to readers: Sometimes people contact me to ask if I will scan for them the pages of an out-of-print book I own. For liability reasons, I cannot honor those requests. If you're looking for a particular copy of an out-of-print book, I will do my best to look with you.