L&L: Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

I just have to note that this is one of my favorite audiobooks. It is plot motivated and the characters are grand, and those elements together make it easy listening.

- I selfishly loved all the action in Nebraska because I've spent a lot of time on the Platte River. I was enchanted by the travel in India as well (I will be traveling there soon), because I was mentally comparing Verne's India with Wilkie Collins' India in The Moonstone. Both are strongly colonial and judgmental.

-The portrayals of America were entertaining. Justice of the peace? Hah!

- My biggest frustration with the book was Aouda. The woman who is given no agency, frequently no words, and a fierce Stockholm syndrome that becomes legitimate once Mr. Fogg decides to love her.

SAG Foundation: Storyline Online

Celebrities with books:
Reading them.
Standing near them.
Talking about them.
Posed with them. (See: Benedict Cumberbatch on the cover of An English Room. Yeah, I have a copy.)

If I know there's a celebrity with a book in that link, I'm totally going to click it. Click it good.

Thanks to that very compulsion, I recently discovered Storyline Online. The website, sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, houses free videos of celebrities reading children's books.

My parents read to me almost every day, for probably the first 10 or 12 years of my life. Computers, the Internet, and even audiobooks weren't part of growing up for me. I absolutely adored those scroll-through computer things at the library. Those machines where you would listen along with a book and "turn the page" when the recording made a certain beep. And I loved the story time read-to-kids programs at the library as well. I'm so grateful my parents made these things happen for me.

But the reality is that it can't happen for everyone. Parents work a lot. Libraries are closing, staffs are reduced, and services aren't available or easy to access anymore. And although the internet is not universally available for everyone at home, it's still reaching plenty of kids. Which is why I think this website is so dang cool. Let a kid be read to by someone who, by their acting nature, is a great reader. Let those talents engage kids with books and reading. For free.

Huzzah to you, SAG Foundation!

New Children's Collection

I am sucker for a good collection--be it watching an entire television show, or buying a grouping of books. My current obsession is the Penguin English Library, which is a collection of absolutely eye-catching classics. I have 50 of the 100 books, and they are currently on exhibition in my apartment.

Not surprisingly, Penguin is responsible for another good looking collection. This one is less sophisticated in design--but that's okay, because it's some of our favorite kids' books!

Photo credit facebook.com/penguinbooks

This Puffin collection is just delightful. Sure, I have Narnia and Harry Potter and there are many others, but this is a kid-lit canon with variety and accessible covers and timeless tales.

I think it would make a fab gift.
-Perhaps a group gift from a family to another family member with their first child?
-What about a to-be grandparent who will love to read and share stories with their little ones?
-A children's librarian
-Collectors?
All the people and all the gifts!




There's something that tugs at the heartstrings with those well loved, well worn collections of our youth (are you thinking about Little Golden Books?), and I think this collection can reach a little older audience with a lot more love to give to reading.

Photo credit facebook.com/penguinbooks