Senor Parrot's Perch

This is the Summer Of The Princess. Look around and you’ll find dozen’s of books freshly churned about one princess or another, Di included. Is there anything out their for your girls beside Princess fantasy. Turns out there is. Kid’s Lit blogger Tasha Saecker pointw out The Anti-Princess Reading List posted by Amy Keroes on her Mommy Track’d site. Why the anti-princess list? Amy writes:

Snow White, Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast all have their place in children’s hearts we suppose. But if you want your kids to grow up believing that girls should dream of more than just kissing the prince, check out these books.

Each of them features strong, smart, spunky girl protagonists that want to eat bugs, get first place in the science fair and grow up to be a teacher, a doctor, a firefighter or even a diva.

After browsing her list, I’d have to say that she’s done a good job of selecting books beyond the day-dreamy stuff of princesses.

George Melies, true-to-life genius and major character in Brian Selznick’s great Kids’ novel, and for adults, too, produced this movie in 1902. It is an important feature of the book.

After quite a bit of mistakes, all of which didn’t rank on the intelligent side, I finally got a video posted. This one is The Black Imp which is posted from YouTube. Its a good example of the video magic Georges Melies created in his movies.

Warning: This movie contains a lot of arm waving!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a sensational book by writer and illustrator Brian Selznick. I have been snatching a few moments of free time to savor reading and looking through it whenever I can. I’m about half way through this book and I’m enjoying it immensely. I highly recommend it. Here are a few interesting� sites, reviews, and posts about the book.

Expanded Books produced an interview with Brian Selznick about his terrific Kids’ Book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.�Brian Selznick discusses his inspiration for the book, his approach to illustrating it and some of the story of the multifaceted man Georges Melies, the magician, film-maker, and toy-store owner who is at he center of the book.

There is more about this book with a few good links to more sites of interest over at Hypothetically Thinking, a good kids book blog.

Outside of a Cat has more good stuff to say about this book. He’s also posted the the video of the important short film by George Melies’� A Trip to the Moon, the�silent�film referenced frequently in the book.�� This is a must see for you interested folks.

My favorite post� by Esme Raji Codell in her blog�, describes her own reaction to this book:

“I think he has managed to create a whole new genre in children’s literature: the cinematic novel. An astonishing hybrid of screenplay, graphic novel and good old fashioned page-turner, this is as perfect a foray into the new as was Georges Melies’ movie, “A Trip to the Moon,” which, fittingly, is featured in this novel.”

It really is something new. Selznick’s storytelling technique that jumps�from text�to drawing and back again is like a reversion of the silient movie technique of jumping from motion picture to text, except his illustration tell the story, rather than explains it. If you are acquainted with silent movies and their technique, you’ll understand how Selznick uses his drawings to convey the story with every bit as much life as his text does.

Technique alone�isn’t why this is such a terrific book. It is excellent storytelling, full of drama and mystery, and very�compelling. Now, if I didn’t have that job, the lawn, weekend biking with the kids, the lawn, the job, the lawn, I’d be done with that book.�

Over at Yahoo! News I read that sales of books are expected to grow only about 3% per year for the next few years. Bad news! Of course, I’m biased, but I think that reading books is the best, most productive pasttime – well, next to sailing, books are the best, most productive pastime there is.

Why is the decline in reading so bad? Reading build our brains up. Its the mental gym. Read alot of good books, newspapers, and magazines, and your mind will be as buff as any steriod enhanced body builder’s torso.

In my many years of teaching, I found students more and more limited by their ability to think on their feet, read critically, comprehend the world at large, or to even have a strong vocabulary. Maybe the gene pool at the college where i worked was draining dry, but I think that this is more of a trend nationwide. Bad News! Today, with the internet, more and more well educated workers are available to fill my former students’ jobs. The world is flattening, in some regards, as Thomas Friedman argued in his excellent book.

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On the morning of Friday, June 1, 2007, a UFO was spotted over Lake Mendota in Madison, WI. This amazing photo, taken from one of the University of Wisconsin webcams aimed at the lake shows a large, somewhat indistinct, object floating or flying above the lake just after sunrise. Looking carefully at the leftmost area in the photo, just beyond picnic point,�what appears to be an enormous waterspout is also visible. Strange occurences such as this are not uncommon in this midwester state’s capital, however, Rummy Botts, our roving, street-level reporter, has informed us that this is somewhat unique.