Senor Parrot's Perch

PaleoJoe is Joe Kchodl, a real-life paleontologist and author of the Dinosaur Detective Series. I wrote about the first of these books, The Disappearance of Dinosaur Sue,�just the other day. PaleoJoe has his own website�where you can find out more about�his other books,�or even buy trilobite fossils.�

I liked this one: A Pictorial Guide to North American Trilobites which

“… provides basic information the beginning enthusiast needs to start collecting and identifying Trilobites. It also serves as an excellent reference guide to these wonderful creatures.”

I�just finished a fun book: The Disappearance of Dinosaur Sue, the first in Dinosaur Detective Club, written by Joseph Kchodl and Wendy Caszatt-Allen.� If you love dinosaurs and you love mysteries and you are at the early chapter book phase, or you know and love someone who fits that description, I recommend this book for you.

PaleoJoe is a paleontologist, trained in careful, scientific observation and reasoning. And he’s an expert in his field. When Dinosaur Sue, the world’s most complete skeleton of a T-Rex is stolen from its home at the World Famous Field Museum in Chicago, they call in PaleoJoe even before they call the�Police. His young friend�Shelly, an�eleven year-old junior paleontologist takes advantage of PaleoJoe’s�tendency to absent-mindedness to get in on the chase.�

Something else I liked about this book was its interesting use of reasoning, based upon scientific method. PaleoJoe instructs Shelly�about how paleontologists go about�finding fossils, and how the evidence that is collected during the fossil excavation is carefully observed and compared with other data to deduce the fascinating details about the lives of the�dinosaurs and about the state of the world when they lived.

This book is published by Mackinac Island Press, a small regional press in Michigan. They have an interesting and unique�assortment of books that they publish, and several others besides The Disappearance of Dinosaur Sue featuring PaleoJoe., including the 2nd in this series, Stolen Stegosaurus, where PaleoJoe and Shelly, with Shelly’s schoolmate Dakota, “battle the dark side of fossil collecting.”��And just�out�last month is�Secret Sabertooth, #3 in the series.

If you or your child likes Nate the Great or Cam Jansen, you’ll find this book an entertaining second step into longer chapter books. There’s even a funny little animated dinosaur at the bottom of the pages. Flip the pages and watch him run.

Another local bookstore decides to close. Several others mention that they are either struggling or coping with their declining sales. The blame is on the online stores-that would be Amazon, I suppose. Barnes and Noble’s online store prices aren’t much different than their brick and mortar, and I believe Border’s still sells through Amazon, though I believe that they have their own e-store in the planning.

The Nathan J. Comp story is at the Capital Times, and covers the Madison. He writes that

there is plenty of concern among local bookstore owners over several unnerving trends they say are undermining their businesses, including a massive consumer shift to online book buying, easy access to information on the Internet, corporate booksellers, rising rents and increasing competition for people’s time.

The general trend for independent sellers is very gloomy. In his story, Comp points out that in 1993 there were over 4500 independents and that has fallen 40% to 2700 independents nationwide. Madison seemed like it might buck the trend, but alas Madison is catching up to the rest of the country.

Are people too busy to read, like some folks say? I think so. TV, video games, and the internet are the easy things, a sort of soma for today. For many folks today, books don’t provide the same bang-per-buck in leisure that they did before. Also, I think for many folks, with the changing economy and workplace, they find that they read all day as part of their work and when they’re done from work, reading isn’t the first thing on their agenda.

There are other things, more related choices available. To a smaller degree than the time issue, I think that there is a growing distance between the publishing industry and published writers, on one hand, and the reading public, on the other hand. Its still easy for me to find a good book to read. Its becoming far too easy for me to find books that are polarizing or offensive or disgusting or monotonous or unoriginal copies of one thing or another, in huge enormous piles up and down the aisle. That takes a lot of the fun out of looking.

Nowadays, only social pariahs smoke cigarettes and eat trans fats. Nearly every city with any politically progressive presence is, has, or will make smoking and eating trans fats into a crime. Its laudable that they want to protect our bodies from our choices. They miss the more important thing: protecting our minds and spirits from the dreck we are exposed to day in and day out.

My family has found the online Movie, Music and Game reviews site Plugged In Online a valuable help in helping us select what we want our minds to consume. Bookmark it in your web browser so you can return to it whenever you want.

Plugged-In Online is provided by Focus on the Family, which also publishes Plugged In magazine, as well. So its no surprise that it promotes an evangelical Christian perspective in its reviews. I think that’s a good thing and one of the reasons I find it so reliable.

So, while the thoughtful and thought-provoking movie reviews of Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal remain my clear favorites of all those I read I find that many of my family viewing decisions are finalized by the reviews of Bob Waliszewski at Plugged In. He weighs elements and features of films in terms of my own family’s values. His concern is our spiritual and emotional welfare and he carefully notes why he makes his decisions and recommendations about movies. His reviews are also broadcast over many Christian Radio Stations. Whether they are broadcast on any non-Christian stations, I don’t know.�

�

On the night of July 3, in a heavy rain, I was in a two-car/one semi wreck on Interstate 90, just east of Madison. The cause? A single sheet of cardboard, carried by the water running along the side of the road, blocked a storm sewer inlet, flooding the east-bound lanes of the interstate. I lost control, the car behind me managed to keep from hitting me, until the semi behind her smashed into her car and drove it into mine.
Well, that got me thinking. Literature is full of stories where weather is behind scores of wrecks and tragedies.

Two of my favorites are The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger and The Children’s Blizzard by David Laskin are two of my favorites. Both are non-fictional accounts of real events that still reverberate today in the lives of many people. Both books have this in common: solid and detailed research, and moving depictions of the lives of the people swept up into the events.
The Perfect Storm tells the tale of the men aboard the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing vessel, that was caught in the killer storm off the coasts of New England and Canada. The Children’s Blizzard is the story of the late wave of prairie settlers isolated in the harsh extremes of the northern Great Plains, caught in the worst blizzard in memory.

The events of weather in themselves can be fascinating, but what makes these books excel is their clear explanation of the catastrophic impact weather has on our lives. It is the struggle real people, brought to vivid life in the pages of these books, against the incredible power and capriciousness of changes in the weather and their environment as they seek their livelihood and fortunes.

Both are excellent reads for older kids. For myself, I’m guessing that I would have enjoyed them as early as the age of 13. I would enjoy them at the age of 93, as well. Look for them in your library or bookstore and get ready to lose yourself in another place and time.