Ali's Choice

When my mother, the Benevolent Book Goddess and tech geek, rushed out to buy one of the first Amazon Kindle eReaders and gushed about how cool it was, I have to admit I was pretty obnoxious in my refusal to even hold it.  I just couldn’t imagine reading a book on a computer screen.  After about a year of my Mother asking me if I wanted her Kindle [there’s a button to turn pages on both sides and it was hard for her to hold it], I finally decided to try it out – and was blown away!  I absolutely love the little thing and the fact that around half my books on there were downloaded FREE was a fantastic bonus!  Now, those of you with kids can understand the tendency to do this:  when I get something, I must then get my kids something, too.  I think it’s a balance thing.  So, after getting myself a couple of books, I started looking around for something for Ali, my 6-year old daughter. 

First, you have to understand that my daughter loves being read to. She just started to read for herself last year, but together, we have gone through an insane number of books. Oh, and we don’t read the books – we make a production out of it.  I am the silly voice maker, the get off the floor acter-outer and the freaky face-maker of readers.  So, her favorite books are always going to be the ones where I have a horrible British accent [‘a-low gov’na], act like an animal, or some other such craziness. Here are two of her very favorites that never [and I mean never] get old for her.



Mo Willems - Genius!



We call them “The Pigeon Books.”  That pigeon is one of the funniest characters in children’s books I’ve come across.  He begs, he pleads, he threatens [sound familiar parents?], and he teaches. The very first time I read The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, my daughter looked down at the floor sheepishly [she recognized some of her own tactics].  I immediately opened it back up and gave it the full-on Brit treatment. She fell out laughing.  When the last page was turned, she looked at me and said – with a straight face – “that pigeon’s kind of a brat isn’t he!”  It took every ounce of willpower I had to hold in the maniacal laughter.  Mo Willems is awesome.  Check out his Knufflebunny books, too!

             Another favorite is Splat the Cat by Rob Scotton (who also wrote Russell the Sheep – another good one).  Splat is a neurotic cat whose fur seems to float on the page.  In fact, Ali reached out her hand to see if he was fuzzy like he looked on the page. Her very favorite Splat book is Love, Splat because she’s into all that mushy love stuff.  That one is a sweet, funny Valentine's story.  But the one she likes me to read the best is Splat the Cat because it’s all about Splat going to school for the first time and how he overcomes his anxiety. It was a great book for her to read, especially last year as she entered kindergarten. She's kind of a worrywart herself, so she relates.



Mmmmm....hamburgers!

            Okay, so back to the Kindle. The only book of these three I downloaded to the Kindle was Stick Dog Wants a Hamburger  [because we already own the other two].  I got Stick Dog for FREE from Amazon.com.  Tom Watson takes it to the next level with his hilarious comparisons and descriptions. It’s a little long, but I split it up into two separate bedtime readings, which worked great [especially since my throat was getting a little sore from doing the voices].  A few words of caution:  Although this book was great – funny and smart with lots of action, there are a few things worth knowing before reading it.  First, it’s really for kids 6+.  Second, it’s going to make your kid want to run around like a small Tasmanian devil.  Third, prepare yourself for snickers, giggles and outright horselaughs every time you say one of the character’s names. Finally, it may cause a gigantic urge to grill out some thick, juicy hamburgers.  We liked the book, and the drawings showed up really well on the Kindle.  Since they're pencil drawings and because the Kindle is black-and-white, they looked good.  I won’t hesitate to download another picture book if it turns out as great as this one.

            All in all, I am extremely satisfied with my Kindle, and now that I can get some really cool books like Stick Dog for free [or close to it], within a couple of minutes, without even leaving the house, I greatly fear that I’ll need to keep a good supply of throat lozenges handy for some marathon reading sessions.

Hostage to the Devil

Here’s how my life works:  I read an article or book and I think to myself - “Is this true?”  So, of course, like any other well educated American, I hit the Internet to see what’s out there on that particular subject.  As I research, I become intrigued by a related word, phrase, picture or name and I follow that link further into the Internet cosmos until I find something that finally gets my full attention [Why, yes, I do have a touch of ADHD] 

This particular fall down the rabbit hole led me to Hostage to the Devil, a free e-book by Malachi Martin.  There are people out there who feel very strongly that the devil exists and influences our lives on a daily basis.  “Ah, yes,” you may be thinking, “the ignorant, the fundamentalist, the religious fanatic!”  Or, you could be thinking more along the abstract “Evil exists, yes, but only as construct of humanity – a classification of aberrant social behavior“ [Ok, so maybe only the anthropologists out there are thinking that.]

~~Of the five case studies presented in this book, I could only make myself read through the second.~~


Whatever it is you are thinking, it can’t compare to “I no longer want to read this book, “which was my exact thought around page 117, followed by “I want to delete this book from my computer’s hard drive and then have my computer blessed by a religious person.”  This is not an exaggeration.  I don’t think I’ve ever read anything as truly creepy as this [and I’m a Stephen King fan!].  

Two things stood out:  First, there are grammatical and punctuation errors throughout the book that I know, on a rational level, were most likely caused by the OCR program that scanned this book in, but…there is a part of me that thinks that the errors are there on purpose.  For what purpose, I don’t know – or maybe won’t permit myself to guess at, but I have a pretty vivid imagination, and what I come up with is something like a secret demonic code that is unwittingly translated as you read and hard-wires  your brain into receiving Satan and all his minions into your subconscious.  [Sounds fun, huh?] 

The second thing that I could not seem to reconcile was the startling intelligence behind the writing in this book.  You can immediately tell that an educated person – an intellectual, in fact – wrote this book.  Having my liberal arts education turned on its ear was hardly comforting.  This intelligence coupled with the glaring mistakes in grammar and punctuation is creepy in and of itself, and lent the book an overall dark and disturbing energy. 

I never did finish the book.  [And I probably will delete it from my hard drive.]