177.62 (Friendship)

This post is extremely belated, but I wanted to be able to share these photos in a variety of formats, so to the blog they go.

In November 2013, my best friend Sophia and I decided to have some photos done together to commemorate our friendship as well as our wedding dresses. We had seen photos on Facebook of groups of friends getting together to do this, so we figured why not? Due to some luck and the generosity of random strangers, our session with Olivia Brey of Oh! Photography was free.

I LOVED working with Olivia to get some really fun shots with my BFF. We played around with props, danced around in the woods, and got some really beautiful photography out of it. I can only share a few of the photos here to keep with the license agreement with Olivia, but the 40 or so images we received were ALL beautiful and make their appearance all over my home. I love them. I can't say enough good about them. Olivia was FANTASTIC. I've never felt  so comfortable in front of a camera and have never loved getting back photos more.

Without further ado, the photos!

Besties

I love this photo more than the shots from my wedding day.

Basically, this is us. I'm a shorty.

Parasols make everything better.

A little bit of Elphaba and Galinda (Glinda)

One of my FAVORITES!

Living in the lakeshore area (Green Bay, Sheboygan, Manitowoc)? I recommend Oh! Photography without question.

808.899283 (Adolescent Literature) - Week Seven

Alright, back to finishing the YA Literature posts it is. Let's plow through these and get to book reviewing!

Week Seven's theme was non-fiction, and I warn you, this was the week that my partner (Katelyn) and I were responsible for book talks, so not only did I read the three books required for class, I also read something like 6 or 7 other books, too. It was an intense week of reading and I'm just going to plow through a bunch of books at once. I'm only going to give overall impressions of the books instead of my normal delights and defects model. Too many books, too little time. This post is long, too. Sorry not sorry.

The three assigned books for this week were Steve Sheinkin's Bomb: The Race to Build -- and Steal -- the World's Most Dangerous Weapon, Phillip Hoose's Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95, and lastly, Anton Treuer's Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Were Afraid to Ask. Each of the title's holds the link to the Goodreads' description of the book, as always.

My favorite assigned book of the week was definitely Sheinkin's Bomb.

When I initially saw the book, I thought that it was going to be just another Manhattan Project story, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was so much more than that. It was obvious to me within the first few chapters of this book why it won the Siebert Award. Not only does Sheinkin cover the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos, but he also delves into the spying done by Germany, Russia, and the United States surrouding the atomic bomb projects, the missions that were run to destroy the efforts of other nations to create their own nuclear weapons, and a thousand other very interesting details about a HUGE variety of people that helped in the creation of the atomic bomb. Sheinkin makes the subject matter interesting and the book reads much more like a novel than a typical non-fiction text. There are very few photos throughout, but the prose carries the subject matter so well, that they aren't necessarily required. I definitely would recommend this book to just about ANYONE; male, female, adult, teen, pre-teen, it's going to interest everyone and keep them on the edge of their seat. This book would definitely be a great addition to the social studies curriculum when students are studying WWII (and possibly even the Cold War). Great overall, I really enjoyed this one!

Moonbird was okay, but it definitely was more "traditional" non-fiction and definitely for younger readers. I could see purchasing this one for upper elementary kiddos. The photos are pretty fantastic and the graphs and other infographics included in the text are on point, but I felt like there are other comparable "animal" books out there that are of an equal quality.

Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians is written in Q&A format and contains most of the questions that people might be interested in knowing the answer to. From religious beliefs, cultural information, and a variety of other subject areas. The book reads a little more like an adult book, but it would be great for upper level teens or as a classroom resource for classes that are learning about Native Americans. I enjoyed how frank and straightforward the answers that Treuer provides and he makes the point to really point out that his answers are for some, not all tribes and native peoples. It was great, if a little dry or boring when read as a whole, but if you were picking or choosing individual questions you were interested in, it wouldn't be quite as dry.

The additional texts I read and then book talked were meant to be 'read-alikes' or fiction pairs for the non-fiction text. Working with Katelyn, we ended up going above and beyond (oops?) and including digital resources and more than the 2-3 other texts we were supposed to talk about. If you want a full view of our resource, you can find it here via Google Drive. My books start with the Manhattan Project/Atomic Bomb books.

My fiction pair for Bomb was Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages. I love this book and it's a fantastic pair for a younger reader, especially for a female reader, of Bomb. It's basically a kid's perspective on Los Alamos during the build of the atomic bomb and it's a Newbery Award winning book, too! The librarian in me also loves that the main character is named Dewey - yup, like Dewey Decimal System Dewey. The target audience for this novel is definitely 5th/6th graders, though. The main character is only 11-years-old. You might be hard pressed to get an older teen to read it.

Read alikes that I chose included Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting by Jim Murphy and An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming by Ale Gore. Murphy's Truce was done in typical Murphy style: great images, excellent prose, and well produced layouts. I loved it and I had a fiction pair in mind when I picked it for my project. 

I loved An Inconvenient Truth even more, though. The images were breathtaking, the infographics COMPLETELY made sense and really put the global warming crisis into perspective, and Gore's very 'personal' and friendly writing style made the information so very accessible. Seriously. If you haven't read it, it's totally worth it. I read the adult version of An Inconvenient Truth and I felt like the version produced for teens was significantly more interesting and easier to understand. No, I don't feel bad liking the teen book more.

The fiction pairs for the two read alikes were Love in the Time of Global Warming

by Francesca Lia Block and And the Soldiers Sang by J. Patrick Lewis & Gary Kelley. And the Soldiers Sang was a little a-typical for a pairing as it's actually a picture book for a slightly older audience. I did order this book when I was working in an elementary library and it's definitely a tear jerker - the illustrations are beautiful and touching and they fit the text so well. It's a perfect pair for Murphy's non-fiction book about the Christmas Day Armistice, as it covers the same exact subject from different perspectives. Love in the Time of Global Warming is a modern day Odyssey (REALLY REALLY REALLY the Odyssey) with a post-apocalyptic feel. I warn you, like Francesca Lia Block's other works, there is homosexuality, sex, and other 'adult' topics, including violence (hey, in the Odyssey, the men blind a cyclops... and it happens in this book, too!). It definitely has FLB's typical "magical realism", though, and it definitely made me want to read the other books in the series to continue the adventure.

That's it for this week. I'm a big fan of non-fiction texts, though, so it was the right week for me to go read-crazy. Eight more weeks of YA Literature to go. Keep an eye out for future blog posts, which I PROMISE won't be nearly as long winded.

641.3513 (Carrots)

So the post isn't really about carrots, but carrot cake (with cream cheese frosting, of course). I'm sorry about the bad photography that follows - it was night and I was using my phone camera.

The above photos are of my first attempt at a sheet-style cake (12x18), which I made for a retirement party at my husband's workplace. He didn't have a design in mind, nor did his supervisor (who requested the cake), so they got something simple with a little bit of "whimsy". Anything 'white' on the cake is cream cheese frosting; anything colored is a simple buttercream - I wasn't sure how well cream cheese frosting would pipe or hold up.

Next time, I'll make more batter for a taller cake or stack two on top of each other. This time? It is what it is.

371.2912 (School completion) - Part the Last

A quick update...

So, I graduated! Whoo hoo! It's over and done. So why haven't there been more posts? Well, my husband and I bought a house the same week in which I graduated and I've been moving things, painting things, fixing things, and generally taking care of things for the last few weeks. I JUST unpacked my computer on Thursday night. It's been a wild ride. Things are starting to settle again, so I'm coming back to do a quick post about graduation.

No worries - I'll finish the Adolescent Lit posts over the course of the summer along with my most recent reads as well. House updates will happen here, too, as soon as things are "finished" and all unpacked. Yes, we're still unpacking. We just finished the bathroom today. We have a lot more to go.

As for graduation? It went smoothly... and I conquered my nerves to sing a little ditty in front of everyone. Yes, I sang for graduation. The ditty is below, as is a picture of me singing it. That's really it for this post. Let it be known that more updates should happen over the course of this week and next, but not a lot. We're hosting a party on the 21st. Eek!

My Library Things

(to the tune of "My Favorite Things" from Sound of Music)

Metadata, cardigans, and people in glasses,

Hot tea and coffee through all of my classes,

In Allison's classroom, everyone sings,

These are a few of my library things.

Dorothea taught me it's cool to be geeky,

Rebekah's reading lists never left me sleepy,

Rubel, Smith, and Senchyne's theory left me spinning in rings,

These are a few of my library things.

When RDA seems far too tricky

and Drupal has me sad,

I simply remember my library things,

and then I don't feel so bad. 

Photo courtesy of  UW-Madison SLIS (via Facebook)

371.2912 (School completion) - Part the First

So this whole past week has been my husband asking me "Are you done with your homework?" and my consistent answer has been

I spent a lot of time staring at the homework

working on it slowly, late into the night

and submitting it, piece by piece to the appropriate drop boxes. Today, though, I clicked send and realized something

that it was my last submission. I was done. No more grad school homework.

I was frozen, and it took me a moment to realize it, but then

And then I remembered

I still have to pass and graduate. But in lieu of that happening in 10 days, let me just say that I'm done.

808.899283 (Adolescent Literature) - Week Six

Still trying to catch up to the current week (which would be 14, I think?), but we're getting there. Almost half way! I'd like to finish with my YA lit posts before I graduate (May 18th), but that might be pushing it... I'll have a new house as of May 15th! Anywhoo, onto the post!

This week's theme was Historical fiction and war novels and the two books that were on the syllabus were War Horse by Michael Morpurgo and Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys. As always, links take you out to the Goodreads page for the books.

War Horse isn't just a book. The novel has also been turned into a film (starring Benedict Cumberbatch AND Tom Hiddleston... in one movie) and a play, which I saw in workshop when I was in London at the National Theatre. Both adaptations of the novel are fantastic (HOW can you say no to life size horse puppets... or those two previously mentioned hotties?).

As far as books go, here's my quick delights/disdain points for War Horse.

3 Delights for War Horse

1. It is the best book you will ever read where the narrator is the horse... ever. This is a book about WWI, which was a war that changed the shape of wars to come. Having an animal narrator dampens the horrors of war a bit for a younger reader, while still having emotional turmoil over things like character deaths and keeping track of time/plot.
2. I love that this book is such an easy, quick read. The novel is written for a slightly younger audience and meets the ease of reading requirements nicely.
3. This novel is a great tie-in to a unit on WWI as readers will have the background knowledge they need to understand what is going on. An excellent fiction pair for a social studies classroom. This book is also a "must read" in British schools, which I think is completely understandable.

3 Defects for War Horse

1. The narrator is a horse? It's one of my delights, too, but I was never fond of the animal narrator. I do think it's well done though, but personally, I felt the book was a little "flat" because of it.
2. Readers will need a bit of a background in WWI history to fully appreciate the novel. 
3. I kept having All Quiet on the Western Front flashbacks... if you don't know what I mean or what I'm referencing, you've never experienced the psychological horrors that come with reading All Quiet on the Western Front and then reading about horses... A wikipedia summary should get you up to speed.

Between Shades of Gray was right up my alley of reading choices - it's a WWII novel about the Russian Gulag. Most people know a whole lot about the holocaust, but know nothing about Stalin killing his own people. It's a subject that isn't talked about in Russian history and there are a whole lot of deniers out there, even more so than the holocaust deniers. 

3 Delights for Between Shades of Gray

1. I loved the main character (Lina). She's tough, she's clever, and she's opinionated. She perseveres through some really horrible events and finds a way to make the best of everything. 
2. I loved Lina's mother. She was wonderfully 3-dimensional in the text and it's quite obvious where Lina got her brains. The fact that her mother knew how to build friendships and knew how to play the system the way she did was wonderful to. And her ability to instill in Lina the strength to carry on was fantastic.  
3. I felt that, on a whole, the novel was very well written and it gave you a clear understanding of the time period and the settings that the characters live in. From the trains to the Gulags, to tiny shacks that don't keep out the wind, all was described beautifully.

3 Defects for Between Shades of Gray

1. I really don't know how I felt about the ending. A part of me was pleased... and a part of me felt like it was stereotypical WWII novel fodder.
2. I wish that we knew more about some of the auxiliary characters' backgrounds. I think some of it would have made the novel a little more 'round', but overall, I was pleased.
3. The only real complaint I have about the novel is that sometimes it dragged on a little slower than I would have liked. Some of the exposition and description starts to kill the action happening in the novel, which makes the novel feel longer than it actually is. 

That wraps up week six of YA lit. Hopefully I'll post the next few weeks worth of reviews in the next couple of days and get myself caught up.

551.5271 (Solar radiation) - Sunshine in a Box

My best friends birthday is coming up this week and I wanted to send her something in the mail beyond just a birthday card. What did I do? I made her some sunshine... in a box!

I started my box of sunshine with a small priority mail/small flat rate box from the post office. These boxes are free, you just have to stop in and pick them up. I "prettified" the inside of the box with some scrapbook paper and double stick tape that I already had in with craft supplies.

I made sure to leave gaps where the box folded so there wasn't any issues with bubbling paper.

I used a little bit of the double stick tape to fold up one side of the box so I could begin loading it with the goodies I picked up. I wanted to find a healthy balance between things to eat and things to use in the box. What I decided to include is below:

In my "Sunshine" Box:

- Burt's Bees Baby Bee Lotion

- Snack size Lindt's Caramel Truffles

- 2 Burt's Bees Beewax Lip Balms (Original Recipe)

- Box of Crystal Light Lemonade Singles

- Travel Size Clorox Wipes (the microbiologist friend should approve)

- Eos Lip Balm (in Lemon Drop)

- M&Ms Peanut

- Raisinets

- Reese's Peanut Better Egg

- Chocolate Covered Peep

- Yellow Fingernail Polish

As you can see, everything just fit inside the box with enough room for me to shove in a funny birthday card and close it. Barely a bulge in the box when it was all closed, although I did have to remove some packaging and have a special "conversation" with one of the Lindt choclates... it's probably a little squished. Oops?   

I found a cute yellow polka dot address label that I bought from Target some years back that I hacked up and attached to the front of the box with packaging tape.

A part of me wishes I cold have fit a little more in the box or sent a larger box, but the grad student in me knows I have to be frugal for just a little while longer and I'm truly a believer in the old adage "it's the thought that counts". I hope it'll be a drop of sunshine in my best friend's week, especially with the rainy spring we've been having.