By The Way

Happy Valentines Day.


I hope you remembered to send your friends annoying text messaging forwards and dancing internet e-cards.

Lets Get This Started

So I decided to get back to the blogging, with a brand spanking new blog.

I just hope I can keep up with it.

Now down to business. I was watching Hook the other day and It reminded me of how much I loved Peter Pan as a kid, more than most kids I was scarely obeseesd with this book. Whenever I wanted to play Peter Pan I would cover the doorway to my basement with couch cushions so nobody could walk down (even at 6 I understood that pretending to fly with a broomstick as a sword was embarrassing) and pretend that I was in Never Land. I would crow and jump off my cushion-less couch and fight captain hook for hours. I can't wait until my nephew is old enough for me to start reading the book to him, as soon as he is it means I have a real person to sword fight with! Neverland (my basement with the lights dimmed) was my favorite game in the world; I loved the book almost as much as I loved pretending to be Pan. I would read sections of it everyday over and over, my favorite parts was when Peter and Captain Hook got into it. It still is the best villain/hero duo ever imagined.

Anyway, all of this Pan reminiscing got me to thinking about my other favorite books growing up. I was a little bit of a nerd and my favorite school "special block" was when we got to go to the library on Wednesdays and borrow books for the week.
I enjoyed most of them but some stick out to be my favorites, so why not make a list of it?

My top 5 kids books:
(In no particular order)

1 The Great Gilly Hopkins: I remember loving this book. Gilly was a tough broad and she was sassy too. The book managed to deal with the complicated idea of racism that we didn't talk about in school because the subject seemed to be too scary if it wasn't taught along the lines of "racism is bad and it doesn't happen anymore" I remember reading this in about 5th grade and wouldn't mind reading it again...


2. Ramona the Pest: This was the first chapter book I ever read. I was 4 or 5 years old and I liked the cover of the book. Ramona had the same smart ass smile that I did, so I imeditly liked her. I loved her red rain boots and made my mom buy me some rain boots. She botched the whole thing up though when she bought me ones with blue flowers on them, hey just like the book! (except Ramona's mom bought her ugly brown ones I think...) OH God I loved this book! From the teacher who talked way too properly to be teaching kindergarteners to Ramona pulling the pretty curls of that bitch Susan. She was sassy, and stubborn and a fun girl all around. I think I read every book in the series after that. I even watched the sort of crappy TV movies based on Ramona. God bless old Bev. Cleary.


3. The BFG

This is one of the most fun Roald Dahl books, I think. I don't know why they haven't made a movie adaptation of it yet but I'm sort of glad. Also it may have something to do with the fact that the giants eat kids. The BFG was awesome, I wish I got to be his tiny friend. Also, can I say something about how awesome Roald Dahl is at naming things? With human eating giants named the Fleshlumpeater and the Maidmasher and a cucumber looking magic foodstuff called Snozzcumber how could you not love this book?

2 The Boxcar Children

they killed this book when they made it a series, as a series it looked more like a cheap knock off of the Hardy Boys and The Babysitters Club but the original book was awesome. I had a crawl space above my bedroom that I made into a makeshift boxcar. I think it is every kid's dream to run away, make an awesome hide out/new fort. One time I wanted my parents to think I ran away so I hid in the crawl space for an entire afternoon and pretended that I was on the boxcar, just living off the fat of the land and fixing up my new home. I came downstairs after I was sure they had called the police but my mom just made me a plate of chip beef on toast like noting had happened. Those assholes.

1. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

This remains one of my favorite Christmas stories. The characters were so fun and dysfunctional. I think from the list I can either determine that the 1960s and 70s were the golden age of odd-ball characters and misfits in children's books or my school library was just very out dated. It's a good thing that my mom is a 3rd grade teacher, I have a lot of these books on my shelves at home and can re-read them whenever I want.

I think I will.