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Jan. 5th, 2014 03:43 pmIt is currently -19 with a wind chill of -46. If you look at the wind chill forecast map for the US and southern Canada right now, you'll see a bull's eye in the middle where possible wind chills tonight may be as low as -70. We live in the very center of that bull's eye. Minnesota (right across the river from us) cancelled school tomorrow. I think Wisconsin may have as well. As far as I've heard, ND is still on, though! And we had church this morning, too. (Small attendance, but the locals who didn't have far to drive were all there.) As my kids would say, North Dakota is hard core, man.
So er, yeah, about that daily exercise... Mostly I've been working hard on a revision, switching out to critique a couple books for other people. It's all going well, but I just wish I had more time. Or could work faster. Or something. I'm glad I have it all to work on, since that's almost the ONLY thing we can do around here. It's cold here, yes--but not normally THIS cold!! I even had a look at all the highs and lows of the past several years here, and this is not normal. But--we are hard core. So we will survive.
One of the books my kids got for Christmas was Kurtis Scaletta's THE WINTER OF THE ROBOTS. Great book.
I like all of Kurtis's books--the mushroom one (The Tanglewood Terror) is one of my particular favorites (especially since one of my kids was going through a major terror of live mushrooms at the time--it seemed fitting). But I dunno, I like this one at least as much if not more. It's Minneapolis in the winter, and Jim is tired of always being sidekick to his friend Oliver's science experiments. Which are ALWAYS about robots. So this year, he teams up with Rocky, a girl from down the street, instead. Their science fair project is supposed to be about observing otters at a nearby dump (observed with Jim's dad's security cameras, which he doesn't exactly have permission to use). But then the cameras are stolen. Not to mention people getting hurt and a lot of...really weird things happening at the site, which is not just a dump but the wreck of some kind of technology company where Oliver's dad used to work.
Loved the Minneapolis setting, the real-feeling kids, the really different kind of story (robotics, the kind that smart kids get into around middle school and sometimes go to competitions for). Loved the little sister. (They build a snow fort. "This will protect us," she said. "Protect us from what?" "Extremists," she said, which made me wonder what was going on in the puppet show she'd been watching." Or the moment much later on, where she's snooping around in Jim's room and discovers a disk he was hiding in a "horror book about fungus." The Tanglewood Terror, perhaps?
) So if you're wanting a middle grade story that's realistic contemporary but bordering on the fantastical, this is a great pick.
So er, yeah, about that daily exercise... Mostly I've been working hard on a revision, switching out to critique a couple books for other people. It's all going well, but I just wish I had more time. Or could work faster. Or something. I'm glad I have it all to work on, since that's almost the ONLY thing we can do around here. It's cold here, yes--but not normally THIS cold!! I even had a look at all the highs and lows of the past several years here, and this is not normal. But--we are hard core. So we will survive.
One of the books my kids got for Christmas was Kurtis Scaletta's THE WINTER OF THE ROBOTS. Great book.
I like all of Kurtis's books--the mushroom one (The Tanglewood Terror) is one of my particular favorites (especially since one of my kids was going through a major terror of live mushrooms at the time--it seemed fitting). But I dunno, I like this one at least as much if not more. It's Minneapolis in the winter, and Jim is tired of always being sidekick to his friend Oliver's science experiments. Which are ALWAYS about robots. So this year, he teams up with Rocky, a girl from down the street, instead. Their science fair project is supposed to be about observing otters at a nearby dump (observed with Jim's dad's security cameras, which he doesn't exactly have permission to use). But then the cameras are stolen. Not to mention people getting hurt and a lot of...really weird things happening at the site, which is not just a dump but the wreck of some kind of technology company where Oliver's dad used to work.
Loved the Minneapolis setting, the real-feeling kids, the really different kind of story (robotics, the kind that smart kids get into around middle school and sometimes go to competitions for). Loved the little sister. (They build a snow fort. "This will protect us," she said. "Protect us from what?" "Extremists," she said, which made me wonder what was going on in the puppet show she'd been watching." Or the moment much later on, where she's snooping around in Jim's room and discovers a disk he was hiding in a "horror book about fungus." The Tanglewood Terror, perhaps?
) So if you're wanting a middle grade story that's realistic contemporary but bordering on the fantastical, this is a great pick.
