changes

Used my favorite spatula to make eggs with onions and peppers for me, and plain for a breakfast burrito for my son.

This spatula, in addition to being a great spatula, always makes me think about Malla, Chewbacca’s wife, cooking the Life Day meal in the Star Wars Holiday Special. I’ll admit, it’s something that’s far more fun to just think about for a minute than it is to actually watch, but I feel everyone should watch it at least once.

And I just learned from the Wookieepedia that her full name is Mallatobuck.

Standalone post link: Daily Picture- Cooking with Malla

Just a December Sunday desk scene.

Standalone post link: Daily Picture- December Sunday Desk

Standalone post link: ''''

I published a review of Nightbooks by J.A. White on Granite Media and also posted it on Goodreads.

Alex has an obsession with all things creepy, and he spends his nights writing scary stories. One night he decides he’s tired of being a “weirdo,” so he sneaks out of his family’s apartment with his story notebooks and heads to the basement to burn them in the building’s boiler. The elevator takes him to a different floor instead, where he is illogically lured into a strange apartment and soon finds himself trapped in an actual scary story, enslaved by an actual witch. It turns out the witch needs his stories to keep the enchanted apartment under control, and although he wants to find a way to escape there is a part of him that enjoys the dark, magical surroundings and the appreciative new audience for his tales. Can he keep creating new horror stories to keep the witch happy, or can he figure out a way to use his storytelling as his means of escape?

This isn’t the creepiest middle grade fiction book I’ve ever read, but with its dark fairy tale elements it brings just the right amount of horror, tinged with hope and humor, for young readers. I loved how this book not only spun a good tale but made me think about the power of storytelling, and, quite simply, made me want to write things. I think young readers will recognize and engage with these themes of storytelling, writing, and being true to one’s interests and talents as well. The story also explores friendship/relationship-building rather well, as Alex and Yasmin (another child enslaved by the witch) learn to trust, help, and open up to each other despite the very real possibility of getting separated or hurt by the manipulations of the witch.

This novel would be a perfect next step for fans of scary story collections. The text does an excellent job of integrating many such scary stories, written by Alex, into the larger narrative framework. I especially liked the inclusion of fully-readable pages from books in the witch’s library, complete with secret handwritten notes in the margins. It is a low-key metafictional touch that isn’t too gimmicky and does subtle wonders for the setting, making the witch’s vast library of scary stories seem tangible. They are teasers for a whole world of other books to explore.

Highly recommended for budding writers (which ideally would be any young person) and fans of scary stories and fairy tales, whether fractured, Disneyfied, or traditionally dark. It could make a good read-alike for Neil Gaiman’s middle grade books, Adam Gidwitz’ A Tale Dark and Grimm series, Frank Cole’s Potion Masters series, and for those who enjoy the creepier aspects of Harry Potter. It would be a great step towards more literary/Newbery-ish dark fantasy books such as The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Splendors and Glooms, or Jonathan Auxier, as it has similar moods and themes but reads slightly easier and younger than those books.

Review by Joshua Whiting, Media Specialist, Granite Educational Technology Department Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5 stars) Interest Level: Grades 4-7

Nightbooks Written by J.A. White Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 294 pages Release Date: July 24, 2018

Tags: 2018 Children’s Fiction, Books Fiction, Fairy Tales Fiction, Fantasy Fiction, Fractured Fairy Tales, Friendship Fiction, Horror Fiction, Joshua Whiting, New York City Fiction, Storytelling Fiction, Witches Fiction, Writing Fiction

Standalone post link: Book Review - Nightbooks

I published a review of Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling on Granite Media and also posted it on Goodreads.

When her dad randomly takes a job as manager of an old west theme park, Aven Green has to move to the Arizona desert for the start of 8th grade. Her armlessness was never a big deal with her friends in Kansas, where she had gone to school with the same group from kindergarten on up. Now at a new large school where she doesn’t know anyone, Aven is self-conscious and the kids she encounters aren’t exactly welcoming or friendly. Can she overcome her fear, make connections with people, and follow her interests and talents, or at least stop eating lunch in the bathroom? And can she uncover the mystery of the absentee owner of the quirky theme park, to which she feels a strange growing connection?

Told in an authentic, hilarious first person voice, this book is filled with life and heart. The author does a great job of showing Aven and other characters as authentic, growing people, making mistakes and learning throughout the book. It provides an empathetic and informative depiction of characters with differing abilities, helping readers understand the real challenges caused by specific disabilities as well as how little those challenges can actually limit a determined and supported person from following their interests and talents to accomplish great things. As an adult reader the story opened my eyes to ways I could improve my interactions with people of differing abilities and be a more considerate support. These are things I wish I had learned at a much younger age so I feel this could be an important book for young people to read. It’s an extremely engaging, easy read that kids will want to pick up anyway. Highly recommended for young people as well as teachers and parents of young people.

Read-alikes: • This book has a similar vibe to Wonder, but is lighter and funnier, without a central bully-villain. It’s a very accessible realistic/contemporary fiction story. • Could be a good next step for fans of humorous diary books like Wimpy Kid or Dork Diaries. It doesn’t have illustrations but it is told in first person and it includes funny entries from the character’s blog. • The quirky theme park mystery element has a similar vibe to small town stories by authors such as Sheila Turnage and Natalie Lloyd.

Review by Joshua Whiting, Media Specialist, Granite Educational Technology Department Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5 stars) Interest Level: Grades 4-8

Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus Written by Dusti Bowling Sterling Children’s Books 262 pages Release Date: September 5, 2017

Tags: 2017 Children’s Fiction, Arizona Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Desert Fiction, Dusti Bowling, Humorous Fiction, Joshua Whiting, Mystery Fiction, Persons with Disabilities Fiction, Realistic Fiction

Standalone post link: Book Review - Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus

Think I’m going to try writing a poem every day in April.

I went looking and "writing a poem every day in April" is already a thing. it has been a thing for a long time. It has a hashtag and a domain and some blog posts and links to websites of people who are supposedly going to do it.#napowrimo #glopowrimohttps://t.co/A2AgFxnO3r

— Joshua Whiting (@jdwhiting) March 16, 2019

Actually I'm fairly certain that I won't share them. I'll just use it as a way to get back into writing, bank up some ideas and drafts, see what happens.

— Joshua Whiting (@jdwhiting) March 16, 2019

I went looking and “writing a poem every day in April” is already a thing, it’s been a thing for a long time. It has a hashtag and a domain and some blog posts. That’s definitely enough to be thing. #napowrimo #glopowrimo http://www.napowrimo.net/

Not quite decided yet on whether I will post the poems online or share them in any way as I make them.

Actually I’m fairly decided that I won’t share them. I’ll just use it as a way to get back into writing, bank up some ideas and drafts, see what happens.

There’s also this other piece of it I’m thinking about, a weekly #NaPoWriMo class in Salt Lake, but I’m not sure I dare to do it or if it will be a good fit for me.

http://www.slcc.edu/cwc/workshops.aspx

I mainly mention it because it might be a good fit for someone else.

Standalone post link: #NaPoWriMo

I reviewed this book last week, and in doing so made some serious mistakes, which I’m hoping to learn from going forward.

Mistake #1:

The whole time I was reading the novel I assumed the narrator was a boy. I can point to several possible reasons in the text why I came to that assumption, but in the end they are flimsy justifications for my assumption, held up only by gender stereotypes, clichéd attitudes, and expected conventions of storytelling, all of which I would be unfairly imputing onto the text when they simply are not there. In fact, the text was consciously constructed by the author so as not to gender the narrator, and there really isn’t a legitimate way to argue from the text that the narrator is either male or female. I brought my bias, assumptions, and lazy reading to the book and came away with an incorrect assumption, which I then propagated on the internet.

There is one really positive thing I hope I can take away from this mistake. I hope by becoming aware of this problem through misgendering a character in a book, I can be more conscious of others and in the future perhaps avoid misgendering an actual person in real life. I believe this whole learning exercise I am going through is part of the reason why the author chose to create the book in this fashion. It is a nice playground in which to learn this, and yet another way that this book can be used for learning and discussion.

Mistake #2:

Before writing my review I consciously avoided reading other reviews of this book or really anything about this book other than the book itself and probably the publisher’s blurb. I told myself I had decided on this because I didn’t want to be influenced by others and inadvertently restate whatever others said about the book. This is a semi-legitimate fear, but in reality my decision was an attempt to just get a book review written without thinking about it too much or spending too much time on it. It was a short cut, and it didn’t really work. I realize now that I owe it to any author or book which I am taking the time to write about to write well, and that includes doing proper research and close reading. Not only does this do the creator of the work better justice, but it also can save me from looking foolish; in the case of this book, some more reading about it would have prevented me from making Mistake #1 (noted above.)

By the way, We’re Not From Here by Geoff Rodkey is an awesome book. You should totally read it and share it with kids that you know. Here’s my review:

https://www.granitemedia.org/2019/05/were-not-from-here/

After Earth is rendered uninhabitable for reasons*, Lan’s family are among the last 2400 or so humans living on the Mars base. When they start running out of food, supplies, and any other options, they are relatively excited to receive an invitation from the insect-like Zhuri and a couple of other species to come to the distant planet Choom as refugees. 20 years of deep-space hibernation travel later when the humans wake up in Choom’s orbit, things have changed and the Zhuri are no longer so enthusiastic about bringing in a species who just blew up their own planet. They nonetheless let one human reproductive unit come down to the planet and go to school and work as a trial: Lan’s family. Can Lan survive the school day and charm the Zhuri into letting them stay, and letting the rest of the humans come down as well?

On one level this book is a cartoonish/sitcom-styled sci-fi in which the goofball kid Lan, their despondent former pop star sister, and their parents find themselves trying to fit in with the mosquitoish inhabitants of a beige, hex-shaped suburbia on Planet Choom. On another level it is a sophisticated middle-grade satire and a masterclass in media literacy and political science that speaks to compelling contemporary issues such as the worldwide refugee crisis and the responding rise of populist/nationalist anti-immigration political movements, news media manipulation, and more. That might sound like a lot for an ostensibly humorous middle-grade novel, but I promise you it does not come off as heavy at all; it is light with some completely age-appropriate dark humor. I think kids will enjoy this on either or both the silly and serious levels, and it would make for great discussions.

*nuclear war, mainly

Correction: The text of this review originally referred to the character/narrator Lan as a boy. This was a presumption entirely made by the reviewer. The author kindly pointed out that Lan’s gender is never specified in the text. You can learn more in the author’s guest post on Nerdy Book Club: “One Book, Two Imaginations.”

Standalone post link: Misadventures in Book Reviewing: Thoughts After Reading and Reviewing *We’re Not From Here*

Ever do that thing where you start building a new website, and even write and publish a few things on the website, but never tell anyone about the website or link to the things on the website?

I guess I’m finally ready to admit to the world that I have a new website, such as it is. https://jdwhiting.com/

*And by “the world” I basically mean whatever fraction of my 700ish twitter followers and my 200ish Facebook friends happen to be logged in sometime in the next few hours and blessed by the almighty algorithm to see this status update.

Standalone post link: I guess I'm finally ready to admit to the world that I have a new website

Today I happened upon an excerpt from Tommy Pico’s forthcoming poem/book Feed, and I’m weirdly excited about it now.

I can’t claim to be a studious or consistent follower of contemporary poetry, but Pico’s first book IRL jumped out at me a few years ago and since then he’s become one of my favorite contemporary poets. He is writing some of the most fun, funny, irreverent, low-key profound, and casually innovative poetry that I’ve come across, and Feed looks and sounds to be his best work yet.

I say “sounds” because I also found on his website a link to this audio excerpt of Feed that has him reading/reciting what I assume is a big chunk of Feed while simultaneously serving as a sort of audio walking guide to the High Line Gardens in New York City. The way he reads his poem is fantastic, and it makes me want to seek out more such audio recordings / podcasts of him and maybe other poets reading their work if they do it sincerely like this and not in that 90s “poetry reading” cadence I remember so well from high school and college, and probably used myself a few times. (Pico is a genuinely, uniquely great reader of his own work, but hopefully also a lot has just changed for the better since I used to go to poetry readings back in the 90s and 00s.)

https://soundcloud.com/highlinenyc/high-line-feed-soundscape-tommy-pico

I’ve never been to High Line (or anywhere in New York City for that matter) but I have fond feelings for it as the apparent inspiration for one of my family’s favorite picture books, The Curious Garden by Peter Brown. I don’t know if it is a stretch, but Brown and Pico seem to be working on some similar themes, though in vastly different formats for different audiences. I mainly just wanted an excuse to put this here and give this book a shout-out, though.

Standalone post link: While Reading and Listening: Feed

Mesita made me a 5-second song on twitter. I love that he does this and that I finally got the guts to ask for one, and he did it.

His professionally recorded music is quite good, btw. I’ve listened to it a little over the years but need to dig into his discography more.

Standalone post link: Mesita made me a 5-Second Song on Twitter