Book of the week: Marvin K Mooney will you please go now

I don't have a consistent rationale or criteria for selecting a Suburban Sonnet-inspired Book of the Week, so this week it started with this:

Which is of course a Zike-Bike to anyone who knows Marvin K Mooney by heart.

This "just" another rollicking, rhyming, nonsensical Dr Seuss- in this case the theme being:

the time has come, the time is now, Marvin K Mooney will you please GO NOW.

Marvin is then offered a series of suggestions, including:

"you may go on a Zike-Bike if you like". Big Bro often pores over the picture, trying to work out how the Zike-Bike works. Must say, I never had the heart to say that it was just made up- which is fortunate, given there is a real-life one out there in the world!

Book of the week: The Cable Car and the Dragon

The Cable Car and the Dragon- Herb Caen.

Big Bro and I brought this book out in honour of Chinese New Year; it's the tale of two exotic creatures who both wanted a taste of a a different life. Charlie, a San Francisco cable car, is on the top of Nob Hill late one Chinese New Year's night realises that after "running up and down San Francisco for sixty years, (he) has NEVER seen a Chinese New Year's Parade or a Chinese Dragon". So instead of turning left towards Russian Hill, for the first time in his life he turns right, and ventures off the tracks into Chinatown. There he meets the dragon Chu Chin Chow, who for sixty years has lived a reclusive life in the hills across the bay, emerging once a year to head the Chinese New Year Parade through Chinatown.

This is another of my childhood books, probably bought when we visited my aunt in San Francisco when I was three (or else sent from there later). It's quite a wordy book- the recommended age of 4-8 years seems quite appropriate- and goes into details of the history and mechanics of cable cars, which Big Bro enjoys. It couldn't be set anywhere else- it's very much a San Francisco tale, with mentions of Nob and Russian Hills and particular streets. If When we take the boys to San Francisco I'll be making sure we take the Cable Car over the same tracks, looking down over Chinatown. Who knows, we might even ride Charlie.

One of my favourite bits of the book, which I always make sure I read, is the dedication:

For my son Christopher, who, having had the taste and judgement to be born in San Francisco in 1965, knows quite a bit about cable cars and dragons. He also knows enough about his father to listen to the following tale with an air of polite disbelief.

Book of the Week was devised by Suburban Sonnet

Book of the Week: Wynken, Blynken and Nod

I've mentioned before that I've been lucky that my mother has kept many of my picture books which are now gradually relocating themselves here. Eugene Field's Wynken, Blynken and Nod has been one of these, which I often bring out when the boys are in need of a calming book.

Wynken, Blynken and Nod one night

Sailed off in a wooden shoe

Sailed on a river of crystal light

Into a sea of dew....

It's a dreamy verse about three boys sailing into the sky, and I love its rhythm and quiet tones. Our edition is illustrated by Barbara Cooney, with beautiful monochrome scenes which match the quietness of the verse.

---------------------------------

The internet is a wonderful place, and in writing this I discovered a Denver link to Eugene Field, who was a journalist there for two years and managed to leave his house. The statue in the picture at the top, of the Fishermen Three, Wynken, Blynken and Nod, turns out to be located in Denver's Washington Park near Field's house. Of course I never saw it while we lived there.....

Book of the Week: The Snail and the Whale

I’ve started this post several times on the screen, and more than that in my head, wondering what I should pick as my second Book of the Week (courtesy of Suburban Sonnet). After too much mind-changing I’ve finally settled on….

on….

(Yes, I HAVE settled on it. No more changes now.)

We have all become big Julia Donaldson fans here. First there was The Gruffalo and Toddle Waddle. Thanks to his birthday and Christmas, Little Bro now has an expanded and very popular collection filed in the “D” section. (No, not really.) Big Bro is also a fan, but Little Bro is obsessed. And B and I don’t mind the books, so they keep getting read , and not lost under the couch. No don't admit to that..

All our favourite Julia Donaldsons have catching rhyming text, and a clever story, mostly starring humbler animals becoming unlikely heroes. The Snail and the Whale fits this exactly- a snail on a rock with an “itchy foot” hitches a ride on the tail of a helpful whale who shows him the world. Diaster strikes when the whale is beached (as I write that Little Bro's high pitched, dramatic "Oh no!" comes into my mind), and only the snail can save the day.

The illustrations by Axel Scheffler, who has illustrated many of the Julia Donaldson books, are bright and detailed, and it was no wonder that The Snail and the Whale repeatedly receives Little Bro’s highest honour- “read it again!”

Book of the Week: A few good first chapter books

Suburban Sonnet has started a Book of the Week segment with the invitation to join in- which has inspired me to finally put fingers to keys and tell you about our recent favourites (ok, so it's Books of the Week... you'll survive)

Big Bro's ability to follow stories has steadily increased over the past year, meaning that we've been able to venture into longer picture books like the Tim series, The Velveteen Rabbit, fairy tales and Aesop's Fables, and also into chapter books. Moving into chapter books has been an exciting development for me, as I have lots of fond memories from my childhood as a voracious reader (I wish could say that I read as much these days...)

It started with Enid Blyton's The Wishing Chair, which I couldn't pass by when I spotted it at the local library. It was a good place to start as most of the stories are self-contained, the edition we were reading had pictures on most of the pages, and I think Big Bro enjoyed the general theme of a flying chair. They're pretty simple good-versus-evil stories, with the occasional unfortunate mishap thrown in. I wasn't quite sure how well it was being received until he made this origami wishing chair (either origami or wishing chair is a slightly steep claim, I admit).


Our next adventure was Joan Robinson's About Teddy Robinson. It's a collection of short stories about the adventures of a girl and her apparently-alive bear. They're nice mundane real-life adventures like going to a party or shopping, which children can relate to. Teddy Robinson was a big success, but unfortunately it seems to be out of print so I am still stalking eBay looking for copies that aren't priced for the "collectors' edition" market.

Next on the menu was a return to Enid Blyton- The Enchanted Wood, which is the first of the Faraway Tree series. Jo, Bessie and F(r)anny (the "r" is a post-1980s inclusion) and their friends Moon Face and Silkie have adventures in a magical tree that is a bridge to other lands. It's the same formula as The Wishing Chair, but often the adventures span several chapters. Big Bro initially lost track of some stories, but by the time we launched into books 2 and 3 he had the idea of the multi-chapter story, and was disappointed when it finished. There are heaps of other Enid Blytons I think he'd enjoy- and from my childhood collection and second hand bookshops I've accumulated a queue that includes Mr Pinkwhistle, Bimbo and Topsy and the various Tales... short stories. However, I've been trying to mix them up with other authors so we don't turn into exclusively Enid readers (which is tempting given how many of her books I loved!)

After The Enchanted Wood we tested the Winnie the Pooh water. The first couple of chapters were alright, but even I got a bit lost in the subtleties of the next chapters and it remains half read next to Big Bro's bed. A.A.Milne's children's poetry was much more of a success, and thanks to Lines and Squares Big Bro is "ever so careful to watch (his) feet" whenever he walks on a Melbourne street.

More successful have been a few "real world" classics- My Naughty Little Sister was very popular, as was Milly Molly Mandy. They're opposite ends of the slightly moralistic spectrum- I never realised as a child that My Naughty Little Sister uses the protagonist to illustrate what not to do, while Milly Molly Mandy is unbelievably virtuous- the closest to sin that she ever reached was to briefly consider ignoring the "trespassers will be prosecuted" sign that protected someone else's blackberries before realised that was wrong. That being said, MMM is a very sweet picture of 1920s village life- horses and carts, the occasional excursion to a market town.

By this point I was aware that our repertoire was completely based around books I read as a child, which even then weren't that modern, so to try to get Big Bro a few post-1950s literary experiences I ventured into The Hill of Content bookshop in the city. There I came across Lucy (subject of a Grateful Post) who reassured me that there haven't been a lot of post-1980s classics in the early-chapter book department. Between Lucy and responses to a Facebook enquiry I came up with a few more modern books to try: the Tashi series, which has gone down well so far, and Madame Pampelmousse and Aussie Nibbles which are on the to-read list.

I like the routine of reading a chapter book over several evenings, but part of me wonders what we've forgotten to read in the picture book department- and we're certainly including plenty of picture books in the mix. While I never seem to manage to read enough books to myself, I'm relieved that we have plenty of time to work through the children's section. What are- or were- your favourite first chapter books?

The Chinese Mother Theory

Maxabella beat me- and very eloquently- to raise a fascinating article, Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, an excerpt from Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. It's about a style of parenting- and the Chinese-American author, Amy Chua, points out it isn't exclusively a Chinese style- whereby parents expect the utmost from their children. As I commented to Maxabella (excuse my laziness in the cut-and-paste department), I'm half-interested to read the book and I couldn't decide how much of the article was tongue-in-cheek. I agree with the "assume strength, not fragility" strategy, but there were points at which it went too far (Lulu's Piano Saga, for one). Pick your battles, and live your own life. Certainly children need parents' time invested in them, but maybe they also need to see their parents have a sense of perspective.

Postscript: there is a great response, also in the WSJ.

A couple of book memes

Holidays for me used to mean time to read. School holidays were my time for indulgent reads, like starting The Famous Five at book number one, and aiming for book 21. These days my hopes are a lot more sedate- like "read an entire book"- but I like to imagine that one day holidays will again be "time to read".

I'm not really one for memes, but these two came up in Facebook and I felt enthused about responding (apologies to those for whom I'm double dipping!)

Fifteen Authors in Fifteen minutes

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

1 Enid Blyton (anyone want to discuss the intricate plot details of the Famous Five? I am still excited to find an original Blyton I hadn't read- though not the crummy spin-offs!)

2 Alexander McCall Smith (I live from one Scotland Street instalment to the next)

3 Jane Austen

4 Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible, Animal Vegetable Miracle)

5 Neil Campbell (Biology)

6 Nigella Lawson

7 Vikram Seth (I could read all 1000 pages of A Suitable Boy any day)

8 Bill Bryson (lots are good, but Made in America especially)

9 Cynthia Voigt

10 Thomas Hardy

11 Lewis Carrol (esp the Jabberwocky, Hit your baby when he sneezes)

12 DH Lawrence (Snake)

13 Samuel Shem (The House of God- B said "read this and you'll understand what I've been through")

14 Laura Ingals Wilder

15 Three way tie between CS Lewis or EB White or JK Rowling... not convinced which should be here and I am sure I have forgotten someone else!!!)

100 Books

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. (I add that if you like Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens and/or Jane Austen you get immediate bonus points as they're represented at a high frequency.)

I've bolded the books I've read in their entirety, and italicized the ones I started but didn't finish, or read an excerpt.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton (and just read them all to Big Bro!)

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I'm at a bit of a loss to single out particular books- lots of great ones in the list, and lots that I wish I'd read!

This weekend I'm grateful for.... choosing my own path

I'm back! The double-header party last week left me without the energy for a Maxabella-inspired Grateful Post, but believe me that I was grateful for lovely people- minor and major- who helped the party run smoothly. Aren't friends great?

I sometimes get the guilts about skipping posts I was planning to do. But you know what? It's my blog and I can choose when and what I write... I just can't choose who reads it! :)

The other thing I'm grateful for this week are real bookshops. Y'know, the ones you have to walk into? I thought I was a complete online convert, but Lucy at The Hill of Content Bookshop on Bourke Street made me realise that when I don't know exactly what I want, having someone in the children's section who apparently remembers the details of every book is worth the extra cost of the book , plus the extra books I was incited to buy. ("Apparently" not referring to her memory, but the fact that I can only judge on the basis of the 4 or so books she suggested that I had read) And she knew the difference between the real Enid Blytons and the modern spin offs.

Oh, and I'm grateful to the Wiggles, whose 930am concert was enough incentive for the boys to eat and get dressed with enough time to spare that I had time for an early Grateful Post!

Edward Ardizzone

Big Bro has been getting into longer books with more writing and fewer pictures. This has opened up a whole new range of authors, including Edward Ardizzone, who I also enjoyed as a child- and still do.

Ardizzone wrote and illustrated many children's books including the Tim series, Diana and her Rhinoceros and Johnny the Clockmaker, all of which have been very popular with Big Bro. There is a "boys own" theme running through the books, of children-versus-adults, where the brave and spunky children are constantly held back by the majority of adults who think that the children are not up to the task at hand. Usually there is one adult who understands the capacities of children and allows them to enact their adventures in an adult world. In the Tim series, this is the boatman and the Captain, who let little Tim sail ships and defend lighthouses against wreckers; in Johnny the Clockmaker it is the blacksmith who is the only adult who believes Johnny really can make a grandfather clock, whilst in Diana and her Rhinoceros, it is the very pragmatic Diana versus the adult world as to whether a refugee rhino should live in the garden.

Ardizzone's illustrations are wonderful, and his sparing use of speech bubbles to accentuate certain actions or sentiments- like Tim's father responding to being woken up with "go away you horrid boy", or mundane comments from the mundane adults like "but is it wise?"- is very effective in bringing the pictures to life.

Ardizzone builds the same sort of exciting world as that in which the Famous Five and Hal and Roger live, where children who know no bounds, and it's completely appealing to children, young and old.

The genetics of garden peas- with credit to Gregor Mendel

This year we are growing two varieties of pea (Pisum sativum) in our garden:

Early crop Massey (which I now find are also called Melbourne Market)

And Golden Podded Snow Peas

As I watched the two plants grow, I started to remember snippets of biology lessons: pea flower colour, dwarf or tall, Mendel's Garden... I looked up my favourite biology text, Neil Campbell's Biology (now Campbell and Reece- RIP Neil Campbell) and sure enough, I was observing the same differences between my pea plants as Gregor Mendel did, in an Austrian monastry 150 years ago.

If you don't know Mendel: he was an Augustinian monk, and I suspect he is one of the few monks who can lay legitimate and honourable claim to fatherhood? (Are there others?) Mendel is considered "the father of modern genetics" because of his studies of the inheritance of pea characteristics.

This was a fifty years before anyone had shown that it is DNA that carries traits between generations (thank you Oswald Avery), and a hundred years before anyone could see how DNA could specify different characteristics (thank you James Watson and Francis Crick). Gregor Mendel meticulously studied the characteristics of peas, and controlled pollination (peas normally self-pollinate) to study the effect of interbreeding different characteristics. From this he realised that there was something that was transmitted between generations that enabled the features of a parent plant to be transmitted to its offspring. More importantly, he realised that this something was independently inherited for each feature of the plant- for example, whether a plant had purple or white flowers didn't influence whether it had yellow or green seeds.

Mendel's genius came when he applied mathematical techniques to analyse the offspring of parents with different features, and realised that for each feature in a plant (eg flower colour), a plant inherits information from both parents, yet some versions are "dominant" so mask the effect of the "recessive" ("not dominant" version). So, for example, the offspring of a purple flowering and a white flowering pea plant will have purple flowers (purple is dominant over white). However, these offspring still contain the "white" information, because their offspring (grandchildren of the original white- and purple-flowering plants) can show the white flowering trait.

The characteristics Mendel studied included flower colour (purple/white), flower position (on a side shoot/at the top of the main shoot), seed colour (yellow/green), seed shape (round/wrinkled), pod shape (inflated/constricted), pod colour (yellow/green), and height (tall (2m)/dwarf (0.5m)) (the illustration to the left is taken from Campbell and Reece's Biology.)

This whole thought process about Mendel came about because the two pea varieties I have differ in five of these Mendelian characteristics:

Flower colour: Early Crop Massey- white, Golden Podded- purple

Seed colour: Early Crop Massey- green, Golden Podded- yellow

Pod shape: Early Crop Massey- inflated, Golden Podded- constricted

Pod colour: Early Crop Massey- green, Golden Podded- yellow

Height: Early Crop Massey- 0.5m (dwarf), Golden Podded- 2m (tall)

I have no plans to do the intercrosses to re-prove Mendel's findings, but it's pretty cool to think that peas haven't changed much in 150 years!

More on online shopping

My mention of online shopping last week spurred a few off-blog comments from other people about their favourite online retailers. I am clearly not alone, judging from this article in The Age yesterday. I like to support local businesses on the truly local level, but when I'm choosing between purchasing from two large companies that both use developing world labour forces, economics and quality are my major deciding factors.

Does that make me a bad Australian?

The Not-Quite-Fridge Chronicles

Maxabella, Queen of Linkies (by my estimation), has been running The Fridge Chronicles for several months, which I excused myself from on the basis that we have a non-magnetic and therefore barren fridge door. I have been granted an exemption from the letter of the linky law, so I'll show a couple of pictures of what might be on my fridge if it were stickable... the fact that I don't blutac anything onto it probably suggests I'm not a fridge door type personality... and besides, the kitchen cupboards have way more surface area for covering...

Most of what we post is kiddie art work. I put up my favourites of the reams that come home from kindy (do us parents reduce their recycling costs?)

First up, "My weekend" and Untitled, both by Big Bro, and which I liked in a Picasso-esque way. They demonstrate two stages of Big Bro's artistic evolution: Untitled is his abstract style, which explores the textures and melding of the media (ie, he evidently spends a lot of time testing of mixing colours and different ways to colour, as well as creating abstract masterpieces like "Blue Pencil Line on Recycled White Invoice Sheet"). "My weekend" is a response to the demands of institutionalization for normalcy and representative art (ie, when I complimented him on the people in the middle, Big Bro replied "the teacher told me I had to to draw pictures, not scribble any more". Fair call, I thought.)

Next, a bit of ancient and modern: the top are Big Bro's pre-2 art, while the bottom was fairly recent. I thought it was a digger and a truck, but apparently the purple is a rainbow, yellow is rain, the green is a house and the blue is water running off the roof into a rainwater tank. Atta boy!

A bit more art, in a picture of Dada- glasses and all, drawn in one line by my experimental artist (he needs an etcha-sketch?), plus the most exciting things we get in our letter box- the occasional post card, in this case all from my mum. Big Bro still doesn't understand the postal system, and wonders why she dropped them off without saying hi.

Then there are recipes around the place. Ilipilli's sourdough bread is on a postit elsewhere for quick reference, while this caramel slice recipe from the side of the condensed milk tin was intended for a guest who hasn't yet come back... And the (few) birthday invitations Big Bro receives take months to remove. I only removed last year's version of this invitation a couple of weeks ago.... did I mention this will probably be my only Fridge Chronicles, as things won't change for ages?

Finally, odd little notes and aide-memoires, again without expiry dates. This book recommendation- Cinnamon Gardens- is from a Sri-Lankan-Canadian visitor in early 2009. I have actually bought it for B's parents who didn't say whether it was any good so I suspect it wasn't... (hmm, must read it myself?) Evidently the stick of the postit ran out so rather than discard such a vital piece of paper, for some reason I used extra sticking. Y- why- indeed?

I think by this point you're seeing why a non-magnetised fridge is a good thing for clutterbugs like us?

Parity, parity, parity, oi oi oi! OR Be still my throbbing credit card

I'm usually not that excited about economics and finance, but at the moment the Australian dollar's rise-and-rise (or the US dollar's fall-and-fall) has got me captivated. Will it cross the 1:1 "parity" exchange rate?

Why does this interest me? Pure self interest: you see, somehow in the last month or two, I've found that online shopping suits me. It's not that I haven't shopped online before, but suddenly I've found myself shopping online rather than going to a physical shop.

I think it started with discovering The Book Depository. Like Amazon in having way better prices than elsewhere, but with free worldwide shipping. Take the original Railway Series (aka Thomas the Tank Engine; the original Rev W. Awdry books are by far the best written)- I'm looking to get a few for Little Bro's birthday. Borders Online, which now I see has a price guarantee- meaning it should be the cheapest of Australian shops- stocks each of these books for $15.95. The Book Depository price is $7.61- half that. By the bye, while you're checking out The Book Depository, for some mindless entertainment for which the web is legendary, click onto the Live site, where you can watch people buying in real time. Complete time waster, but completely addictive!

Meanwhile, across the pond, The Little Aussie Battler's strength suddenly opens up the world of US online shopping. Never let anyone tell you otherwise: American retailers know how to make you spend. Offer excellent websites. Offer lots of sales. Offer incentives. Offer (almost) unlimited returns. Oh, and offer a huge range of "stuff". And from B's recent shopping expeditions work trips I know which children's brands I like. A friend was taking advantage of the Gymboree sale a month or two ago, and asked if I wanted to share postage. Why not? I thought, as I like Gymboree and I found a few cheap items and a few items that would make nice gifts (like girls' dresses in colours other than pink). All well and good, but then came the Gymbucks. $175 of them, to be used in the first two weeks of October. Suddenly I remembered all the cute Gymboree items I hadn't thought to get first time around, and with $25 off every $50 their value escalated.

And then I wondered whether Old Navy ship to Australia. Well, it turns out that, as of last week, all the Gap family of brands do. Suddenly there are a heap more nice clothes at good prices within my reach. The wonders of online...

Please don't overestimate my shopaholic tendencies. I'm not really that much of a shopper. I was surprised that in five years I've bought fewer than 20 things from eBay. I do what's needed, and that's enough. I certainly don't have the nous to buy clothes online for myself, but when it comes to children's clothes (or books for that matter), wherever I shop the deciding factors are going to be: style (what is it?), size (what format is it?) and price. If you give me a package with those criteria met, then I'll take it. And if it's online, all the better, and I'll spend the afternoon with my kids at the park rather than at the shops. Any day.

Go on, tempt me- I'm hooked: where's your favourite website for spending money?

10 things I love to do in the garden with my children

Little Garden Helpers issued an open invitation to post about 10 things I love to do with my children in the garden:

1.Run, jump, roll and everything else you can do on a lawn. People might call it "green cancer", but by watering it with bath water it's not using too much water and it's worth the effort of mowing when we have a space to play.

2. Discover hideyholes. I love the idea of secret gardens, walled gardens and sunken gardens- that idea of your own secluded space to commune with nature. Growing up in a fairly free-range manner I would find spaces under bushes or up trees to hide. My boys live in a much more constrained garden complete with fences and gates. We don't have a permanent cubby house, but instead occasionally put up our beach tent (which has been used more in the garden than at the beach). Better still, I hope the boys can find their own spaces; at the moment they are enjoying crawling in and out of the Westringea hedge.

3. Planting out seedlings and seeds. Currently not the easiest activity, given Little Bro's quest for dominance in the shovel department, but we manage and I still enjoy being part of this cycle of plant life.

4. Pick fresh food. One day the boys might even eat a leaf...

5. Talk about how plants "work": the leaves breath and make food, the roots drink water and eat dirt, etc. Big Bro is fascinated by plants' favourite food being animal poop.

6. Find critters. Worms and earwigs seem to be appearing in droves. Yay for the former, boo for the latter; at least someone enjoys seeing them.

7. Watch birds. Even though most of the birds visiting our garden are mundane introduced species like Indian mynahs and blackbirds, there's something exciting about seeing them. The boys go quiet and stare; the awe in which we watch reminds me of D.H. Lawrence's "A snake came to my water trough..." poem, except we try not to scare the birds away. Once the boys are bigger, we'll take a torch out on summer nights and spotlight the ringtail possums that run along the fence and the flying foxes that plunder the fig tree.

8. Dig, dig, dig, and better still, find buried treasures from bygone eras. Well, I like the treasures best; I think the boys just like to dig...

9. Put a flower in my hair. The boys think this is hilarious; I find it quite charming that they will bring me flowers to wear.

10. Eat outside. Barbecue. The weather has warmed up in the last week and the temperatures have crossed my threshold for outdoor dining. We're lucky enough to have a covered deck meaning that you can enjoy the outdoors without the full blast of the elements. With Little Bro being an enthusiastically independent, and thus messy eater, I can't deny enjoying the easy cleanup outside via the hose. And the same goes for the barbecue- carbonizing the hotplate is much more relaxing than scrubbing pans. And there's also Famous Five motto, "food always tastes so much better outside".

What are your 10 favourite things to do in the garden?

This is part of the November AMB Blog Carnival.

The Bunnings Trap

I dropped into Bunnings with the boys to pick up some potting mix and dripper system fittings, and came out with a strawberry for each boy, a punnet of cos lettuce, chives, a silvan berry and a pack of Jiffy pots.... "oops".

Big Bro decided the strawberries were called Mr Strawberry and Mrs Strawberry. Mr Strawberry brings two developing fruit with him- maybe inspired by our recent library borrowing, Eric Carle's Mr Seahorse?

This weekend I am grateful for....mentors, memories and history

Maxabella has been writing a weekly "grateful" post which is a great structure for a positive post and I've joined her linky list. There are lots of things I am always grateful for- a loving and wonderful husband and family being top of the list, and a wonderful circle of friends being a close second. But rather that restate this every week, I'll try to think of single defined events to be grateful for.

I was going to write that I'm grateful for mentors, music and television, but that sounded rather too shallow for my maiden post.... hence the retitling , m

entors, memories and history. So here goes. This weekend I am grateful for:

Professional mentors- who will park their egos at the door and say the right thing when necessary. I am lucky to have several.

John Denver and his music (and I'm grateful to B for loading it onto iTunes!)- a loop of Rocky Mountain High and Take Me Home, Country Roads kept me going through a tedious manual exercise at work, and had me thinking about the incredible beauty of the United States.

We saw the John Denver Sanctuary in Aspen, and that whole part of the Rockies would be an amazing place to live- as the song suggests. I've never been to the Appalachians, but from what I know they are similarly beautiful, in constrast to hard life of many West Viginians, depicted in fiction like The Bean Trees and The Memory Keeper's Daughter, and the real-life horror of events like the Sago mine disaster (and others; I just remember being transfixed by the unfolding Sago drama in January 2006). All very tangential to the music, but it was a great way to divert a flat mind for an hour or two!

A Digital Video Recorder- which let me watch the excellent Seven Ages of Britain weeks after it aired. And it was worth it- almost a potted tour of British historical artifacts. I wouldn't say I'm a history buff but I love books like Our Island Story and A Little History of the World which are full of facts presented in a concise, readable way. That they are both intended for children shows the depth of my interest in history!

Maisy's birthday party

Did you know Lucy Cousins' anthropomorphic mouse, Maisy, is 20 years old?

We found that out last weekend when we attended her birthday party at a book shop in the city. Big Bro was thrilled- and all day wondered whether it was Maisy's party time yet. When we arrived there were a couple of warmup acts- book readings- before the party girl emerged. (It's evidently not the world's best designed costume, as Maisy had to be led in and out, and a couple of times whacked her guests on the head with her nose!)

The kids played "Maisy says", there was a well-regulated photo-op for each family (Big Bro was nearly ejected by a bouncer because he had almost completely rubbed off his official entry stamp!) and there was cake and singing. What else could a mouse want for her birthday?

Big Bro of course wanted to invite Maisy to his birthday party, and I reminded him that he and Little Bro had of course had a Maisy-themed party last year (subtext- I am out of Maisy creative ideas!)

At the time I showed you the Maisy cakes:

I realized I didn't get around the showing the other Maisy themed components, mostly made using pictures from the Maisy website. First we had the invitations:

I printed pictures from the Maisy Fun Club onto coloured paper bags to use as lolly bags

and onto coloured paper which I cut into triangles and threaded on a string to make a banner.

The official party had Maisy balloons, but apart from those it was pretty easy to make our own Maisy-themed party from scratch.

Francis Drake: virtuous or villainous?

This year Big Bro has become increasingly interested in reading non-fiction books. Our local library has a large children's non-fiction section so I've been including a few books from there in our borrowings. A few weeks ago I found the picture-heavy Famous People Famous Lives: Francis Drake (Emma Fischel) in the history section. I couldn't remember much about Francis Drake other than he was a revered explorer, and the first Englishman to sail around the world. When Big Bro and I curled up to read, my view of Drake quickly changed- certainly what I had rembered was correct, but I hadn't remembered that Drake made his fortune plundering treasure from Spanish ships and waging war against the Armada, avenging similar piracy on behalf of the Spanish fleet. It wasn't the story of bravery and innovation that I was expecting, and I spent as much time explaining to Big Bro how Francis Drake's actions weren't very nice as I spent reading the book! Our next library books went along much safer ground: garbage collectors and the Wright brothers. And we certainly won't be reading about Henry VIII any time soon!

Dig, Dig, Diggers

Our neighbours had some excavating done a month or two ago, which sparked Little Bro's interest in obsession with diggers and heavy machinery. I dug out a few of Big Bro's old favourites, which Little Bro now can't get enough of. Top of his list are:

Dig, Dig, Digging by Margaret Mayo- this is a series of catchy short verses about diggers and other mostly-construction vehicles:

Diggers are good at dig, dig, digging...

Fire engines are good at race, race, racing...

Cranes are good at lift, lift, lifting....

They can work all day, and Little Bro could listen to it all day.

Dazzling Diggers by Ant Mitton and Tony Parker- this is part of a series of catchy rhymes about different vehicles- Flashing Fire Engines, Tremendous Tractors, Roaring Rockets etc. Some of the rhymes work better than others (Dazzling Diggers is my favourite) but each page of every book has enough heavy machinery action to keep Little Bro enthralled.

Don't tell the American Association for Pediatrics, but I've also been showing Little Bro YouTube clips of diggers. I can't say I find them exciting- diggers making holes, diggers loading trucks, diggers dredging rivers, diggers carrying people, diggers dancing..... but Little Bro loves them. So much so that I have cut back on DiggerTube when Little Bro started handing me the iPad with a hopeful "digger?" The most interesting thing the clips have taught me is that there is Digger Land in the UK where "families can drive heavy machinery". I guess that could be us one day.....!!!

Three scenes to make me smile :)

1. Big Bro husking the corn for our dinner on Saturday.

2. Little Bro reading by himself (even better, it was a book that I am thoroughly sick of reading to him!)

3. Big Bro reading to Little Bro (I Went Walking by Sue Williams, which is a lovely book.)