Children's Books, Music, and Language

"There is in men and women a motivation stronger even than love or hatred or fear. It is that of being interested - in a body of knowledge, in a problem, in a hobby, in tomorrow's newspaper." (Arthur Koestler, The New York Times Book Review, March 15, 2009)

Children's Best Sellers

Hip Hop Speaks To Children - Nikki Giovanni; "A celebration of poetry with a beat; includes a CD"

Big Words For Little People - Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell; "A boisterous family improves its vocabulary, and thus its relationships"

The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart and Carson Ellis; "Gifted kids on a mission (ages 9-12)" My wife recommends reading this instead of Life of Pi from "My Book Club" post (2/20/09) to be followed up on in April. That'll work because I can't find the Life of Pi that I thought I had, but we own The Mysterious Benedict Society. So listen up, anyone who wants to join me in discussing a book a month, this is your new assignment.

Similarly Themed Books For Grown-Ups:

The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music - Ben Ratliff; "will be a permanent part of learning how to listen inside the musicians playing"

Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English - John McWhorter; "He points out that English has what he calls 'kinks' in its grammar, qualities that are not shared by any of its relatives in the Germanic family of languages, but which do exist in a number of the Celtic ones, and questions why it is that these Celtic influences on English have gone unnoticed"

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver; "The novelist and her family spend a year eating homegrown or local food"

I can't believe that there are five "vampires in school" series on best seller lists right now: Twilight, House of Night, Vampire Diaries, Night World, and Vampire Academy. Was "magic in schools" this bad during Harry Potter? I remember Eragon and Levin Thumps, but were there really that many others? Changing subjects, I've added "my reading lists compiled" to the right.