Tag! The Next Best Thing (In the Book World), UPDATED

One of my favorite Boston Globe columnists, Joanna Weiss, invited me to participate in a very cool thing called a "blog hop," where one author "tags" another and the person who's "It" fields questions about her next writing project.

Weiss -- who wrote the sharp and amusing satirical novel Milkshake, about the lunacy of the political and feminist politics surrounding breastfeeding -- is working on a new book about a culture clash involving an uber-rich Boston family and working/middle class Bostonians. You can see what she wrote about her work-in-progress Beantown book here.

Weiss has tagged yours truly to answer some questions about my work-in-progress novel. Thanks Joanna! Here goes:

What is the working title of your book?

The Mortified: A Novel About Over-Sharing.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

After years of reading personal blogs, I became increasingly surprised and intrigued by how many vivid, personal details bloggers revealed online about not just themselves, but about their friends and family members. The notion of what is or isn't considered "over-sharing" fascinated me.

What genre does you book fall under?

Contemporary fiction.
 
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

The main character, thirtysomething Maggie Kelly, who has an anonymous and profane personal blog, could be played by someone like Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson on Mad Men), Ginnifer Goodwin (Once Upon a Time, Big Love) or Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under), all of whom I think could deftly balance Maggie's emotional intensity with her desperate and darkly comedic side.

For Maggie's husband Michael -- a kind, career-focused guy who doesn't understand (and doesn't want to understand) what's causing his wife's lingering melancholy -- I picture anyone from James Marsden (30 Rock, 27 Dresses, The Notebook) and Zack Gilford (Matt Saracen from Friday Night Lights), to Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception, (500) Days of Summer) playing that role.

The third main character is Michael's mother Dorothy, who I describe as a militant Emily Post in sensible shoes. I could envision actresses such as Kelly Bishop (Gilmore Girls, Bunheads) or Mary Kay Place (Big Love) stepping into Dorothy's petite Easy Spirit loafers.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

The Mortified asks readers this question: What would you do if your spouse blogged about how you are a self-centered, unsupportive jerk, who happens to be lousy in bed, and then, after the blog went viral, your mother and your colleagues read the punishingly graphic commentary?

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I'm currently in talks with an indie publisher. (*fingers crossed*)

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

A year-and-a-half.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I'd liken The Mortified to something I might read from Jennifer Weiner who, like me, is a former newspaper reporter. Weiner's novel Then Came You, for example, explores the many complex and emotional sides of surrogacy, similar to the way I think The Mortified delves into the consequences of over-sharing online. Fellow New England resident Tom Perrotta's Little Children -- which addresses the loneliness of at-home parenthood coupled with suburban hysteria -- and The Abstinence Teacher -- that tackles the clash of sex education and religious values -- used similarly no-nonsense approaches to analyzing current social issues.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My mother made this off-handed comment about my writing one day, saying, "You used to be funnier." And she was right, at least when it came to my personal blog. Once my children got wise to this thing called the Internet and the handy little tool called Google, I started cordoning off vast quantities of would-be amusing anecdotes behind bright orange traffic cones in an "off-limits" zone. The result of choosing family privacy over material that would've made for good blog posts? Some of the best, funniest tales were banned from the blog, per my children's request.

But what was happening inside the homes of people who didn't seem to do much holding back on their blogs? Were their husbands or wives unhappy with having their sex lives dissected online? Did their children feel over-exposed? Did their families even know that they were being discussed on a blog? Hence . . . The Mortified, a book about a suburban woman who, to cope with her feelings of being oppressed by matrimony and maternity, started what she thought was an anonymous, brutally honest blog where she would vent her unpleasant feelings about her life's disappointments.

What else about your book might pique the readers' interest?

People who publish very personal information about their loved ones online -- whether on blogs or on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter -- might have a strong reaction to the question of what constitutes "over-sharing." While The Mortified chronicles incidents in various characters' pasts where they were embarrassed by something someone had said about them, the difference is that in the modern era, embarrassing accusations and remarks can now be detailed in blogs and social media. And they can go viral. Mortification via Google.

*Be sure to check out the author who I have tagged as she's working on her very own "Next Big Thing:" Suzanne Strempek Shea, the author of eight books, including five novels, such as Selling the Lite of Heaven, Hoopi Shoopi Donna and Becoming Finola. Suzanne and I both worked for the same newspaper in western Massachusetts back in the day. I can't wait to read her answers.*

UPDATE: Suzanne fielded the same questions where she filled us in on her new project, This is Paradise, a work of non-fiction that sounds positively gripping.

She also tagged writer Ann Hood, author of The Knitting Club and The Red Thread, as the next writer.

Image credits: Amazon.com, Jack Rowand/ABC.

So I Finally Finished 'The Hunger Games' Series ... 'Twas a Good Thing

When I started reading Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games trilogy about which my twin seventh graders raved, my daughter said she liked the first installment – The Hunger Games – the best and found the final book, Mockingjay, kind of depressing, albeit riveting. By contrast, her brother, who also preferred the first book, found Mockingjay's conclusion “realistic” and said he appreciated that it wasn’t all tied up neatly, with sunshine and rainbows and all that.

Upon completing the series myself this week, I have to agree with them that the first book was the superior of the three, when the freshness of the horrifying premise and the abject inhumane cruelty of the Games still shocked you. (Twenty-four children, ages 12-18, are selected and forced by the government to “play” a game where the last one living “wins” as the government forces them to compete to the death by intensifying the lethal conditions and broadcasting the entire competition on live TV.)

The second book, Catching Fire, was shocking anew in that the “winners” are forced by the government into more deadly competition, both as punishment for the populace for rebelling decades ago (to warn them about rebelling against the all-powerful, dictatorship) and for the purpose of entertaining those in the opulent, wasteful Capitol. Catching Fire had more of a political feel to it as it became clearer that certain participants in the Games were being manipulated by various groups for political purposes.

I read the final book, Mockingjay -- which was indeed the bleakest, my daughter was right -- as the Arab spring of revolt, which had grown somewhat quiet in recent weeks, roared back to life in Libya as rebels tried to take down the dictatorship that had been brutally savaging its own people. Seeing people rioting in the streets, hearing the automatic machine-gun fire during live newscasts, while TV journalists donned protective helmets and bulletproof vests as they beamed images around the globe provided the backdrop for my reading of Mockingjay, where the oppressed districts of the nation of Panem revolted against their violent, oppressive ruler, with the series’ heroine, Katniss Everdeen, serving as the living symbol of the revolution in the person of a 17-year-old girl.

The ending, which I won’t betray here, did as my son said, seem to fit in logically with the overall tone of the series: Dark and melancholy mixed with a dab of hopefulness that springs eternal even under the most precarious of circumstances. But, no matter how realistic it was in the context of the book, it was a downer.

After finishing Mockingjay – which I recommend for readers middle school and up – I've turned to something completely different, Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife, a fictionalized story about the life of a First Lady, based loosely on the real life of Laura Bush. Thus far I’m on page 248 (out of 555) and I’m a fan.

Have you read the Hunger Games series? If so, what did you think?

Image credits: Amazon.com.

Notes on Pop Culture/Politics: 'Grey's' Mixed Notes, Ferraro's Passing Ignored, Paging Mr. Darcy

Grey's Mixed Notes

So, about that Grey's Anatomy major music extravaganza . . . it received largely mixed reviews, like the mixed review I gave it the morning after it aired.

The scene above -- in which Callie was supposedly imagining all the Grey's couples gettin' flirty and sexy -- is an example of how this episode, which started out very powerfully (so much so that I was teary-eyed), went horribly awry. While Callie and her unborn baby were in life threatening situations and Meredith was severely depressed about her inability to have her own baby, she would NOT be singing gloriously about "running on sunshine" with a crazy-big smile on her face while kissing Derek I'm sorry. This scene was preposterous.

However my review wasn't all negative:

"Sara Ramirez, who plays Callie, sang the hell out of this episode. She has a lovely voice. She energetically emoted. She underplayed it when the song called for quiet grace. And that opening scene where Callie was having an out-of-body experience and singing as she was brought to Seattle Grace and wheeled into the OR for the first time, that was mighty powerful.

Chyler Leigh (Lexie) and Chandra Wilson (Bailey) also sang exceptionally well throughout."

Otherwise . . . too. Much. Singing.

Media Coverage: Ferraro vs Taylor

Following on the heels of last week’s post about the disparity of the media coverage allotted to the deaths of screen icon Elizabeth Taylor and political trailblazer Geraldine Ferraro, I wrote a column which contains some hard numbers to back up my assertion that Taylor received loads more news coverage than did the first woman vice presidential nominee for a major political party, someone who the likes of Hillary Clinton and Madeline Albright said was a role model for them.


The most dispiriting part of the piece was this quote that I found from a National Journal writer who, after comparing the  media attention these two women received after their deaths, surmised, “. . . [A]s the media space afforded Elizabeth Taylor’s and Ferraro’s obituaries attested . . . society still values female sex symbols more than female leaders.”

Paging Mr. Darcy

I have an embarrassing confession to make: I've never read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. I know, shocking, isn't it?

But seeing as though I've been on a classics binge lately -- A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Eyre -- I started Pride and Prejudice over the weekend and am bringing with me high hopes that this classic will deeply impress me. I hope I won't be disappointed.

In the meantime, as far as my pet project of reading the entire, seven-book Harry Potter series aloud to my youngest son, I've started writing about the Harry Potter Reading Out Loud Project on my lifestyle/parenting blog. Thus far, between myself and my husband, we've read 2,750 pages to our now-9-year-old son and just concluded Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

To keep tabs on our reading progress, I made a special blog page where I list on what page we left off and what was going on when we closed the book. We've just started the beginning of the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and are still on the part where the U.K. Prime Minister is having a disturbing conversation with the Minister of Magic.

Image credit: Amazon.com.

That's Right, I'm Back . . . and Winning (Even Without the Tiger Blood)

Charlie Sheen's Winning Recipes from Charlie Sheen

I’ve returned from my self-imposed blogging break fresh and ready to go and, still, frankly, in awe of the odd specter that is now Charlie Sheen, an irresistible car wreck from which I, and scores of others, cannot help but watch, no matter how dirty you feel after you've watched him (or followed him on Twitter).

I’ve finished editing my top secret manuscript (Winning! . . . I’ve been invoking the self-proclaimed warlock’s exclamation pretty frequently, much to my own personal dismay and shame) and have dispatched it to some folks who I trust to tell me whether they think it’s publishable or total bunk. With my manuscript out of my hands for the time being, I’m back to the business of writing about all things pop culture and politics here on this blog . . .

Big Love’s Almost Over

I'm going to start with the second-to-last episode of Big Love. As far as I'm concerned, the end can't come soon enough as I've now lost my faith in the show's writers. Don't get me wrong, I used to call Big Love one of my favorite shows. I was fascinated by its unique twist on the suburban family and on the subject of what it means to be a wife and a husband, particularly when there's more than one wife in the picture. I thought the show was at its best when it had a smaller, home-based focus and examined the relationships between people and what happens when your vision of what makes a family conflicts with the view held by society.

Then the Big Love writers got bigger, wilder storylines in their minds. And they just couldn't help themselves. They started writing more and more eccentric, out-there stories, trying to (artificially) amp up the tension more and more, pour on the violence and the insanity until it got to the point last season when it was just ridiculous.

I had hopes that this season would improve. It started off promisingly, but, as with last season, it's gone to far afield and my expectations for the series finale are pretty darned low right about now, which is a damned shame. (I did a more thorough episode review on CliqueClack TV.)

Any Big Love fans in the house? What have you thought about its last season? What do you want to see in the finale?



Now Reading . . . Jane Eyre

During my blogging break I finally finished reading A Tale of Two Cities for the very first time. I slugged through the first 30 or so pages, impatient for the story to seize me in its grasp, when it, at last, become entertaining. The twists and turns that it took came as a surprise to me and now I finally get all those “Madame Defarge” references people have made in political contexts. They’re not complimentary.

Completing the Dickens classic made me hunger for another classic. Seeing the preview for the latest cinematic incarnation of Jane Eyre made my selection for me. When I was but an ungainly, awkward, too-tall of a junior high gal, I read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre multiple times over. But since that was a very long time ago, I realized, once I started reading Jane Eyre, that I’d forgotten 90 percent of what happened in the book.

As I waded through the first 60 pages, I was taken by how many similarities there were between the 10-year-old orphaned Jane – unloved tortured, abused (physically and emotionally) by her aunt and cousins, made to watch while her cousins celebrated holidays and open presents while she was excluded – and Harry Potter. It was eerie. (I’ve got Harry Potter on the brain because my husband and I are still reading the J.K. Rowling series out loud to our 9-year-old son. We’re almost done with the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.) Harry too was an orphan, treated abysmally by the Dursleys, reared by them to think he was wicked and bad, and, in the human world, he too was poor, though his parents had money in the wizarding world. However, I’m sure, if I have any shred of memories left from my previous readings of Jane Eyre, that the similarities between Jane and Harry will end shortly as I continue reading.

It's good to be back!

Unlike Most, I Didn't Like 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo'

It’s been impossible to not take notice of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. The books have been everywhere with their unusual covers wrapped around what promises to be a compelling tale featuring a butt-kicking leading character in the mysterious Lisbeth Salander. My parents read the first book. My sister-in-law bought it too. A local book club designated it as a monthly selection. The books were turned into films. So, several months ago, I thought I’d give it a whirl.

In fact, you might’ve noticed that in my “Currently Reading” tab on the right-hand column of this blog, the image of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had been sitting there for months. And months. Usually it doesn’t take me months to get through a book, unless of course, I’m having trouble getting through it. Such was the case with this book. Damn did it disappoint me. It completely failed to grab me by my shirt collar and demand that I ignore everything else and read it. (The last time a book did this to me was when I re-read The Great Gatsby last year and couldn’t stop reading.)

As I plodded 100 pages into Tattoo, I was so thoroughly bored that I kept wondering what all the fuss was about. Usually, I love books about reporters, being a former newspaper scribe myself, but with this one -- about a disgraced investigative journalist trying to solve a mystery and a computer hacker/investigator who teamed up with him -- I was struggling to keep my eyes open.

When there finally was some action, I was distinctly underwhelmed. The only reason I stuck with it – other than to find out what actually did happen to Harriet Vanger – was because I wanted to see why this series of book is omnipresent in pop culture right now. Now that I’ve gotten to the end – finished it when I was feeling a bit better as I battled with the flu germs which were harassing me – I still don’t understand why this book is such a hit. (I can’t speak for the other two books – The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – since I haven’t read them and doubt that I ever will.)

Then I read this post from Entertainment Weekly’s Henry Goldblatt who wrote a wry commentary about the phenomenon of the series saying:

“I hate The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. To many, that is the equivalent of saying, ‘I kick puppies,’ or ‘I choke babies,’ or ‘American Idol is the best show in the history of television.’ Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s crime trilogy about crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his hacker lover/pal Lisbeth, in my view, is poorly written, ridiculously plotted and (yawn!) incredibly tedious.”


Anyone else out there find the Tattoo book didn’t live up to the hype?

In the meantime, I’ve started a classic which I’ve never read and, for some reason, think it’s now time that I do: Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.
I’m also toying with the idea of tackling a whole bunch of classics which I’ve never read this year, or ones which I read in high school and didn’t fully comprehend at the time, but haven’t wholly bought into the idea.

Image credits: Entertainment Weekly and Audio Editions.

Literary Mama Reviews 'Suburban Mom'

The brainy literary web site for mother's, Literary Mama, just released a lengthy review of my book, A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum, my collection of humor columns which inspired this blog.

Reviewer Heather Hudson wrote:

"Writing about challenges with children is tougher than it seems. Ignore the universality of a situation and the stories become self-indulgent and better suited to the family scrapbook. Go too deep and you risk alienating readers who are simply looking for a little escape and camaraderie over a cup of coffee. There is a fine balance.

One writer who comes close to finding the right mix of angst and humor is Meredith O'Brien. In her book, A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum, a collection of columns written when she was raising three children (including twins) under five, she provides quick-and-dirty snapshots into her efforts to parent conscientiously through incessant demands

. . . In this collection, O'Brien adroitly handles the balance between relating what could have been tedious anecdotes about the specific frustrations and joys that come with three young children and offering a universal message. With essay titles like 'The Scrapbooking Cult' and 'To Yell, Perchance to Scream,' it's easy to picture O'Brien as one of your funniest friends, the one who can make you laugh through your tears and shore you up with the all-important validation that you're not alone."

Image credit: Literary Mama.

Enough Titles for a 'Mad Men' Book Club?

After watching the latest episode of Mad Men, I think it would be an interesting project to put together a list of titles of books that are referenced on the show, the way folks do with Lost.

Mad Men is so tightly crafted that certainly, if a book is featured (so that you can read the title), or characters mention it, it must have some sort of significance to the greater plot, right? Or maybe I'm reading too much into these things. Anyway . . .

During "The Jet Set" episode, the William Faulkner novel The Sound and The Fury received some prominent attention. Having not read it (yes, I'm hanging my head in shame), I looked it up online and came across this synopsis from C-SPAN as part of its American Writers series:

"Set in Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, Miss., in the early 20th century, the novel describes the decay and fall of the aristocratic Compson family, and, implicitly, of an entire social order, from four different points of view."

Hmm. Sound like it could be applied to the decay and fall of the folks at Sterling Cooper? At Don Draper's life?

Earlier this season, Betty Draper was seen reading, Ship of Fools, by Katherine Anne Porter. An excerpt from eNotes says of the book about an ocean voyage:

"Ship of Fools is notable for its pessimistic view of the human condition. In particular, the Germans are portrayed in a harshly negative light. They are mostly anti-Semitic and contemptuous of races other than their own, with an arrogant sense of their own superiority. Critics have remarked on how accurately Porter conveyed the German mentality on the eve of the rise of Nazism. However, the other characters, with few exceptions, are unsavory also. The one Jew on the ship is filled with hatred for all Gentiles; the Spanish, who are members of a dancing troupe, are presented as amoral thieves, pimps and prostitutes. There is little genuine human love present in the novel, although there is much comedy and satire."

In season two's premiere, Don read and then mailed a book of poems, Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara to someone. At the end of the episode, you hear Don's voice-over reading a part of the poem, "Mayakovsky" (from National Post):

"Now I am quietly waiting
for the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is gray and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just gray.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do
perhaps I am myself again."

In season one, Don was seen reading Leon Uris' Exodus (in the primo episode "Babylon") and The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe. In July, New York Magazine ran a piece examining what books were pictured on Don Draper's bookshelf, including The Hidden Persuaders and Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, although I don't recall any scenes of any characters reading those books.

If you put all these titles together, you could form a reading log for a Mad Men book club. Not only could you analyze the books, you could analyze them for how they apply (or don't apply) to the themes and characters in Mad Men.

Any titles I missed? Please add them in the comments section below. If I get a comprehensive list, I may indeed start a Mad Men book club.

Four for Friday: Family Melodrama Edition (A Loose Tooth, Daddy School, Fashion Sense and Potter Mania)

Item #1: Fang No More

For weeks, the Youngest Boy insisted on letting his second loose tooth jut forward in the bottom his mouth as his adult tooth was rising up through the gums behind it, inching the baby tooth outward a little more each day. The discomfort caused him to stop eating anything with a discernible crunch, making feeding the child more than the challenge it is under normal conditions. When he would finally agree to eat, he would tilt his head to the side and eat out of one corner of his mouth, leaving what looked like a permanent streak of dried food remnants curling around the left side of his face. Despite parental offerings to “ease” the tooth from its irritating position – his uncle and his grandfather helpfully offered string-and-doorknob solutions -- he refused intervention.

So everyone, including him, began jokingly referring to him as Fang . . . until the tooth mercifully fell out of his mouth. (There was genuine concern that it was so loose that he’d swallow it in his sleep, thereby denying him the opportunity to put it under his pillow for the Tooth Fairy so he could get a dollar for his “money collection,” as he calls it.)

However as soon as the tooth came out, the Youngest Boy demanded that it return to its rightful place. As the 6-year-old fled the room sobbing, the Eldest Boy asked me if he could touch the tooth, to which I said, “No,” before trying to soothe He-Who-Hath-the-Bloody-Mouth. When the Youngest Boy calmed down, we returned to the kitchen only to find the Eldest Boy standing very still. “I lost the tooth,” he said, which sent his younger brother into another fit and provoked my loud lamentations about kids who don’t listen to me, which, in turn, sent the Eldest Boy out of the room, sobbing.

I did find the tooth, although it took the Youngest Boy two days to come to terms with the loss. (He initially told us he wanted to keep his tooth and insisted we hide it from the Tooth Fairy.) Finally, he agreed to place it under his pillow. The following morning, he got his dollar, thus concluding another in a string of recent, family melodramas.

Item #2: Daddy School

For once, I was not the subject of the children’s ire for daring to do something as irrational as refusing their requests to watch television for 17 consecutive hours, to play videogames until their eyeballs melted or to subsist on nothing more than ginger ale, frozen waffles and ice cream.

While The Spouse was having an argument with the Youngest Boy the other day – I think the dispute was over whether the child needed to wear a coat in 30-degree weather, but many of the pediatric arguments tend to blur together so I can’t be sure – I overheard the boy yell, “You’re the worst daddy in the world! You need to go to grown-up school to learn how to be a good dad!”

I laughed. Guffawed, actually. Out loud. Perhaps a bit too loudly.

After the child went outside to play, The Spouse said to me, “If I have to go to parenting classes, you’re coming with me.”

Item #3: In Today, Out Tomorrow

It seems like just a few years ago when The Girl refused to wear anything that wasn’t pink or some form of a dress or a skirt. Looking inside of her dresser drawers in those days was like looking into the eye of a Pepto-Bismol hurricane.

Not so anymore.

Nowadays, the 9-year-old is into sporty-gal chic, meaning absolutely nothing in pink, nothing frilly, no skirts and no dresses. She prefers bold, primary colors in hues of blue, red or green. I discovered how vehement she actually was about her new fashion preferences when we were getting ready to take The Spouse out to a nice dinner to celebrate a Milestone Birthday and I told her she couldn’t wear jeans. Her response was to vigorously stomp, yell and fall to the floor in abject horror. Later, when I demanded she accompany me to her room to make a more appropriate clothing choice and found some red pants and a fluffy sweater (which I couldn’t get her to stop wearing last year), she yelled, “You’re just trying to make me look fancy!”

In the meantime, the Youngest Son was absolutely blissful as he eagerly donned khakis, a button-down shirt, a tie and a sweater vest, so he could look just like his favorite person in the whole wide world, the guy who he said needed to take parenting classes.

Item #4: Make Way for Potter

My third graders are thrilled that I’ve decided to read the Harry Potter series. (They’re only on their 47th time through all seven books.) I introduced them to the books last summer and since then, they’ve been utterly hooked. In fact, it’s been painfully difficult to try to get my 9-year-old son to read anything other than a Potter book because, as he says, “There’s nothing else I like as much as these.”

Only problem is, the kids are extremely impatient with the pace of my reading. They don’t get that I can’t spend every waking moment reading for pleasure. When I explain that I have things to which I must attend such as work, reading for work, household chores, preparing them meals and sleeping, they look at me quizzically, as if I were speaking in a foreign tongue. And when they excitedly ask me to tell them at what exact scene I left off and I say I can’t remember, they look crestfallen.

For the record, I’m on the second book, but I’ve got a heap of work this weekend, so the likelihood that I’ll get to the book is slim. But try telling that to the kids. They think I’m just made of time.

An Entirely Different Kind of Candidate

One day removed from Super-Duper Tuesday, I came across this post from Universal Hub which reminded me of one of my absolute favorite children’s books, “Duck for President," which contains wonderful lessons for kids.

Replete with historical references which make grown-ups reading the book chuckle (Duck strikes JFK-esque and Nixonian iconic poses, quotes FDR and Lincoln, and plays the saxophone on a late night comedy show like a former president who shall remain nameless), the book follows a duck who lives on a farm and decides he doesn’t think that this dude, Farmer Brown, should remain in charge. In his own quest for Change (with a capital “C”), Duck organizes an election on the farm and makes sure to help all the farm animals register to vote.

Once Duck wins the farm election, he quickly becomes bored with the job. So he decides to run for governor, wins, becomes bored, runs for president, wins, becomes bored by that gig and then winds up at the farm again . . . to write his memoirs.

Classic.

(Image from Scholastic.)