The Horrible Beauty: Get In Trouble today

There's nothing like an election season to turn my thoughts to horror. Instinctively, I load up on horror movies and fiction to dull the truly ugly realities of the American political system.*

So, as the elections rage on, I've watched everything from Z-Nation (zombies killed with giant wheel of cheese) to the quietly paced, theologically-delving, Colonial American The Witch to the contemporary Irish new-to-a-weird-rural-village, The Hallow. I've been reading lots of extremely short stories to find addictive little bits to use in my fall classes, so I was quite intrigued when someone referenced Kelly Link's short story collection Get In Trouble.

I read the entire collection in less than 24 hours- which, with three young kids, means giving up my steady nighttime commitment of Netflix and shirking even more household duties than normal.

As a horror story reader, I love experiencing the story unfolding unspoiled before me-- so I will stick to generalities.

I loved Link's old-school perspective which expertly wields the unseen, the looming, and the quite-possibly-only-imagined.  Kelly Link reminds me of the mid-century British writer John Wyndham- who wrote the books behind Village of the Damned (The Midwich Cuckoos) and 28 Days Later (Day of the Triffids)-- among others.

Kelly Link is a skilled world-builder. Her stories bear no consistent locale, time period, or reality. This collection includes an on-location ghost-hunting reality show in Florida swampland, contemporary Appalachia, a future where bored children of the uber-wealthy commission full-scale pyramid tombs, a colonizing mission to Mars, and two of the world's most logical horror settings-- high school and hometown reunions. With a beautiful playfulness, Link sometimes allows the details of one fantastic place to appear in another, slightly-related story. Like the breaking of the fourth wall in film, these details play with the form and the medium.

Link's fiction gets in your head and under your skin without resorting to the merely sensational and repulsive. It lurks and insinuates making shadows shift in even the brightest landscapes.

Link's detail is measured- not overreaching, but fully drawn- and exacting- leaving jeweled details that rewards the observant reader.

The opening story, "The Summer People," immediately sent up red flags with me. Its Appalachian setting with poor characters and vernacular speech took the story toward a place where most writers should never go. I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the end of the first story-- much less the second story, but Link didn't allow her story to be consumed by stereotypes. All my trepidation dissipated when the too-familiar elements reassembled into a new nightmare carefully wrought from ancient lore.

All but one of Link's stories clearly center around young female characters, but they're not lambs waiting for the slaughter (or salvation). These wily women carve their own destinies. It's refreshing- even though the charater's outcomes vary wildly.

For a tiny taste of the stories:  "I Can See Right Through You" involves a ghost hunting reality show at the site of the mysterious 1974 disappearance of twenty-two nudists. "Secret Identity" reveals side-by-side hotel conventions of superheroes and dentists, a 15-year-old girl who finds her own yearning and authenticity in a MMORPG, and figuring out who you are when you just don't fit anywhere.

"The Valley of the Girls" takes readers to a world where the profoundly wealthy in a neo-Egyptian trend build competing pyramids for their teenage children."Origin Story" makes sly references to superhero tropes introduced in "Secret Identity," but is a stand-alone tale with entirely different motives. "Two Houses" involves campfire storytelling aboard a exploratory spaceship headed to the nearest Goldilocks planet.

The book has nine stories in all, and I loved each one. If you like horror and seeing new stories borne from old ones, this book is for you.

To which fantastic worlds are you escaping?

If you want to see what I'm reading, friend me on Goodreads.

*Please note: I'm discouraged, but not politically disengaged. To the contrary, I'm politically active year-round- so much that my state house representative has blocked me on Twitter. I'm just so disappointed to see my fellow citizens with convictions not vote or others voting without a thought for the long-term implications. I love public education and public libraries. We all need to vote to protect these things-- they are increasingly endangered by for-profit interests.

***Baby Toolkit is an almost decade-long conversation between some geeky Midwestern parents and other netizens. We love and talk games and gaming communities at our Great Big Table podcast. We're so unaffiliated with the publishers of Get in Trouble that the copy we read came from our AWESOME local library, but we are Amazon affiliates-- so if you buy anything through our Amazon links, a small portion of the sale comes back to us where it might be spent on domain names, an increasingly feeble DSL connection, or world domination. Thanks for reading. We love you.

The Case of the Tired Novel: On revisiting favorite childhood books

When we first had kids, I imagined our family enjoying together many of the books from my childhood.

In my grandma's basement, green-covered Nancy Drews shared a shelf with the Hardy Boys. Time-crisp dust jackets broke at the creases as if they could no longer contain the adventures of 1950s and '60s kids' pulp. The Bobbsey Twins cheerfully solved crimes while hero dogs saved hapless humans time and time again. I don't think there was any book considered a classic on those shelves. My brother and I read them at every opportunity. They may not have been Choose-Your-Own-Adventures, but I marveled at sixteen-year-old Nancy's blue roadster, keen eye and seemingly limitless freedom.

At my small country grade school, the classics stood shoulder-to-shoulder waiting to fill any unoccupied student minute. Twain and Dickens were some of my favorites. These school's books also came from the years preceding mass market paperbacks.

Books seemed ageless. Of course I felt the distance of the years when reading, but the stories still breathed.

Even after weeding out the obvious twaddle, many books I loved did not stand up to the years when I tried to read them with our kids. And a few that they do like, I now actively dislike.

At present, the kids are obsessed with Encyclopedia Brown audiobooks. We listen to them in the car, the kids rapt in the riddles while Jim and I quietly snark about Idaville being the worst town in America. Despite a high case closure rate, crime is unusually high in Idaville. A known public menace is allowed to keep creating problems with no real consequences. Gambling and theft are high. People hide out from thugs. And worst of all, the police chief relies on his child to solve the crimes.

Often the cases are solved by details that are circumstantial at best. When Encyclopedia "proves" Bugs Meany is cheating a younger boy, Encyclopedia declares a letter and check forgeries because they are dated July 31st. While this may have been grand detective work in my childhood perception, an erroneously dated check now seems less like a smoking gun and more like a common paperwork error.

While social changes may make these old books seem outmoded, I'm becoming convinced that the literature of my childhood was inferior. It may have been the literary equivalent of the buddy parent: pandering and lacking complexity.

When I listen to Encyclopedia Brown with my kids, the books operate on a surface level. The heroes don't fear anything, and there's no moral complexity. Encyclopedia pronounces a verdict that everyone accepts no matter how thin the premise. The stories have all the depth and emotional authenticity of a Scooby-Doo episode.

That approach may have been enough when I was a kid, but there are so many better offerings today. I am convinced that children's literature has improved. It respects the young reader with complexity and depth in the stories and their emotions.

As a parent, I really appreciate this shift. I remember reading stories to try and understand the world around me- particularly the parts that adults didn't discuss. When the stories were preachy, prescriptive cautionary tales, they become predictable, relatively worthless and most offensively, not fun.

Accepting the limitations of my childhood favorites allows us to discover together the rich, new world of children's stories. Every parent who once loved Encyclopedia Brown should take the opportunity to Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library alongside their kids.

This BAD summer, we'll discuss some of our other new and old family favorites.

Have you revisited your favorites?

How have your favorite books aged?

***Baby Toolkit is a tale told by a Midwestern gaming family, full of books and adventures, signifying something. We just don't know what. We are Amazon affiliates, so a small portion of purchases made through our links goes to pay for our domain name and general upkeep. Be sure to check out our gaming podcast at GreatBigTable.com.

Our BAD summer begins!

This rainy leftover-cake-for-breakfast morning* is the dawn of the kids' and I's summer together.

Our chaos-strewn house already looks like it was invaded by warring troops of toy and paper hoarding monkeys. We have a lot of work to make it a mere shambles again.

I couldn't be more excited. This summer holds so much potential, so much opportunity.

The kids and I decided to go for a BAD summer this year: book a day. We're going to try to read at least one book together every day. Rogue is four and Scout is a new reader, so we're setting our goal of one a day in the field of picture books. We're also planning on reading longer books aloud together throughout the week. Ranger and I will each be reading books at least 15 minutes a day every day.

Jim and I started reading chapter books aloud with the kids some evenings at dinner. There is magic in sharing the experience of books like Elise Broach's great beetle adventure Masterpiece and Doreen Cronin's retired rescue dog J.J. Tully mysteries The Trouble With Chickens, The Legend of Diamond Lil, and The Chicken Squad. As I looked up these titles, I found that both Broach and Cronin have extended these wonderful series with new titles. The kids ran into to look and we called Jim at work to tell him. The books are that good.

This summer we plan to cook, play, game, be creative, visit friends, make our home welcoming for visitors, laugh, dance, game, dream, listen to music, crack jokes,explore, learn, blow bubbles, share, help where we can, be part of our neighborhood and community, picnic, and recharge our souls.

Ranger and I will both be writing about the BAD books we find notable. I'm so excited that he's about to start writing here.

What should we be reading and doing?
What things are you planning?

May your summer be a wonderful adventure, friends!


*Even with leftover lemon cake available, the girls chose Cheerios. Ranger on the other hand, stumbled out of his room asking about the cake.

**Baby Toolkit is the ongoing story of a Midwestern family on the adventure that is life. We are astronauts on spaceship Earth taking in the vast wonder of the universe. We are also Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase after clicking through our links, a tiny bit of the proceeds become resources for future Jones endeavors. Check out our board game podcast at GreatBigTable.com.

Recommended Reading: Thinking about community with Dean Koontz's The City

During the early '90s, in a Blockbuster Video, I first met Dean Koontz's storytelling. Jim and I rented a videocassette of The Servants of Twilight. The movie was a 1991 adaption of Dean Koontz's novel Twilight originally published under his pseudonym Leigh Nichols (I know, a bestselling book named Twilight published in 1984?).

The movie was superb, but it didn't launch me into Koontz readership. Honestly, I have yet to read that specific title.

Decades later, faced with an anxiety-filled drive to a children's hospital with my infant (our first trip), I stood in the library audiobook stacks on the phone with my brother.

"So what will keep me transfixed and awake?' I asked.

And my brother introduced me to Odd Thomas, a golden-hearted, philosopher fry cook with the strange burden of seeing the deceased. While the "seeing the dead" part seemed a little Sixth Sense, my brother assured me the books were top notch.

They were so good that I listened to the remaining discs on my laptop because I didn't want to wait for the ride home. Odd's social commentary is incisive and hilarious. That first book was good company during the long hours of baby holding and bedside nights.

My brother and I shared Odd Thomas news (new book! movie! movie not available in the US! new book! movie finally released here!) and interviews with Koontz as we found them.

While it probably should not be a surprise that a horror writer might have mystical and supernatural beliefs, I found Koontz's social perspective (informed by his religious beliefs and experiences) to be refreshingly generous and positive. In his Odd Thomas series, the hero is nothing without the support and friendship of communities and good citizens.

Koontz's newest release, The City: A Novel strikes me more as suspenseful literary fiction than his typical genres of horror and suspense. A young boy, a third-generation musician with prodigious talent, works to understand and survive a childhood in dangerous urban social upheaval of the 1970s.

As his parents' marriage dissolves, his father's aggression and anger toward his mother make Jonah a highly sought after pawn in his father's schemes to hurt his mother.

As in other Koontz stories, acquaintances and strangers rise to become friends and allies in the struggle against a truly malicious minority. Koontz's characters engage the reader immediately and deeply. At one point while I was reading the book on my tablet, Jim asked me "What's happening? Are you upset?" because I looked stricken (and he thought I was reading something in my email that was deeply bad news).

As young Jonah Kirk comes to age and understanding, he hears, as we do in real life, some incredible observations from mentors and friends on how the world works and how each person can improve things. As in the classics, some of these passages offer such clarity that they are easily adopted into a reader's understanding of the world.

If you're looking for a great summer read that makes the days look a little brighter, check out Dean Koontz's The City.

What fiction brightens your summer?

***Baby Toolkit is the commonplace commentary of  some geek parents navigating Zeitgeist (though only one of us has read this book). We received a free advance reader ebook on loan from Bantam, but nothing more. I only review a fraction of the advance copies I read, so you can trust that I strongly reacted to a book if I took the time to write about it). We are Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase through our Amazon links, we'll get a small percentage of purchases made that we put back into the blog or our board game podcast (greatbigtable.com). Most recently we replaced a six year-old desktop computer with a new tower when the motherboard failed. Thanks!

The Good Life for Less: A Happiness Upgrade

Jim and I began our married lives in austerity. We were students with time left on our degrees and meager student jobs to augment parental support.

Our first anniversary is remembered as the Ben & Jerry's milkshake anniversary. Milkshake- not milkshakes.

Those early days of rice and potatoes left us reading a lot of budgeting (and healthy eating) books (trust me, you pay later for a cheap all-starch diet).

I met Amy Allen Clark in 2008 at a mom blogger event. In a connecting flight back to the Midwest, Amy and I talked about our families- especially about adding a second child (as I was pregnant with Scout). Amy's lively spirit and positivity are contagious. I was sorry when I had to run (neither figuratively nor gracefully) for my next flight.

Since that time, I've faithfully read Amy's blogs at Mom Advice. Amy's elegantly simple solutions to household issues, like using a backwards daybed with a newly independent sleeper, have shaped my home. Her Notebook posts offer a maven's eye-view of great recent blog recipes, patterns and projects- and are one of the highlights of my feed reader.

When her publisher (Perigee, an imprint of Penguin) offered me a chance to read her new book The Good Life for Less: Giving Your Family Great Meals, Good Times, and a Happy Home on a Budget, I was excited to see Amy's take on the seemingly-familiar world of budget living.

The matter of finances is timely for our family. As we've worked to make shrinking ends meet (growing medical expenses and a few annual payroll freezes), I've been resisting the need to rethink our financial lives. Revisiting our budget with new constraints seemed more like my personal failure than anything else.

The text radiates Amy's warm energy. As I read the stories of Amy's family's journey to frugality, I kept stumbling into great memories from my own childhood. Rather than looking toward a slightly grave new austerity, I found myself excited to launch into a life that celebrates the riches already abundant in my life.

Without using the term, Amy's book embodies many Simple Living philosophies. The Good Life for Less reminded me of sitting together with my parents and brother eating homemade fudge and popcorn as we watched a favorite movie on broadcast television. Her family's Friday pizza nights made me think fondly of similar evenings in high school were I regularly attended my buddy's weekly family's pizza night and drank copious amounts of sweet tea while we played cards afterwards. Simple, wonderful times.

Amy includes many great budget-friendly recipes that I wish we'd had back in the early days of our marriage. Her homemade chai mix is not only a great gift option, but offers one of my favorite indulgences at a great value.

It was also great to read the book while feeling swamped by the holidays. Like many parents, I struggle about how much to get my kids. Her family's current formula of "Something you want, something you need, something to wear, and something to read" is exactly the gift-giving framework I have been searching for. This formula allows for creativity, utility and wish-granting tailored to each member of the family.

There are so many parts of the book I could excerpt here as simple tips (because it is brimming with brilliance), but Amy's stories set mental gears spinning. With renewed creativity and joy, I'm identifying and capitalizing on those simple systems and moments that bring happiness and satisfaction to my family. A shocking number of those life upgrades come at no expense.

***Baby Toolkit is the ongoing story of two geek parents in the Midwest. I do know Amy Allen Clark, but have no financial relationship with her (other than the fiscal benefits of reading her blog and book) nor her publishers. We are Amazon affiliates, so a small portion of purchases made through our Amazon links helps support our blogging and podcasting (www.greatbigtable.com) efforts. Thanks!

Recommended Reading: Some Favorites from 2012*

Should a genie offer me a bonus hour for every day, I would make lots of plans and promises for that time. And then I will spend it reading. Actually, I wouldn't because literature clearly teaches never to trust genies.

I love books and stories. My Twitter feed is usually peppered with current reads, new recommendations from friends, and other book talk. I neglect Pinterest and totally abandoned Facebook, but I usually read my daily notifications from Goodreads.

While I have tried to limit my bookish chatter to kids' books and relevant parenting titles, sometimes I can't restrain myself.

So, please forgive me as I shoehorn in a few favorite reads from this year under the guise of holiday shopping.

The Book My Dad and I Agree On:
Don't Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman
Buck Schatz, a former police detective, goes on the hunt for a Nazi war criminal. Buck has personal reasons to bring the man to justice, but others are searching for the fugitive's rumored fortune in gold. Did I mention that both men are now octogenarians?

Buck's cutting and unvarnished opinions (which he considers the privilege of old age) made my septuagenarian dad laugh so hard that my brother immediately read the book. Then he called me and insisted that I read it too.

We are all waiting for Friedman's next release.

The Book I Immediately Bought My Brother (After Reading a Library Copy):
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
A Western noir. Modern sensibilities, sibling conflict and affinity, and dialogue so bewitching that I wanted to every word of it aloud to bystanders.

Talented assassins Eli and Charlie Sisters pursue an intended victim to remote Western outposts. After a strange night in a mostly abandoned cabin, Eli starts considering their future.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

The Book I Stole from Jim's To-Read Pile -or-
The Best Dystopian Novel Explaining the Eighties Geek Zeitgeist:
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
If you can remember being really excited about getting an Apple II to display your name or you ever programmed onto an audio cassette, this book will speak to you. I have long thought that the young geeks and gamers of the eighties were conferred a special blessing by history.

This novel about our nation gone wrong (via global warming, hyper-commercialization, and other present-day headlines) offers insight into that strange decade and those who came of age during it. While it's a great dystopian novel for any geek, Eighties geeks may find it as generation-affirming as the Goonies was back in 1985.

The Quirky Book I Made Everyone Read
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
The Fangs specialize in family drama. Years of creating awkward scenes as spontaneous performance art have left the siblings known to the world as Child A and Child B with some serious emotional baggage.

Annie, now famous for her acting (and some unfortunate internet memes) and Buster, an entertainment journalist specializing in thrill-seeking exploits, avoid their parents at all costs. Until Buster finds himself injured and unemployed and Annie's career publicly implodes. Then their parents vanish leaving behind only a bloody van at an out-of-state rest park.

The Book That Carried Me Away
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Make sure everyone is well fed before you crack the covers of this one.

A grudge-match competition between two aging magicians results in a circus unlike any other.


My Geeky Beach Read Recommendation
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
One of my dearest friends asked me for a book to read while on the beach in Jamaica. She didn't really get into reading until Harry Potter, so I sent her back to this wonderful book behind the wonderful film of the same title.

Even if you have seen the movie a million times, the book is not to be missed.

My Favorite Geek Love Story
Bellwether by Connie Willis
Sheep and the slings and arrows of corporate culture. The wry humor in this slim little novel just captured my heart entirely.

A trend-hunter working in an ever-expanding bureaucracy tries to find out why women bobbed their hair.

Short Stories with Strange Sensibilities
Sorry Please Thank You by Charles Yu
Delightfully unexpected stories that I just wanted to savor. Even though I read the book month ago, just this weekend Jim practically shouted "I'm reading that now," when I flipped open a library copy he checked out (and left on the kitchen table- I argue that makes it fair game).

The collection opens with a call center in the developing world that outsources pain and grief. It wanders through the Star Trek universe with a recently promoted redshirt in "Yeoman" (everyone who has seen Trek must read this). The 2-person skeleton shift in a big box store find a finger in the aisle, and then the zombie who dropped it. And (I promise I won't mention all of the stories individually) in "Troubleshooting"is so wonderfully mind-bending that it reminds me of the movie Primer.

And Not to Get Lost in a World of Fiction
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
Want to know what life is like after electricity? This startling book looks at what happens when the lights truly go out.

Through interviews with North Korean refugees and expatriots, Barbara Demick draws a gripping presentation of a hidden nation and the people struggling to live in it.

This non-fiction work by LA Times' Beijing bureau chief made me recognize so many of my own cherished assumptions I have about modern life. This book tugs at the same psychological knots as zombies and futuristic dystopias.

There are so many more titles I could mention (don't even get me started about zombies), but I'm stopping now.

What great books are you reading?

Should I post more often about books like these- or just keep it on Goodreads?

*It took a lot of restraint not to title this post, "I like big books and I cannot lie."

***Baby Toolkit is a bootstrap blog written by Midwestern geek parents (between books, boo-boos and bedtimes). We're Amazon affiliates so a portion of purchases made through our links help pay our domain name fees and library fines (THANKS!). All of the books discussed in this post were provided by our public library and/or purchased by us (though we do selectively accept review copies). If you like board games, check out our Great Big Table podcast.

Eating Jim's Lunch: Tyler Florence's Start Fresh cookbook

Somewhere, very soon, a grown man may cry over broccoli.

Jim, This Is Just To Say*
I have eaten
the leftovers
that were in
the icebox

and which
you definitely meant
to eat
for lunch

Forgive me
they were delicious
so tender
and so warm.

 It's rare when I jump to a recommendation without weeks of scrutiny, but Tyler Florence's Start Fresh cookbook won me over as soon as I started reading it.

I'm too lazy for most celebrity chef cookbooks. The recipes seem designed to occupy hours shopping for hard-to-find ingredients, doing abundant prep work, and then obsessively observing every stage of cooking. What I need now, with my household of five, is simplicity, clarity, and health.

A mom who was making her baby all-organic baby food recommended the book to me, and I thought, "Lady, you're insane." Every time I cracked the cover of a baby cookbook, I spent at least an hour preparing something that NO ONE in the family wanted to eat (though Jim would very kindly feign enthusiasm for the disgustingly soft, unbelievable bland horror that I dished up). My friends grew an organic garden and made mountains of baby food for their first child, only to have it summarily rejected. I was too smart to do this again (note: with every new Jones baby I buy an expensive sling I hate and a stack of labyrinthine baby/kid cookbooks). Not this time (for the cookbooks, I already gave up on a Moby wrap).

And then came the line that landed the sales pitch, "You make one meal for the whole family and just puree some of it for the baby."

I dream of only making one meal that everyone eats. Somehow, I have become that short-order mom who everyone thinks they won't be. My kids eat fruit, breads, peanut butter, crackers, and cheese. It's like being stuck at a w(h)ine and cheese buffet for life. Jim and I still love the variety and flavors offered through menu planning service Relish! (we've subscribed since '08). So I've been making two meals and feeding the baby from jars and containers.

When (Tyler Florence's) Sprout baby food went on sale at the grocery, I bought a couple packs. If the baby would reject them like the other kids' did another leading organic baby food brand, I could cast out the lingering book recommendation faster than she spits out peas.

The baby all but wept for joy at the first taste. Her joyful face soon turned cynical as I swear she thought, "What else are you holding out on?" Then she banged her fists until she ate every bit. About 10 bags later, I bought the book.

Start Fresh is a pragmatist's cookbook. Recipes call for simple ingredients that are roasted or steamed (techniques that are cheap and easy). Jim has some great 13 gauge baking sheets which are perfect for roasting.

Last night the baby ate pureed roasted broccoli with Paremsan while we tossed the broccoli with some random pasta, Parmesan, and olive oil. It was outstanding. Even Ranger ate the letters in his name (which is something for a 6 year old who doesn't eat pasta). Jim was gleeful when I packed the leftovers for his lunch.

And then he forgot them. (And Jim, should you still be reading this, I actually saved half for you.)

Start Fresh: Your Child's Jump Start to Lifelong Healthy Eating is currently an Amazon bargain book ($7.79).  The first part of the book is purees while the second half is family meals with simple adaptations. About half the recipes are vegetarian (including great foods like beets, quinoa, eggplant, butternut squash). Only four dessert recipes are included- which is a refreshing change from most kids' cookbooks. The included desserts look healthier than average while still sounding sumptuous (e.g. baked pumpkin with peaches, strawberry-stuffed muffins).

While the book has some fancy-pants moments like making your own almond milk, it has parallel slacker instructions for us less motivated readers.

*My deepest apologies to William Carlos Williams, his red wheelbarrow, the white chickens, and the rain.

***Baby Toolkit is one Midwestern couple's approach to geek living with kids. Our opinions and judgement may be questionable, but they are entirely our own. We have no relationship with Tyler Florence or Rodale books. We are however Amazon affiliates, so a small percentage of purchases made through our links helps support this blog (thanks!).

Household Essential: 3M Book Tape

Photographed to emphasize tape

It's no secret that we love books. Despite our best intentions, sometimes we even love them to pieces.

Before we had kids (okay, even for a while after we had Ranger), I thought we could maintain an organized library of carefully maintained books. I slowly came to realize that, at least for picture books, I could have readers -or- crisp, clean editions, but not both.

Why have books without readers?

I nearly wept the day Ranger ripped a page out of the hardback copy of On the Day You Were Born that I bought him upon request. He loved that book, and although paper kind of grows on trees, changing that paper to books can be an expensive process.

Then Jim reminded me of book tape. At one point, we both worked in an academic library and regularly traversed the catacombs behind the public areas. In one dark corner of cataloging, dedicated bibliophiles maintained and repaired worn and broken volumes. Little red boxes of book tape sat shoulder to shoulder waiting to assist in the ongoing battle against time, entropy, and abuse.

I use book tape to stitch together damaged volumes, but it also works on puzzle pieces and game boxes. Jim even uses it to reinforce the covers of frequently used reference books before damage occurs.

Corner reinforcement by library (interior)

The tape is slightly re-positionable when first applied (unlike clear packaging tape), but bonds firmly once placed. Its thicker and stiffer than packaging tape. The edges may shed a little adhesive, but it rolls off easily (like rubber cement) rather than creating a gummy mess. The tape can be creased easily over the edge of a softback cover or spine. Our local library even adds it to hardback corners to slow cover wear.

Exterior spine & corner reinforcement by library

Even with three young readers, we don't worry about letting our kids handle books.

A roll of book tape costs about $6 for 15 yards of 2" wide tape. That's far less than the replacement value of most books and a downright paltry investment in independence for a young reader. There's even an 8 roll value pack that might prevent the stink eye when someone abducts a roll "for work."

***Baby Toolkit is the periodic chronicle of a couple geeks crawling the dungeons of parenthood. We're Amazon affiliates, so purchases through our links will help us buy more books and book tape and other bits and bobs. Though we may be categorized as 3M enthusiasts, we have no non-imaginary relationship with the company.

Required Reading for Geeks & Parents: Science Fair Season Set Me On Fire

At first blush, Judy Dutton's Science Fair Season: Twelve Kids, A Robot Named Scorch. . . and What It Takes To Win looks like Spellbound recast with science geeks.  Don't be fooled.  While Science Fair Season explores the lives of a handful of contestants in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, it deftly illustrates artful parenting and success in learning as well.

The high school students' projects are sometimes mind-boggling in scale (like building a reactor for nuclear fusion).  I expected the top achieving high school students to be working on an undergraduate level, but these noteworthy projects more clearly resemble post-graduate research.  Because the students approach their inquiries with fresh perspective, they see possibility and challenge where more conventional researchers might not explore.

While no two contestants' stories are remotely identical, patterns do emerge that speak to science education and parenting young children.  So often the students' stories begin with an early spark of interest in something (horses, electricity, cars, astronomy) which parents encouraged with exploration.  Though the kids' interests didn't usually mirror parental interests, the parents went out of their way to feed their child's curiosity and enthusiasm.  Time after time, parents provide opportunities (like a homebrew chem lab, a borrowed Geiger counter, or time with horses) and find mentors with similar interests.  Granted, not every child is going to become a super-competitor in science by the mere magic of parental support, but these stories clearly illuminate a parent's ability to multiply interest into inquiry and fascination.

Yet the book is not populated with Tiger Moms or Stage Fathers, the burgeoning interests are consistently directed by the kids (and I say kids because this explosion of interest seems most common in early childhood).  These biographies are full of freedom and exploration.

The other looming discussion is that of how students come to love science learning.  Halfway through the book I became painfully aware that, although some "outsiders" come to science interest in junior high or high school, most of the kids with scientific fervor (and the resulting knowledge) fully embraced science long before most schools begin to seriously teach it.  We, as a nation, are missing the critical window where kids fall in love with science.  Thanks to budget cuts and lack of advocacy, science is barely taught when young students are making decisions about what they love.  When schools finally start teaching science in junior high, the approach is often dry and makes the very foundation of existence seem irrelevant and esoteric.

During the space race, science charged into unsuspecting homes through popular media.  While the media marveled and quaked at Sputnik, rocket scientists became the heroes of coal mine town boys like Homer Hickam (NASA engineer and author of Rocket Boys).  This book reminds me that not only are science heroes present today, they're still coming of age (though in increasingly shorter supply).  Our tech role models need to be more than wealthy boys with killer apps (Apple's Steve Jobs, Facebook's Mark Zuckerman).  Kids would be better served to know about Pluto Files atrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson and science humanitarian Amy Smith.

In my life as a university academic advisor, the most frustrating academic trajectories were those of students with no real interests. A student sorting through a abundance of passions brimmed with energy, but one without a single definable interest made me want to bang my head against my desk.  I knew then that, should we ever have kids, I wanted them to deeply love some thing that challenged and expanded them.

Science Fair Season left me with a long to-do list.  I want Ranger, Scout, and the Detective to gain exposure to math and science beyond what they'll get in the elementary classroom, and I also want those opportunities to be available for their friends and classmates.  My mom's fifth grade class had this amazing interactive experience put together by an orthopedic surgeon dad; the dad set up hands-on stations where the class could use real orthopedic tools to meet objectives (like screwing a nut on a bolt) through obstacles (inside a bottle) to simulate surgical challenge.  My mom believes that one presentation converted more students to science than any other single event of her long teaching career.  This it the type of early experience I want for my kids and as many other kids as we can involve.

I think the future, not just of our kids' educations, but of the country and the world, may lie in the opportunities we offer our kids in their early years.

Well written and entertaining, Science Fair Season is going to have the broad voyeuristic appeal of subculture documentaries like Word Wars and The Farmer's Wife, but it also has the seeds of one of the most critical educational discourses of our generation.


Hyperion, hardcover $25 MSRP, $15.99 on Amazon.
Read excerpt at author's site.



***Baby Toolkit is a couple geek parents currently so hot about science learning that we might just turn to plasma.  Hyperion supplied us with a free e-book loan of Science Fair Season, but we've now bought three hardcover copies to share with friends and family (the first taste is free...).  As Amazon affiliates, a small portion of purchases made through our Amazon links brings us one step closer to a giant dirigible trip around the planet.

The Red Book: Instant Adventure, Just Add Words

Over a year ago, when we asked Ranger about his morning at preschool, we had a hard time getting a clear response.  His responses to any open-ended questions (like "What did you see at the zoo?") came out of left field, and didn't really answer the questions.  Often, he'd prefer to discuss something currently happening or something he wanted to do in the future.

Storytelling was clearly not one of his interest areas.  The resulting vagueness caused a lot of misunderstandings, and I was frustrated that he seemed disinterested in telling me about his experiences.

In the Spring last year, illustrator Barbara Lehman's wordless story The Red Book was featured in Ranger's Scholastic flier.  Intrigued by the cute book's mysterious story, I added a copy to our order.

The first naptime we settled in to read it, I asked Ranger questions about what he saw on each page and what he thought was happening.  Each vibrant page offers a lot of things to observe and describe, and the cumulative story is both magical and clearly understood by an older toddler.

The Red Book is a sweet adventure story about a new friendship where the narrative is told through sequential images that the reader can explore and interpret.  Lehman's nonverbal storytelling encompasses enough mystery and magic that the events mandate explanation with each new discovery.

Ranger really liked telling me the story of a child who finds a red book in a snow drift and the ensuing events.  He empathized when one of the main characters became afraid and celebrated when everything worked out in the end.


At naptime and bedtime, Ranger only wanted to read us The Red Book.  His storytelling got better and better, and we all found new information in the images to make the story richer and more interesting.

A month or two later, I bought all of Barbara Lehman's other wordless books:  Rainstorm, Trainstop, and The Museum Trip.
Each of her stories centers around brave discovery by a curious, courageous, and independent child.  This is a great message for children finding their wings as new readers and storytellers.

These are great books to get your kids talking and reading.  The Red Book and Trainstop each tell the story of a girl while Rainstorm and The Museum Trip have boy primary characters.  While the gender of the protagonist seems to have no influence on Ranger's enjoyment of a book, I like that Lehman varies boy and girl heroes in her adventures.

Ranger's storytelling reluctance receded as he practiced daily with Lehman's books.

These wonderful stories opened some important new avenues of communication for our family.

A visiting friend's observation on Ranger's relationship with these books matched our own perceptions.

Right now Amazon has The Red Book marked down to $9.32 (hardcover or Kindle edition) and a bargain paperback edition of The Museum Book for only $5.78.

If you have a pre-reader chomping at the bit or a reluctant storyteller, definitely check out Barbara Lehman's picture books at your local library.

Which kids' books helped your family?

***Baby Toolkit is a collection of dispatches from some bibliophilic geeks with young children.  While we love to curl up with a good book, we recognize that a lot of kids' books are dreadful.  We also confess that there are a handful of books shoved under our heavy sofa so we never have to read them aloud again.  We have no fiscal relationship with Barbara Lehman or her publishers.  DISCLOSURE: Amazon associations we are, so a small portion of sales through our Amazon links comes back to Baby Toolkit and pays for our internet connectivity (thanks!).