books

Sampler Saturday: New Format

Elizabeth has stopped drawing comics for now, and started writing a chapter book. It’s turning out to be quite the entertaining read. Right now she’s on Part 2, Chapter 18 and still rolling right along, so I thought it might be fun to start posting her story here on Sampler Saturday, a chapter at a time. I think she has a real gift for storytelling; I hope she keeps developing it as she grows.

So here we go:

THE ADVENTURES OF ELIZABETH AND FRIENDS
Chapter 1: Interspecies Friends
By Elizabeth Silkotch, age 11

Once upon a time there was a young chupacabra girl. She looked human except that she had the ears of a rabbit, the tail of a cougar, the wings and claws of a dragon, the horn of a unicorn, and a strange purple marking (the source of her magic) on her nose. Her name was Elizabeth, she was a great artist and a beautiful singer, and she was reading one of her custom-made comic books while listening to her purple iPod.

Meditating in a corner was her friend, Espio. He was a sixteen-year-old ninja humanoid chameleon. His skin was a bright magenta/purple and his eyes were yellow and sometimes looked innocent. In between his eyes was a short yellow horn that stuck straight out. Like all chameleons, he had a coiled tail and a sort of crest on his head. Espio also had a sort of heart shape on his belly. He didn’t know why it had to be a heart shape, but Elizabeth thought Espio had so much love in his heart (he just refused to show it sometimes), that it just had to show on the outside too. Espio wore pure white gloves with purple triangle shapes on the back and gauntlets covering his wrists. He also wore shin guards and purple shoes. There was a single black stripe running across each shoe. And to top that off, there were three black spikes running vertically down his spine.

Espio just woke up from meditation and walked toward Elizabeth.

“Elizabeth,” Espio said.

Elizabeth, who could barely hear him over the sound of her iPod, paused her music and looked up.

“What?” She asked.

“I feel thirsty for adventure right now.” Espio replied.

Elizabeth and Espio had lived together for only a year now, Espio taking care of Elizabeth like a parent, only letting her have some fun when she wanted it*, teaching her some of his ninja skills, going on adventures whenever it seemed necessary. Espio also possessed every single little thing that a ninja possessed, (including shuriken stars and whatnot) and he even gave Elizabeth one fifth of his shuriken collection. Some of Espio’s shuriken stars were explosive and he didn’t give Elizabeth any of those because he said he didn’t trust her with any of his explosive equipment. He let her handle the non-explosives though. Espio had been a good teacher, parent, and friend to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth loved him to pieces.

Together, Elizabeth and Espio had become great friends and gradually, Elizabeth was winning Espio’s trust with his explosives.

**********************

*ED: Hmph!

Categories: Animals, books, Family, Fiction, Friends, Humor, kids, Life, Sampler Saturday | 1 Comment

Wordless Wednesday: Winter Leaf

Categories: books, Life, trees, Winter, Wordless Wednesday | 3 Comments

Sampler Saturday: Elizabeth and Dialga’s Car Wash Adventure

Apparently armor doesn’t count as clothing. But I’m not sure it counts as “naked” either….

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CW11

Categories: Artwork, books, Comics, Humor, kids, Sampler Saturday | 3 Comments

Contributing To The Geekiness Of Minors

star-trek-inspirational-poster

One of my very favorite times of day has always been that magical pause in the evenings when the kids and I snuggle up on the sofa for storytime. This has been a treasured part of my life since Elizabeth was a baby and we used to curl up every night in the big cozy rocking chair together and read Babybug magazine or one of her chunky board books.

Alas, time marches on. My kids are eight and ten now, and no longer content to let me read a story to them chapter by chapter. We’ll start a new book — say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — and I’ll read Chapter 1, and they like it…so by the time the next night rolls around they’re both halfway through the book and fidgeting restlessly because they’re way past the part I’m reading to them.

As much as I love storytime, even I finally had to admit that maybe they’ve just outgrown it.

But how to get my nightly fix of snuggle time without sharing a book? I pondered this dilemma and realized that I didn’t necessarily have to give up storytime. Stories come in many different forms, after all. On dvd’s, for instance. I’d shared most of my favorite childhood books with them, maybe now it was time to start sharing my favorite old tv series, one episode per night.

So then it was just a matter of deciding which show to start with. I can’t wait to introduce Elizabeth to the Gilmore Girls, but she’s a bit too young to really appreciate it yet. Same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars. Luke will LOVE The Wild Wild West (the original series, not the lame movie)…in about five years. So where to begin right now?

You know where this is going. That holy grail of geekdom: Star Trek.

I actually gave some serious thought to whether I even wanted to introduce them to this show at all, ever. I mean, in this day and age it’s tantamount to making your kid take accordion lessons, right? Just give him a bad haircut and a pocket protector and be done with it already.

In the end, I couldn’t help myself. Resistance is futile. The next generation must be assimilated into the collective. I added The Original Series to my Netflix queue and when the first disk arrived we popped it in.

Observations:

1. It had been more than 20 years since I’d seen a full episode of ST:TOS.

2. This was the cheesiest. show. ever.

3. Both kids are mesmerized by its colorful, hypnotic cheesiness.

4. It helped that they were already familiar with the basic concept thanks to our fabulous deck of Blogography playing cards.

5. The kids’ preliminary consensus is that Captain Kirk is “tricksy.” And they’re fascinated by the fact that the turbolift can move in any direction.

6. Shatner’s line delivery is hardly mockable at all in these first few episodes. I guess it wasn’t until the show gained an audience and success went straight to his head that he started milking every syllable for all it was worth.

7. I’m glad I decided to do this. I mean, sure, I’m dooming Luke and Elizabeth to a desolate existence on the geeky fringes of social acceptability, and torpedoing any chance that the cool kids will ever talk to them, but hey, that 45 minutes of basking in the warm glow of nostalgia every night makes it all totally worth it. You know, to me. They can thank me later.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone. Live long and prosper, and don’t forget: infinite diversity in infinite combinations!

Because popularity is totally overrated, right?

Categories: books, Family, kids, Life, Love, Star Trek | 5 Comments

Hey, Look Over There! Something Shiny!

I don’t think I have anything to say today.

But let me direct your attention to some other folks’ posts that are worth a look:

True Story…Or Not.

I may give this a shot.

Book Guy

PS. The spider sold for $15,000 on eBay.

Categories: Artwork, books, Humor, Life, NaBloPoMo | 4 Comments

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