Ginger Snapped

Sometimes days come around when you don't like yourself very much. When you see faults written like tattoos all over your soul, and no matter how much you scrub, they never fade, never fall away. Faults like pride and fear and ignorance and jealousy and insensitivity. Things that make you ugly inside. Things that make you want to crawl out of your skin and into someone else's. That desire to be different from who you are, a different person altogether, only comes at you once in a blue moon. You know deep down that you have it pretty good--besides freedom, democracy, and religion, you've got good health, enough intelligence to guide you through three college degrees, a dollop of creativity, a supportive husband, sweet children. What more could you ask for? Still, you wish you were different. You wish you were more. You sometimes look around at the people you come in contact with and wish you could pluck bits and pieces of them and add these things to your personality. If...

Sometimes you just need an afternoon spent on the hammock, cocooned together with the gingerbread boys and the gingerbread man, one foot hanging down, pushing at the ground to sway all four of you back and forth. Sometimes you just need the sun shining down in between the unfurling leaves, and the blue, blue sky above you, and the singing of the birds, while simple thoughts flit in and out of your mind. Sometimes nothing is better than something, especially when life has been far too full of many, many somethings and your head has been full of complexities. Sometimes you think that a day of rest is the most compassionate gift God could give you, far better than riches or fame or success or even the ability to type really fast. And the swaying of the hammock, and the feel of the gingerbread man's shoulder under your head and the wisp of one gingerbread boy's hair on your face and the chatter of the other gives you just enough strength to carry on through another week of ...

From young to old: Elephant and Piggie series, Mo Willem Minnie and Moo  series, Denys Cazet Ling and Ting: Not Exactly the Same,  Grace Lin (series) Anna Hibiscus  series, Atinuke Mercy Watson , Kate DiCamillo (series) Bink and Gollie , Kate DiCamillo and Allison McGhee (series) Half Magic , Edward Eager (series) Dick King-Smith (farmyard fantasy) The Invention of Hugo Cabret , Brian Selznick (heavily illustrated) The Whipping Boy,  Sid Fleischman The Secret Life of Owen Skye , Alan Cumyn (trilogy) The Way Things Work , David Macaulay Where the Mountain Meets the Moon , Grace Lin The Westing Game , Ellen Raskin Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH , Robert C. O'Brien The Penderwicks , Jeanne Birdsall (series) From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler , E.L. Konigsburg Bridge to Terabithia , Katherine Paterson Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt A Wrinkle in Time , Madeleine L'Engle A Long Way from Chicago , Richard Peck (has a sequel) Wh...

I live in the forest, where the moss bids you to look down, and the trees bid you to look up. The woodpeckers bid you good morning, and the blue jays just want you to shut up and listen, already. At nightfall, the stars lay so dense in the sky, that you can wrap yourself in them, if only the trees wouldn’t get in the way. The hooting of the barred owls lulls you to sleep. In the woods, anything can happen; all you need is a handful of magic beans, a conversation with the infamous  immortal goldfish , a drink from a clear, cold spring, the flash of a fox’s tail. If you’re lucky, you can dance with a lady’s slipper, but only in June. The immortal goldfish It’s the stuff fairy tales are made of. But there’s always room for wishing, even in a fairy tale. There’s no pizza delivery here, nor is there a house built out of candy for those midnight cravings. The trail of crumbs can only lead to one of a handful of places: the river, the cemetery, the library, and to...