It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like…

…Friday. Only it isn’t yet. Only, I went to the chiropractor a day early for my appointment, thinking that yesterday was Thursday, and my chiropopper, blissful Zenny fem that she is, just blithely saw me, leaving me to wake up this morning completely bewildered that it wasn’t yet Friday… Siiiiigh… Can’t tell if this makes me Sleepy or just Dopey…

In my thoroughly half-awake state, I forgot to tell you about some great T-shirts MotherReader has going on that all the smart set will be wearing at conferences this year. I’m SO calling dibs on this one. And isn’t it cool how LittleReader is growing up just like Mom? Awww.

Thanks to Chicken Spaghetti for the heads up on the PEN’s Children’s/Young Adult Book Authors Committee discussion on censorship. I read the three essays by the painfully realistic YA author Robert Lipsyte, thoughtful children’s poet and novelist Mary Anne Hoberman and the super creative middle grade author Elizabeth Levy for some prose on writing, censorship, self-censorship, and where to draw the line as gatekeepers of Children’s/YA authors. Elizabeth Levy’s statement, “my greatest fear, far scarier than vampires, is the one that I somehow haven’t been honest,” is reverberating in my head, the pen battling the sword… and will probably provide blog fodder for another day.
Meanwhile, if you’ve never visited kidSpeak, where censorship issues are talked about by kids… you’ve got to. It will make you feel like the world just might be all right, because young people are learning to stand up for their First Amendment rights. Huzzah!

Fun with linguistics… okay, maybe I’m the only one who winces when she hears people say ‘exspresso’… when it’s pronounced and spelled ‘espresso’… (I may also be the only one who thinks linguistics are fun…) Here are more entertaining common errors in English usage.

Have a good weekend… starting… tomorrow.
Sigh

About the author

tanita s. davis is a writer and avid reader who prefers books to most things in the world, including people. That's ...pretty much it, she's very boring and she can't even tell jokes. She is, however, the author of nine books, including Serena Says, Partly Cloudy, Go Figure, Henri Weldon, and the Coretta Scott King honored Mare's War. Look for her new MG, The Science of Friendship in 1/2024 from Katherine Tegen Books.

Comments

  1. Yay for the Shakespeare shirt! Yay for Mother Reader’s Daughter! And Yay for Paul Brians’ common errors in English page!! I’ve long been particularly irritated by “step foot” (which I hear on TV constantly–CONSTANTLY!!) and “you’ve got another thing coming.”

    Here’s something funny the “expresso” thing reminded me of…on our recent vacation we parked at a long-term lot near the airport, operated by “Expresso Parking.”

  2. Thanks for the shout-out to my kid. It’s funny, she was more snarky about the book than I would have been. But, hey, it was her review.

    Love the link to the common errors page! I’ll have to bookmark that site. I am personally fond of the exorcise/exercise one. After an initial confusion when I was young, I can never hear the phrase “exorcise his demons” without imagining devils sweating to the oldies.

  3. Heh. Valentimes.

    I remember when my sister was little, she read ‘deviled eggs’ as De-Viled eggs… and so now I shall imagine de vile eggs, ‘exorcising’ with Richard Simmons… bad, bad.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.