App Turns iPhone Into Portable Picture Book Reader

by on December 29, 2008
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There’s a cool new app for your iPhone. And it’s FREE! I’m all about free.

The International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) provides the world’s largest collection of children’s literature freely on the Internet. ICDL for the iPhone application allows users to read a selection of books from the ICDL’s master collection. And supposedly the technology makes it possible to read story text clearly, even in highly illustrated children’s picture books on the small mobile screen.

Plus you can download books directly to the device, giving children and parents access to content offline and in airplane mode. Great for the doctor’s office. Because really – who wants to touch all those germy ACTUAL books?

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Story Books From the 1970s: Chicken Soup with Rice

by on November 12, 2008
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Oh yay! You all are in for a treat…. if you like 1970s children’s literature! Check out the video below!

I’m time traveling back to the 1970s again today with another classic story – Chicken Soup with Rice, by Maurice Sendak. If you’re not familiar with this book, it’s a stroll through the calendar extolling the virtues of chicken soup. It’s not fair, but I don’t associate this book with Sendak as much as Carole King, who sang the song. I don’t know if I ever actually heard the story without the accompanying cassette tape. If you emerged from a 1970s childhood without at least a fondness for King, then you never heard this song. Sendak is also responsible for another of my favorites – Where the Wild Things Are.

This is such a cozy book and song. And it’s catchy. I love it so much that a few years ago I checked out the book and tape from the library and played it over and over for my kids in the car. I’m glad I did that, because now I probably couldn’t get through it once before they were asking me to switch to 101.9.

I’m collecting all these classics, along with my memories of them. You can get Chicken Soup with Rice on Amazon. You can even download an MP3 file for $.99!

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Story Books From the 1970s: Tikki Tikki Tembo

by on November 6, 2008
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Do you ever find yourself reverting to your childhood as the holiday’s approach? Instead of channeling all that energy into tired family squabbles, such as who poisoned the dog back in ’83, why not put a happy spin on your mental time travel with a bit of classic 1970s children’s literature.

Tikki Tikki Tembo, no sarembo mari bari puchi pip peri pembo ….. or something like that. This is a great Chinese fable about a boy with a very long name who falls into a well. A bit grim by today’s standards, but the kids with love the rhythm and repetition of the prose.
What’s your favorite 1970s childhood classic?

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Do You Want to Look Old?

by on July 2, 2008
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Nobody wants to look old. Especially you, over there, little miss almost forty. You especially don’t want to look old. I know you.

Good news: Wildly successful website maven Terri and I are going to help YOU not look old! How you ask? Without giving away too many of the details (mostly because we haven’t worked them out yet), we’re launching an on and offline book club that you are going to LOVE!

Think Oprah for practical people. We’re going to help you improve your life in the parts that count right here, right now. Join us and you’ll save time, save money, and perhaps most important: look younger!

We’re starting with Charla Krupp’s brilliant How Not To Look Old.

We need your help!

I am looking for women to introduce our unique book club concept to their local communities. If you’re interested in being part of the pilot project, let me know: lela AT leladavidson DOT com.

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Ask Me

by on March 5, 2008
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A while back I started an advice column at HubPages. I call it Ask a Know-It-All Mom: Parenting Advice on Everything. Readers ask questions in the comments and I respond. I’d love it if any of you would ask questions!

Go ahead, ask me anything!

What else is new at HubPages?

All About SIG: Summer Institute for the Gifted
Dad’s Guide to Packing a Diaper Bag
Parents’ Guide to AR Books and Tests: What is Accelerated Reader?

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Book Review: The Sky Isn’t Visible From Here

by on February 18, 2008
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The next you’re thinking your mother done you wrong, pick up The Sky Isn’t Visible From Here, by Felicia Sullivan. This fearless author writes about her painful childhood in excrutiating detail. The things this girl went thruogh you can’t imagine, but when she tells you, you’ll never forget.

At first I was confused and I’ll admit, a little irritated, because he book is not organized in chronological order, and the author skips around from first person to third, present tense to past. When I started reading this bugged me, but as I continued , I realized this was the best way to get the story across. Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. It just so happens that some of the most awful stuff happened near the start of Sullivan’s life. If she had told the story in order, readers wouldn’t get the chance to really get to know her before being hit with the truly gruesome. The book is subtitled Scenes from a Life and that’s what it delivers. However, I am tempted to read it again now that I know more about the all the characters.

As I read, I had to check the dates and remind myself that the author is only a few years younger than I am. The world she describes is so far from the one I grew up in, it often seems like she’s talking about another place and time instead of America in the 1980s and 90s. Her dual worlds of rough Brooklyn and pretentious Manhattan are foreign to so many of us, but we can go there now with Sullivan’s words.

There are a few disappoinments in the book, including the author never finding out who her real father is and the lack of closure with a mother who just disappears. But if I wanted happy endings, I suppose I’d better stick to fiction. Real life is messy. Read this book to realize that yours is probably not that bad, and whatever circumstance you landed in, you can overcome it. Sullivan has.
I’ll be following the author’s blog from now on, because when you read the interview, you find out Sullivan is WAY cool. See for youself:

Interview in Gothamist
Identity Theory Interview
Interview on Cruelist Month

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Lela is going to be in a BOOK!

by on February 13, 2008
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And she’s going to start talking about herself in the third person!

Lela Davidson is a freelance writer and columnist. She writes regularly for several websites and magazines and her humor column, After the Bubbly, was honored in 2006 by the Oklahoma Writers Federation. Lela’s memoir pieces have appeared in Visions literary journal and the Story Circle Journal. She balances deadlines with two kids, a traveling husband, volunteer work, friends, wine, and chasing after the world’s fastest dog. You can keep up with Lela at www.afterthebubbly.blogspot.com.

That is the bio for the book, Women Writing on Family: Writing, Publishing, and Teaching Tips by U.S. Women Writers, that is going to include two essays/articles I wrote about writing! Yay! Yay! Yay for me! It will be over a year before the anthology is available, but you can bet I’ll let you know where to get a copy when the time comes.

Thanks, loyal ATB readers, for giving me the confidence to keeping tapping the keys!

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The Pigeon Wants a Mojito

by on January 28, 2008
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Don’t ask me why I love the Pigeon. Maybe it’s the sparse illustrations, his attitude, or maybe it’s just how few words there are in a Pigeon book. The first time I read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus I was hooked. Now author Mo Willems is holding a contest to name the next book and I think it’s time for cocktail hour at Pigeon’s house. How about you? Go to http://www.pigeonpresents.com/ by March 10th and enter for a chance to win a visit to your child’s school and a complete signed collection of Pigeon books. 100 runners up get a signed copy of the new book. I’m pretty sure the mojito comment is worth at least that!
PS – You can also send e-valentines cards featuring Pigeon from here.

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For Hipsters, Geeks, and People Like Me

by on January 18, 2008
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I started reading Wired magazine in 1997. It’s very mod and techy, but they hooked me on an artilce about Burning Man because I’m a little fascinated with modern counter-cultural grooviness. It was pretty and and hip and it made me sound smart when I ate lunch with the partners at a certain once-great-but-fallen accounting firm.

I recently subscribed again – mostly because of an issue they put out a while back featuring lego robot stuff. (My son is practically a Bionicle.) It’s got this great mix of cultural and techy stuff. It’s a way cool and ageless magazine. Their website is here if want to check it out online, but I like the longer features best and for that you just need to turn pages, right? You can also get updates sent to your phone, participate in forums, or sign up to receive a monthly newsletter about books they review. I’m signing up for that, so I’ll let you know if I find any books you can’t live without!

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Follow Your Heart in 2008

by on December 21, 2007
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If You Want To Write, by Brenda Ueland has been recommended to me for years and I finally picked it up last month. Loved it! Very gently, the author encourages you to do what it is you want to do – whether that’s write, paint, scrapbook, dig in the garden, sing, cook, or anything else that engages your creativity. Her premise: Everybody is talented, original, and has something to say. Just get out of your own way and let it flow.

I know, know, know, my writing buddies will take something special away from the book, but it’s for the rest of you too. Ueland envisions a world where people operate from their happy places more often than not. And then she gives specific advice on how to find your own.

In chapter ten she counsels women to forego some of the housework in favor of something they truly love. We’ll be better mothers for it because “…the only way to teach is to be fine and shining examples.” Love that. While the writing style is pretty old-fashioned (the book was first published in 1938), her message is lovely and clear enough to make up for it. Happy reading!

Get and give If You Want To Write.

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