Preschool Read Aloud of the Week: The Circus Ship

God bless Tom Thumb for having the amazing skill of being able to pluck a gem from the shelves of our library every single week!  This week we bring you The Circus Ship by Chris Van Dusen.  Chris Van Dusen is the illustrator of the Mercy Watson books (which are delightful reads about an adventurous pig for the grade 1-3 set) and he wrote this book in rhyme about the circus ship that meets a rock in the sea and subsequently sinks.  The real fun begins when the animals come ashore to a village in Maine and save the day.  But will the villagers save them when the unkind circus owner returns to reclaim them?


My favorite pages are here:

All fifteen of the circus animals are hidden from the owner somewhere in the picture.  Tom Thumb and I had a ball as he easily identified the easy ones like the gorilla on the far left side of the page and I helped him find the more difficult ones like the alligator.  


I love books like that this that have delicious illustrations and an interesting story.  Can you believe the author loosely based the story on a real event?  There actually was a ship called The Royal Tar that sunk off the coast of Maine in 1836.  Van Dusen includes a page at the back of the book describing the event's influence on this fictional tale.  I can't wait to see what Tom Thumb uncovers next! :-)


Speaking of circuses, I visited Erin Morgenstern's blog today.  She's the author of one of my fave books, The Night Circus, and I wanted to check and see what she was up to.  I appreciated the refreshing blog post she posted the other day.  Being a novelist has always sounded very glamorous to me and I have romanticized it in my mind to the point of ridiculousness.  I have visions of the author sitting pensively at her laptop, looking out her window over some sumptuous mountain/ocean/forest view.  She takes a sip of her coffee and continues on writing her literary feast of brilliance.  Okay---maybe not that romanticized.  It must be the day I'm having, but it nice to hear that someone else was struggling to get it all done---even if I'm just a stay at home mom and she's a novelist with her first book optioned for a movie.  


I've also had an undue obsession with pot roast lately.  I've been eating 99% vegetarian for the last year, but over the last couple of days all I can think of is tender, cut with your fork beef pot roast and mashed potatoes completely covered in salty brown gravy.  And a side a salty canned green beans wouldn't be too bad either.  Somebody slap me...

A new car game for the kids

This is Joumana. :-)

The last time the kids and I were in the car on our way to karate class I overheard the following conversation:


Red: JOUMANA!!!!  I found her.  I get a point!


Tom Thumb: I have ninety nine Joumanas.  I need one more and then I'll have one hundred Joumanas!


Joumana Kayrouz is a personal injury attorney who has billboards EVERYWHERE around our town.  If we take a 10 minute drive anywhere around where we live, we'll see at least one Joumana billboard---sometimes up to five during a single drive.  Last week we took a road trip to a town an hour and a half away and she had a billboard there too. 


Do you have an attorney who advertises themselves to death in your hometown?  Perhaps your kids can play their own version of Find Joumana.  I guess if the kids ever need a personal injury lawyer, they'll know who to call. ;-)

Ammonium hydroxide---perhaps the most disgusting thing I've seen in a long time!

Can you believe McDonald's was actually treating their meat with this as to make inedible meat edible again?!?!  OY!  Here's a link to the blog post on the topic.

Here's my grocery list, Mom...

Last night, Red was complaining to me about how I never send money with her to school to buy snacks.  I'm really picky about what I want the kids eating and the "snacks" offered in her school cafeteria include a variety of chips and gummy fruit snacks.  In an effort to compromise, I said that when I make up our next grocery list she could tell me what she wanted me to buy for her lunches.  Our scanner is on the fritz right now so I can't post a photo of the original list, but here is a type written version of the list she emerged with about ten minutes after our conversation.  I have corrected the phonetic spellings for the ease of your reading:


Donuts
Propel Zero Water
Candy and graham crackers
Sun chips flavor cheese
Cheez-its
Purple foot wine for you or another kind
spicy chocolate
yogurt from Yoplait
thing for shoe for the dolls
things for star of the week poster
knitting kit
Puffs Plus tissues
Blanket or things to make blankets
more super friend coloring books
Books like rainbow magic
costumes for me and tom thumb
thing for doll clothes
thing for my wall
patches for my snow pants
decorations for the inside
decorations for fan
jewelry making kit
thing to decorate my closet
princess pink paint from either lowes or home depot
computer for me in my room


What is this?  A grocery list or a Christmas list?!?!?  I was especially amused by the addition of a bottle of wine for me and the thinly veiled request for me to paint her bedroom.  Is she really planning on decorating her ceiling fan and closet?  Only time will tell...

Anderson Cooper kills me making puns about Gerard Depardieu

You have to check out this link with Anderson Cooper doing his Ridiculist about Gerard Depardieu urinating on the airplane.  Around the 2 1/2 minute mark in the clip, Cooper starts giggling like a school girl when he says the flight crew "should thank their lucky stars it wasn't de part deux".  Tee hee!  I couldn't stop laughing.  Thanks Andrea for calling me about this one.  Enjoy!

I earned my Medical Mama Merit Badge!

I just discovered Mama Merit Badges.  They're like Girl Scout badges for mommies!  You can put them on whatever you want (you don't need a sash!) and you decide when you've earned one.  I found the concept completely hysterical.  The owner Amy had a request on her blog for merit badge tales so I submitted a story about when Red was a baby.  She decided it was worthy of receiving the Medical badge and published it on her blog.  Here's a link to our story.  I know plenty of you out there who are deserving of every Mama Merit badge in the book!  Which badges do you think you have earned?

Any Lost fans out there?

If you played the lottery numbers Hurley played on the Lost TV show in the Mega Millions lottery last night, you won $150! 

Or if you're not into gambling, you can always learn who was Matt Damon's Ab Double for the movie True Grit here.

I've got a PTA fundraising committee meeting.  I'm brainstorming how to get everyone to buy my ideas about NOT selling cookie dough or gift wrap.  More on that later...