Cute Kid Pix April 2025

More pictures that didn't make their own post...

My youngest participated in the county Solo and Ensemble festival playing both a solo piece and a duet (a bit from Star Wars) with his friend.

Big fun!

Grandpa came to be with us on our Spring Vacation trip (posts on that coming soon!). Before we left, we had a little birthday party for him.

Blowing out the candle

A nice present

Magic in the back seat

My daughter went to a birthday party for a friend (not Grandpa). She crafted some home-made taffy as a gift. The friend loved it.

Taffy doesn't look so good before it is mixed!

Much more taffy-like

My youngest had his Battle of the Books, a competition sponsored by the local public schools and library. The trivia contest has teams reading nine books and answering trivia questions. The finale was held at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland.

When we first got there

A little over half the team

Closer to starting

Beret with bowtie not part of the team

Trivia time!

Battle of the Books 2025 Reviews: Fast Pitch and How Do You Spell Unfair?

My youngest is engaged in the Battle of the Books, a competition sponsored by our local public library. His team of classmates are reading nine books and getting ready to answer trivia questions at a county-wide meeting in late April. I am reading some of the books too. The first two I read have reviews here. Now for another two...

Fast Pitch by Nic Stone

Shenice "Lightning" Lockwood is a catcher on an all-black female fast-pitch softball team in the U12 level of the Dixie Youth Softball Association. They are the first all-Black team to make it to the playoffs. Lightning is the team captain and carries a family tradition of "batball," as her younger brother calls it. Her father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all played in their time. Complications arise when she finds out about her grandfather, JonJon Lockwood. He played in the Negro League and had ambitions to go MLB...ambitions that never played out. She doesn't know the story of why he stopped playing ball. Her dying great-uncle tells her that the career-ending moment was a crime that JonJon did not actually commit. Great-uncle has some evidence and wants Shenice to clear his brother's name. So she's got a lot on her plate aside from being a twelve-year old on a championship-bound team.

The book does a good job blending the soft-ball drama with the more dominant personal-history drama (and lots of comedic touches to keep things a little lighter). She has to navigate her family, which doesn't know about the scandal (it got swept under the rug). She discovers a lot of discrimination that her family experienced, especially living in the American South. She still experiences some discrimination but clearly not as much as her forefathers. One or two hard-to-believe plot contrivances make the book at bit longer than it needs to be. Otherwise this is an entertaining middle-school read.

Recommended.

How Do You Spell Unfair? MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee written by Carole Boston Weatherford and Illustrated by Frank Morrison

MacNolia Cox was one of two African-American girls to compete in the 1936 Scripps National Spelling Bee, the first time since 1908 that a black child participated in an American national spelling bee. She came from Akron, Ohio, where locals were proud to send her off to the Washington, D.C. championship. Her trip was not the best experience as she encountered segregation (she had to switch to the "blacks only" train car once they crossed into Maryland; she and her escorts had to stay at a different hotel from the white contestants in D.C.). MacNolia made it to the top five spellers (the other African-American girl went out in tenth place). She failed on the word "nemesis," which she had not studied because it was not on the official list. Her teacher and the Akron journalist who accompanied her protested to no avail. Even so, coming in fifth in a nation-wide pool was a proud accomplishment, recognized on her return to Akron in 1936 and by the U. S. Senate in 2021.

The story is both inspiring and heartbreaking. The main downside is that the reader does not get to know MacNolia as a person--did she have a sense of humor or a sense of style? What did she think of school, of spelling, of her fellow spellers, of her teacher? She isn't so much a distinct person but a character in the history of American Civil Rights. I wanted a little bit more about her. The art is great, with splash pages depicting the scenes in a charming style.

Recommended.

Battle of the Books 2025 Reviews: Last Cuentista and First Cat

My youngest is engaged in the Battle of the Books, a competition sponsored by our local public library. He has a team of classmates that are reading nine books and getting ready to answer trivia questions at a county-wide meeting in late April. I am reading some of the books too. Here's the first two I've read...

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera

The Earth is about to be hit by Halley's Comet, so select people are evacuated, going hopefully to a habitable planet far away. One family selected is the Penas. Daughter Petra wants to be a storyteller like her granny Lita. The people will be put in stasis and uploaded with useful information on the centuries long trip. Storytelling is not a prized skill, so Petra is unhappy about the situation. The situation becomes much worse when she is woken up hundreds of years later on the ship by a group that has seized control and is called the Collective. It is an evil organization that has homogenized everyone's looks and erased their memories of Earth in an attempt to create peace and harmony for human beings. If the memory purge does not work on a person, that individual is purged. Petra has to pretend to be Zeta-1, a technician who will help to assess a planet that the ship has discovered and seems habitable. She really wants to save her family and escape from the Collective if she can.

The story has an interesting (if unoriginal) premise. Petra truly loves her family and misses her times on Earth with Lita. Her storytelling is what keeps her going and the book has plenty of flashbacks to Lita telling stories and giving advice (sometimes telling a story to give advice). Lita encourages Petra to make the stories her own, which winds up being a little narcissistic. Petra tells stories to some of her shipmates as a way to keep them on her side. Often she recasts the stories to make herself seem heroic or to get the outcomes she wants, as if the stories are meant to serve her rather than have value in themselves. So the further I got in the book, the less I liked her. The Collective is so clearly and blatantly evil that it might excuse Petra from "making the stories her own," (advice from Lita) but I was a lot less sympathetic with her by the end of the book. I still had sympathy for her and the final action is exciting.

Mildly recommended--the story is very entertaining but Petra turned out to be less of the hero than I wanted her to be. 

The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza by Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris

Scientist discover that the moon is being eaten by rats. If they go unchecked, the moon will disappear entirely! They decide to send a scientifically-enhanced cat to deal with the rodent infestation. The ship has a quirky robot guiding it and a toe-nail-clipping robot for some reason. Once they make it to the moon, they have various adventures on their way to confront the rats, including meeting the Moon Queen, who becomes an ally.  

The story is about as silly as the premise, though the cat does not speak English, it just meows significantly, so there's a tiny nod to realism. It is entertaining  and creative but very light-weight and definitely aimed at kids. 

Barely recommended--I probably would never have read this if it weren't for Battle of the Books.

Cute Kid Pix April 2019

More pictures that didn't make their own post...

The biggest event last month was Easter. As often happens, we were so busy celebrating that we didn't get many pictures. We did take some snaps before going to church in the morning.

All the kids, happy together

The youngest couldn't stay for more than one photo

One last shot

My son participated in Battle of the Books, an event co-sponsored by the local school system and the local library system. Each fifth-grade team had to read thirteen books before coming to a two-hour Friday night trivia contest. My son's team didn't win but they did have fun.

Teams entering

My son the standard-bearer

We went on a hike along the Patuxtent River near Savage Mill and enjoyed the spring weather and not-yet-lush scenery.

The roughest part of the river

A serious fellow

Side stream pouring into the river

We tried out duck pin bowling, which has smaller balls and smaller pins, but still the same size alley. The kids had fun though it was not so easy, even with an extra third throw. I had to remind them that it was our first time playing and we were just getting used to the different sizes. Our scores came out pretty close.

The youngest watches his ball

Not the greatest bowling ever

My son's saxophone needed some repairs. The day we picked it up, the weather was nice enough to do a little geocaching. We found A Stitch in Time, a fun urban cache. The kids weren't very patient and we looked at the hint very soon. Still, it was a fun find.

Ground zero for A Stitch in Time

Not far away is Short Line, a trail that was converted from old railroad tracks. This cache had no hints. I was a little worried because the area looked like it had undergone an undergrowth clearing, with several stumps from smaller trees visible. Thankfully the cache was still there and our youngest managed to find it first, to his great delight.

A happy geocacher

Another library story time saw us making a dinosaur puppet, just like the one from the Dinosaur vs. series by Bob Shea.

Gluing him together!

Finished product

Religious education for this academic year ended on the last Sunday of the month, with a crowning of Mary. Usually such crownings happen in May but since the parish is dedicated to Mary, it's appropriate anytime. The year typically ends with a May crowning, just this year the classed ended in April instead of May. We had the crowning indoors because the weather was ominous.

Crowning Mary