Beth Ain's Blog, page 2

This Blog Belongs To…

Okay, here we go. So I set up this blog when I was waiting to see if I would get a book deal myself. It was a place to put my writing while I wondered (read: paced, worried, chewed nails) what was next for me professionally. In an instant, it became so satisfying to write about the books I loved as a child, the books I read out loud to my children now, and the ideas and emotions stirred up nightly by books written for and about the lives of children (and also, highly imaginative Siamese cats....

prizes, southern charm, and other things you get out of PARP week

Tonight my daughter was reading the superb Three Times Lucky when I rudely interrupted her. It was time for sleep. “There is a murder in this book, Mommy.” I had been in a hurry until she said that. I half sat down. I knew if I fully sat down it would scare her, make her think that the murder in Tupelo Landing was deadly serious and maybe not fictional. And at this moment it was more important to emphasize the fake in fiction.

“Nothing interesting usually happens in Tupelo Landing,” she insist...

From Where Shall My Help Come?

I spent yesterday with a very religious Jewish women. A newly single mother of 7 children, she is also a musician heavy on Beastie Boys influences, a producer, a camp counselor, a laundress, a sister and an aunt. But mostly, she is a believer.

And she wears a head scarf to prove it. And she says a bracha before eating a handful of cashews. She gives thanks to God regularly. The same God, presumably, to whom I give thanks when I make Shabbat dinner for my kids and we bicker over who will say mo...

An Open Letter to Governor Jan Brewer:

While we road-tripped through your great Grand Canyon State last week, I worked with my daughter on her rocks project for school. With all that red rock and limestone all around us, she and I were charged with delving into the architecture of the Jefferson Memorial—a grand and important monument made solidly of Georgia marble and limestone and built in the image of the Pantheon of Rome. Things a third grader knows.

We also learned about the words inscribed in the dome and on the walls of this...

“I cried so much, I’m washed enough.” (or, The Genius of Kevin Henkes)

I spend a lot of time with a 6 year old boy, which is to say that I spend a lot of time tripping over forts improbably made out of board game boxes and empty toilet paper rolls. I don’t ever get used to it either. I’ve written about the tiny little pieces of things that send me over the edge sometimes, and I picture myself making good on all those promises to throw it all away or better yet, give it all away to a deserving, imaginary child who will take good care of these things, sorting it a...

New Year, Newish Me*

*(Nothing to do with kids’ books, everything to do with #jewishgirls twitter prompts…)

I sometimes read Goop—Gwyneth Paltrow’s aspirational online lifestyle magazine–browsing the recipes and clothes that might change my life if I could just…would just…shop for the ingredients, do the gritty work celebrity fitness addicts do in their kitchens all afternoon, soaking beans, sautéing greens, developing new ways to keep quinoa at center stage–brush my teeth with it? Does it do anything for teeth? A...

“After Miranda was done saving her own life, she called someone who could commiserate…”

I was at the movies this weekend and it was crowded, so crowded I had to sit in one row with my first-born while my husband sat a few rows up with our second child. It was a funny movie and I found myself glancing behind me and up, trying to catch my husband’s eye—searching, I guess, for a shared moment.

Afterward, he said, “didn’t you love the Isaac reference?” We had seen Despicable Me 2 and it was loaded with in-jokes for the parents. Brilliant, really. “I did,” I said. I didn’t tell him th...

Is it more interesting to be gay or a Kardashian?

A friend recently asked me how she should go about writing a children’s book that represents her family’s life. I admit that on any given day, I might find this question aggravating. While some of the people who solicit writing advice are indeed writers, many of the people interested in writing books for kids are not. And sometimes that matters to me and sometimes it doesn’t. On this day, it didn’t aggravate me one bit–it got me thinking.




The person who asked me this particular question on thi...

20 Seconds of Courage (over and over again)

Thanks to Cameron Crowe, we have a new parenting philosophy around our house. Recently, as a family, we watched We Bought a Zoo, where Matt Damon’s character, Benjamin Mee, invokes 20 seconds of courage as a lifestyle mantra. We don’t learn about it until late in the movie when Mee’s mopey son has something to do requiring bravery. He has to tell a girl how is feeling, he has to tell her that he loves her. And he has to do it in the rain because it’s a Cameron Crowe movie, so of course there...

“I Said Ay, Man…” (So, you want to be a Huxtable)

If it isn’t enough that my children—thanks to XM radio’s 80’s on 8—think that Beat It and Come on Eileen are current radio hits, add to that my insistence on exposing them to the child-rearing of the Huxtable family and let’s see what we have here. Kids who live in a time warp of one-hit wonders and family togetherness? Check. Kids who maybe shrug their shoulders and list Bon Jovi in their top three favorite singers list? Check. Kids who ask their friends if they’ve seen the one with the Gord...