Mechele Armstrong's Blog, page 11

Friday Five

1. I'm a third of the way through the third dragon story!! Yay me!

2. Just found out Stephen King's Bag of Bones is being done as a mini-series by A&E! Will have to reread the book before December but am very much looking forward to it.

3. The Walking Dead premieres on Sunday night. Last time I watched the series, it gave me nightmares LOL. The previews look good. Castle was excellent this week as always. I loved Ryan's part in the episode. And what better compliment could Kate ever give Castle than the one at the end.

4. Youngest is not a reader *sigh* much to my dismay. She's been reading the True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi in class. She plopped the book on my desk with the admonition to "read it, Mom, it's so good!" Needless to say when the kids tell me to read something, I don't take it lightly, especially from her. I checked it out from the library and read it. Really good adventure book with a hint of mystery. I enjoyed it very much, thank you, youngest. She was mad because I finished it before she did LOL.

5. To the person beside me in the double turning lane who tried to turn into my lane...thanks for eliminating the need for coffee this morning. Yes, that woke me up!

May the muses have books they can't put down
Mechele

Getting ready to write! It's going slowly but it is going...

Getting ready to write! It's going slowly but it is going. I have a new pretty to share soon...definitely inspiring me this morning.

I blogged at TRS: http://ping.fm/XkbnF

I blogged at TRS: http://ping.fm/XkbnF

Friday Five

1. I'm working on the third dragon rider story. My word count isn't going up as fast as I would like but *sigh* it is moving. Lots of distractions right now.

2. I could be looking at 3 releases before the end of the year! Will keep you informed.

3. Let's see, I've been watching Castle (loving it, the last few have been so good, course they always are), Doctor Who (OMG! what a ride), Big Bang Theory (it gets funnier and funnier) and Warehouse 13 (Ack! at the season finale). Phineas and Ferb has a Halloween episode tonight and I plan to tune in. P&F is the one cartoon I'll watch without kidlets.

4. Reading, I'm sort of a standstill in the reading. I read two books by Karen Rose (awesome as always, gosh I love her), Sandpiper (couldn't put it down), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (ehhhh, not my favorite book, the writing style didn't draw me in), and Bitter End by Jennifer Brown (that woman can write emotional like nobody else, very serious topic and she did a good job).

5. Middle schools here have adopted the program, Rachel's Challenge. It's a program about kindness adopted from the writings of Columbine victim, Rachel Scott. It's a very moving program, I went to a parent's assembly. I hope the schools manage to keep it going.

May the muses have acts of kindness
Mechele

Need to get motivated this morning! My word count sucketh...

Need to get motivated this morning! My word count sucketh this week so far, but I will prevail. I will make my muse submit.

A review of Another Dream, Another Reality! http://ping.f...

A review of Another Dream, Another Reality! http://ping.fm/GDVVB

Stop, Look, Win!

Banned Books Week-it is personal

I've had experience with a challenged book. You may have heard the story...but for those who haven't...

My high school pulled Salem's Lot by Stephen King from the high school library's book shelves. Our understanding was that one parent objected to the book and it was pulled.

Oddly enough, I had done a Honors English book report on Salem's Lot when I was in 10th grade.

The students protested. A local bookstore gave away free copies of Salem's Lot to any Goochland High School student who wanted it.

But the book remained off the library shelves.

I will never understand why I could do an Honors English report on a book that was so objectionable it was pulled such a short time later. I don't believe the library was better for the challenge and ban. No, I felt the space on the shelf where that book used to be was much lesser for the loss of it.

A book I had read as a younger student was pulled because one parent decided their child couldn't read it and if they couldn't, no one could.

That's why it matters so much to me.

Mechele

What books are banned and why?

The books on the challenged/banned list run the gamut.

It's anything from And Tango Makes Three to In the Night Kitchen, both children's picture books to children's chapter books like Captain Underpants to Bridge to Terabithia to Julie of the Wolves to young adult novels like Sandpiper (which I read at the library in the banned books reading room the other night) and The Hunger Games to classics like The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Flies, 1984 to popular fiction like Harry Potter and Twilight. Several books by Stephen King and Judy Blume have been banned/challenged in years past.

Generally when people are asked to name their favorite book, To Kill a Mockingbird is somewhere on that list. And yep it's been challenged/banned as well.

ALA took a list of the Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century and counted off how many book on that list had been challenged/banned. These are just ones they know about but 45/100 books have been challenged and yet are considered the top novels of the 20th century.

Why do people challenge books?

The most common reasons books were challenged from 2001 to 2010
- "sexually explicit"
- "offensive language"
- "unsuited to age group"
- "violence"
- "homosexuality"
- "anti-family"
- "religious viewpoints"

I know Harry Potter has been challenged due to promotion of witchcraft.

Mechele Armstrong

"All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of ou...

"All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children or any other children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf - that work I abhor - then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us."
― Katherine Paterson