The Magician’s Workshop, Volume One by Christopher Hansen and J. R. Fehr

Having loved fantasy for many years I’m often startled by people who complain about books that dump them into a new world without explaining things. Personally, jumping headfirst into a new mysterious world is one of my favorite ways to start a book.  But the authors of The Magician’s Workshop understand that not everyone (particularly young readers) may enjoy such a thing.  So they start with a bit of a disclaimer as the preface, likening trying a new book to starting summer camp. It might seem scary and uncertain, and you might not know if you’ll like it but you should try it because chances are good you will love it!

Sadly, no doubt because Mom suggested she read it, it didn’t sway my daughter.

Which is too bad because, for a young girl who likes reading books with magic in them, I still think she’d like this one.

The Magician’s Workshop dumps you straight into a pile of characters living in their crazy island world where everyone can work magic. And as the characters go about life projecting magic images, flavors and smells, the authors slowly start to introduce some of the difficulties that come in such a fantastical world. What do you think? Would you bother eating real fruit if you could eat something that tasted like fruit instead?

Would I recommend it? For a magic loving pre-teen/teen audience these books could be just the ticket. And, although I have no credentials to back it up, (remember me? I’m a woman with three daughters) I think that boys would really like these books too.  Fair warning, as it says in the beginning, this is the first of a series of books that is more like a television series. Which is true, at the end there is no real conclusion or even a cliff hanger, just a fade out until you start the next book (which is okay because volume two is available on Amazon already!).

Rosie's Book Review team 1

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I discovered this book because I’m a proud member of Rosie’s Book Review Team!

 

Burning Firewood

I put another stick of firewood on the fire.

It’s a large awkward chunk with holes riddling it, part of an old carpenter ants’ nest. It came from the big cherry tree on the old fence line. It must be one of the oldest trees on the property with three big trunks and when one of them broke and fell it landed on the neighbors side. Cherry is about as good of wood as we have for burning at our place, so I quickly sent John over to negotiate. Our tree, his land, we will clean it up quick, thank you very much!firewood carved by ants

My brother happened to visit just about then so I put a chainsaw in his hand and he cut the limb into rounds while I heaved them over the old wire fence. Straight into all the kinds of prickles that grow in Wisconsin. It took another day with John running the chainsaw to finish clearing everything. And then, over the course of several months I smashed my wheelbarrow through the brush to a little clearing I had made. There I split the big rounds into firewood sized chunks. There I also learned it’s important not to catch brush on the top of your arc while splitting wood. Then I loaded them all up and brought them to the wood pile. That was the time that I learned that even if those ants are frozen solid, they thaw – alive…

My firewood piles near the house are dwindling. I need to move more from the big stacks a bit further away but I need a better system. The tractor would be ideal. Hopefully it’ll be fixed soon. Maybe a sled would work. I think there might be a half dozen hard to split pieces back by the fence. I must have given up on them when I hurt my shoulder last year. I should check. And I should learn to use a chainsaw so I don’t have to rely on the boys. Of course that gives me an excuse to spend a day working outside with John or my brother or my dad. Maybe I’ll stick with the splitting maul. Our chainsaw has issues anyway, I wonder what else we can try to fix it…

I put another stick of firewood on the fire and I wonder what people think about when they turn up the thermostat.

 

 

How do you spell…

In case you haven’t noticed (because spell check and John usually see these posts before you do) I am, have always been, and likely always will be, a terrible speller.

In new spelling lows, I have successfully taught my phone how to spell tomorrow incorrectly. That’s right, my phone now auto completes to a misspelled word. I am also learning Portuguese on Duolingo.com (Are you learning a language on Duolingo too? Lets be friends!) and I get lots of answers wrong because they are misspelled – in English. It seems the program will give you a break if you spell a word wrong in the language you are learning but it expects you to know your native tongue.

I mention this not look for sympathy or advice but simply because I’d like you all to believe me when I say I’m a terrible speller. Because, unfortunately for us all, my kids do not.

Kid -“Hey Mom! How do you spell tomorrow?”

Me- “I don’t know, just try it.”

Kid- “No, just tell me how to spell it!”

Me- “I don’t know! With a “T”. ”

Kid- ” ARGGHHH! Why are you being so mean!!!”

Me- “I’m not. I just don’t know how to spell it.  You’ll have to figure it out.”

Kid- “Yes you doooo, you are just being meeaaannn.”

Me- *throws arms up in exasperation and leaves the room*dscn7917-2sm

Sadly, since they don’t believe me, they don’t stop asking and “How do you spell…” is fast becoming one of my new dreaded phrases. Even Jane is in on it now.  Just the other day she asked, “Mom, how do you spell “how to regret your salmon?”.

And, in the worst news of all, not only was I unsure how to spell that, I couldn’t even figure out why she wanted to know.

 

Grind by Edward Vukovic

Is it cliche to compare a book that features coffee with a coffee shop? I hope not…

This book is told from a variety of view points and as they are introduced, the characters swirl through the plot like the steam and scent of coffee in eddies of breezes, mingling and changing as they meet. Just as if you were to follow your nose walking through your favorite local coffee shop, the scent of some of the characters drew me in. I wanted to know more about the woman who reads the future in coffee cups and I drank those stories up looking for seconds. Others pushed me back, the real estate agent was not what I hoped for, nor what I was expecting. Yet others, like the homeless man, changed on closer inspection, the difference between the initial scent of a cup and the surprising flavor on the tongue.

And I think the cover is wonderful. Judge books by covers sometimes- it totally works!

These people living in an Australian city have nothing but coffee in common, until they all drift toward the ceiling, swirling, changing and intersecting.  Once that happens, once all the characters intersect, some in big ways some smaller you are left with an overall ambiance that is better than any of them individually.

Would I recommend it?  Yes and I don’t even drink coffee.

(Also the book has undergone a rewrite and additional editing since the first reviews posted on Amazon, don’t let them scare you off!)

 

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

 

“Cleaning”

…Five. … Six! …

I was cleaning the girls’ room…

…SEVEN!!! …

…emptying out the space behind the door, on top of and under and over the doll bed that was hiding there.

…EIGHT!!!

Finding eight dirty, crumpled socks smashed in the doll bed along with old school papers, an assortment of toys, random bits of garbage and other dirty laundry sent me into full blown mom freak out mode.

Perhaps you are familiar. It involves high pitched squeaky voices, excessive use of the word “seriously”, a significant amount of arm waving and glassy eyed children who just show up to watch the spectacle without taking in any of the information.

When the arm waving wound down and the children went back to “cleaning” other areas I stomped downstairs with an armful of things that belonged elsewhere in the house wondering why on earth the kids thought it was acceptable to just throw stuff in piles in the corner and call it clean.

Seriously, don’t they realize that their toys have places to go I thought as I chucked tape into the dresser drawer that houses the world’s largest “junk” drawer.

“These things have places they belong!” I hollered up the stairs as I tossed crayons and markers onto a shelf in the office.

At what age do they actually put things where they belong instead of just throwing them in piles I fumed as I tossed nail polish on my closet shelf. I had to do it twice. It fell off the first time because of the pile of unused baby carriers, clothes that are only “barely” dirty (different from kinda dirty – those go on the chair), clothes that need mending, a bag of nail polish that was never unpacked from Thanksgiving, jeans with a broken button, and an old e-reader.

…

*sigh*

It’s possible some of us never learn.

 

 

 

Not Just Any White Stuff Will Do

There are all different kinds of snow.

There is the icy, crystally kind that hurts your cheeks when it drives down out of the sky and the impossibly fluffy kind that falls out of the sky in feathery clumps that compact into almost nothing by morning. There are the super cold drifts that squeak beneath your boots and the terrible warmed and refrozen kind that is really just snow shaped ice covering the ground.

The best kind, that never seems to come around as often as you hope, is the wet pack-able kind. This snow, that snowballs and snowmen are made of, shows up on warm days. And those days, when the snow is debating disappearing altogether but hasn’t yet given up it’s hold, those are the days for sledding.sledding

The track becomes hard and packed so you fly down the hill.Ivy sledding

And between the climb of the hill and the warmth of the day everyone can stay out for hours.Jonas sledding

The soft snow that might be turning to slush at the bottom is forgiving of crash landings. Grandma Mary and Ivy sleddingIt will melt on your face and your clothes, until snow pants start to sag with the weight of it.Grandma Mary, Clara and Ivy sledding

It takes a certain kind of day, a certain type of warmth, a certain amount of snow and a perfect hill.Tyler and Jonas sledding

Not just any white stuff will do…John sledding

…if you are looking for…
Jonas and Pete sledding

 

 

… a perfect day on the hill.Jane sledding

Did I Just Say What I Thought I Said? XV

I’m back with another edition of “Did I Just Say What I Thought I Said?” in which I share a phrase that I never thought:

A) would ever need to be said in the first place,

B) that I would need to be the one to say it and

C) that I wouldn’t just be saying it, I’d be yelling repeating it over and over and over…

For the first time ever I am sharing a phrase that I never thought I’d have to say that is not directed at any of the kids, nor even the dogs. No, this time it’s John who is the one who has been hearing:

No. I will not colonize Mars with you!

Repeatedly.

Because…

I am not interested in space. I’d rather here about the mating habit of moths than what far away planets have which moons and are covered with what frozen water like substance.

I am not interested in traveling through space. That’s just terrifying and you aren’t going to convince me otherwise.

I am not interested in living in a confined space for any length of time. I’m assuming there would be people other than my husband in that confined space with me. I mean, I like other people, and being around them is fine but then I like to leave them wherever they are and go back to my own earthy space with my husband and ignore all talk about stars, galaxies and life support systems.

I am not interested in going to Mars. Because to get to Mars you would have to travel through space in a tiny space with other people – just no.

I am not even remotely interested in staying on Mars. Even if I could avoid all the space travel and teleport there for a quick look around before quickly teleporting back to the nice green earth, Mars is NOT where I would go first… or second… or third…

It does not matter if John thinks he is the perfect candidate for Mars colonization. I am not. I don’t care if he makes up things about Mars needing chickens my answer stays the same.

No. I will not colonize Mars with you!

Just in case you thought I was being dramatic. This is the poster now hanging in our bedroom.

Just in case you thought I was being dramatic this is the poster now hanging in our bedroom.

 

What about you? If given the opportunity would you colonize Mars?

 

The Ballet Birthday

Jane was treated to her first viewing of The Nutcracker today (With tickets from her great grandparents with a view that had us all feeling spoiled!).

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She spent most of the show on the edge of her seat which exhausted her so she couldn’t stay awake on her way out to her birthday dinner. It was touch and go there for awhile but, after a little nap and some dinner, Jane was all smiles by the time we brought the cake out!Jane
Jane

Happy Birthday Jane!