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Charm School
Charm School Book 1: Magical Witch Girl Bunny by Elizabeth Watasin
This is something I bought for my adult graphic novel collection, but am now regretfully giving to the teen section. Anyway, this is a fun and fluffy fantasy romance. Bunny is a teen-aged witch, dating smooth cross-dressing vampire biker girl Dean. But the aptly-named faery hybrid Fairer Than wants Bunny for herself, and she’s not used to taking no for an answer. The drawings have a smooth, 1950s feel to them, and all the principles in our love triangle are incredibly sexy (in one tongue-in-cheek panel, Bunny asks the artist to draw her in fewer outfits that require a girdle.) It’s definitely focused on the relationships and the ghoulish teenagers setting – no big action sequences here – but very good at what it’s doing.
Green Babies, Sage Moms
Here’s one for Earth Day, a day early.
I’m happy to say that things have changed for the better since I had Mr. Froggie Pants. When I was pregnant and reading about how to have a green baby, everything seemed very fringe. The products they recommended were astronomically expensive, available only by mail order (I’m ok with mail-ordering diapers; paint, not so much) and looked like they would fall apart under normal usage. It all seemed so scary that I just ignored most of it.
Green Babies, Sage Moms by Lynda Fassa
Now comes this very accessible book, full of solid advice on every aspect of keeping dangerous chemicals out of your baby’s life. It’s geared towards pregnancy and baby care, but since just about everything in the house affects a baby, it covers enough to be useful to anyone wanting to improve their health and the environment at the same time. Here’s a short list: food, beauty products, gifts, cleaning, baby gear, clothes, detoxing the home, outside play, winning over family and neighbors, and connecting to other mothers. The advice is solid, and comes from a woman who didn’t want to give up mascara or spend all her time in the kitchen cooking. The reasons for going green are covered without being too scary, and sources are given for everything she recommends. She has numorous small contributions from experts in the field, including makers of chlorine and gel-free disposible diapers and makers of cloth diapers. Every chapter ends with a summary, dividing steps to be taken into three levels of green: evergeeen, pea green, and spring green, with the easiest and most important steps under spring green. That makes it easy to determine your level of commitment or to take things in smaller steps. For example, for food, spring green is buying only the Dirty Dozen fruits and vegetables organic, pea green is buying all organic, and evergreen is buying all local organic. The resource guide at the back includes even more resources than are given in the main text. This is a great start for anyone looking to go organic.
New Graphic Novels
AGE OF BRONZE 2 vol.
Alice in Sunderland
Apollo’s Song by Osamu Tezuka
Blue Pills by Federik Peeters
CEREBUS 16 vols.
DRIFTING CLASSROOM 2 vols.
FABLES VOL 2
FRANK MILLER SIN CITY 2ND ED 3 vols
House of Clay by Naomi Nowak
ICE HAVEN
NIGHTLY NEWS VOL
PUNISHER MAX 3 vol.
RED SONJA 3 vol.
SALON
WE 3
Rock Your Socks Off
Rock Your Socks Off by Charity and the Jam Band It’s time for dancing, mud, pickles and birthday cake in this rockin’ album for the under-ten set. Jump to “Happy Fluffy”, figure out your super power in “Super Hero”, and break out your towel to dance the “Towel Tango.” The songs are happy, upbeat, danceable. The lyrics are snappy, the tunes are catchy, and – wait – it sounds like real rock music, not like a classically trained musician or someone who just likes fiddling around with a guitar pretending to be able to sing rock. But don’t take my word for it – she’s got all the music to listen to on her website, http://www.jamjamjam.com .
Sneaky Chef
Sneaky Chef by Missy Chase Lapine Lapine starts the book with a rather lengthy argument for hiding veggies rather than forcing kids to eat them undisguised. She then gets down to business, explaining the theory of hiding unpopular nutrition inside favorite foods, matching color and texture and adding whole grains without being obvious about it. Next come recipes for several purees – white, orange, green, purple, bean, as well as several juices. Most of these use multiple veggies for added nutritional punch. If you’re handy in the kitchen, you can stop right there – just read the theory, and start adding her purees to your food. Or, go on to the recipes. These look quite solid. Yes, she uses veggies purees and whole grains, but they are mostly real food. She will mix butter and olive oil for a buttery taste without all the cholesterol, but not call for trans-fat free margarine, or separate the eggs to cut down on the fat. I’m still of the opinion that kids need cholesterol and natural saturated fats, but her approach is both easy to substitute full-fat items back in, and moderate as far as the low-fat crowd goes. The recipes that we’ve tried have gone over very well – macaroni and cheese was actually creamier after the addition of white puree, and went down like a charm. Mr. Froggie Pants is also excited about trying breakfast ice cream and cookies, and any of the desserts. I’d use the theories for adults as well as kids, because couldn’t we all use a little extra veggie power in our meals? And don’t we want it to taste yummy, too?
Persepolis
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi There are a lot of good comic books out there. And there’s a lot of good “contemporary women’s fiction,” aka book club books out there, with enough heft to carry over an hour or so discussion. This memoir fits nicely into both categories. Satrapi (five years older than me) tells a story of growing up in Iran in the 70s and 80s, moving from one repressive regime to another. The illustrations are very simple black and white, expressive and occasionally stunningly beautiful. The stark contrasts are especially telling as they illustrate the story of a girl learning that life isn’t black and white. Comic fans will probably already have read this. Everyone else should put it on their lists now.
Pirate Freedom
Pirate Freedom by Gene Wolfe A young but worldly-wise priest is writing his memoirs. It started when Chris was put in a monastery school in Cuba and decided he didn’t want to take orders. When he left the monastery, the Havana he knew was gone, replaced by a much smaller one. Without money, food or shelter, he found work on a pirate ship. He made friends with Cap’n Burt, but didn’t want to become a murderous pirate himself. So much for good intentions. After several more adventures, he finds himself captain of his own pirate ship, pursued (romantically) by the wily and courageous Novia. The straightforward prose suits the book well, telling the plain facts of real pirate life. The action is violent without being romanticized and the plot does several quite unexpected flips. And while Father Chris is writing his memoirs and working at the Teen Center, he’s plotting how he can get back in time to the wife he left behind. I hear Neil Gaiman’s calling it essential reading.
Slings & Arrows
Slings & Arrows
What’s not to love about a show whose opening song is titled “Cheer up, Hamlet!”? This a darkly comedic Canadian TV miniseries is about the New Burbage Theatre, smaller but very similar to Stratford, Ontario. At the heart of the show are three characters: Oliver (Stephen Ouimette), the jaded artistic director; Ellen (Martha Burns), the company’s lead actress, currently maintaining her youth with a string of much younger lovers; and Geoffrey Tenant (Paul Gross), director of a tiny and failing theater in Toronto. Seven years previously, these three were in an acclaimed production of Hamlet, Oliver directing and Ellen and Geoffrey playing the leads. In the middle of the third performance, Geoffrey went mad, jumping into Ophelia’s grave and then running away. At the end of the first episode, a very drunk Oliver calls Geoffrey to talk about the past. When Geoffrey refuses to talk to him, he falls down in the street and is run over by a truck labeled “Canada’s Best Hams.” Now, Geoffrey has been asked to be the interim artistic director and Oliver is haunting him. The current lead production is again Hamlet, and a young American action star has been asked to play the lead. We also follow a young apprentice actor, Kate, as perfectly winning an ingénue as you could ask for. Meanwhile, American executive Holly Day is convincing the already business-oriented financial director, Richard, that New Burbage would make a lot more money if it were transformed into a peppy and commercialized Shakespeareville. and I were flabbergasted by it all: the dark humor and snappy dialogue, the depth of the musings on theater and humanity, the sheer number of pots kept merrily bubbling at the same time. For those with theater backgrounds, this is absolute perfection. It’s also excellent TV.
