Day: December 27, 2005

Rowling Dedicates 2006 to Writing

| Tasha

J.K. Rowling has updated her website with an note saying that she is dedicating the next year to the writing of the final Harry Potter book. 


“For 2006 will be the year when I write the final book in the Harry
Potter series,” she says. “I contemplate the task with mingled feelings
of excitement and dread, because I can’t wait to get started, to tell
the final part of the story and, at last, to answer all the questions
(will I ever answer all of the questions? Let’s aim for most of the
questions); and yet it will all be over at last and I can’t quite
imagine life without Harry.”

Sigh.  Readers feel exactly the same mix of yearning to know how it ends and dread of the ending of the Harry Potter series. 

Dona Flor

| Tasha

Dona Flor: A Tall Tale About a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart by Pat Mora, illustrated by Raul Colon is a magical Southwestern tall tale.  Flor is an enormous woman as tall as the mountains.  She uses her size and strength to help the people who live near her. She grows  huge flowers that she lets the children play with.  She makes enormous tortillas that can be used as roofs and rafts.  She searches out a fearsome animal whose growls have been terrorizing the villagers.  And throughout it all, she demonstrates kindness and a very big heart.

The marriage of text and illustration is wonderfully done, with neither leaning on the other but both contributing to the story and making it better than it could have been.  This exquisitely done story is one that is perfect to share when studying tall tales at school.  We finally have a woman large enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Paul Bunyan. 

Carson Writes A Kid's Book

| Tasha

Carson Kressley, star of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, has written a children’s book about being different and being true to yourself.  The article focuses more on Carson and his own past rather than the book itself, but I loved a similar book, The Sissy Duckling, written by Harvey Fierstein.  I will hold out hope that if this is really based on his experiences as a child, it will reach farther than other celebrity books.