Make It Special - Book Gifts for Kids

Having loved books myself ever since I can remember, it's often what I turn to when selecting gifts for others. When giving the gift of a book to a child (or anyone else for that matter), you can make it special by adding a personalized bookplate to it.

There's a lovely selection of bookplates of all types and sizes at My Home Library. The bookplates can be used any way you like (except for commercial purposes). There's a lovely and growing selection contributed by well known illustrators of children's books. You're sure to find something suitable to make your gift of a book unique for that special person from among the many sizes and styles, color or black and white.

I found this simple one by Joan Aiken that appealed to me.

Where Kids Can Learn to ' Be'

While I was reading blogs several days ago, I ran into a blog Carrie and Danielle: How to live an inspired life, be true to you, and make a difference in the world where this question was posed: What is your favorite cultural activity that doesn't cost money?

There were lots of answers to this post, but the one I liked best was from Frances who gave this reply:

"It's the Library for me! I can travel the world, explore new science, learn any craft or skill right from our little Town. Any one can jump on the web super highway with access to special data bases paid for by the Library.

The Library is a meeting place; a place of arts/crafts; of meeting authors and it's the first place our kids can learn how to 'be' in our community.

Libraries aren't the stuffy, hear-a-pin-drop kind of places any more. They are vibrant, engaged inclusive places.

They are communal places that are built by and for the community and reflect the community's history and taste."

I love that idea the first place our kids can learn how to 'be' in our community.

That perfectly describes my rural library and many more like it that I know. How does yours measure up?

Best Practices in Fair Use

American University's School of Communications Center for Social Media has made available the full report of The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education as a PDF download. It is meant to help educators using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. This code of best practices was created by convening ten meetings with more than 150 members of leading educational associations, including signatories to this document, and other educators across the United States.

This video has some interesting commentary on copyright law and the rapidly changing technological landscape and what it potentially means to teaching media literacy.

Readability Test

TV Reviews

That blog readability test has cropped up again in many of the blogs I follow. Being as curious as the next person, I decided I would plug in my blog address and see how my blog fared as far as readability goes.


I'm not sure if the result is a compliment or an insult as far as my writing goes. If it's a compliment, all the credit goes to Jim Klein, the best high school writing and composition teacher ever. He's even excused for being totally a Green Bay Packers fan in Detroit Lion territory.

Hello Again

It's been several months since I've seen this logo come up on Twitter, their Fail Whale, meaning they are over capacity.

Things had been percolating along quite nicely with no problems for quite some time, but my reading has indicated that tweeting is the new "In" thing, replacing blogging for many. They say blogging has lost the unique, immediate and intimate feel it began with in the early days and that Twitter is being adopted as it seems to have that same unique quality.

I'll have to wait a bit to stop following one app as it is throwing out too many tweets that do nothing for me. Kind of an annoyance, but hopefully I can log on soon to slow down those tweets.

An Impulse Purchase

It gets dark so early these days that we'd been talking about getting some solar lights to light the walk in the yard. My husband was looking at utilitarian lights or lanterns. I saw these "Christmasy" ones at Sam's Club and liked the more decorative look, not to mention they are LED, change colors, and can charge even on cloudy days. Perfect for NE Minnesota where we need all the cheerful light we can get in winter months.

Life Lessons