Author: Melissa Prycer
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Kindred Spirits
The last six months or so have been crazier than usual, of which this poor neglected blog is certainly a testament. To briefly recap: in June, I was named Interim Executive Director at the museum where I’ve worked as educator for the past nine years. I spent four weeks this fall at a professional development…
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Small books about big wars
In the fall of 2011, my family and I made our first trip to Hawaii. In what should be no surprise, we made sure to make time for a visit to Pearl Harbor. My knowledge of World War II is probably deeper that the average bear, but I’m not even close to being an expert.…
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On Slates
Around here, school is about to start. This is quite evident with the flashing school zone lights, and the conversations among the younger set. I spent Sunday night hanging out with two of my favorite girls, Grace and Sophie. However, the usual “back to school” conversation took an unexpected turn. Grace, now 11, started talking…
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Road trip inspiration
Over the years, I’ve built a few vacations around visiting favorite literary sites. There was the Prince Edward Island Trip in 2002. Mankato in 2009 (which led to the genesis of this blog). Mansfield and Hannibal in 2010. Monterey in 2012 and 2013. So, I’m very intrigued by the newish website, Placing Literature. It’s a…
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The Orphan Club
I read an awful lot as a kid, but there are still plenty of books that I missed. I’m starting to wonder if I had some sort of strange prejudice against girls named Betsy–after all, I didn’t discover Betsy Ray until college. And only recently did I discover another delightful Betsy. Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield…
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A Texas Twist
A gazillion years ago, I spent most of a semester reading the Dear America books. Officially, it was for a grad school paper, but I was also kinda curious. (I’ve now just spent 10 minutes looking for said paper, because I’m totally the kind of person to keep such things. But I can’t find it…
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The best medicine
Yesterday, I was walking down the back staircase at work, not paying too much attention to things. After all, I’ve walked down that staircase thousands of times. But this time, I missed a step and managed to do a wonderful job of spraining my ankle. I’ve done this once before, about five years ago, in…
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A 20th Century Pioneer
In these days of an enormous to-read list on goodreads and an online library reserve system, I don’t spend a lot of time browsing the stacks any more. Though I probably stop by the library about once a week, I truly get in and get out. On Saturday, the same song was playing on the…
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Judging a book by its cover. . . Again.
I first ranted about covers of Anne back in 2009. And then just this week, many kindred spirits joined my rant. A new cover of Anne went viral–Anne is remarkably modern, and more shockingly, blond! I mean, if you’re going to switch Anne’s hair color, shouldn’t you at least do something she would want? Like…
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Breaking News?
Today was quite the day for breaking news in the kidlit history world: Scarlet fever wasn’t the cause of Mary Ingalls’ blindness. Friends linked to articles on USA Today, the University of Michigan alumni newsletter, and jezebel.com–and I’m sure there were more. In a nutshell, Mary most likely had viral meningoencephalitis, a brain infection. And Laura…
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