Children’s Books Reading Goal: Update 3

Well, I made it through 3 books this week. I actually thought I had done four. However, it was only after finishing Lost in Bermooda that I realized it wasn’t one of my goal books. I must have checked it out for Calvin (?).

Goal Books I’ve Read

Hope was Here, by Joan Bauer (young adult, politics, family)

Hope and her aunt are moving to Wisconsin to try to start fresh after being betrayed. Addie, Hope’s aunt, takes over the job of cook from a dying man while Hope waitresses for the diner. Hope misses the exciting life of New York but gradually the little town becomes her home.

This was a really good book. It has all sorts of themes that may be relevant to a teen: rejection, family, growing up, relationships, adversity.

Peeled, by Joan Bauer (young adult, fear, newspapers)

Another great book featuring a female protagonist by Bauer. Hildy is a high school reporter who is trying to follow in her deceased father’s footsteps. She loves her small town but there have been rumors of malicious ghosts near the old Ludlow House. The town is whipped into a panic, helped by the town’s official newspaper, and Hildy is determined to get to the bottom of the situation.

The Double-Digit Club, by Marion Dane Bauer (Juvenile, girls, cliques, conflict resolution)

At the beginning of the school year Valerie created the “Double-Digit Club”. It’s for “any” girl that is ten or older. At the time, Valerie was the only ten-year-old in the class so it was a club of one. However, one-by-one the other girls turn ten until only Sarah and Paige are excluded. Sarah and Paige have vowed not to join the double-digit club and stay friends but things don’t go the way they envisioned.

This was a harder book for more to get through. It’s probably because it’s aimed at the juvenile audience. Probably a good book for juvenile girls but not one of my favorites reads as an adult.

Reading Goal: 14 of 180

Meadow Glen Park, Boulder, CO

I signed Calvin to participate in a study on Monday at the Cognitive Development Center but we had about an hour after preschool before we needed to be there. Monday turned out to be remarkably warm, for winter, so I decided we should visit a park first. I went to City of Boulder’s playground list and decided to try out Meadow Glen Park.

01MeadowGlen

Meadow Glen Park is a neighborhood park. It’s a nice park to walk to if you live in the neighborhood. However, unless you’re specifically trying to tour all Boulder parks, it’s not a park you would normally drive out of your way for. It has all the basics but not much else. Calvin’s favorite piece of equipment was the Vertical Pipe Climbers:

02Climber

In the picture above, you’ll also see there’s a red playhouse-type structure. I’m not sure what it is suppose to be called officially. It’s bigger than the normal playground playhouses. Outside, along either side, there’s a bench that can be sat on. Inside, there’s a fair amount of space and a couple small seats that kids can perch on.

03Playhouse

One of the other unique features of this park is it has a sun dial. It seemed accurate to within a 1/2 hr or so.

04Sundial

The playground also feature several swings and traditional-style playground equipment. Unfortunately, the spiral slide was roped off with a note that it needed to be fixed.

05Playground

The park backs up to City of Boulder open space on two sides. It’s not as scenic as Foothills Community Park but is still very relaxing. In addition to playground equipment there’s a small basketball court and the park connects to a path that runs beside the Empson Ditch. Once Calvin got bored with the playground he challenged me to several “races” across the bridge that spans the ditch.

06Bridge

I don’t think we’ll go back to this park, we still have a lot of parks left to explore. However, it did provide a nice break in the day.

Summary:

Features 5-12 year old equipment, spiral slide (currently broken), playhouse, swings, bucket swing, sun dial, verticle pipe climber, horse spring riders, steering wheel, storefront panel, bubble panel, Corkscrew Climber, Loop Arch Climber, chinning bar,
Surface Material Mostly pea gravel. Some poured rubber.
Restrooms No
Water fountain No
Shade Most of the playground is unshaded. Playhouse provides shade as do some mature trees on the west side.
Picnic area picnic table (no shade)
Parking Streets parking and then a short walk
Pros
  • Peaceful, backs up to open space
  • Neighborhood park so it’s not going to be over-run with people
  • Interesting playhouse
Cons
  • No restrooms


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Children’s Books Reading Goal: Update 2

This week was a fairly bad week for goal books. I only got through two books.

Goal Books I’ve Read

The Secret School, by Avi (Juvenile Historical Fiction)

I haven’t read a lot but so far every Avi book I’ve read has been good. In this one Ida is an eighth grade student who has a goal of going to high school and becoming a teacher. Unfortunately, her teacher has to quit toward the end of the year and the school board is too cheap to hire a replacement teacher. So, Ida decides to teach everyone herself so she will be able to take the high school placement exam and still go to high school. It’s a good story.

Traitor’s Gate, by Avi (Juvenile Historical Mystery Fiction)

Can you tell I’m reading alphabetically by author? This book was also a juvenile historical fiction but set further back in history, around the time of Dickens. In addition, it’s still a juvenile book but I’d say it’s for a slightly older audience. It’s a coming of age story where a boy starts learning that his father isn’t perfect and makes mistakes, sometimes mistakes with dire consequences.

Reading Goal: 11 of 180

Children’s Books Reading Goal: Update 1

I forgot how short some juvenile books are. I checked out several from the library this week and already ran out of new reading material. I’ve checked out some as ebooks but many of the books listed in Reid’s Read-Alouds don’t appear to be available as ebooks, at least from the libraries I have access to. I’ve put a lot more on hold for next week so hopefully I can avoid running out next time. I’m also hoping I get more young adults. The juvenile chapter books are a bit more basic than I like reading for fun.

Goal Books I’ve Read

The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy, by Jeanne Birdsall (Juvenile Old-fashioned Summer Adventure)

The Penderwicks has a very old-fashioned feel to it. It’s the story of a family of girls and their father renting a cottage for the summer holiday. The girls are quirky and adventurous and they drag everyone they meet, including their landlords son, into their adventures. It won the 2005 National Book Award for young people’s literature. NPR did a short interview with Bridsall about the book.

This was a good book. It’s very much in the vein of older children’s book written a long time ago and reminded me of many books I read as a child.

The Poison Apples, by
Lily Archer (Young Adult Boarding School)

Three girls acquire stepmothers and get packed off to the same elite boarding school. All of them hate their evil stepmothers and want their fathers to get rid of the new stepmothers.

This was my favorite of the books I read this week. One reason is probably because it was written for an older audience than juvenile. However, it’s also a wonderful plot. Boarding school stories always seem to be fun. Parts of it reminded me of The School for Good and Evil.

I Was A Third Grade Spy, by Mary Jane Auch (Juvenile Talking Dog)

This was a very short chapter book that revolved around a dog learning how to speak English. However, he still has the brain and motivation of a dog so this doesn’t end out working well.

This was probably my least favorite. Not because the book was bad, it wasn’t, but because it’s so below the level I would normally choose to read. It’s very much a book for children that are just starting to read chapter books on their own.

Ereth’s Birthday, by Avi (Juvenile Anthropomorphic Porcupine)

A porcupine leaves his home in a huff because he thinks everyone has forgotten his birthday. Through multiple mischances, he ends up talking care of three young foxes whose mother has died.

This was a great book. The language is fantastic. The porcupine is constantly swearing but in a very creative manner. For instance,

“Why can’t young folks ever be still?” A deeply disappointed Ereth complained to himself. “Potted pockets of grizzly grunions, it would save so much trouble if children were born . . . old.”

According to the reviews, this book is rated for the same grade levels as I Was A Third Grade Spy but it felt a lot more complex to me. It’ll be several years before Calvin can read this book but it’s a prefect listening level for him now. The subject is interesting without being too mature and the sentences are beautiful.

Ivy and Bean and the Ghost that Had to Go, by Annie Barrows (Juvenile Chapter Book)

Ivy and Bean are best (female) friends. They see a ghost in the elementary school restroom and pretty soon none of the students are willing to use it.

Another chapter book. It was fine but wasn’t inspiring for me. At least it was short.

Soupy Saturdays with the Pain and the Great One, by Judy Blume (Juvenile Sibling Fiction)

“The Pain”, a first grader, and “The Great One”, his 3rd grade sister snipe at each other like normal siblings. Sometimes they have good days and sometimes bad but in spite of it all they still look out for each other.

I remember listening to Judy Blume stories when I was in elementary school. I really enjoyed the ones I heard back then. Reading this one now, I thought it was fine. It’s probably good for the age group it was written for.

Reading Goal: 9 of 180

Wonderland Lake Park, Boulder, CO

Well . . . the weather report misled us. It said today was suppose to be sunny and 60 degrees. It actually was cloudy and in the 30s with a couple snowflakes drifting down. However, I told Calvin we would go to a park today so we went to the park after Sabbath School. This time we went to Wonderland Lake Park which was almost on the way home.

Getting there turned out to be more confusing than I expected. I had looked briefly at the map but my phone’s battery was dying and I wanted to save it for pictures so I didn’t use it for directions. I missed the turn the first time but eventually figured out that from Broadway I needed to turn west onto Poplar. It’s a “neighborhood” park which I think means there is no parking lot. We parked on Poplar street between Quince Cir and Quail Cir.

The park itself is beautifully situated. Wonderlake is fairly close and there are hills in the background.

01WonderlandPark

There’s a nice sand area with an elevated sand table and two diggers. One digger has a seat and the other one doesn’t so it can be used standing up or by someone in a wheelchair. Unfortunately, the snow had melted into the sand and frozen it into one hard mass so it was hard to do much digging.

02SandShovel

An informational sign at the park says the park was designed for ages 2-5. Though, most of the equipment seemed a bit “old” to officially be for 2-5 year olds. However, they did have an interesting caterpillar tunnel as well as a little covered house.

03CaterpillarTunnel

The main play structure is probably officially rated for 5-12 year olds but probably interests younger kids more. It’s a traditional style but looks fairly new.

04Structure

One of the panels was a double steering wheel.

05SteeringWheels

They also had a periscope panel and Calvin pretended he was on a submarine.

06Periscope

Like Harlow Platts Park, they had a tire swing. I was expecting I would have to push him a lot. However, after the picture below, when the tire swing was practically motionless, Calvin fell off, bumped his head and didn’t want to get on after that. I’m not sure how he fell off, I was zipping my coat up and missed it. However, it seems weird he fell off this swing when I was spinning him very fast on the other without any problems. Perhaps he got overconfident.

07TireSwing

We didn’t stay very long at this park. It’s a nice park but the weather was chilly. However, before we left Calvin managed to make some sand dunes (plural, he got upset when it was implied it was only one sand dune). If you look closely at the picture you’ll see a rock on top. That is Calvin. Next to it is a stick. That is Jaeger.

08SandStructure

Summary:

Features 5-12 year old equipment, spiral slide, periscope panel, steering wheel panel, caterpillar tunnel, sand area, accessible digger, digger, elevated sand table, small playhouse, swings, bucket swing, tire swing, straight slide
Surface Material Mostly rubber squares. Sand in the sand area and pea gravel by the tire swing.
Restrooms No
Water fountain No
Shade Small shaded structure with a picic table.
Picnic area A small picnic table
Parking Streets parking and then a short walk
Pros
  • Very scenic area.
  • Neighborhood park so it’s not going to be over-run with people
  • Nice variety of equipment
  • Good sand equipment
Cons
  • No restrooms


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New Reading Goal

Since I finished my first reading goal back in October I’ve been trying to figure out what my next reading goal should be. I was thinking about doing a goal around children’s books which would help me figure out books that might be good for Calvin.

At first, I was considering reading all the Newbery Medal books. After all, it’s one of the most prestigious awards in the US for children’s literature. However, I wasn’t getting inspired after pursuing the list of past Newbery Medal winners. There’s many good books in the Newbery list but there are some that are also very dated. In addition, I have read quite a few of them already. So, I dithered and dallied waiting for inspiration to strike.

Being a librarian in charge of an ILS, I do a lot of random searching to make sure things work the way they’re suppose to. Last week I stumbled across Reid’s Read-Alouds. It’s an annotated list of books selected to be of interest to juveniles and young adults. What I particularly like about this list are the books were all published between 2000 and 2008. This means they’re all new since my childhood. In addition, the reviews I’ve read imply that the books are nicely diverse reflecting a variety of backgrounds and experiences.

So, the goal. My goal is to read at least 180 of the books listed in Reid’s Read-Alouds. These are juvenile/young adult books so they’re probably going to be on the thin side. However, 180 is still a lot of books. I don’t have any idea how long it will take me to get through this many books but I guess we’ll find out.

Goal Books I’ve Read

Down the Rabbit Hole, by Peter Abrahams (Juvenile Mystery)

Ingrid is a teenage girl who loves Sherlock Holmes and acting. After getting lost on her way to soccer practice, Ingrid finds herself in the middle of a police investigation and develops a compulsion to figure out the mystery herself.

I enjoyed the book. I always like reading about strong female characters and Ingrid fits perfectly. She’s intelligent, moderately quirky, and figures things out in the end.

Whittington, by Alan Armstrong (Juvenile)

A story within a story. Whittington, a stray cat, finds a home in a barn with other stray animals the local gas station owner has taken in. The animals talk to each other and to the owner’s two orphaned grandchildren, Abby and Ben. Ben is having trouble learning to read at school and Abby and the animals decide to try to help him. Each night, after Ben finishes studying, Whittington tells the story of his famous ancestor.

I suspect this is a book Calvin would really like. However, it was a bit slow for me. It’s a good book, I’m just not the right audience.

Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson (Young Adult Historical Fiction)

In 1793 Philadelphia suffered a yellow fever epidemic that killed 5000 people. In Fever 1793, Mattie is 14 and is in the awkward stage between being a child and adult. She starts out resenting her mother but then the epidemic strikes and chaos ensues. Mattie tries to survive the epidemic while making sure the family’s livelihood, the local coffeehouse, also survives.

This was another good book and was a fairly quick read for me. At the end of the book Anderson provides an appendix that discusses various historical details interwoven throughout the book.

Reading Goal: 3 of 180

Harlow Platts Community Park, Boulder, CO

The past couple of weeks have been fairly snowy and cold. However, today’s weather was forecasted to be in the 50s and I decided we needed to take advantage of the weather and go to a park. After speech therapy, I took Calvin to Harlow Platts Community Park which is very close to Fairview, the high school Jaeger went to. This morning our backyard still had several inches of snow so I brought along a towel in case I needed to wipe off the slides. Viele Lake, adjacent to the park, was covered in ice. However, the playground itself was completely snow free and the slides were even dry!

The playground at the Harlow Platts park is pretty traditional and perhaps a bit on the old side. However, I don’t know if it really was old or if it was just so traditional it felt old. The equipment itself was in good shape. Calvin’s favorite feature by far was the tire swing. I probably spent 20 minutes pushing him on it and earned the honor of him telling me I made him go even faster than Kyle1 I did have some minor qualms about how fast I was spinning him but he survived without falling off :)

01CalvinOnTireSwing

The park also had a traditional play structure which the safety experts will tell us is for kids ages 5-12. Calvin climbed up the corkscrew and slid down the covered slide once but other than that ignored it.
02CalvinCorkscrewClimber

They also had a play structure for 2-5 year olds. Calvin wandered around this a bit more because it was windy and this structure was sheltered better.

03CalvinPlays

The tunnel made a nice escape from the wind.

04CalvinTunnels

05CalvinSlides

Calvin tried the overhead glider but it’s still a bit tall for him. I lifted him up and pushed him to the other side but it was too awkward for him to really enjoy it.

06CalvinTrackRide

The park has both bucket swings for smaller children and decent sized swings for older kids. However, Calvin didn’t stay on them long because it was uncomfortable with the blowing wind.

07CalvinSwing

Calvin did enjoy playing a little bit with the pull-up bar.

08CalvinChinningBar

There was also a decently sized sand pit which looks like it could be interesting closer to summer. There’s no provided sand toys but it’s a big enough area he could bring his shovel and bucket and spread out a bit.

Overall, this was an ok park. I expected more from it since it’s close to the recreation center but it didn’t really overwhelm me. It looks like there are some nice paths around the lake that might be nice for Calvin to ride his bike around.

Summary:

Features 5-12 year old equipment, 2-5 year old equipment, covered slide, track ride, tic-tac-toe panel, corkscrew climber, swings, bucket swings, sand area, tire swing, spring riders
Surface Material Mostly pea gravel/coarse sand
Restrooms No
Water fountain No
Shade Shaded structure right next to the playground but the equipment itself isn’t shaded.
Picnic area One small, two-person picnic table and then a couple more closer to the lake
Parking Yes
Pros
  • The lake is picturesque but there’s a fence between it and the playground to keep toddlers from wandering too far.
  • Tire swing!
Cons
  • The tire swing was nice but other than that it wasn’t a particularly exciting park.


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  1. Calvin’s preschool has a tire swing and Kyle is one of Calvin’s preschool teachers. ↩

Cosmo Lavish: The $10 Tablet

Last Sunday, while shopping at our local grocery store, I wandered back into the sale section. This is the section where the fruit is almost spoiled, the bread is stale, and really random things that won’t sell appear. Sunday, nestled close to mostly dead flowers, I found several Proscan 7″ tablets for $10 each.

I picked it up thinking I must be misreading the box somehow. Maybe it was only a case? Nope, it claimed to have Android Jelly Bean installed. I read the box specs very carefully. The biggest downside seemed that it only had 4 GB of space. However, it claimed to be expandable an additional 32 GB via a microSD card. I pulled out my phone and looked it up on Amazon. I had just time to see it got a full 2 1/2 stars before my phone died. I debated with myself how bad a tablet would have to be to not be worth $10. I had been considering getting a tablet for a while for trips so that Calvin could play his videos on it while I could use the iPad for other things. After too much waffling, I decided to buy it and see what happened.

I got it home, pulled it out, and was pleasantly surprised by the case and keyboard it came with. The keyboard is cramped and itsy-bitsy but feels pretty nice. Of course, it also makes the tablet at least twice as thick. The tablet itself is obviously very cheap. I have named it Cosmo Lavish because it’s an extremely cheap imitation of the Google Nexus.

After I confirmed there really was a tablet inside the box, our family took an outing where I picked up a 32 GB micro SD card. This micro SD card cost about three times what the tablet did. On the other hand, it came with an adapter so if this came to naught, I could probably re-purpose it for something else.

The next day, after the tablet was fully charged, I loaded the SD Card with most of Calvin’s movies/TV shows. The video player works fine though the resolution is terrifying (800×480). Fortunately, Calvin has not yet inherited his father’s high standards when it comes to video display. However, the biggest downside I noticed was the battery was draining at an alarming rate. The box claimed it had 4 hours of video playing time. Naturally, I took this with a grain of salt. However, I managed to go from a claimed 100% to 75% battery in 15 minutes. This was moderately worrying.

My first real-life test of the tablet occurred on Tuesday. Since I started working on Mondays, I no longer was able to get my hair cut while Calvin was in preschool. So, I took Calvin to the salon with me and handed him Cosmo to play movies on. The interface is moderately different from the iPad so Calvin had to fiddle a bit to figure out how to make the video do what he wanted1. However, about 30 minutes in, the battery managed to die completely, cutting Calvin off mid-video. Fortunately, my haircut was almost over so I didn’t have to figure out how to entertain him for the rest of the time.

So, Cosmo failed his first test. I was unclear whether that was because the battery was pathetic or if it was also power hungry. Once home, I hooked it up to one of my portable batteries to see how long movies could run on that. I ran out of time that night to wear it down, but I got it to play 4 hrs of video without getting a third of the way through the external battery. So, I think it’s just the battery itself that is substandard. As a result, I think I can still use this for travel since I have two portable batteries. With the battery, it’ll play video longer than any of my laptops.

I would have felt ripped off if I had paid $75 for Cosmo. However, at only $10, I think it was a reasonable deal. If nothing else, it has a pretty standard Android interface so I can decide whether or not I like the OS enough to consider a Nexus later on.

As an aside, the Proscan manual has an amazing amount of exemplary Engrish in it. Excerpts on the first page:

  • Do not drop or crash the device to prevent the violent impacting between the display and the capacitive touch screen. Or the customers have to take the consequence by themselves.
  • Please choose the suitable volume and never make the too loud volume .If you feel uncomfortable please turn down the volume or stop to use the device soon.
  • Do not disconnect the device while formatting, downloading or uploading, or it may make the error.
  • Please operate the device according to the user manual rightly and backup the important data in time2.
  • Do not use this device while walking and driving, avoiding traffic accident.
  1. In retrospect, I probably should have given him time before then to play with it when I could help him ↩
  2. Because I always know when my device is going to fail . . . ↩

32 hours

When Calvin was born I went from working 40 hrs/week at the library to working 20 hrs/week from home. It seemed a good decision at the time. Working from home definitely allowed me more flexibility when Calvin was sick as well as an easy way to do off-hour server maintenance. However, this coming November we will be migrating to a new Integrated Library System (the catalog et al.). The selection process was hard enough to do at 20 hrs/week and both my manager and I agreed that the actual migration would be impossible.

So, this last Monday I upped my hours from 20 hrs/week to 32 hrs/ week. I also shifted from working a Sunday, Tuesday-Friday schedule to a straight Monday-Friday schedule. I planned several months ago to try to work most of the additional hours either during Calvin’s existing preschool time or early in the morning. However, I wasn’t sure if this plan would survive contact with the reality. So far though, it’s working out. I’ve been getting up at 5:40 each morning, showering and running downstairs to work for an hour and a half1. Then, I take a break to eat, get Calvin ready, and drop him off at preschool. Then work from 9:30-2:30. I don’t have much flex time before picking up Calvin at 3:00 but so far I’ve really enjoyed being able to work more. I’m not nearly so stressed at all the things I’m not getting done :) As a bonus, I’m also walking about 4-6 miles everyday on the treadmill.

  1. This morning time replaces the time I would work on Sunday to do maintenance as well as gives me uninterrupted time to work on specific projects. ↩

St. Mary’s Square Playground, San Francisco, CA

The last couple of weeks have been busy. Calvin and I went out to visit Nana, Jaeger’s mother, early so she could have more time with Calvin. Than the rest of the family arrived a couple of days later. After Christmas we flew to San Francisco and are decompressing from family time before going to visit Jaeger’s grandmother. This was our second full day in San Francisco. We went to Chinatown and wandered around the streets for a while. While there, we stumbled across a playground in St. Mary’s Square1. To my surprise it was mostly deserted . Maybe it was just the wrong time of day for families to be their with their children.

The playground is small but has a nice selection of equipment. The equipment seems fairly new but is showing some sign of wear and tear. The first thing Calvin tried out was the double teeter-totter-type thing.
teetertotter

Next, he played for a bit with the Playworks structure which was very similar to the one at East Boulder Community Park.
sand

They also had a train which looked like it could entertain a variety of ages.
train

The last piece of equipment was a semi-traditional playground set that is probably officially designed for 5-12 year-olds. Calvin enjoyed climbing on the rope ladder but other than that seemed to get bored of it fairly quickly.
playground

They also had some swings outside the fenced area but we didn’t get around to those. It was a nice little park and provided a great opportunity for Calvin to run around and get energy out before once again braving the Chinatown crowds.
Summary:

Features 5-12 year old equipment, 2-5 year old equipment, rope bridge, slide, new-style teeter-totter, sand play works, train, swings
Surface Material Poured Rubber and sand
Restrooms No
Water fountain No
Shade Yes, mainly provided by the tall buildings around the park.
Picnic area No.
Parking I believe it’s on top of a parking garage but we walked there.
Pros
  • Nice place to take a break in the middle of the city
  • Provides a couple of playground pieces for a variety of ages
Cons
  • Eqipment showing some wear and tear, though most is still fine.
  • It’s a city so there’s homeless people, though none were near the enclosed part of the playground.


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  1. Also yet another statue of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, they’re everywhere. ↩