The winner and finalists of this year's Washington Post's Peeps Diorama Contest are up!
I have been slightly obsessed with Peeps ever since a good friend of mine introduced me to them years ago (and since I heard the perhaps-urban-legend about their indestructability). These entries are so clever, it makes me want to enter next year--though it looks like I may have to live in the D.C. area to be eligible?
- L'Edi-Peeps
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Doing the tap dance
It's World Water Week, and I just heard about this awesome nationwide project for UNICEF.
Perhaps this week will even get you used to drinking tap water all the time, and you will no longer waste your money (or the valuable resources used to bottle, ship, and dispose of the plastic bottles housing what is pretty much just tap water that you've already paid for in taxes) on bottled water anymore.
I strongly believe that access to clean water is a human right, and that rights should not be privatized. When we privileged few start paying high prices for things that should come to us free, all that happens is the poor people who can't afford this newly commodified resource will end up with no access at all. (For an analagous, if less serious example, see the rise of cell phones and the decline of pay phones.)
Activistically yours,
L'Editrice
Perhaps this week will even get you used to drinking tap water all the time, and you will no longer waste your money (or the valuable resources used to bottle, ship, and dispose of the plastic bottles housing what is pretty much just tap water that you've already paid for in taxes) on bottled water anymore.
I strongly believe that access to clean water is a human right, and that rights should not be privatized. When we privileged few start paying high prices for things that should come to us free, all that happens is the poor people who can't afford this newly commodified resource will end up with no access at all. (For an analagous, if less serious example, see the rise of cell phones and the decline of pay phones.)
Activistically yours,
L'Editrice
Thursday, March 4, 2010
W/b/s!
It just occurred to me that my job allows me to do not just one but TWO of my favorite childhood pasttimes for a living: The first one is obviously reading, but the second one is writing to penpals.
When I read authors' manuscripts, I'm learning so much about them and their characters and different worlds, just like I did when I was little and would write to all my penpals (some of whom were, ahem, better correspondents than others). And then I get to write back these long letters to everyone. And even though I've never met the majority of them--just like I never met my Romanian penpal, Laura--I feel I know them so well and that we're friends. (I hope my authors feel the same way--or at least recognize my niceness through my constructive criticism/bossiness. Come to think of it, bossiness may also have been one of my childhood hobbies . . .)
All that's missing is the Lisa Frank stationery. I may just have to remedy that. . . .
TTFN!
L'Editrice
P.S. Woah, I just came across a bakery that makes Lisa Frank cupcakes. And they're in my hometown!
Friday, February 26, 2010
Cool things I learned from this week's PW Children's Bookshelf
- Publishers introduce a high-tech way to share storytime (with a super-cute name)--now that's a smart way for old media to embrace new media without compromise.
- John Grisham is writing a middle-grade series. My dad and I (cautiously) squeal! (Though it would have been even better news had the 13-year-old legal-whiz protagonist been named Theodora.)
- And I didn't even know they'd replicated that famous cookie test with marshmallows recently, but I'm glad to see it confirmed that one's childhood lack of self-control involving sweets has nothing to do with one's long-term self-control on more important things. I mean, I was a good kid who followed instructions, but I have never been able to turn down a cookie or a marshallow--and I think I've done okay in life. So stop maligning us sweet-tooth types!
- L'Editrice
- John Grisham is writing a middle-grade series. My dad and I (cautiously) squeal! (Though it would have been even better news had the 13-year-old legal-whiz protagonist been named Theodora.)
- And I didn't even know they'd replicated that famous cookie test with marshmallows recently, but I'm glad to see it confirmed that one's childhood lack of self-control involving sweets has nothing to do with one's long-term self-control on more important things. I mean, I was a good kid who followed instructions, but I have never been able to turn down a cookie or a marshallow--and I think I've done okay in life. So stop maligning us sweet-tooth types!
- L'Editrice
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Think (and re-think, and say out loud) before you write
I don't mean to make fun of what I'm sure are fine establishments, but I've now seen one too many Universal Technical Institute commercials and I have to say something: Did no one realize that their acronym (which they definitely go by) is also shared with urinary tract infection?
It reminds me of a store I passed when I was home last month: its name was PooLife, which I was hoping was some sort of ayurvedic vitamin store with an unfortunate transliteration, but no, it is a pool-cleaning store.
Listen, when one of your needed words has "poo" in it, you can't make a cutesey compound name. Just call it "Pool Life." Because "poo" is one thing you don't want in a pool--unless they are advertising their ability to help you get rid of it.
Scatalogically yours,
L'Editrice
It reminds me of a store I passed when I was home last month: its name was PooLife, which I was hoping was some sort of ayurvedic vitamin store with an unfortunate transliteration, but no, it is a pool-cleaning store.
Listen, when one of your needed words has "poo" in it, you can't make a cutesey compound name. Just call it "Pool Life." Because "poo" is one thing you don't want in a pool--unless they are advertising their ability to help you get rid of it.
Scatalogically yours,
L'Editrice
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