Weekend Reads: Rapunzel’s not Ready for Marriage, Being an “OK” Parent, and The Best Rhyming Books

Happy Weekend Readers! It’s March 26th, or Purple Day, an international grassroots effort to raise awareness about epilepsy.  Which I was not aware of…

The script for a Disney Princess is pretty settled. Find Prince Charming or his genre appropriate equivalent, get rescued by or have an adventure with said Prince, get Married and live Happily Ever After (TM). But in the sequel to the wonderful Tangled from 2010, Tangled Ever After Rapunzel flips that script, turning down the proposal of her roguish beau Eugene because she’s not ready to settle down.   And the best part? Everybody understands and respects her decision!

Potential Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was reveled to have some interesting ideas about maternity leave during a visiting lecturer gig…

“He asked the class to raise their hands if they knew of a female who had used a company to get maternity benefits and then left right after having a baby,” Sisk wrote.

When only a fraction of the classroom acknowledged such a tactic, Gorsuch scoffed.

“C’mon guys,” Gorsuch allegedly replied, adding that more students should have raised their hands.

Sisk claims that Gorsuch said “‘many’ women use their companies for maternity benefits and then leave the company after the baby is born.

He then “tied this back to his original comment that companies need to ask these questions in order to protect themselves against the female employees,” Sisk added.

Anti-vaxxers are pushing the conspiracy theory that Julia, a new Muppet, is part of a Big Pharma plan to “normalize’ autism… Ewww.

Speaking of kids with autism,  Arlene Karidis writes about how to help children with autism make and keep friends. 

Author Barbara Dee tells the story of how school administrators asked to avoid discussion of her new book Star-Crossed, because it deals with same sex attraction…

Now, as I followed Teacher X, I wondered why she needed to speak to me just minutes before my next talk. So I asked what was up.
“It’s about STAR-CROSSED,” she admitted. “We’re concerned that some of the kids are too young for the content.”

The content? I was dumbstruck. STAR-CROSSED is a middle grade novel about an eighth grade production of Romeo & Juliet in which the girl playing Romeo realizes she has a crush on the girl playing Juliet. Even as it tracks the plot of Shakespeare’s play, it’s a gentle, wholesome comedy– wholesome enough for Scholastic to have licensed it for book clubs and fairs. Reviews from School Library Journal and Kirkus have praised its age-appropriateness and  “sweetness.” Amanda MacGregor blogged on SLJ: “The positive, accepting, supportive tone of the story makes this book a must-have for every middle school library.” And I’m proud to say that  STAR-CROSSED has earned raves from some rockstar kidlit authors–Gail Carson Levine, Donna Gephart, Nora Raleigh Baskin, Ami Polonsky.

Not completely sure I understood what I was hearing, I asked Teacher X if she meant that only the next kids were “too young”–even though, like the classes earlier, they were sixth graders. I showed her the publisher’s age recommendation: 9-13. I also pointed out the endorsements from Gail Carson Levine, et al. That was when she admitted  the real reason she wanted me to stop talking about the book: “a fear of parental backlash.”

My daughters aren’t a problem… but you might be. 

There’s a lot of pressure for parents to be perfect. But it’s OK to be just OK. Here are 5 ways to help with being an OK parent. 

Robert E. Kelly and his wife, Kim Jung-A have broken their silence after their adorable precocious kiddos crashed their Dads Skype interview.

Kelly said assumptions that Kim was a nanny, and not the children’s mother, made them “pretty uncomfortable.” But they also said they appreciated why most people found the video so funny.

“We watched it multiple times, too, and our families have watched it as well. Everybody we know seems to think it’s pretty hysterical,” Kelly told Menendez. “It was sort of catching a regular family off-guard and stuff. It’s funny.”

“We laughed a lot,” his wife added.

And, in an incredible confirmation of what many people had suspected, the Journal reported that Kim had not realized that the children had wandered into their father’s home office — until she saw them on the TV screen.

Rhyming is important to learning. Here’s a GIANT list of great rhyming books for kids. 

We haven’t visited the Slo Mo Guys in awhile… check it out!

Featured Image Credit: Sesame Street