Women’s suffrage has been on my mind lately with the hundredth anniversary of the 19th Amendment, as well as the recent ratification of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment), in the 38th state in January.
I wanted to introduce these ideas to my children and let them know that the struggle for equality that some would say goes back to the Garden of Eden is still actively going on in spite of the fact that some women got the vote 100 years ago.
It’s that time of year again. If you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll remember my previous posts on what to read for Black History Month. You can find my 2018 post here, and here’s 2019. This year, I have four picture books with fantastic illustrations, all with their own distinct flavor.
It has been over five months since we gave up Amazon Prime and Netflix.
The rapidly escalating content on Netflix was leaving the adults in our family feeling gross after watching our shows, and we squirmed at the content the kids kept finding.
There were some great shows, but our tweens kept finding stuff that was rated for their age, but was full of bigger kid content that we weren’t ready to expose them to, at least not on the screen. I’d much rather have my kids read about something than watch it and have everything spelled out for them.
Amazon Prime? I was sick of paying to shop at a specific store, especially one that was invading my privacy and was my first choice when I was shopping or just looking for something. With the ease of ordering, sometimes, I clicked purchase before I even realized what had happened.
Our evening streetwalk in Saratoga Springs was easy to write about because it went so well. We got dropped off by the shuttle bus, walked down the wide street on one side, and back up the other. We got back just in time to catch the last shuttle to our parking lot. And the whole thing was really, really fun.
The Troy Stroll was different.
The Serpent King, by Jeff Zentner, is the second book I read for the YA Book Club I joined at my library. (The last book I read for the book club was The Cruel Prince, by Holly Black).
I started The Serpent King at a tender time. I was spending a second weekend at the bedside of my grandmother, who was dying. Many of my most vivid memories of my time spent at her home were from my teenage years, when my friendships with my cousins were one of the most important things in my life and the summer visits, full of new experiences, were larger than life.
The house itself is full of senior photos of the cousins and grandkids, all of us gathered on shelves and side tables, frozen in time as 17 and 18-year-olds, and the home’s interior has barely changed over the course of the time I visited there from childhood until I was an adult.
