Tuesday Top Ten: It's for the kids edition

I think today is a perfect day for a Top Ten list.

I will never be to old for picture books. Sometimes I just want to spend hours at the university library in the children's books stacks. (Perhaps I will this weekend...?)

Here are my top ten favorite kiddie books. You know, the kind with pictures!

10. Kitten's First Full Moon
This is a newer book-- published in 2004. I didn't grow up loving this book, but my Children's Lit. teacher read it to the class last year, and I thought the book was so cute. A hungry kitten sees a full moon for the first time and thinks it's a bowl of milk. See? It just exudes cuteness!

9. The Mitten
Nikki has a pair of snow white mittens. He loses one in the snow, and pretty soon forest animals see it and decide to make a home out of it. Jan Brett's illustrations are amazing! I remember looking at the illustrations and making my own story more often than reading the text.


8. Goodnight Moon
I'm pretty sure everybody has read this book. It's certainly a picture book classic, and I made my mom read it to me all the time when I was in my pre-school and kindergarten years.


7. Love You Forever
This is another book that most people know and love. It's so sentimental, and last time I read it I cried like a baby (I read this book last winter break). My mom made up her own tune for the poem/song in the book. I still remember how it goes even though she hasn't read to book for me in years.

6. The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear
A mouse finds a delicious strawberry and plans to eat it all himself. But, a bear sniffs out the the strawberry, and he wants to eat it all himself. The mouse tries to hid the strawberry for the bear in some silly ways.

5. Harvey Potter's Balloon Farm
Harvey Potter, farmer, doesn't grow typical crops-- no okra, no corn, no carrots. Nope. Instead he grows magical, government inspected balloons! This story was so enchanting.

4. The True Story of the Three Little Pigs
The Three Little Pigs from the wolf's point of view! It was hilarious, and the illustrations were amazing! (I was an equally HUGE fan of The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales).

3. The Runaway Bunny
Baby bunny wants to run away, but mother bunny describes how she'd go to the end of the world to bring her baby back. I stared forever at the illustrations as a child. In fact, I recall paying more attention to the illustrations than the text because up until recently, I thought the book didn't have words!

2. Possum Magic
This story takes place in Australia. Baby bush baby wants to be invisible, so grandma bush baby grants this wish. The only way to reverse the magic is to travel all over Australia and eat different types of food. This book made me hungry.

I was an accelerated student when I was younger, so I was pulled out of class for Possum Magic Hour. The book was read to us. Then we got to eat the food that was mentioned in the book. I remember eating Vegemite sammiches, pavlova, and lamington. There was other food, but I don't remember them very much. I loved the pavolva and the lamington, but I wasn't so fond of the vegemite sammiches.

1. Wednesday is Spaghetti Day
This is my all-time favorite book! An orange cat (who looks suspiciously like my own cat) invites his kitty friends over once the humans leave. While the humans are gone, the cats make a delicious spaghetti dinner! I always liked to think my cat did the same.


What are some of your favorite picture books from when you were a child?

Artist Plug: Abney Park

I still can't get enough of steampunk. Lately, I've been indulging in some steampunk music-- yes, it has it's own genre. I find it really hard to describe, but it's...dark cabaret, industrial, gothic, pirate-esque, and awesome.

Abney Park

I'm particularly drawn to a band called Abney Park. They're a five piece band that plays all the "normal" instruments, and them some others that aren't so typical like the Darkbuka, the diatonic button accordion, the violin, and the mandolin. They're music has industrial elements as well as world music elements. It's...interesting, for lack of better words, and certainly an acquired taste.


Oh! And, the band created fictional identities for themselves, and they even created a fictional background story that describes their fictional history as crew members of the airship, Ophelia. Eh...I just let my geeky-side show.

Here are some of their songs if you're interested. I'm not sure if they have any official music video, these are just fan-made videos.

Abney Park -- "She"
(The anime in this video is Last Exile?)



Abney Park -- "The Wrong Side"

Things I Love

We're not having much of a fall this year. About half the trees are nice and colorful. The other half are already bare or still green and somewhat bare. And, even worse, Brooke told me it was kind of snowing this morning. October 15, and it's already snowing. This is strange weather for Michigan.

Current weather where I live =[

Despite too cold weather, this week still deserves to be celebrated.

++ Doing well on my Geo test. In fact, doing better than the person with the Geo major that I studied with! Unfortunately, I didn't get the A like I thought I was going to get, but an 88% is nothing to shake my finger at.

++ Enjoying a beer on a Tuesday night. Just for the hell of it.

++ Drinking Sapporo and Purple Haze beer, and eating melon flavored hi-chews while watching Memoirs of a Geisha (with Brooke). You can read about the World Market adventure over here!.


++ Exploring music. Exploring electronic music. The very idea that I'm required to explore music because it's for a class project. Remember that blog I had to create for my English class? I decided to make a blog about electronic music-- because it's misunderstood and under represented?

This is the first banner I created for the soon-to-exist blog, but I decided to
scrap it because...well...it's too reserved.
There is nothing reserved about electronic music.

++ Getting free food from one of the university's cafes! Yesterday, Ian and I went to Flossie's Cafe to bother our friend Kenny, who works at the cafe. I got a free vitamin water and a soft pretzel with cheese. It was perhaps the best "meal" I've had all week, mostly because it was free.

++ Morningstar Chik'n Tenders! I'm not vegetarian, but holy heck I love Morningstar!


++ I also love this Morningstar by AFI which you can listen to here!. Because imeem is being a jerk, and will only let me post a 30 second clip. Lame!

Coffee Cups

Lately I've been obsessing over coffee. I want to drink it two time, sometime three times a day. But...I know this is unhealthy so I try to limit myself to one measly cup of coffee a day. Two on the weekends if I'm feeling daring. I just want to gulp down something warm since the temperatures have been dropping lately. And I've been feeling rather lethargic too.

I've been thinking I need a coffee cup. One that I can call my own. One that I didn't lift from my father's collection. One that doesn't have a picture of a bear trying to swat a golf ball out of a sand trap. I mean, I've never played golf in my life...

I was thinking I need one of these:

from circa ceramics

Sakura mugs from zombie irish

Zombie mugs from urban soule

jolly roger mugs from empressed

Skull and crossbones from bread and badger

Birds on wires from urban soule

Dandelion mugs from urban soule

Top Things that Rocked My Week

The title says it all. Here are the top (not-quite-ten) things that rocked my week:

7. Getting an 88% on my first Japanese test of the semester and feeling confident about my first Geography test of the semester (I'm pretty sure I'm going to earn an A on this one!)

6. Pizza and beer at midnight!

5. Coffee first thing in the morning.

I'd be a zombie without the coffee...seriously.


4. A lazy, lazy weekend after a tough week filled with studying for exams, loads of reading, and writing project proposals. And when I say lazy, lazy weekend, I mean there is an America's Next Top Model marathon on today, so I probably won't be leaving the couch too frequently. =o

3. Getting surprises in the mail part 1:


2. Sleeping in. Finally.

1. Getting surprises in the mail part 2:

I devoured the package of apple Hi-Chews as soon as I tore open the surprise package.
(Thanks Jenn!)

What are some things that rocked your week?

This is mindless

Today I had to suffer through an hour long Macromedia Fireworks tutorial. The person next to me couldn't even figure out how to open up a new canvas and kept asking me how. *facepalm*

So, as my prof. yammered on, I made this:



Yep! That's pretty much the extent of my post.

Oh, except, today a new furnace was installed at my apartment. The new thermostat is pretty rad too-- it's the programmable, energy savin' kind, and it glows blue!

I've noticed that with age, relatively dull things become increasingly exciting. New furnaces on a Wednesday. New toothbrushes and floss for Christmas. The Weather Channel. Buying second-hand blenders from my mom. Coupons. Organizing my closet. A new knife set-- ones that actually have sharp blades.

What relatively dull things get you totally pumped?

Things I Love: Crash Love

This week, there is only one thing that I wish to celebrate. Okay, maybe two or three things. Really quickly, those are: being home-sweet-home for the weekend, seeing my mom and my boyfriend, and plans to eat my mom's homemade chicken noodle soup tomorrow.

Otherwise, everything is pallor in comparison to A.F.I.'s new release: Crash Love.

I've been listening to it non-stop since it dropped on Sept. 29 via imeem.com. But, today I was actually able to hold the CD in my hands for the first time. I was filled with glee as I flipped through the little lyrics booklet. I pre-ordered the CD a week or two ago, and I had it sent to my parents' house; I didn't want to risk the chance of having this CD dropped off on some other apartment resident's doorstep. That would be a tragedy!

I was concerned at first because this CD lacked a lot of the aggressive vocals that were present on past CDs (and obviously those vocals appealed to me greatly). But, after a second listen I have determined this CD is ace, most definitely.

I find there are very few artists and bands who truly excite me these days. But, A.F.I. still has me by the heartstrings. They've been my fave since 10th grade (That's six, almost seven years ago, yeesh!).

They're certainly an acquired taste. And to be honest I've only met two other people (IRL) who actually like them. But in case you were curious, here's the first song off their newest album.

Do you have a favorite artist or band? Or, at least a band you're always excited to hear new things from?