crooked house

Alice in Wonderland Paper Dolls

Brian Gubicza's Alice in Wonderland paper dolls are available on Etsy.  He's got characters from Dracula, too. Via Paper Forest.

Skipping Rocks

Looking for the right rock.

Is this the right angle?

Will it skip?

If it doesn't, we'll just change the game. How about: will it hit that rope out there? Why yes, it will! Yay! In the past couple of weeks I must have taken a hundred photos of Luke attempting to skip rocks. I'm not sure he's actually done it yet but he's sure having fun trying.

Wondertime has instructions.  Here's the Official Stone Skipping Home Page. Unless you consider the North American Stone Skipping Association to be more official. The Guinness record number of skips appears to be 51. You can watch it here. In the Scottish World Championships, it's not the number of skips the stone makes, it's the distance it travels. Apparently, in Britain, skipping stones (or skimming stones or skipping rocks)  used to be known as  playing at ducks and drakes.  The expression now:

...usually means to behave irresponsibly or recklessly, to squander one’s wealth, or to heedlessly throw away something of value.

To play ducks and drakes from the sixteenth century on was to play that immemorial game of throwing a flat stone across water so that it skips and bounces several times before it sinks. Why it was given that name is uncertain, apart from the obvious association of both ducks and drakes with ponds and rivers. I’ve seen it explained as referring to the way ducks bob their heads in their courtship rituals, or the way water fowl rise from a pond, or as an allusion to the passing of these birds over water. The association of ideas is clear enough, even if the exact analogy is uncertain.

The first example recorded in English is from The nomenclator, or remembrancer of Adrianus Junius of 1585, by John Higgins: “A kind of sport or play with an oister shell or stone throwne into the water, and making circles yer it sinke, etc. It is called a ducke and a drake, and a halfe-penie cake.” (That last part may remind some readers of the old Mother Goose children’s rhyme:

    A duck and a drake,
    And a halfpenny cake,
    With a penny to pay the old baker.
    A hop and a scotch
    Is another notch,
    Slitherum, slatherum, take her.)

By about 1600, the game had become associated in people’s minds with idle play, in which some object is thrown carelessly away. Out of that came the idea of squandering things.

Will it skip? Will it? Will it?

Book Birdhouses

Birdhouses made from second-hand books. The one on the left is made out of To Kill A Mockingbird. You can zoom in on the photo if you go to Uncommon Goods where they are sold. But I think they wouldn't be that hard to make yourself. Thanks for the link, Mary!

Manners for the Junior Set

Yesterday we took Luke into Chapters, the giant Canadian chain bookstore, to use a fifteen dollar gift certificate he got for his birthday. He zoomed up and down the aisles in a frenzy of delight, pulling book after book off  the shelf.

"Luke, you don't have enough money for all these books," I tried to explain. "You've got enough money for maybe two or three books, tops."

"Don't worry 'bout it, Mommy," he said, pulling five or six Dora books off the shelf and tossing them onto the floor without even really looking at them.

I sat down and began picking them up. David pointed to a book on the shelf right behind me.

"Maybe we should get him that one," he said.

It was Munro Leaf's How to Behave and Why.*

Leaf was best known for The Story of Ferdinand but in the 1940s he wrote a series of rather pedantic but charming books about behaviour that have been reprinted in the last five years or so. (The latest is Brushing Your Teeth Can Be Fun.) 

I was reminded of this when I was reading Patricia's post about the book Goops and How to Be Them.

The Goops appeared around 1900 and demonstrated, through the unpleasant antics of bald macrocephalic children, how not to behave. The Goops, in turn, reminded me of Goofus and Gallant, a cartoon fixture of Highlights magazine when I was a kid. I think they still appear in its pages today.

Found on Metafilter. Click on it to enlarge if you can't read it. Other possible things for Goofus to say:

"Your father ought to get a job."

"That coat is so last season."

Although perhaps that second one is more the kind of thing Gallant would say, albeit much more tactfully. If you've got a suggestion, add it in the comments. The unfortunate thing about these kinds of instructional materials is that the rude kids are generally more entertaining.

*And no, in the end, Luke didn't choose to use his gift certificate on How to Behave and Why . Surprise, surprise. (Which I always mentally pronounce as "soo-preez, soo-preez" ever since our waiter said it when David ordered a hamburger and a coke in a café in Paris.)

Lauren Pritchard's Paper City

Lauren Pritchard's whimsical paper city and instructions.

And here are Kim Keene's paper houses made to look like Chinese takeout boxes:

Via The Rag and Bone Blog, which features tons of gorgeous stuff.

Lauren Thomas Dancing With Her Childhood Self

The adult Lauren Thomas dances along with video of her four-year-old self dancing to "Hip to Be Square."

Luke loves to dance along to video of himself dancing. But the age difference is much less striking. Right now. Here is a thought: if you think your child might apply to art school, immediately start videotaping him or her dancing to "Dancing With Myself" on every birthday. One of the projects will already be complete when your kid decides to take a year off before college to "work on his portfolio." Via The Rag and Bone Blog and Youngme / Nowme.

Comfort Objects

Luke's most treasured "dee." The one "with the BIG hole."

For a while now I've been musing about a book made up of beautiful photographs of comfort objects, more commonly known as "loveys."  You know what I mean -- blankies, soothers, teddy bears, glasses of wine and the like. And these photographs would be accompanied by short quotes, anecdotes, and ruminations on the subject. *

My teddy bear Jay Jay. You can't see it in this photo but his head is almost completely detached.

So today I started a flickr group devoted to them. There's nothing but three little lonely pictures of my own there -- and I don't pretend to be a remotely good photographer -- so if you have any you'd like to share, please do join us. Er, I mean me.

Here are some nice photos of comfort objects that other people have posted on flickr:

a threadbare blankie
a soother and a spare
blankie love
teddy falling
another old teddy
teddy goes for a walk
pacifier
it says "uhoh" to me 
this one may be my favourite

*Of course, the way these things tend to go, today I discovered that someone has already put together a book called Creature Comforts and it is very similar to the one I had in mind. Although I think I prefer the photos to focus more on the object than the person. And ideally, in my imaginary book, they'd be contributed by a variety of different photographers. As would the writing. But the general idea is the same. Here's a piece the author and photographer put together for Pacific Northwest Magazine.

The Birth of Experimental Literature

Via Fuse #8. (I don't know, Elizabeth, I think it would be kind of fun if you did that.)

Sophie Blackall's Self-Portrait

You must go here to look at the best self-portrait ever. It's of illustrator Sophie Blackall and if you scroll down, it looks as if she's based it on a self-portrait she did in her childhood. But I'm only guessing. Via Sara's 123oleary. Here's a bit more about her.

I want her to illustrate Other People's Children.

100th Anniversary of The Hole Book

Over at Collecting Children's Books, Peter discusses the 100th anniversary of The Hole Book, a once-popular children's picture book about a little boy who plays with a gun and accidentally shoots a number of things, including a cat:

There is a die-cut hole through each of the pages that follows the bullet's trajectory. Once one of Dr. Seuss's favourites, it has now fallen, not so inexplicably, out of favour. (Although we can probably expect a video game any time now.) You can view the whole thing here.