Alan Mendelsohn:
In Alan Mendelsohn there is no elderly character to offer perfect wisdom to the two young protagonists. There are parents, but they are ineffective and get little screen time. Then there’s a parade of other adults, each of them bizarre and slightly suspicious in hiw own way. None of these characters comes onstage stamped with the label “good guy” or “bad guy”. Rather, it’s up to the two boys to figure out who is trustworthy and who isn’t and who lies somewhere in the middle. Just like real life.

Fun fact: There is a FishWhistle restaurant in Maryland.

I've never been very familiar with Walter Cronkite, or the phenomenon that is Walter Cronkite. But this blog post comes as I've been rereading Daniel Pinkwater's Lizard Music for the first time in decades.

I suppose every book changes me, but I'm not sure that a book ever changed my life. There were a few that gave me something to hang on to. As a much younger reader, I enjoyed Daniel Pinkwater's "Lizard Music" and "Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars." In my YA years, I hung on to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and waited impatiently for each new book. You know, now that I think about it, these are books about people who simply outgrow their worlds and move on. Works for me.

And finally, here are some Yuletide-ish icon bases that I made for sharing last year and never posted, some of them from a very old greeting card and some of them from Alan Mendelsohn, The Boy From Mars book covers, and also one of the giant chicken of Hoboken (you can probably figure out which are which):

Recommend some books:
Lizard Music, Daniel Pinkwater. A combination of fantasy and adventure thoroughly grounded in a kid's everyday suburban existence. Don't be surprised if you find him in front of the TV at midnight, flipping channels for the lizard music
My fifth grade teacher sort of shoved "How to Eat Fried Worms" down my throat. I didn't get that book... it made no real sense to me.