One of the benefits of being a teacher is that every so often you come across great discounts for educators. This weekend (and up until Tuesday) Borders offered an educator’s discount of 25% off all books, CDs, and DVDs. (I don’t know if that’s nation-wide or just in my area.) On Friday night they had a “reception” for teachers, which consisted of an employee manning a table with cookies and teacher’s guides and posters; I picked up a free copy of Madeline l’Engle’s “Wrinkle in Time” (which I read in the 6th grade, so it’s about due for a re-reading — and I hope I can get my step-kids to read it) as well as posters for the last Harry Potter book and Dinosaurs. We have a loft where the kids’ computer is set up, so I decided to decorate it with these and a couple of other posters I have (a timeline of scientific discoveries and a mp of the human genome).
Even with a bag full of teacher freebies at my side and a steep discount, though, I ended up spending way too much — and loving it. I picked up a bunch of children’s books, including Sing Down the Mountain by Scott O’Dell (of Island of the Blue Dolphins fame), Charles de Lint’s young adult noel Little (Grrrl) Lost, Neil Gaiman’s new collection of short stories M is for Magic, and a couple of others. I’m really looking forward to reading these and sharing them with my step-kids!
I did find myself in an unexpected awkward moment, though — my 11-year old step-daughter somehow came across Uncle Tom’s Cabin and, even more unexpectedly, wanted to get it. Now, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is somewhere around 700 pages and written in fairly dry 19th century language. As much as I’d like to see her read it, I’m pretty sure she’d run out of steam after a hundred pages or so. So do I discourage her from taking on a “serious” work of major historical importance, or do I let her try and possibly fail? I have pretty strong feelings about challenging kids with material that is beyond them so they grow into the material, and I’m also not against failure as a general rule, but still — this is Uncle Tom’s Cabin we’re talking about, really demanding reading.
Well, I compromised. I told he that we’d check it out of the library next week. Since she’s got a couple of other books on her todo list in the meantime, she probably won’t finish it in the 6 weeks (3 weeks and a 3-week renewal) the library allows, but if she likes it, we can go back and get her a copy. It’s not expensive — I’m more worried about having that huge brick of a book that we’d have to find a place for (with several heavy readers in the house, shelf space is at a premium!) than the couple of dollars I’d save by buying it with the discount.
All the kids got something, though — she got the second book in the series she’s reading now, my 12-year old stepson got a book about drawing dragons, and my 5-year old stepson got a Power Rangers coloring book (which I suspect interested him more for the two plastic Power Ranger figures that came with it than for the coloring, though he did color a few pictures before bedtime). My partner got some knitting books out of the deal, and me, I got a ton of books to review in the coming weeks here at StepDadding.
It pays to be a teacher. We’re underpaid, overworked, and constantly held up as the root of all America’s social problems, but we get pretty good discounts from time to time.
 Lois Lowry’s young adult novel The Giver is a truly amazing book. Winner of the Newberry Award in 1994, The Giver tells the story of a utopian society located somewhere (somewhen?) in the future where lying is forbidden, competition is eliminated, everyone knows exactly where they belong, and death is unknown.
Or so it seems. When the main character Jonas is selected to be his community’s Receiver and enters into his apprenticeship with the old Receiver, now become the Giver, he begins to learn some uncomfortable truths about the community he lives in and the people closest to him. Instead of a perfect society, Jonas learns that the apparent perfection around him is carefully maintained by deception, secrecy, and unquestioned power.
I don’t want to give too much away — The Giver is built on suspense and revelation, and I’d hate to ruin it for anyone. Suitable for readers 10 or 11 and up, The Giver poses uncomfortable questions about what a good society and a good life are, what responsibility we have for the suffering of others, and ultimately, the nature of justice, that will prove as rewarding for adult readers as for kids.
My partner and I both read this (it took me about 4 hours) before turning it over to our 12-year old boy. He resisted at first — there were no fighter plane battles or alien invaders in it — but was hooked by the time he’d read 20 pages. Because it’s a complex book, we asked him a lot of questions along the way to make sure he was getting as much as possible out of it, and I think he did. We couldn’t get our 11-year old girl to read it, despite the assurances of the three of us that she’d like it, because her step-sister (same age) had read it last year and she wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. Ah, sibling rivalries…
This is an A-plus read, highly recommended. You can read more about the book and its author at Lois Lowry’s website.
FinanceIsPersonal.com offers up some advice for cutting your grocery bills. The advice is good enough, but I doubt it will help much. One thing I disagree with is that Wal-Mart is cheapest — there’ve been a couple of studies that show very little savings on the overall grocery bill between Wal-Mart and other chains. Where Wal-Mart has an advantage is in loss leaders — they’ll take a huge hit on some items, to get you to buy other stuff that’s the same price or even slightly more while you’re in the store. (This applies to groceries, not housewares — groceries are already on a tiny profit margin, usually only a couple percent or even less, so there’s not much room for discount pricing, even at Wal-Mart.) If you live in a pricey area, Wal-Mart might be cheaper than other local stores, but that needs to be verified for your specific area.
Here’s what we do: I’ve made up a master list of groceries, in order from the back to the front of the store. We do shop at Wal-Mart, because a few of the items we use a lot of (e.g. Capri-Sun juices) are , in fact, cheaper there than at other local supermarkets. I hate giving them our business, but I’d hate it more if our kids didn’t get enough to eat, so there it is. Anyway, we sit down Sunday morning, early, and go through the list, planning out a set of meal options for the coming week and crossing off anything we don’t need, adding anything we don’t usually use. Then we head out and buy just that stuff.
For a lot of stuff, Trader Joe’s is either cheaper or, in some cases, the only place we can get stuff. For example, they have pre-made pizza dough for about a dollar. Two of those, a jar of 99¢ pizza sauce, and a bag of mozzarella from the grocery store and we’ve got a $6 pizza night for 5 (or 6 or 7 if neighbor kids drop by). So while we plan our big shopping trip Sunday, we also make up a list for Trader Joe’s, and I stop on my way home Monday to pick that stuff up (Mondays I only work in the morning, so I have the store almost to myself).
The trick is
- have a list
- keep to the list
- know what you’re going to make
- do all the shopping in one go (I’ve never gone into a store for “just one thing” and come out with only that thing…)
- know your local stores and their prices
- plan realistic meals to fit your schedule (Wednesday we both come home late so we make easy stuff like spaghetti; Mondays I’m home all afternoon so I can make lasagna or goulash — added bonus: we can eat leftovers on Tuesday)
- use store brands whenever possible
- buy in bulk only what you use in bulk (it’s no help to get a great deal on something you end up throwing away because it goes bad)
As the step-father of a “tween” girl — and as a professor of Women’s Studies — I’m deeply concerned about the way “girly” expectations are not just imposed on girls but crammed down their throats (or, better yet, not crammed down their throats, because eating is totally outré for girls these days). Andrea Learned, the “Learned” behind the excellent marketing blog Learned on Women, shares those concenrs in her discussion of the way books are marketed to girls in Selling A Children’s Book By Its Pink Cover: Gender Stereotypes That Needn’t Be. According to Learned, not only are marketers’ ideas of what girls want their books to look like totally out of tune with the actual desires of girls (who, studies show, show equal interest regardless of the color of a book’s cover), but by creating a market of “girly books” marketers are actually limiting the choices of boys who do care about color and are less likely to read pink or purple books.
Girls don’t actually NEED pink marketing to figure out what they like or want to read. On the other hand, boys seem to need for the books (or any product, I’m guessing) to just NOT BE PINK (or purple etc). Seems easy enough.
The book marketers in Frean’s story forced a gender stereotype that needn’t be forced.
One of the upshots of feminism and the Women’s Movement is that (at long last) girls are feeling pretty empowered. They do better in school than boys, read more than boys, attend college more than boys (where, again, they do better than boys). Granted, all this grrrl power sort of ceases once they enter the workforce (where men without college still out-earn women with degrees over the course of their lives), but it’s hopeful. Marketers are, however, still stuck in 1958, throwing products at our kids that virtually mandate girls grow up to be mothers and housekeepers and boys grow up to be construction workers, doctors, and office workers (if, that is, all the superhero positions are already taken; note, however, that there is an absolute absence of “fathering” toys or products on the market). The insistence on clear divisions between boys and girls — in defiance of kids’ own understandings of their lives — is hurting kids. Girls because once they hit teen-hood all the doubts about their bodies and their worth as people start consuming them, boys because they are being shut out of opportunities for educational and other life experiences. They might get something out of books like Hilary McKay’s Saffy’s Angel , The Suitcase Kid by Jacqueline Wilson, or Pig Heart Boy by Malorie Blackman, none of which tells stories that boys couldn’t get into, but all of which have covers that assure that boys will not pick them up, let alone carry them around while reading them.
Wordpreneur, an excellent site about the business of writing and blogging, is offering three free e-books in exchange for links to their site from other writers. I’ve been reading and enjoying Wordpreneur for a while now, and it’s a pleasure to send a little link live their way. If you’re a writer — even if you haven’t gotten around to the “writing for pay” stage yet — Wordpreneur is definitely worth taking a look.
I was flipping around on Google today and found a link to my forthcoming book, Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War, on Amazon. And there’s a cover image! This is the first I’ve seen it, so I was pretty excited. The book isn’t due out until February 2008 (Amazon says January, so maybe they know something I don’t), and I haven’t even seen the page proofs yet, but you can sign up at Amazon to be notified when it comes out.
Update (12/1/07): The cover image on Amazon is not the final cover — I guess it was a mockup or something. I’ve just approved the actual cover, which will look similar but different.
If you’re a college student and a blogger, CollegeScholarships.org is offering a $10,000 scholarship you might want to apply for. $10,000! Why didn’t we have blogging when I was in college…?
Last week’s posts at lifehack.org were:
To be honest, I’m a little disappointed in the Made to Stick series. The posts are good, and the comments on them have been good, but they’ve been rare — the series isn’t setting off nearly the level of discussion I had hoped for. We’ll see if this kind of thing is something I do again in the future…
I fell behind in doing these week posts, because I went out of town over a weekend and came back busy as heck! So, here’s what I’ve posted at lifehack.org over the weeks I missed:
How to Give Instructions offers advice on, well, giving instructions.
Book Discussion: Chip and Dan Heath’s “Made to Stick” is an overview of Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, which I think is an amazing book. This post is followed by a 6-part “Sticky Ideas Workshop” exploring the book’s themes more closely.
Sticky Ideas Workshop (Part 1): Simple
The lifehack.org User’s Guide explains the different features of the site and how the site gets written. I wrote this for two reasons: 1) to try to build up some interest in the community aspects of the site (forums, howto wiki, etc.) and 2) to make the point that we are several different people who write for lifehack.org. I often get comments when I contradict something another writer has said, saying “But you just said…!” For some reason, it’s hard for people to get that, like a magazine, a website might be written by many different people, not all of whom agree on everything.
Sticky Ideas Workshop (Part 2): Unexpected
Five Productivity Ideas I’m Not Buying (Yet?) was an attempt to stir the pot a little by attacking (though somewhat mildly, if I say so myself) some dearly-held productivity concepts like mind mapping, the power of positive thinking, etc.
This week I’ve been continuing the “Sticky Ideas Workshop” and also trying to get some back-to-school posts up, which will be my focus until the end of the month.
I’ve been busy as heck this month preparing for the Fall semester (I’m teaching two classes and co-teaching another, all in Women’s Studies), so I haven’t been posting much. I did manage to make time for a short vacation with my family, and have some great pictures to post here once I get them all off my camera and web-ready. I’m also working on a guest writing slot at a blog I respect greatly — more news on that as it breaks. I still need to compile my lifehack.org posts — I fell behind in that and it’s a habit I don’t want to break. More soon…
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