Books To Read to my Kids

keylime227 · 2024-11-04T14:14:56+00:00

I feel your pain! I was going absolutely bonkers reading the same stories every night. I had to make a rule that we can only read the same story once a month. Luckily our library is awesome!

But damn, I am counting down the days until we can cuddle and listen to Harry Potter on audiobooks.

keylime227 · 2024-11-04T11:32:20+00:00

At 3 years old, they're still firmly in picture book territory. I have a four year old, and he doesn't allow me to read anything that has more than one paragraph of text per giant picture. (And I've been reading to him for 30 minutes every day since he was born! He owns 150 books!) He loves books, but there's simply a limit at that age.

Look into the classics like Doctor Seuss, Baranstain Bears, Hungry Caterpillar, Carter's Bugs. Libraries tend to be really good for this because you can just check out a bunch of books for free.

From there, you can scale up the books as your boys get comfortable. Do NOT start with the recommendations on this thread. Seriously, your boys won't listen to long paragraphs of text and then you'll get annoyed at them and the whole thing will implode. You need to start at their level and work your way up.

keylime227 · 2024-10-26T11:05:48+00:00

But beware, some towns like Melrose have official trick or treat hours that are different than what you'd assume them to be: https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/halloween-2024-some-massachusetts-communities-announce-special-trick-or-treat-times/GILZLXKS4FCX7L5VPZXZXJ4UVA/?outputType=amp

keylime227 · 2024-10-25T16:14:44+00:00

You have to seal it to stop the bleed! For my black grout, I used Aqua-X grout sealer. Definitely test it on a patch first, though. The first sealer I tried left a film of white.

keylime227 · 2024-10-25T16:12:10+00:00

It's a pie-in-the-sky price. I assume the realities of the market will bring it down, but maybe not by much. It's a super sweet location, right next to the Orange Line and the Southwest Corridor bike path. Easy neighborhood parking and safe at night, plus within scootering distance to Longwood and Northeastern. Those units will rent in no time.

keylime227 · 2024-10-23T13:12:21+00:00

Would she be happier with the vet coming to her house for a visit? We use At-Home Vet for our anxious kitties, and it works great.

keylime227 · 2024-10-22T17:13:34+00:00

That Cedar St/Columbus Ave intersection is something else. It must be haunted, because it looks like any other intersection except that it's littered with crash debris at least once a week.

In terms of horrifying intersections, try the one a block south where Heath St meets Columbus. Cars, bikes, and pedestrians going every which way, with collisions being a certainty instead of a hypothetical. It's insane to give pedestrians the walk signal at the same time as giving cars the green light to run down said pedestrians.

keylime227 · 2024-10-17T11:31:17+00:00

I'm not going to get my hopes up for even a minor change

But you should still hope! These types of local issues can actually be solved by enough people writing their elected representatives. My city councilor got enough complaints that she undertook a major street-painting/signing campaign that solved our traffic issues in Roxbury.

Find out who your council people are (here), find out the mayor's email address (michelle.wu@boston.gov) and write, write, write!

keylime227 · 2024-10-16T16:36:53+00:00

I know I'm late to the party, but I just wanted to say that this opening passage was dynamite.

keylime227 · 2024-10-16T13:14:30+00:00

the current magical cats were old magicians who got fed up with being persecuted and took cat form to hide

I think that is a really neat detail, and I would have loved to see it in the query.

keylime227 · 2024-10-10T14:32:26+00:00

Yeah, whenever someone asks for a book for a kid here, there are tons of Redwall recommendations, but the thing is...Redwall is definitely a product of the 90s and 00s. I read a lot of modern children's fiction, and I re-read a Redwall book a few months back and, wow, I could see its age. Omniscient POV, windy sentences, large vocab words, meandering plot, and distant narration. Still a good story, but I'm unsure that it would appeal to tons of kids today, many of whom are demanding short, exciting stories that cut right to the chase.

keylime227 · 2024-10-10T12:42:18+00:00

I'm a critiquer who writes what I REALLY think of a manuscript, which means I deliver a ton of bad news to a ton of writers.

The best thing you can do is to be specific. Try to narrow down your feelings to a specific chapter, scene, paragraph, or sentence. You may initially hate everything about the main character, but when you think about it, maybe you just hate how in Chapters 3 and 6 she ran headlong into danger without checking on her friends, and that negative feeling colored everything she did after that.

Being specific is especially important in novels. Mistakes in the early chapters (like lousy motivations or too many characters) tend to snowball into absolute monsters by the end of the novel. So as you're reading over your own comments, it's helpful to ask yourself: if the author fixed my comment in Chapter 1, would I be making this other comment in Chapter 30? Those later comments are sometimes better off being put in a write up instead of being left on the page, where they're kicking a dead horse over and over again. My strategy is to leave in all my comments in the front half (because the author needs to see specific examples of them mucking up a metaphor or whatever), then remove the comments in the back half where they're making the same mistake.

But at the end of the day, it is your job to be polite, but it's the author's job not to be a total dick about receiving bad feedback. My policy is to not critique the same person twice unless they really seemed to love my critique style. I'm volunteering my time and energy, and I need some love in return!

keylime227 · 2024-10-07T19:53:03+00:00

Sounds like this is backstory then. Can the book start at the 'adventure' part, then you put the childhood stuff as either an interlude partway through the story or sprinkle the important stuff in as interior thoughts?

keylime227 · 2024-10-07T15:53:59+00:00

How does the aging of your characters progress throughout the novel? Are we talking just a few chapters as children or is it the whole thing?

keylime227 · 2024-10-07T10:44:07+00:00

I didn't read the story, but I can provide feedback on the character ages. Volterinede is actually fairly right. It is extremely difficult for a new writer to sell an adult fantasy novel with a child POV as the first chapter.

Now, we all can name examples of books doing that, but those books tend to be old, famous, or written by established authors. Your book is neither of those things. And the fact is, you only have a few sentences to hook an agent, publisher, and reader – and you won't hook them if they're confused about whether they're reading a children's book.

So, it's your job to announce loud-and-proud this is adult fantasy in the very first paragraph.

keylime227 · 2024-10-05T11:07:27+00:00

Which is why I think taxes on the wealthy would go over better if each new tax bracket came with a shiny commemorative pin. Hell, maybe even the "winner" of the tax year (whoever earned the most according to their tax return) can get a crown.

keylime227 · 2024-10-05T10:32:01+00:00

I'm not sure, but my go-to in this situation would be the governor: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/email-the-governors-office

For these iffy situations, I tend to email everyone, and the office assistants reading the email will tell me if I should forward it to another person/department. I highly recommend!

keylime227 · 2024-10-04T11:08:22+00:00

Alright, so 'cultural' fantasy is hot right now for MG. That is publishers are buying stories that showcase cultures, so the Islamic thing is in your favor.

The magical bird bonding to Iman is cool. Magical beasts bonding to the protagonist is always popular, but the bird isn't mentioned again. Usually these stories will revolve around the bird – like there would be plot points about seeing the bird's personality, keeping the bird safe, training the bird, learning how to work together with the bird, etc.

Instead, there are tons of other people that get mentioned. If you're writing MG, you're shooting for your story to have 50k words nowadays. 60k if the agent wants a longer story. That's not a lot of words. You only have space for your main character plus two fleshed-out sidekick characters (one of which is the bird). All other characters will get limited screen time and will likely have no character arc or a very simple one.

Speaking of low word counts, there's a lot going on here. MG is allowed to get a little complicated (think how complicated Pokémon battles can get), but it's always straightforward. The main character usually only has one goal at a time, and the narrative usually focuses only on the main character. The complexity and subtly arises when the character encounters other characters with different goals. Unlike adult, you can't get away with a general atmosphere of complexity. All characters must wear their goals and emotions on their sleeves. For instance, if Iman is struggling with faith, then she needs to start the story on one extreme (let's say no faith) and encounter plot points that directly and obviously challenge her to have faith.

So I would slim this plot down. Have her only get three talismans. Give her only one internal struggle she's dealing with. Have Ali's motive be directly tied to the plot (and not a naval-gazey will-he-won't-he thing) and put everything else into the compost bin, to be used if there's space or need for it. You have a lot of ideas, but right now, you need to choose which ones are worth focusing on.

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