Poison Dance by Livia Blackburne This is an e-book by my very talented writer buddy, Livia Blackburne. I was lucky enough to see early versions of this novella and was very excited to see how well the final version turned out. If you’re looking for a gritty, fast-paced fantasy story, or really if you’re just looking for something new to read, this is a great choice. This novella is a stand-alone prequel featuring James, a vital character in Livia’s upcoming YA book, Midnight

No, this isn't a picture of me and my daughter. Yay! It’s been 4 fun years of Monkey Poop and incredibly eloquent blog posts by yours truly. I had fun compiling my top ten list last year, so I thought I’d do that again! Here’s a list of Monkey Poop’s Top Ten Most Popular Posts of 2011: 10) Book Review: Love that Dog by Sharon Creech 9) Book Review: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater 8) Book Review: Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen 7) The BosKidLit Author Events Master List of Links (whi

I have an alter ego online. That’s right, I’ve finally decided to link to my TV blog. My writing group members told me to do this ages ago, but I had some convoluted reasons not to (something about not promoting TV shows as a children’s writer–seems a little silly now). Now that I’ve moved my blog to my husband’s server, I’m thinking about somehow importing the TV blog too and doing something with categories, but am too lazy to figure that out since I already have a category

Apparently Mary was from Somerville! According to the article, Mary’s family owned a farm in Sterling, MA and one of the ewe’s had twin lambs. The ewe wouldn’t feed one of the lambs, so Mary took it in and cared for it herself. The lamb thought Mary was her mother and followed her to school. Cute! When Mary was older and got married, she moved to Somerville (to a home which is now the Greek Orthodox Church on Central street for those of you familiar with the area). (via Som

Writer and Blogger Shelli posted a great blog post this week with some lessons on handling rejection from American Idol. #links #tipsfromtv

My twitter followers will have seen this link already to writing rules from famous authors, but I just can’t help sharing some of my favorites: From Margaret Atwood: “7 You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so d

Okay this is a bit off-topic but in the spirit of my new motherhood I thought I’d share a few of my favorite Disney lullabies with you. These are songs I enjoyed as a kid and my baby daughter seems to like them too: “La La Lu” from Lady and the Tramp And here’s a non-Disney related one that I really like (and only recently discovered on a world lullaby CD called Dreamland that I got for Xmas on year): “Dreamland I also like Numi Numi from this same CD, but since it’s in Hebre

Sorry I’ve been pretty bad at posting lately but I have a good excuse: I just had a baby and am slowly getting back into the swing of things! I promise to add some blog posts next week. In the meantime: check out an interview with Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes –one of my favorite comic strips (via bookninja) Which reminds me I have to get around to finishing the complete collection my husband gave me several Xmases ago… #calvinandhobbes #comicstrips #links

A notepad to write on in the shower! Cool! (via Inkygirl) Here’s a demonstration:Aqua Notepad #links

Have you seen this list of Gossip Girl character Dan Humphrey’s favorite books for 2009? I haven’t read any of them, but I have read other books by a few of these authors. (via bookshelvesofdoom — man she finds some good stuff!) And check out my guest post to Livia Blackburne’s blog: http://blog.liviablackburne.com/2009/11/writing-lessons-from-gossip-girl.html #bookstoread #gossipgirl #links

PoojaMakhijani.com has a great list online of YA books that depict South Asia and South Asian chacters. Head over there and check it out! She also has lists of picture books, folk/fairytales, and what she calls “crossover” books (not sure what that means, but the books look interesting nonetheless). I wish I’d had a list like this when I was a kid! (via: Reading in Color) #bookstoread #links #southasianlit

Via The New Yorker’s Book Bench: Apparently the world’s largest book is Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Himalayan Kingdom by MIT’s Michael Hawley available from Amazon.com by Friendly Planet for $30,000. Wow. I am definitely putting this one on my Xmas wish list :) Photo by JasonUnbound / CC BY-NC 2.0 #amazon #links #newyorker

I’m far from having to worry about this yet, but The Millions has posted an article about funny author photos. Here is the gallery that the writer refers to by Marion Ettlinger: http://www.marionettlinger.com/gallery1.php Some of the photos look fine to me, but others are quite hilarious. Why do most of them look so upset? Did their books not turn out the way they had hoped? Did they just realize they stepped in dog poo? I wonder how the authors feel about their photos? Or ma

E-reader alert! Spring Design has announced their new e-reader Alex. Like Barnes and Noble’s new e-reader, Alex will have both a black and white e-ink screen and a smaller color LCD screen and run on Google’s Android software. It will also have internet access via wi-fi or mobile networks. (No word on how much it will cost.) Does better internet access defeat the purpose of an e-reader or does it enhance it? I wonder if I would get completely distracted by a good internet con

From a really cool gallery of sculptures made out of books. (via bookninja) #links #sculpture

The Boston Book Festival is only a few weeks away! Check out: http://www.bostonbookfest.org/ and consider volunteering. I’ll be there! Will you? #bostonbookfest #links

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/4640670.Rasher_of_bacon_found_in_Worthing_Library_book/ Someone returned a book with a slice of bacon to a library in England. Apparently artist Dan Thompson (mentioned in the article) has amassed quite a collection of objects returned with books. I have yet to find anything other than library receipts (my library prints out a receipt with due dates on it when you check out a book). I wonder if I’ve ever left anything weird in a book? #links

I haven’t been able to find a good master list of children’s author events in the Boston area, so I thought I’d make my own. The Boston Globe’s book blog, Off the Shelf has listings of Boston area readings, but they only do week by week and they include both adults and children’s. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which just based on the names/titles. Check it out on my website: http://www.amithaknight.com/Homepage/Author_Events.html If I find a better list, I may take thi

Researchers have sought to determine whether the temperature of an object in someone’s hands determines how ”warm” or ”cold” he considers a person he meets, whether the heft of a held object affects how ”weighty” people consider topics they are presented with, or whether people think of the powerful as physically more elevated than the less powerful.What they have found is that, in fact, we do. Metaphors aren’t just how we talk and write, they’re how we think. At some level,

(via @bookninja) Umberto Eco dates the decline of handwriting back to the invention of the ballpoint pen rather than the computer. He also asks the question: “Why should we regret the passing of good handwriting? I think this is an interesting question especially now that everyone communicates via email and that even writers hardly ever pen their works (or more than a chapter or two). I do like to handwrite when I’m writing a first draft but I always type things up prior to r