Amy's Free Library of Rock!

What happened is, I got a new computer for Christmas! I set about transferring files and downloading preferred software–Firefox, Scrivener– but I decided to upgrade Scrivener to the newest version, which meant all my files got upgraded, too. And THEN my new computer promptly stopped working two days later.

Well, yay for staying firmly in the warranty period!

So for the whole between-Christmas-and-New-Years (and a week or so beyond) that I USUALLY spend pulling my Annual Roundup together, I had, well, my old painfully slow computer, which also pertinently would now no longer open my Scrivener files (which luckily were all still saved on the cloud. And most of my other files were also still saved on my old computer. So I didn’t LOSE any information luckily).
So now I no longer had ACCESS to my file of Notes on Stuff that I keep throughout the year!

But wait. That’s not all.

I finally got my new, WORKING computer back, so I opened up my Scrivener file– only to discover that I’d never MADE a 2023 Notes on Stuff folder!

So if the only really great detailed stuff in this update is the booklists, you have the BookRiot Reading Log spreadsheet stored on Google Docs to thank! Because I DID take thorough notes when it came to stuff I READ this year!

Anyway, here’s my 2023, don’t forget to comment and converse with me about it!

STUFF THAT HAPPENED
Life Events in no particular order

1. So, if your last contact with me was LAST year’s roundup, you may have noticed how depressed the library-related write-ups sounded. My job was getting pretty miserable, and I wasn’t doing what I loved anymore, and it wasn’t like I was even getting paid well for it (though I couldn’t just quit, because we couldn’t afford that, either). But it was draining on my self-esteem and I didn’t believe I COULD get a new job, either. With a lot of vital encouragement from former coworker Dana, though, I finally got up the courage to at least LOOK what was out there, and wouldn’t you know it? There was a position for an actual Children’s Librarian in Waynesburg, just under a 40-minute-drive-mostly-highway away. So dangit, I applied, and dangit, I got the position.

Here’s the thing. Eva K. Bowlby died back in the 1950s and left her house/estate to the city of Waynesburg with the CLEAR STIPULATION that it would be used as a CHILDREN’S library. Oh sure, there’s a grownup library too, and grownup programming, but the FOCUS is Youth Services, which means our professional goals actually align! And I was going from being constantly belittled, doubted, and having responsibilities taken away from me at the Sarris library, to being IN CHARGE OF THE MOST RESPECTED DEPARTMENT of Bowlby Library– which was a little daunting! But you know? I’m doing all right. I’m not perfect, and the job isn’t perfect either, but I am SO MUCH HAPPIER now and the patrons are apparently happy, too. More in the Library Happenings section.

So like I said, I forgot to note the exciting things happening throughout the year AS they happened, so what sticks out are the BIG things. Like that.

2. Oh, and since I’ve only met her twice, I nearly forgot another big change in the EXTENDED family: in July, Maggie– my 39-year-old apparently-child-free sister–had a baby, Betty. I gave her a stuffed Betty Lou for Christmas. Maddie goes into fits of hysterical shrieking because her baby forehead is so big. Anyway, I’m convinced my Dad had something to do with this development, from beyond, because of the timing (she got pregnant as soon as possible after his death)– if not just to reincarnate himself back into the family, at the very least just as a sign, a reminder, that life goes on.

3. Uh, Sam got his driving permit. Yes, I’m the mother of a driving teenager. This is less scary than you might expect, Sam being Sam and A) obsessed with cars from toddlerhood and therefore learning everything possible about them, so INTELLECTUALLY knowing what he’s doing; and b) from the same age, spacially gifted– innately knowing how to make machines work; and most importantly, c) also from the same age, being a very CAREFUL, RULE-CONSCIOUS kid. I mean he already MIGHT be a better driver than me. He only just qualified to take his test, but he still hasn’t learned how to parallel park. But soon, I’m sure.

Okay. Oh!

4. Jason brought home a semi-wild pig! This is totally one of those weird little things that would have made the list if I was keeping track of everything as we went along– it happened early in the year, before I was even looking for a new job. Not a pet pig, he went on a pig hunt. Yes, these things exist. And it was GENERALLY slaughtered and quartered beforehand, but I had to cut it into serving sizes myself. After almost a year, we are now down to two racks of ribs, which we still haven’t QUITE figured out how to cook properly. I am kind of happy to not feel compelled to have pork three times a week any more.

5. Oh, I’ve got one more thing to round this off, even if it might not FEEL like a real life happening to anyone but me. I participated in Yuletide, the annual massive fanfic exchange dedicated to giving fic in “rare” fandoms a boost– what qualifies as “rare” is a fandom with 1000 or less fics of 1000 words or more on AO3– I clarify this because I was genuinely shocked that the fandom I was assigned still qualifies– but, see more below! The whole experience was super fun for me as a writer (and reader!) on many different levels, so I think it deserves this last bullet point!

Christmas
This is where I normally talk happenings and famous presents, but the happenings feel too far gone now, and you’ve already heard about my biggest present. Oh, we were laughing because Jason’s presents for me almost all had to be sent back! The computer broke, the underwear was too small, my brother got me the clock the night before! The only one I got to keep and love unconditionally was a nice throw blanket he’d gotten as a freebie sample at work! (It could be personalized with the company name, and J was doing the buying of Personalized Company Stuff to give employees, so the personalization company was like “buy this blanket for your employees!” and J was like, “Nah, but I’ll give it to my wife, okay?) It IS a very nice blanket.

Library Happenings
This is of course extra big this year. It seems so long since I even had library programs to talk about, and now all of a sudden I have a whole department in my hands.

Top Regular Programs I am Now In Charge Of
1. Summer Quest: I only ever marginally pitched in with Summer Reading programs at the old library, and I STILL occasionally had Summer Reading-related stress dreams. Now I was in charge of the whole thing! Worse, my only adult helper (I had several teen volunteers as well, some of them more actually helpful than others) got a new job and left two weeks in! And yet, despite the occasional chaos, I think it went very well. Summer Quest was the day-long weekly program for elementary-aged kids– younger ones on Wednesday, older on Thursday. Everyone seemed to be happy with it, and I heard lots of stories about kids talking excitedly about the things we’d done, like:
–Top Activities from summer quest. Apparently a lot of other librarians were complaining that the Collaborative Summer Reading Program theme of “All Together Now” was hard to plan programs and activities around, and honestly I do not get that. This theme cries out for teamwork building and getting along, and there are SO MANY fun activities to do with that!

1. Improv Games: The subject of “kindness” made me think of good listening which lead me to “Yes, and–” which led me to a ridiculous afternoon of improv games. After some large group warmups (Walking in different imaginary settings, coming up with a unique use for an oddly-shaped block), we used a set of customizable dice to roll different improv games for randomly chosen kids to do. At the end I had them act out the Three Little Pigs (plus more) like I used to do at the Children’s Museum, and it was hilarious.
2. Robotics and coding: This I came to on the subject of “Making a Difference” – though admittedly also because my boss had also gotten a grant for BristleBot kits that we were required to use this summer. But when you’re coding, every little step makes a difference, right? We read “How to code a sandcastle,” then used the Primo Cubetto robot we have to practice programming. Then we built the BristleBots, which converted even the most “This is stupid” kids by the end, and they spent recess making their Bristlebots dance together. Or fight. One or the other.
   
3. Multicultural Cooking Activity: The obvious choice for the subject of  “Crossing Borders,” it did get pretty chaotic, but resulted in lots of kids trying– and liking!-- new foods and a few deciding they liked cooking, too. We split everyone up and assigned everyone different tasks. Would definitely have been easier with another adult. My own kids even came along that day to help out.
   
4. Build the tallest tower out of weird supplies: The subject of this week WAS straight up “Teamwork,” so it was filled with team-building challenges like 60-second Lego builds and round singing and, memorably, making a Rube Goldberg Machine. That last may have been a little TOO complicated (and it was very hard to convince them that it wasn’t a marble run and they physically COULDN’T make one marble do everything); but the tower building challenge was just the right amount of challenge, and was very exciting.
   
5. Telephone on paper/Painting relay: Two more activities from “Kindness” week also stemming from the concept of “Yes, and”ing, though not improv. The painting relay required the group to try to paint a scene, one person at a time for one minute each, so you had to play off whatever the people before you had done. The younger group took this more seriously than the older group, who were prone to Pollocking the whole paper on their turns just to be obnoxious; but all groups had a wacky time with Telephone on Paper, where you pass around a strip of paper, folding it over each time, alternating between guessing what the person before you just drew and trying to draw what the person before you wrote that the first person drew.
   

2. Ready for Kindergarten: On Mondays during the summer, for less time than the elementary kids but still three hours, I led preschoolers through school-readiness exercises. I was nervous about this, because I’m not certified in early childhood education or anything, but really it was a storytime taken through the next level, and whatever activities I came up with weren’t hard to tie to school.

3. Storytimes: of course there’s basic storytimes throughout the year. I have a part-time coworker, Haley, who actually IS an early childhood educator (but she has a 1.5 year old so she doesn’t want a full-time job. In fact half the time her toddler comes with her. Which makes me jealous in retrospect at how much my kids were unwelcome at my last job), who mostly covers the baby and toddler storytimes, while I take the preschool and evening ones.
--Top themes from regular storytimes

1. Election Day: this will probably be even more interesting this year. It’s really a delightful way to teach kids about the election process without the baggage of grown-up Politics. We read two books: Clifford for President and Duck for President. Then the kids took turns voting by circling their choice’s picture on the ballot and put the ballot in a toy mailbox inside a Voting Booth (a three-sided poster board), while everyone made “Vote For” posters while they were waiting their turn. Then we counted (counting practice!) the votes together. I caught this conversation on the way out one of the days: 4yo, with mild disgust: “I voted for Clifford, but Duck won.” 4yo’s mom: “I know the feeling.”
2. Sharing: I always like to focus– or broaden– themes during holiday weeks to something related to the holiday, but not necessarily ABOUT the holiday, and “Sharing” is one of my favorite Thanksgiving topics. We read Around the Table that Grandad Built (see below) Feast for Ten (more COUNTING PRACTICE!) Thank you, Omu! (see some previous year’s list, I love that book), did an interactive flannelboard of The Doorbell Rang, and a magnet board activity of working together to put pictures together (each child had, say, a window or door but only together could we all build a house). And then we did snack time by making a fruit salad together. The smallest kids dumped in berries, the slightly bigger kids chopped bananas and strawberries and pre-peeled apple slices with butter knives, and everyone took turns mixing it up. “I didn’t know I could DO that!” one 3yo exclaimed proudly, and isn’t that just what we’re going for?    
   
3. Lights and Candles: Another example of broadening your “holiday” themes– the last storytime in December– this community has like NO religious diversity, it is frighteningly Evangelical Christian, so nobody would have a problem with the library doing anything straight-up Christmasy– but there already WERE like three straight-up Christmasy events going on that month (see below for some of them), so I’m sticking to something more universal for this storytime. We started with The Dark by Lemony Snicket, then read a board book called My First Chanukah and did a lighting-eight-candles fingerplay, then read a Disney Frozen board book that had real twinkling lights in it that end up on a tree, so we really covered all bases. And THEN they covered pieces of contact paper with scraps of colored tissue paper and we wrapped it around electric tea lights, so they had their own little “stained glass” nightlight decorations, which they all thought was the coolest and made an excellent grand finale to storytime season.
   
4. Berries: Honestly I wanted to do Berries just so I could read Berry Song, and We Wait for the Sun and Jamberry and The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear (which was probably the winner)-- we did NOT have time for Blueberries for Sal but I pulled it just in case. And then we painted with berries! And also ate berries!
   
5. A Two-fer: “Superheroes” and “Boo! Monsters”:  I’m just putting these together because the craft was variations on the same, and it never ceases to amaze and delight me how you can give kids all the same art supplies and they’ll all come up with something totally unique if you let them. We have Ellison die cutters with both mix-and-match superhero paper dolls and mix-and-match monster parts, and the results were always just special. LOOK at all these wonderful monsters! 
   

4. Family Place Play: The new library is a Family Place Library, a system of libraries focusing on early childhood development through giving families the resources they need to help their children thrive. All Family Place Libraries have to host relatively regular Parent/Child Workshops, which are developmentally-appropriate free play sessions with special guest community experts in to answer grownups’ parenting questions. We expanded the 5-session minimum Parent/Child Workshop into a ten-week regular playtime for three-an-unders and their families. Now, my biggest role in this was just setting up. Since the playtime was MEANT to be between the child and their caregiver, or sometimes with the other kids, I was kind of the third wheel in the room, just watching. But watching is interesting! People who don’t spend much time with babies tend to forget, or not ever realize, that babies (and toddlers) are not just blank slates before they can talk– they have opinions and great big feelings and they are FIGURING OUT SO MUCH STUFF, and when you watch them in a situation like this, you see all the gears turning and the revelations happening and it’s cool. And I keep wanting to talk about my own kids when they were very small, because it reminds me of the unique things they did that proved they were certainly their own people right away.

Top Special Events
1. Polar Express Night: I’ve never been in charge of such a successful program, at any library. 48 people turned out in their pajamas (well, SOME were in their pajamas) for hot cocoa and cookies and the Polar Express movie and leftover gingerbread house decorating– I had had a specific gingerbread house workshop the week before, but there were a bunch of no-shows, so I just pulled the leftovers out again here and boy were they popular– and there were simple craft paintings and a fake-snow-made-of-baking-soda-and-conditioner sensory box and wooden trains and a very weird set of snowglobe crafts and an engine you could go inside to drive! (Observe photo collection here). Everyone raved about it, even the families who left early because their kids got tired! It's already in the album linked above, but please again admire the Polar Express I built!


2. Fetch’s Sleepover: first time I ever got to do one of those taking-pictures-of-inanimate-objects-goofing-off photo shoots, check it out.

3. Turkey Trot: So every year the library has a 5K the weekend before Thanksgiving as a fundraiser, and it’s massive, and all we (Haley and I) were told was that we needed to have activities for kids for when they finished the kids’ race and were waiting for their growups to finish the 5K– not when or for how long. So it turned out about an hour in, we got COMPLETE CHAOS for an hour, and then everyone went home. But at least everyone was occupied (with games, snacks, and crafts) during that hour of chaos.

4. Teddy Bear Picnic: This apparently was also originally a fundraiser, but now it’s just an annual tradition that again Haley and I were thrust into in hopes of living up to everyone’s expectations, which luckily we did. We had stories and a teddy bear parade and a stuff-your-own-plushie activity and bear masks and bear food like berries, (swedish) fish, honey (grahams), ants on a log, and peanut butter and jelly because of course they do, and now the pictures from this event are my work computer screen saver and it’s a good time (sorry, I don't actually have a LINK to those pictures).

5. The Summer Quest Field Trip: Wanted to tie the field trip to something Teamwork related to fit the theme, and finally the improv activity made me think, A SHOW. The nearest community theater doing a children’s matinee was an hour away, but we went anyway, and saw a play called “Cinderella Caterpillar,” which I think my fellow coworker-chaperone laughed way harder at than any of the kids did. The kids got to get all the players to sign their programs as a souvenir, and then we had a picnic, because it was an outdoor theater, and then they spent at least an hour playing on stage themselves. That in itself was cool! But like two days before, my boss said, “There’s some more money in the budget for field trips, you should stop and get ice cream for everyone on the way home.” And I looked at the map and wouldn’t you know it, exactly halfway on our route was a restaurant attached to a dairy farm that makes their own ice cream and has a playground with big slides built into the hill– it’s a great place my own kids have been to on field trips too. So we stopped there and had MORE fun! There was a perfectly timed rain shower for exactly the amount of time it took to ride the bus from the theater and to eat ice cream inside the restaurant, that then immediately cleared up.

Top Other Stuff that Happened at the New Library
1. Sorting the Closet: there was a chaotic supply closet that I used my first break between programming seasons to completely reorganize and inventory and I’m PROUD of that, baby!

2. Sorting the Office: this one’s a bit trickier and I’m still working on it! It involves lots of old files, some of which are useful, and some of which are completely out of date! There are books of literal Clip Art, the kind you had to photocopy, before you did that sort of thing on the computer! There are shelves and shelves of old Mailbox magazines! There’s a lot of stuff I’m not supposed to get rid of because it actually belongs to my boss, who started out as the children’s librarian there, but I don’t always know WHAT! It’s quite the interesting treasure horde!

3. Collection Development: if there’s one thing that frustrates me about my new job compared to the old, it’s that my boss does NOT like to weed anything, and there is NOT a lot of room. And there’s some seriously out of date stuff in that collection. But I am doing my best within my parameters to get the collection a LITTLE less chaotic and easier to use!

4. Christmas party: One very long day I was in town for something like 13-14 hours, starting with a Family Place Play session in the morning, a regular in-library workday in the afternoon, then making Frosty the Snowman buttons at a booth at the town Light-up Night celebration in the evening– I couldn’t just GO HOME in between because it’s a 40 minute commute one-way– and then we had our staff Christmas party at a small local combined pottery-shop/restaurant, which served us THE most comfort-foodish Baked Potato soup as well as a meat and cheese board and wraps; and we had a secret santa exchange and the girl who had me made me a gift basket of all sorts of random treats named after Beatles songs, it was great; and then we played a Murder Mystery Roleplay game (though it wasn’t murder, it was non-lethal poisoning) and I solved it, and we LAUGHED a LOT, and afterward somebody or other asked if I’d had a good time and I was actually a little stunned. “YES,” I realized. “Yes, I really did!”

So now it's time for everyone's favorite section:

MEDIA REVIEWS

Books!

2023 Picture Books
1. Nell Plants a Tree, by Anne Wynter, illus. by Daniel Miyares. Oh this is lovely! Poetic and flowing but simple enough for even a toddler storytime, though older kids will more appreciate how the pictures show time going by and how Nell was a girl when she planted the tree and a grandmother when the tree is full-grown.

2. Mister Kitty is LOST! by Greg Pizzoli. I am looking forward to using this in a story time. There’s counting, guessing, and subversion of expectations– a perfect recipe for child interaction and all-ages entertainment.

3. Stranded! A Mostly True Story from Iceland, by Aevar por Benediktsson, illus. by Anne Wilson (not the rock star). What sold me on thinking libraries need this technically-nonfiction book was that it kept making “great read-aloud” lists. And it does seem to be perfect for next summer’s CSLP theme, “Adventure”-- but I actually bought it as a gift for J’s nephews before I bought it for the library, and got distracted reading while I wrapped it. It is a wonderfully fun book, delightfully told, and with illustrations that add a literally-mythic quality to the author’s grandfather’s unbelievable (but mostly true!) story.  

4. Evergreen, by Matthew Cordell. This book made me wish I had more elementary aged storytimes because it's just a bit too long for preschool. Then I realized this will fit next year's summer theme, too, as it’s about a shy (not quite as much as Scaredy) Squirrel having an Adventure, and I can read it to my elementary group then!

5. How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney? by Mac Barnett, illus. by Jon Klassen. Remember there was awhile there I had like three Barnett/Klassen books per year-end list? It seems like a long time since I did. This is an excellent book to share with thoughtful kids who like to examine all options. Klassen's work always makes me smile, and the words are straightforward but fun, and are just slightly rhythmic with some internal rhymes, so, a good read-aloud. The part about dogs got me and was what tipped me over into “okay, I love this.”


2022 Picture Books I Crammed for Mock Caldecott Time, which happened before I even considered I might have a new job in just a few months so feels ages ago:
1. Action! How Movies Began, by Meghan McCarthy. A simple (enough to read aloud) yet thorough (enough for even grownups to feel like they’re learning something) history of movie making. It ties the first times various innovations were used to more recent movies to show the parallels, which is very cool, and the illustrations highlight parallels as well, which is how it got on the mock Caldecott lists! And it got one of my votes, along with Blue and Berry Song (see last year’s list of New Books).

2. Color the Sky, by David Elliot, illus. by Evan Turk. I remember “arguing” with a kid about why this was on the Mock Caldecott table, because they were “just scribbly crayon drawings.” But oh, the ENERGY those crayon drawings capture! There’s a lot of energy in the verse (about birds of many colors) as well. You could take off flying with this book yourself.

3. Nigel and the Moon, by Antwan Eady, illus. by Gracey Zhang. Sweet story about a kid who whispers his dreams to the moon when he's shy to share what he wants to be in the day. The pictures are sweet, too, if not quite what I’d deem Caldecott-worthy– it was the story I liked most!

4. The Three Billy Goats Gruff, by Mac Barnett, illus. by Jon Klassen. Here they are again! This is a worthy addition to the folktale collection, and a lot of fun. Barnett adds some fun food rhymes to the traditional refrains, and Klassen continues to draw the best expressions. There’s an interesting use of space, as well. Great example of why Klassen is one of my absolute favorite illustrators despite (or because of?) his deceptively simple style!

5. How to Eat a Book, by Mrs. and Mr. MacLeod.  It’s a mildly silly story about the joy of getting sucked into a book (literally), but the cut paper illustrations are a little mindblowingly psychedelic. Curious what the authors might do next.

What’s funny is this is being posted so late that I have already done my Mock Caldecott cramming for THIS year, too. So theoretically I could make next year’s list right now. But I won’t, because spoilers.
(PSST: Remember, Simon and the Better Bone, An American Story, Big, and Stars of the Night– descriptions and ranking subject to change depending on the rest of the year, but those are the ones I liked best, if you’re using my opinions to do your own purchasing and really want to know. Edit to add: Simon and the Better Bone just won our Mock Caldecott. Edit again to add: Big just won the real Caldecott. Yay, month-late roundups!) (Incidentally, I can't remember what won last year's Mock Caldecott. I have looked it up on the FSPL Facebook page but apparently that didn't get posted).

Older Picture Books, which may include 2022 (but I don’t actually think do. Oh, there’s one):
I’m having trouble ranking these: they might just be a ten-way tie. Or they might go something like this.

1. A Polar Bear In the Snow, by Mac Barnett, illus. by Shawn Harris, 2020. And Barnett squeezes on a third time, but the pictures are definitely the real star here. Harris could have gone the easy route: I have no doubt Barnett was thinking of the joke when he came up with the title-- but the artist instead has done some really cool things with torn white cardstock and a sparing use of black and blue ink. It immediately gave me Story Time Art Project ideas. Unfortunately I read this at Sarris like a week before leaving, and we haven’t GOT the book at Bowlby. (Gee, who has the power to change that, anyway?)

2. Around the Table that Grandad Built, by Melanie Heuiser Hill, illus. by Jaime Kim, 2019. Nice Thanksgiving book: it manages to be very classic in tone and themes while showing a diverse family with a variety of foods. An excellent addition to a Thanksgiving collection.

3. The Christmas Mitzvah, by Jeff Gottesfeld, illus. by Michelle Laurentia Agatha, 2021. Speaking of good additions to holiday collections, this is a really lovely story! When I first read reviews of it back in 2021, I remember not being sure how a story of a grownup doing grownup things would be accessible for kids (though it didn’t stop me from putting it on the wish list. Can’t remember if I ever got around to buying it for Sarris. It was already at Bowlby though). But this book pulls off just the right tone, and the pictures help, too. It's just a big smile in a book.

4. Bartali's Bicycle: the true story of Gino Bartali, Italy's Secret Hero, by Megan Hoyt, illus. by Iacopo Bruno, 2021. Fascinating story about a champion cyclist who secretly worked for the Italian Resistance in WWII.

5. My Baby Blue Jays, by John Berendt, 2011. This is apparently an adult-focused Pulitzer-winner, but when he decided to chronicle the family of blue jays outside his window with photographs, then describe what he saw, he explained it on a kid level very well! I always like having simple real-life nonfiction sorts of things like this to sprinkle into storytimes, and the preschoolers all diving forward to get a closer look at the pictures is exactly the sort of reaction I’m going for.

6. Ways to Welcome, by Linda Ashman, illus. by Joey Chou, 2020. This is simple and sweet and exactly what it says on the tin–ways to show kindness, as well. Perfect choice for the All Together Now Summer Reading theme, and unlike a lot of these kinds of everyone-getting-along books, the rhymes actually scan really well.

7. Super Sloth, by Robert Starling, 2019. A very cute everyone-is-talented-in-their-own-way story.

8. The Happy Day, by Ruth Krauss, illus. by Marc Simont, 1949. I found this among the Big Books on one of my first days at the new library and felt called to read it immediately. Indeed it fit my upcoming spring theme storytime, and amused me with its unique refrains (who thinks to include SNAILS in a story like this?). I mean, I know Ruth Krauss knew what she was doing (and Simont’s no slouch either), but I’d never heard of this book before, so who knew it stood the test of time?

9. Mushroom Rain, by Laura K. Zimmermann, illus. by Jamie Green, 2022. Fascinating facts about mushrooms presented in poetic prose with very pretty pictures.

10. Time is a Flower, by Julie Morstad, 2021. Wonderous poetic and artistic musings on the nature of time. The pictures themselves are poetic too.


2023 Longer Books
1. Huda F Cares? by Huda Fahmy. This was hilarious. It's a not-very-wordy graphic novel, so I read it in one sitting (accidentally), when someone accidentally put it on the Children's New Book shelf instead of the YA, and I just flipped it open as I started to carry it away and started laughing out loud immediately. It is cataloged as YA (and I haven’t read the first book in the series to say if this applies there, too), but if this one had stayed in the children’s section, it could have been perfectly appreciated by a middle-grade kid, too, since it's about that universal wonder, sibling relationships (and bc it's a very conservative family– the not-as-universal theme is of being Very Visibly Muslim In Public– it hasn't got the "naughty bits" you might find in a lot of YA, either).  It verges on uncomfortable cringe humor– I kept tensing for disaster!-- but everything works out in the end, so it’s pure delight.

2. The Chalice of the Gods, by Rick Riordan. It’s fun to read Percy and Co. have an adventure that's not world-shattering for once. This is actually taking place in the months between the end of Heroes of Olympus and the beginning of Trials of Apollo, so you canonically know nothing HUGE happened in that time– it’s just a series of fun, funny, often dangerous hijinks– not will he get out of this, but how will he get out of this?

3. The Night Raven, by Johan Rundberg, trans. from the Swedish by A.A. Prime. To be perfectly honest, I’m still not quite sure what to think of this one. I wonder if some subtlety of the plot was lost in translation, because I'm still not entirely sure what happened and why; and the young main character’s relationship with the police detective gives me slight predator vibes even if that's not what’s intended. But Mika is a great protagonist, headstrong and sort of surprisingly snarky (the kind of person who will just say something ridiculous straight-faced and throw you off for a few seconds to a minute), and the kids and I are definitely looking forward to the next English translation (there are already four books in the series out in Sweden). And just as far as well-writtenness goes, it beats out all the other contenders for third place here. It's objectively good! I'm just a little confused by it still!

4. Deephaven, by Ethan M. Aldridge. Pulled this off the New shelf– it was part of the Junior Library Guild shipment, so I hadn’t read much if anything about it beforehand– and went WHOA, if this doesn’t have Maddie-would-like-this written all over it. Mysterious boarding school? Dark occulty secrets lurking? Nonbinary, slightly-autistic-coded protagonist has to solve the mystery before someone else gets hurt? The plot is a little simpler/more middle-grade than some of what we’ve been reading lately, but as we were approaching the last quarter of the book I said, “You know what? I have a feeling this is just the start of a series.” And while the immediate plot was firmly wrapped up, and there's nothing explicitly STATED about a series, there are still plenty of hints that there could be lots more mysteries in the future.    

5. The Sun and the Star, by Mark Oshiro and Rick Riordan. Sorry, Oshiro is no Riordan– it just didn’t have the same gripping narrative style as the rest of the Riordanverse. And I kind of take offense of their portrayal of Hypnos because I’ve already started writing a fic in which Hypnos is way more interesting (but still true to the original myth!). But there’s still lots of fun mythological details, and a particularly lovely scene between Will and Persephone that I really enjoyed.

Honorable Mention: Simon (sort of) Says, by Erin Bow. I started reading this on my own because I knew my kids wouldn’t be interested (they weren’t), and while I really enjoyed what I read, it’s a lot harder to make time to read just for me (hence, the one book on this particular list I DID read just for me was read in one sitting at work), and I never FINISHED it before I realized I needed to stop hogging it and just return it to the library already. I have a feeling it would be higher on this list if I had finished it, but since I didn’t, I’ll settle for the honorable mention. (Edit: it just won a Newbery Honor so I was glad I'd taken it back so I could put it on my winners' display!)


Older Longer Books
1. The Astonishing Chronicles of Oscar from Elsewhere, by Jaclyn Moriarty, 2022, whom I adore so very very much for her kindred ADHD brain. Oddly there is outright acknowledgement of ADHD in this one, even though every one of her characters seems to have some neurodivergent aspect or another. It’s just there’s one character from our world (the eponymous Oscar), instead of from The Kingdoms and Empires, so he gets a proper diagnosis.

2. Hello, Universe, by Erin Entrada Kelly, 2017. I was looking for long reads to "introduce" to the older Summer Reading Quest class by reading first chapters–I mean, I read the first chapters TO them to introduce them, AND I was reading first chapters myself beforehand just to find the books in the first place. This was the first one that jumped out and made me want to keep reading! It was a sweet story and an easy read with memorable characters. Not quite sure about the bully character's development, but otherwise.
    
3. The Lockwood & Co. series, by Jonathan Stroud, 2013-2017. My kids were really into horror in at least the first half of the year (carrying over from last year), and there was a show of this coming out– what’s funny is we completely forgot to watch the show after we finished. Took awhile to read, but we thoroughly enjoyed it. I had started to read it myself years ago but didn’t get past the first chapter– the voice just wasn’t holding my interest. This time I was hearing Lucy with entirely new ears or something– I got her this time around.

4. Ophie's Ghosts, by Justina Ireland, 2021. Pittsburgh history, Black history, ghosts and lore and mystery: a little something for everything we were in the mood for, and educational, too. This book managed to be both sad and fun.    

5. The Truly Devious series, by Maureen Johnson, 2018-2020. Speaking of Pittsburgh not-history, the main character of this series is from Pittsburgh and we totally didn’t know until we read it. But most of the story takes place at a remote mountain boarding school in Vermont, and there’s a modern-day mystery and a past mystery being told in alternate chapters. Maddie said the historical parts were the more interesting ones, but I think that’s because those stuck closer to the mystery itself, while the modern parts also dealt a lot of regular realistic (relatively) teenage social interaction– I found those bits fun, but then, I don’t have to BE a teenager any more, so I dig that my kids are more into escapism– so was I at their age!

Notable Rereads:
Yeah, somewhere along the way we crossed over from horror to mystery, and I decided it was time to introduce my kids to Agatha Christie. We read two:
1. And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie– my personal favorite, and I thought it would be a good start since it’s got a major horror trope (everyone dying one by one!) at its center. And wow, it really hit me just how many common tropes come from this book right here. I ended up getting sucked into its many many citations on TV Tropes (one trope of which– Ten Little Murder Victims– even gets its name from this book. Technically). The kids' reactions were fun– I enjoyed Maddie’s early, “They’re ALL terrible people! They ALL DESERVE to die!” And they kept making predictions and I was bursting with knowing exactly how close and/or not they were.

2. Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie–on the other hand, I actually forgot how this one ended (I remembered in PART, but ONLY in part, so it was a fun reread for me just for that). This was the first straightforward detective-interviews-suspects-and-thinks-a-lot type mystery my kids ever read, very different from their usual thriller-type reads, and I was pleased how interested they stayed regardless. Maddie was extremely satisfied with the ending. Also, when we read Truly Devious, which were the two Christie novels directly referenced in the story? These two! I kept being all, “Ah-hah, you SEE? Aren’t you glad I read those books to you?!”

Onto something completely different, 3. Coraline, by Neil Gaiman. From back in the horror era– in fact this was the very first book on my reading log spreadsheet for the year.  This is a good read-aloud: I appreciated the classic feel of the book better than I ever had, reading it in this capacity.

Moving Pictures!
I watched VERY LITTLE this year. Of course I could be missing some on account of having not kept track, but I don’t think I watched a single movie (for the first time at least), and I started several shows that I forgot to finish (granted, two of them WEREN’T finished by the end of the year). But here are the few notable exceptions:

Two I watched in full!
Muppets Mayhem, Disney+: I think I’ve said before that the Electric Mayhem is genuinely one of my favorite bands– certainly my favorite FICTIONAL band at least. So much that a friend called me out on Facebook: “You ARE watching this, aren’t you?” It managed to be the one thing I binged when I was down with COVID in July (OH! That was another happening. Apparently COVID went around Maggie’s baby shower. Sam got it there and maybe Maddie– or Maddie got it from Sam at home– then Jason got it from those two, and I think I held out because I was the only one to have gotten a booster in the past year, but finally after a week of everyone else being sick they wore me down, too). Anyway, so, the Muppets Mayhem was, like most Muppet shows, kind of a mixed bag, but it quickly became so loveable you don’t care about the weaker parts anymore. The music of course rocked, and the jokes were on the whole funny, and the Get Back episode– because of course I’m going to mention the Get Back episode– was absolutely perfect.

Only Murders in the Building, Hulu: Maybe thanks to reading so many mysteries with the kids this year, I kept having the urge to watch this again. I hadn't gotten around to watching season two, and then when I heard season three was out, I said, well that SETTLES it! And I finally binged both those seasons while making Halloween costumes. The humorous murder mystery is one of my favorite genres, but I always forget until I’m in the middle of one again!

Three I watched in part!
Loki, Disney+: It’s funny, I saw season one before I saw the Umbrella Academy, and now I was kind of curious how the TVA would hold up against the Commission in my perceptions– but Loki definitely holds its own as far as pure time hijinks go. I love time hijinks! (See #1 on the Fanfics I Wrote list for MORE fun with time hijinks!) And I love the Legionesque aesthetic of the show! It’s so many of my favorite bits of television all at once! But I started my binge of Only Murders in the middle of the season, and that put my viewing routine off-schedule, and I never caught back up…

Fargo, Hulu: another one lost to a put-off viewing routine! I saw the first episode– and it turned out two episodes dropped on the first night! But I only noticed the first one! Before I could even catch up with the second, the third dropped during Thanksgiving Vacation when everyone was home and cutting into my viewing time! So… I still have to catch up. So far from one episode, Season 5 seems more promising than Season 3 was at least, but since every season is completely different, I won’t really know until I WATCH THE REST, now, will I.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Disney+: Now, I HAVE watched every episode of this so far, primarily because Maddie won’t LET us miss a single episode, but considering it only started at the end of December, most of it has been watched THIS year. Absolutely confusing the statistics, getting this out so late! But it’s very enjoyable. Maybe I’ll say more about it in the 2024 roundup.

Top Fanfics I read!
I’m still– but more sporadically– reading Umbrella Academy fic in alphabetical order by author, so again that’s where most of what I read and bookmarked this year comes from. I thought I’d read a lot more fandoms after Christmas (when the Yuletide gifts all went online), but it turned out a) I’m still confused from writing this in mid-January, and I read a lot of the Yuletide fics in 2024; and b) I went through and marked a whole lot of Yuletide fics “For Later,” but haven’t actually gotten around to reading them yet. So those will show up next/this year, I guess. Meanwhile, here’s five non-TUA fics I did read, and loved enough to bookmark to perhaps tell you about:

Top 5 Non-Umbrella Academy fics I actually read IN 2023:
1. “No Reservations: Narnia” by Edonohana (Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations RPF, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, T, 6,228 words) – This is one of those “famous” fanfics that people-who-don’t-make-a-habit-of-fanfic-reading have read– Anthony Bourdain himself apparently read it even, and enjoyed it a lot. Someone linked to it on Tumblr and I finally joined the crowd as well– it’s great fun, imagining Bourdain and his crew exploring the cuisine and cultures of Narnia! The sensory details are exquisite. Pretty sure I smiled the whole way through.

2. “Five Subfolders of Existence” by storiesfortravellers (The Good Place (TV), T, 1,536 words) –  storiesfortravellers was my Yuletide recipient, so in deciding what to write for her I clicked to see the sort of stuff she’d written. The answer was “a lot,” so I narrowed that down to just Good Place fics, because that was, spoiler alert for the “Stuff I Wrote” section below, what she’d requested (that I could write. It was the only thing on her request list that I’d seen!). This is told in lists, a look inside Janet’s…brain seems too small of a word, but it’s a human’s feeble attempt (or not so– seems a pretty good attempt to ME) to express all that goes through Janet’s figurative head during a simple fleeting moment with Jason. It’s a fun format that manages to express a lot of emotion in a very not-a-robot way! I left a note in my bookmark to come back to kudo and comment on it later so I wouldn’t give away that someone was snooping around her old Good Place fics before the Yuletide reveals, and luckily saw that note while putting this list together so I could actually do that!
    
3. “You Can't Find the Woods (When You're Hiding in the Trees)” by panAcademic (Legion (TV), X-Men - All Media Types, M, 14,448 words so far) –New Legion fic? Is it possible? Yes! panAcademic was on a roll earlier in the year (and also incidentally inspired my own Greatest Fic of the Year see below), including this wildly layered trip through David’s system’s inner world– which, it turns out, takes place during the middle of season 2. The season that makes the least amount of sense anyway! But seriously, you’d be hard pressed to figure that out in the first few chapters, which all take place internally and are appropriately surreal. David’s got some interesting new alters with some unique roles. And I hope they keep going because supposedly when we get out in the real world we’re going to see the other characters we know and love too (ie Loudermilks). So far there’s just Lenny, but Lenny is written so very Lennyishly.

4. “1/3 Of What You're Saying” by pale_and_tragic (Only Murders in the Building (TV), T, 4,810 words) –I’d only just started my Only Murders binge when Yuletide requests went out, and I noticed a few Mabel/Theo shipping requests, and I said, “Oh, that’s an interesting ship, I can see that I guess,” but by the time I was halfway through the binge I’d decided “Oh I totally get what they’re saying now, I am fully on-board Team Theo,” and I was almost tempted to comment on all those requests congratulating them on their good taste. Anyway, this Yuletide fic is not only a lovely slow-burn Mabel/Theo friends-to-lovers, it’s also got an actual murder mystery to solve, and dream imagery, so an excellent time and my favorite of the Yuletide fics I actually READ in 2023!
    
5. “miscommunications” by carterhaugh (All the Wrong Questions - Lemony Snicket, G, 1,314 words) –  This was the Yuletide fic written specifically for ME! It’s an utterly Snickety conversation between young Lemony and Moxie from within the course of the story, all about the nature of Truth. Which is itself an extremely Snickety topic.

Top Five Returning Favorites from ANY Fandom (the ones I’ve got on Subscribe so I catch each new chapter as it comes out) that I Feel Like I Must Also Mention:

1. “When My Fist Clenches, Crack It Open” by versaphile (Legion (TV), Mature, 876,030 freakin’ words) – And that’s 229 chapters…out of 229! YES! They did it! The most epic Legion fic has come to an end at last, and if I MAY have cried a little just knowing I wouldn’t have a new chapter (particularly a new chapter involving Loudermilks that I don’t have to write myself) possibly waiting on the horizon to surprise me? Yeah, so?

2. “Through Every Open Door” by Gin_Juice (The Umbrella Academy (TV), Not Rated, 165,004 words so far) – I am reasonably certain Gin_Juice is my favorite fic writer. Every update is just pure awesome from start to finish. I haven’t even read all of her really old stuff yet! This ongoing fic is an alternate season three where, instead of eating itself up, the multiverse has started throwing up anachronisms all over reality, and there’s only one screwed up family– or two– who can fix it.

3. “Joining Together” by sharkneto (The Umbrella Academy (TV) , T, 185,149 words so far) – a physics professor takes a didn’t-get-lost-in-time Five under her wing and it’s absolutely the best thing that could happen to him. It’s a prequel to “Holding It Together” which I think made my list last year? Yes it did. Sarah and her husband Rob are seriously the most loveable OCs and deserve recognition for that.

4. “Apollo and the Aftermath” by ceruleancats (The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, T, 35,249 words so far) – Did this one make the list before? Well anyway it’s got an excellent Apollo voice narrating, and its latest developments involve Dionysis, being the god of madness, taking on the role of therapist for Apollo, which is something you didn’t know you needed to see until now, didn’t you.

5. “Little Soldiers In A Row” by damagedpickle (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 65,141 words so far)  –the Subscription feature is the handiest part of reading on AO3. You must subscribe to anything unfinished, no matter how long it’s been, because you never know when suddenly something will update out of nowhere (yes, everyone who’s been waiting on “Tesseract” since December of ‘21, I’m talking to you). This one pulled that on me this year, and I hadn’t linked to it in the past, so have some now, if you’d like something really depressing and angsty but in a good way! This is an AU where there are no superpowers, but Reggie adopted everyone and treated them pretty much the same way he did in the universe where they DID have superpowers, as a psychological experiment, and it’s remarkable how removing the supernatural element just makes the whole thing seem that much worse. But, you know, in a well-written way.

Top Five Umbrella Academy Fics from the TUA Masked Author event, because I reread them more times than the rest in an attempt to guess the authors (which I didn’t. Well, none of THESE five, I don’t think: I actually was like the third-best guesser overall), which gives them an unfair advantage:
1. “To Resurface an Acorn” by glimmerglue, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 2,923 Words) -- So imagine that when Five takes everyone back to the ‘60s, they arrive as only voices in his head? On the plus side, they’re all together! On the downside, they’re all stuck together in one already-maddened guy’s head! There’s so much interesting potential posed in this fic! I respect the author's decision to leave it at this, but that doesn’t stop me passionately wishing for more.

2. “Grace Through the Doorway in Time, and what she found there” by Undercamel_of_Pluto, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, T, 9,398 words) -- First let’s enjoy that for the second year in a row someone has chosen one of my favorite books as the framework for their TUA Masked Author piece. Then, after the author reveals, let’s appreciate that Pluto is a well-known fan ART maker, and had actually never WRITTEN (or at least posted) a fic before. But mostly, let’s appreciate this fic itself, which has ‘60s human Grace fall into a metaphorical rabbit hole that turns out to be just a totally realistic (for them) day at the Umbrella Academy, but certainly SEEMS all topsy turvy through the looking glass from her point of view! It's such a fun twist!
 
3. “Deep Down” by KawaiiCommunism, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 1,035 words) – Poor Allison often gets turned into either “the mom” or “the villain” depending when a fic was written, so I found this a refreshingly balanced and believeable look inside her psyche a couple of years before the show takes place.

4. “Of Monsters and Men” by MyDarlingClementine, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 1,516 words) -- An excellent exploration of character development– I know a lot of people want Five to be the uncontrollable killer he is in the comics, but I think the guy who will listen to his (still messed-up) scruples is a lot more interesting.

5. “Scales and Scars” by rebel_by_default, (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 5,708 words) – Look, this fun-yet-deep “conversation between two emotionally stunted former assassins” was on my shortlist of POSSIBLY being rebel, whose work I’ve read a great deal of, (shout out to “Life is Just This (It's Living),” which ALMOST made the below list on account of being perfect platonic 5+7 content),  I just didn't make that my final guess. I had a lot of little triangles of possible authors for possible fics and I just picked the wrong ones, you know?  

Top 10 OTHER Umbrella Academy Fics, I think, not counting ones that have continued from last year, and not counting fics with over 1,000 kudos because in effort to narrow down my options I figured they didn’t need my advertising:

1. “Certain Ends” by frimfram (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 20,144 words) --full disclosure, I beta’d this one, which is why I’m ranking it first: I’m not going to bother trying to be objective about it. This is a delightfully evocative Christmas Carol-full ghost story, and it didn’t get enough hits, being that it’s a Christmas story that finished updating in February. If I had gotten this roundup written AT Christmastime…! But seriously, read this one whatever time of year. The sensory details are scrumptious and spooky. And there are Muppet references.

2. “The Art of Memory” by redaurorarora (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 22,210 words) --I looked back at my bookmarks and said, “I REALLY should have sorted these better,” because I couldn’t tell which ones were REALLY GOOD vs. ones I just enjoyed a lot, to pick out which would make the list, but this bookmark was just straight up gushing so here it is. It’s a post-Season 3 reboot where Five is now apparently Reggie’s only son, and how much does he remember? The characterization is spot on, the word choices elevate everything even more. There were so many really good lines. Top of the pops.

3. “The Time Traveller's Life” by LittleRit (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 169,165 words so far. It totally just updated while I was writing this) --first longfic I tackled this year—last year—was LittleRit’s still-in-progress epic supposing what would happen if Five kept randomly and uncontrollably popping back and forth through time—how would that affect canon? How would that affect his apocalypse experience and relationship with the Commission? There are a LOT of timeline shenanigans to keep track of in this, and Rit keeps dropping in all sorts of details that suddenly mean something many chapters down the road, so, hooray for keeping that all straight!

4. “Where You Gonna Run To?” by ToriAnne (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 52,264 words so far) --It’s a what-if-they-hadn’t-been-adopted fic, but events are transpiring to bring them together anyway; and their stories for what happened with them instead all just make so much sense. I had not bookmarked this one, but as I was attempting to make this list I kept thinking “But what about that one where…?” and the clearer it was that none of the bookmarked fics fit the bill, the more I had to just dig back in my history until I found this. It sticks out that way.  
 
5. “why'd you look so tough?” by myeyesarenotblue (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 2,286 words) --now, I can’t speak for the writer, whom I don’t know at all, but this fic was written in between when pictures from Season 3 were being released/Viktor’s transition was announced, and when Season 3 actually came out, so I imagine they just saw those pics of freshly-transitioned Viktor and said, “Hey, it looks like he’s raided Ben’s wardrobe”—and from that tiny observation they wove this beautiful little scene of grief and self-discovery twisting together, wrapping up so many layers and tiny canon threads together in Ben’s old leather jacket I mean a story.

6. “Two Steps Forward, One Step Back” by RaspberrySwish (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 11,297 words) – Is it kind of obvious yet that I’m a big fan of absurd humor? I had forgotten this one, and ignored my bookmark, confusing it with an earlier fic I’d read, so I’m glad I clicked through to read it again just to be sure. This one supposes a hypothetical point when the Hargreeves are facing something like their seventh apocalypse and, after a stupidly entertaining scene of them making bets on what’s going to cause the next one, they decide to go back in time to when they were teenagers, murder their dad, and kidnap I mean adopt themselves. It’s ridiculous. I love it.

7. “My Brother's Brother” by spyspyspyder (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 1,765 words) -- yes, to my own bewilderment I’m still obsessed with the relationship between Five and Viktor—no that’s wrong. I’m bewildered by my brain’s need for them to be kissing. Their relationship IS fascinating enough platonically, and I wish I could gush about it more objectively because for some reason a lot of people just stop listening to you the moment you start shipping adoptive brothers. So I appreciate this fic so much for doing what I cannot: showing bits of that fascinating relationship through glimpses caught by other people over time, keeping it strong and inevitable and ironic but also still platonic.  I brought this up in the comments, and the author replied, “I definitely see them as two planets set to orbit each other in any universe, in whatever relationship context,” and that is so perfect and correct.

8. “(Feels Like) Heaven” by Melivian (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 34,795 words so far) --More The Good Place sneaking in to these lists, as this is a Good Place AU, and nicely done, too. The humor is spot on and appropriately quirky, and the casting fits in ways I never would have thought of. I don’t care about Klaus and Dave as a ship really—I feel like Dave was mostly in the show just to inspire Klaus to sober up—but it works perfectly and rather beautifully here as they become the Eleanor and Chidi of this neighborhood.

9. “He Sleeps with the Fishes: The Hoffa Job” by Stephsageek (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 29,048 words so far) –I almost forgot this one actually started this year, not last, as it’s a continuation of the series Steph started last year about Five and Lila being Commission partners pre-show era. There are so many moving pieces in this absurd encounter (multi-chapter, but it’s all happening in one scene, basically!), including a cameo by Carrie Fisher; and she keeps hinting there’s a sea monster, too, but the sea monster hasn’t shown up yet.

10. “Learning Fear” by Repeatinglitanies (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 30,638 words) --now this is unabashedly a Fiktor fik (or Fiveya, it’s from 2019), but almost—almost!—incidentally: there are cults and vigilantes and completely chaotic convergences of secret organizations! I did not expect a “Five-and-Vanya-raised-separately-meet-as-teenagers-and-bond-while-trick-or-treating” to develop into the wild ride this one turned into. It makes the list on uniqueness alone. Again with the absurdity. I have a (story) type.

Stuff I wrote!  

Stuff I Wrote, Here on Dreamwidth Edition: Only my “Dear Yuletide Writer” Letter, designed to give whoever was assigned to me for Yuletide an idea of what I’d like. The way Yuletide works is, starting in September or October, they collect nominations of “Rare” fandoms, then put out the list, and you have to choose between 3 to 5 fandoms that you’d like someone to write for YOU, and then you ALSO choose between 5-10 that you would be willing to write for OTHER people. But you only write a letter about your requests, since what you WRITE will be a surprise. Anyway, I nominated, requested AND offered Legion, just because the idea of someone ELSE writing Loudermilk fic for me to read was so lovely; but then I saw someone had nominated Sal and Gabi??!?!?!?!?! I wish I knew who, because in the end nobody else requested or even offered that one, and there ISN’T any fic already written, and I CAN’T write it myself because I am not fluent enough (at all) in Cuban-American Spanglish to do Sal’s voice justice! SIGH, I want more Sal and Gabi in my life. I did finally match on my THIRD choice, though, as you saw above, and incidentally was assigned something I only offered, not requested, because I figured enough other people would request it because it apparently only still qualified because half its fics on AO3 were less than 1000 words, but SEE BELOW…

Stuff I Wrote, GeekMom Edition: Um, I occasionally participated in the threads in the GeekMom Talk Facebook Group. Do you think if I ever get the motivation to write something GeekMommish again, they’ll take me back?

Stuff I Wrote, Fanfic Edition:

1. “The Magic Man of Oz” (Legion (TV), T, 15,004 words, but only 9,000 of those words are story, the rest are bonus features, so you can skip those if you want) – This is my masterpiece of the year, and it breaks my heart there aren’t more people who can appreciate it! Someone on the Legion fan Discord server posed the idea of a Wizard of Oz AU, and we all started casting the characters, and as soon as someone suggested that Oliver should be the narrator I HAD TO WRITE IT. I worked really hard! Legion meshed beautifully into the Wizard of Oz! Oliver as narrator made it cracky and 4th-wall-breaking! The union of Flying Monkeys and Time Eaters made for the most tripped-out wild fight scene I have ever attempted to write! Please, please, send this to everyone you know who has watched all three seasons of Legion for best effect but you know what my beta reader hasn’t watched ANY Legion and still enjoyed it so MAYBE YOU WILL TOO! (I even wrote an Answer Key to explain all the references, if it helps!)

2. “In Which Jason and Chidi Rob a Bank” (The Good Place (TV), G, 2,785 words) – Now, if you want something a little more mainstream... I say jokingly, as yes THIS was my Yuletide assignment. YEAH I KNOW, rare? But I’m not going to argue, as I’ve always wanted to write the novelization of this show, and when I got into the writing I was honestly surprised I HADN’T ACTUALLY written any of these characters (except Vicky oddly enough) before, because it felt so natural! The recipient wanted something about Jason and Chidi, so I asked the kids what Jason and Chidi should DO together, and Maddie said “They rob a bank” and that WORKS. I LOVE this absurd show! Anyway, to my absolute delight, not only the recipient but also LOADS OF OTHER PEOPLE loved it, leaving comments to the effect of “This is like watching an episode of the show!” which has to be one of the highest compliments a fanfic writer can receive. And in just the short time since Christmas, it has already become my second-highest kudoed fic ever! But don’t let that keep you from reading it, too! It is, if I do say so myself (because lots of other people said so!) quite funny.

3. “A Captain With Seven Children...What's So Fearsome About That?” (The Sound of Music - Rodgers/Hammerstein/Lindsay & Crouse, The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 14,754 total so far but that’s 3,354 words posted this year)   – Before “The Magic Man of Oz,” this was my I-worked-really-hard-please-appreciate-this Masterpiece of the year– not the first three chapters, which you might have read last year (and WERE pretty good, dangit, so if you haven’t read them you can do that now, this is one you actually DON’T need prior canon knowledge to appreciate), but the FOURTH chapter, finished and posted THIS year: “High on a Roof Stood a Lonely Seven,” which is the Big Turning Point in the Story, in which Maria’s meddling pays off and the Big Secret about Viktor-then-Vanya blasts its way out into the open! I mentioned the unusual fight scene in “Magic Man,” but THIS was the work for which I first had to teach myself how to write fight scenes in the first place! Still a highly unusual fight scene (if not as unusual as the one in “Magic Man”)-- I don’t think I COULD write a NOT-unusual fight scene. Why bother if you’re not going to go all out?

4. “How to Catch Up with your Therapist after a Couple of...Busy Months” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 9,322 words) And before I participated in Yuletide, I joined a totally different fanfic event, The Umbrella Academy Masked Author event (where people had to guess the originally anonymous authors)! And because I didn’t have time to get to a completely NEW fic to submit, I ended up submitting something I had already vaguely alluded to writing on the TUA fan Discord server, convinced my General Invisibility would keep anyone else from remembering (though one person, who wasn’t actually participating, DID therefore guess by title alone!). There’s a line in the next fic on this list implying that Viktor convinced Five to start seeing his old therapist, and when I wrote it I went “Wait, that implies VIKTOR is HIMSELF seeing his old therapist again. Bet THAT was an interesting catch-up session.” So I wrote it out, a basic dialogue between the two, Viktor describing the whole first three seasons of the show from his own viewpoint, and the therapist getting more and more shell-shocked. By the end I figure it may be just as difficult to convince the therapist to take Five on as a patient as it would be to convince Five to see her, and that’s saying something.

5. “Morning-After Meltdowns” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 3,930 words) – So right, I’ve grown no less obsessed with this non-canonical pairing between adoptive siblings, and the joy of working with two highly-emotionally-repressed characters is figuring out how to get them to actually admit anything to each other. Last year I wrote a flashback-induced mind-meld; this year I took the more realistic path of drunk sex (which also theoretically takes place the night of the flashback-induced mind-meld). As usual, I do not write onscreen smut, so sorry– it’s basically trying to piece together in the morning what happened to get them into this place the night before. It’s much better than the title. And I hated the title I first posted it with even more.

6. “Anonymous: Renegade Teenage Hormones” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T though the second chapter should probably be M, 5,688 words) – Okay, this one is STILL on AO3 anonymously because I don’t necessarily want someone seeing it on my dashboard without warning. This is me giving you warning!* It’s still not smut, but when you obsessively ship messed-up-adoptive-siblings sometimes you do have to read smut in order to get your fill, and this story was inspired by– in fact is a direct sequel to– someone else’s story that was apparently written to fill a Kink Meme. But that story was (I know this may be shocking to some people) technically a scene from a theoretical YA novel! It was the sort of awkward thing that would HAPPEN to a couple of horny teenagers (when the story took place) in a YA story, and I couldn’t help pondering the awkward teenaged angst that would surely transpire the next day. And so I wrote it! I just didn’t want a link to a Kink Meme right on my AO3 front page so you'll have to get it this way!  
 
7. “Not Just Stupid Kids” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 5,388 words total but just 1,025 posted this year) -- And last year’s FIRST venture into Fiktor-writing bumped back up my recently-posted list this year, again because I was reading someone else’s fic and got, not what happened next, but what happened before in my head, so right in the comments I started writing this little scene of Klaus taking advantage of that nice long Pennsylvania Roadtrip to needle Five over/fish for clues about his feelings toward Viktor’s announcement, but then I decided it fit nicely into THIS fic, too, as a BONUS SCENE taking place soon after the first chapter! I was surprised that this was the most of adult Klaus I’d ever written, too. Some characters just have voices that flow.

8. “The Pipeweed Mafia Epic” (The Lord of the Rings RPF, The Hobbit RPF, Inklings RPF, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, T, 8,986 words) – YES, THIS IS IT, the Infamous Pipeweed Mafia Epic! I got bored, and since I figured out how Real Person Fic worked on AO3 (and considered there were FAR worse things done with the real people in AO3’s RPF collection than just drug dealing and putting Andy Serkis in a coma), I figured I would finally put it up for the world. With a few additional lines added, too! Not remotely COMPLETE or anything. It probably never will be. But this was the silliness I started writing to prompts on the day Diana Wynne Jones died, convincing me that I COULD write again, if I just allowed myself to stop taking everything so seriously! It’s incomplete nonsense, but it’s MY incomplete nonsense! And there’s an Aslan in a Bucket!

*By the way, you do realize this post is full of a WIDE VARIETY of appropriate-for-audience ratings, right? Please mind the ratings! Just because I reviewed Mr. Kitty is LOST! does not mean EVERYTHING on these lists is appropriate for fans of Mr. Kitty is LOST!

Works in Progress
As I did last year, I filled out an “AO3 Writer Wrapped” on Tumblr that went into statistics and favorites and things about the years’ works in a little more detail. I answered a question about Works in Progress there that was pretty much the SAME works in progress I had LAST year, but I’d like to add at least one more here:

I spotted a Yuletide request that made all the neurons in my brain light up at the same time, and said, “Oh I HAVE to write that one: if I don’t get assigned to, I’m writing it up as a Bonus Treat!” I didn’t finish it in time to post with the rest of the Yuletide gifts (I barely finished my ASSIGNED fic in time), and then I had those Computer Issues, but this is really cool and I’m pretty much called to write it– it’s based on a picture book, relatively well-known in kidlit circles but not so much in the Outside World, and is exactly the sort of twisted brain challenge I am so excited by after writing “The Magic Man of Oz.” I will say no more than that since it’s still technically a gift, but I am really excited about it, and I’m sure you’ll see it soon! Well, relatively soon. For me.


So, as usual, that’s the round up! I know it’s long, but please comment and chat with me about anything here that caught your attention!

• I got actually, officially, medically diagnosed with ADHD-Inattentive Type, which in retrospect is so obvious I keep being amazed no one thought of it years ago. Indeed, it's been sort of comforting to realize how many weird and/or stupid things I do are actually extremely common among women with ADD. I have noticed I've been a lot less depressed this year, too, and I suspect a lot of it is that the voices in my head who used to put me down all the time, "You never learn from your mistakes, you're a wash-up, how can you be so smart and fail so bad at life?"-- well, now there's a voice going, "oh, that's totally ADHD, there. You know what you're doing."
• I took the plunge and did Weight Watchers, and annoyingly enough I totally felt better. Turns out this may only partially have to do with the loss of excess weight, but as an added bonus, cutting simple carbs back is, it turns out, really important for making an ADHD brain work better, too. So I'm not on Weight Watchers anymore, but I've been trying to keep in mind many of the things I learned through the experience. Also I lost about 35 pounds.
• ...which has its drawbacks. Apparently being overweight and then suddenly losing a lot of weight can make ones gallbladder FREAK OUT. So round about June I got violently ill and it turned out to be a wonky gallbladder. So in July I had surgery-- my first major surgery ever-- to get the nasty thing removed. The doctors messed up my expectations by calling the outpatient procedure a "band-aid surgery," because it then took a lot longer for me to recover than I expected it to. Like, a month. At least. But by now, I am indeed feeling much better all around. Thank you for leaving, gallbladder.

Hi, I'm all drugged up and still really sore but all went well and I'm home in bed with a much healthier digestive system. pic.twitter.com/1wF80beg6q

— Amy W (@rockinlibrarian) July 14, 2017




• In September the kids and I went to see Dav Pilkey at the Carnegie Library, which is officially the first time I've ever met one of my "celebrity" crushes in person, and got to shake his hand. He was so sweet and awesome, and is also a huge spokesperson for ADHD so the year has a theme, here.
• In the fall we made a new furry friend. A Neighborhood Cat, who we took to calling Marshmallow, adopted us. We are at this point 99.9% sure that Marshmallow has an actual home with someone else in the neighborhood, but when she goes out roaming, it's us she visits right away. After I wrote this follow-up piece, mourning that we hadn't seen her for a month, she showed up again! Looking even fatter and healthier than usual, so, yeah, definitely not a stray.

Guess who came back for a visit!! pic.twitter.com/1x1OY7iTCG

— Amy W (@rockinlibrarian) December 1, 2017

1. Messy Art: I made this the last Family Night of Spring, in late May when it was not likely to be raining, because we HAD to do it outside. We had Alka-Seltzer paint bombs, watercolor-filled squirt gun target practice, turkey baster Jackson-Pollock-esque painting, and the cross between the three that happens when small children get paint everywhere and just try to take advantage of it. To make the evening even more nuts, about three times my usual crowd turned up for it. It was chaos, and it was fun. I read Edward Gets Messy by Rita "Screwy Decimal" Meade, and probably something else but I can't remember what.
2. Visual Music: More controlled, indoor fun with paint. I made a playlist of a variety of instrumental pieces-- one of the moms there knew all of them except my cousin Ian's acid-rock guitar ramble, which I would have been super impressed if she did-- there was John Williams, Scott Joplin, the Beatles and Pink Floyd, Mozart and some Romantic-era composer I can't remember now because it was kind of boring but made for variety. Anyway, I put it on and we painted to it and it was a delight. I read The Noisy Paintbox, which I loved, see review below, and also probably something else I can't remember. Oh, Say Zoop! by Herve Tullet. That was fun.
3. Underpants: I was kind of excited about our Dav Pilkey visit (see above), so I threw this topic in, even though I didn't actually read any Captain Underpants. We read Creepy Pair of Underwear! by Aaron Reynolds-- which to be honest, actually is pretty creepy-- and The Underwear Book by Todd Parr, which is always a hit at Outreach. Our project was simple-- they just designed a pair of underwear on a plain line drawing of a pair-- but they were so pleased with it, they unanimously demanded I display their designs on the front desk. So I did, to the additional delight of everyone who came up to the desk for the next couple of weeks. That little program brought a lot of smiles!
4. Solar Power: It was the Build a Better World Collaborative Summer Reading Theme and a couple weeks before the solar eclipse, so here we go. I read Sun Bread by Elisa Kleven and The Day My Dogs Became Guys by Merrill Markoe (which is about the WEIRD POWERS of a solar eclipse). I had built some pizza box solar ovens, but it was too cloudy for them to work, but luckily that's why I'd decided to make s'mores in them-- so the results were still edible. There WAS just the right amount of sun for photo-sensitive paper art with found objects, though, and the gasps when we rinsed the paper in cold water were totally worth the failed solar ovens.
5. See The World: I set up stations around the room for each continent (actually I split Asia into West and East and combined Australia/Oceania and Antarctica into one), with books and flags for each. I WAS going to set up a laptop at each station with bookmarks on various interesting sites on Google Streetview, but it turned out most of the library's laptop collection had vanished. So I had to improvise: West and East Asia had to share a computer after all, and I used my Nook and the library's iPad, but the latter two were annoying because it turns out the mobile versions of Google Maps don't HAVE Streetview, so I kept having to "request desktop site." BUT I saw so many awesome places on Streetview while prepping for this program that I wrote this article. I can't remotely remember what I read for it, though.

1. 50 Cities of the U.S.A, by Gabrielle Balkan: This is more of a thin coffee table book than a proper picture book, to be honest, but it's so awesome I have to put it here. Two different GeekMoms had reviewed it favorably, and I saw it had Pittsburgh and I'm always looking for more local history for the library's children's collection, so I put it on the library's Amazon wishlist. Yes, I gave the library its own Amazon wishlist. A few weeks ago I looked at the list and noticed the book had gone on deep discount, like 5 dollars (while MSRP is 30?), and I have Prime, so I was like, hey, Merry Christmas, library, I'm getting this for you. When it came I turned right to the Pittsburgh page so I could give it a knowledgeable evaluation, and was totally impressed at the variety of cool trivia they included. I especially loved how, for each city, they also spotlighted several contemporary children's authors (not even superstar names!) from the area. For Pittsburgh they picked Megan McDonald ("got her start at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh" AHEM she spent most of her library career at Adams Memorial in Latrobe, thanks!) and Sharon G. Flake!
2. The Wolf, the Duck, and the Mouse, by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen. What, I can't possibly put one of these lists together without it including at LEAST one Barnett and/or Klassen, and this year gave me two. I will rank this one first because I can really see reading it at a story time, once I find a good excuse to.
3. Triangle: As much as I adore Mac Barnett, I have to admit Klassen's brilliance impresses me the most. The things he can do with simple eye position! Mac's work is a little more the highlight of the first book, but Jon's work is definitely the highlight of this one. I'm apparently on first name bases with them now.
4. Hilda and the Runaway Baby, by Daisy Hirst: In the "notes" column of my possible-books-to-get list spreadsheet I just wrote "the pictures are hilarious." Indeed, when this eventually came through Junior Library Guild, I just sat there beaming at each page. It's not so much laugh-out-loud funny as just delightful-funny.
5. Accident! by Andrea Tsurumi: I already know I do not yet appreciate this book enough. These pictures require extended study, which I have not partaken of yet. But already it's fun and everyone wants to go to the library in it, so good.

1. A Face Like Glass, Frances Hardinge: Technically this book came out something like five years ago in the UK, but only made it across the pond this year, and it's just so...creative? I'm not sure of a better word to describe reading Frances Hardinge. She's a word-weaver, threading her books with magic like the craftspeople in this book thread magic into their wares. This is the only book in this list I did not get out to read to my kids-- it's just good enough to motivate me to read it anyway. When I was writing it up for GeekMom, one of the GeekDads spotted the cover in the image library and started freaking out with excitement that someone else was reading it!
2. Princess Cora and the Crocodile, by Laura Amy Schlitz: (That's a Betsy Bird review there. It was just one of the first results of the search, and I was probably highly influenced by this review when I put it on the library's to-buy list, so hey, it'll be my link)...But it had actually been in the library several months before I was like, "Oh wait, that's a perfect Maddie book [humorous fantasy, strong-willed princess, third-grade reading level], I need to bring it home." Then we fought over who actually got to read it first.
3. Real Friends, by Shannon Hale: I love Shannon Hale so stupid much. Anyway, this book I actually bought for us at home, because it pretty much WAS written for Maddie right where she was-- a graphic "novel" (actually memoir) about the ups-and-downs of elementary school friendship? So Maddie. And so everyone else who remembers how traumatic the elementary school social scene actually was.
4. The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart, by Stephanie Burgis: I confess I bought this for the library just because it sounded perfect for our family read-alouds, though it's more in the style of the books we were reading earlier in the year than when we finally got around to it after Series of Unfortunate Events (see below). Still, middle grade fantasy about CHOCOLATE. It was hard not to crave chocolate while reading this.
5. Funny Girl: Funniest. Stories. Ever., edited by Betsy Bird, speaking of me being highly influenced by her literary opinions. She called together a diverse group of truly funny women (the aforementioned Shannon Hale? My Imaginary-big-sister Libba Bray? The mentioned-right-after-this Ursula Vernon?) to contribute to this book. Being an anthology of this nature, the results are mixed, but there are definitely some pretty hilarious stories in here, and the bests were actually from women I knew very little of. As I mentioned in this Between the Bookends review, which also includes more about Real Friends, the funniest story is "Dear Grandpa: Give Me Money,” by Allison DeCamp, but the all around best story is Carmen Agra Deedy’s “One Hot Mess” —which stuck with me so much I watched a TED talk by her the other day. Turns out she's a professional storyteller. Obviously.

1. Du Iz Tak? by Carson Ellis: I was a guest reader for Maddie's second grade classroom and wanted to do a "lesson" on how reading pictures was just as important (if not more so) to reading a picture book as reading the words is, so I brought in one of my favorites from last year, They All Saw a Cat, and then I thought of this one we had just gotten, and this one turned out to be the favorite. I asked the class if any of them knew how to speak bug, and insisted that by the end of the book they'd be able to, and they dove in to decoding bug language with relish. It ended up becoming Maddie's teacher's new favorite book, too!
2. The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art, by Barb Rosenstock: I got the idea for the Visual Music Family Night (see above) without having any particular read-alouds in mind, but this picture book biography of an artist with synesthesia seemed perfect, subject-wise. So I read it and, word-wise, fell in love. It's a perfect length for a read-aloud (not always easy to do with biographies), and I kept thinking, "I would have understood abstract art SO MUCH BETTER if I had had this book as a child." Indeed, synesthesia makes abstract art make more sense, and this picture book makes synesthesia make sense, and it's all a lovely tribute to art in any form.
3. We Are Growing, by Laurie Keller: I wanted to do a mock Geisel in addition to a mock Caldecott this year, so I pulled out all the 2016 easy readers, and this one made me laugh so much I might have biased our results with my enthusiasm when the group showed up and I was all, "Listen to this one!" So when the votes were totaled, this was our clear winner, but that was all right, because when the actual Geisel committee's votes were totaled this was their clear winner as well, so I guess our taste is pretty good.
4. Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, by Javaka Steptoe: Speaking of Youth Media Award Medalists and of picture book biographies of artists I'd never heard of, it took me a long time to overcome my doubts and give this one a try. I didn't bother ordering it all last year even though it kept getting rave reviews, because bio of a little-known artist? Who's going to check that out? Then it won the Caldecott so I figured I'd better get it, but I still never bothered to open it up until I did a "Family Night At the Museum" Family Night this fall, and-- well, it didn't win the Caldecott for nothing. My jaw literally dropped several times at the gorgeousness of these illustrations. And it's also a picture book biography that's a decent length and flow for a read-aloud, so yay!
5. Katie Meets the Impressionists, by James Mayhew: This is a book that was made for child-me. Impressionism has always been my favorite visual art style, and this is a story about a girl who walks into great Impressionistic paintings and explores them, so like gah, that is Amy's dream. It's another one I only bothered to pick up while prepping "Family Night at the Museum," and was so glad I had.

1. Yes, I have finally introduced the kids to Harry Potter this year and now I have fellow fans. (Oh, and the kids and I are all Hufflepuffs, or more accurately Sam and I are Huffleclaw and Maddie is Huffledor, so the Sorting Hat might have debated a bit. Jason's just straight up Gryffindor, no question). Just the first three books, as they still weren't ready for the end of Goblet of Fire (as it was Chamber of Secrets thoroughly freaked Maddie out). Since then we've read some pretty intense books so they might be ready now, but then they'll want to rush straight through to the end once we pick it up again, and I don't know, then it will be over... but I just have so much I want to share with them in Order of the Phoenix!
2. A Series of Unfortunate Events was our major read of the year, being that it's thirteen books long. That took us from the end of June to sometime in November, actually. That was an example of some pretty intense content, even though it's presented so tongue-in-cheek. But rereading gave me new appreciation of the cleverness and the ways clues were woven in. Look, I kept forgetting the kids wouldn't learn who Beatrice actually was until the last word of the last book, because my whole understanding of the series was shaped by my knowing that fact now, and I had to stop myself from letting it slip a few times.
3. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass: Maddie's a fan of Ever After High, and her favorite character is, naturally, Madeleine Hatter. And Sam's definitely clever enough to get most of the wordplay. So I was like, GOOD, you guys are finally ready for one of my favorite books ever. And indeed? That is just a really friggin' good book(s), and it's even more fun to read out loud (I had read it out loud to my brother decades ago so that wasn't entirely a new experience); and it's just SO NICE to be able to make references to it and have them know what I'm talking about.
4. Speaking of which, that's why I decided to read them Holes. Sam was complaining something was too hard because he wasn't strong enough, and I shot back, "Then you just need to practice, like carrying a pig up the mountain," and then I was like, whoa, you don't get that reference, but you totally will now let's read this! I realized it had both the complicated mystery-building and over-the-top tongue-in-cheek unfortunateness of Series of Unfortunate Events so they'd probably like it, and indeed, they loved it. And I again got to read what is probably a perfect book, so hey. It also contains one of the Other Fictional Sams I Love, though granted one that dies quickly and violently. Oh, we also got to discuss the history of race relations, so, yay?
5. The Polar Express: It's a Christmas classic, yes? But I'd never got into it much. But I'd somehow run short on Christmas outreach books the other week, and I was bringing this one class a bag of books about trains, and we have three copies of this in the main library proper, so I was like, what the heck, I'll throw that in. But I totally had my doubts, because it's long, and these were four-year-olds, but what the heck. I started to read, and THEY. WERE. MESMERIZED. No other way to describe it. If somebody had rung any jingle bells in that room at that moment, everyone's hair would have stood on end. So, okay, I get the Christmas classic thing, now.

1. Legion: Holy cow. Combine an X-Men storyline with Noah Hawley's storytelling chops and how can you make a show any more up my alley? You make it friggin' psychedelic. It's number one on the list even though there were times I wasn't even sure I really liked it-- I just loved it-- which is something psychedelia does, makes occasionally unpleasant experiences awesome. Ahem. And the characters are all so great. It's so. weird. and I know that makes it therefore not for everybody, but I WANT everybody to see it anyway just so I can talk about it.
2. Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party: This was a small webseries-- basically a feature-length film broken into twelve episodes that I referred to above-- that was strongly influenced by the Clue Movie in all the best ways. It's a mystery-farce starring a variety of famous 19th-century...ish authors (the anachronisms are part of the fun), it's utterly ridiculous, and for some reason I felt the need to watch it over and over and over. I even rented it through their site (I mean, it's free on YouTube) so I could watch it with commentary (and yes, support their good work monetarily in retrospect because they're awesome). And I'm kind of addicted to the music. I want everyone to watch this, too, just so we can quote it to each other. The team behind it just released a new mini-movie--a mocku-noir this time-- but I haven't watched it yet for fear it will mess up my carefully curated end of the year list here.
3. Agents of SHIELD: Still my favorite currently-running TV show-- we're only five episodes in to Season 5 and I only LOVED the most recent one (which may say something about the necessity of Fitz?), but the back half of Season 4, in the first part of the year, was some of the finest TV I've ever seen, thanks. It continued to upend expectations and show off fantastically scene-stealing villains (Mallory Jenson where's your Emmy dangit) while growing the characters we already loved. Why is it not universally hailed as the best not-cancelled comic book show on TV? Oh yeah, because Legion exists. But besides that.
4. Moana: Great, another future classic Disney movie. I just genuinely enjoyed it, though, even on rewatches (THAT STUPID CHICKEN cracks me up so hard). And that dang crab makes me go to my kids, "Look, this show is rated TV-MA and there's no way I'm letting you watch the rest of it but YOU SHOULD WATCH the first scene of Legion episode 4 because that crab is playing the BEST CHARACTER" and perhaps lucky for them Legion isn't on demand anymore, darnit, you see what I mean about me and Legion, anyway. And for some reason I was super-attuned to all the mythological tropes while watching and that made it even more fun because I'm a dork that way, or more likely because I was watching "Crash Course Mythology" and they even did a whole episode on Maui soon after I saw the movie, you're welcome. OH WAIT I FORGOT: ---4a. Crash Course World Mythology: I've seen individual Crash Course videos before, but I'm such a Comparative Mythology junkie that I've been outright following this one. If I was going to be an academic I'd do Comparative Mythology. Where's the current writing on that, anyway? I know Joseph Campbell isn't considered completely "correct" by current academics but is anyone supplanting him? Besides Adam Gidwitz (see above), I mean an Academic. I WANT TO READ COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY THEORIES LIKE A DORK.
5. The Defenders: We got Netflix back this fall, and rather than try to watch all the Marvel shows Netflix had put out in that time, particularly since the reviews were mixed, I figured I'd catch up with them all at once just by watching this one. And indeed, I enjoyed it so much that now I'm going to have to go back and watch some of the individual shows anyway. At least Jessica Jones because I love her. And probably Daredevil if only because Matt Murdock is super-cute. Which is totally creepy for me to say because J's super-paranoid Survivalist buddy goes by the name "Matt Murdock" online, and I'm absolutely not by any means talking about him.
6. Doctor Strange: The extent of my review to Jason after we watched this: "I liked it, it's trippy" (See review of Legion, above).
7. Lego Batman: Pretty sure this was the first (and so far only) movie we all four together went to see at the theater as a family. And we all four enjoyed it lots, too.
8. A Series of Unfortunate Events, Netflix Series Version: See book rereads section, above. We saw the first one or two episodes at my parents' house, then after we got Netflix, catching up was the first thing we did. I can't wait to see how season 2 goes and where the background stories go from here. (Is Jacqueline Snicket a cross between Jacques and Kit or is Kit yet to appear as well? How long will the show draw out the full nature of Beatrice's identity?) It might have gone higher on this list but the theme song really bugs me. Sorry, Neil Patrick Harris.
9. Sherlock: This might also be higher on the list if I didn't rather hate the first episode of the season. Well, "hate" is a strong word, but I just didn't ENJOY it like I have pretty much every other episode, even the not-so-good ones. It depressed me. But that's counteracted by the second episode being absolutely fabulous, by which I mean Martin was so fabulous I spent the next week like, "Yep, that's MY Imaginary Husband, he's awesome." And the third episode was equivalent of watching any other episode of the show, so the grand average works out okay.
10. -(tie) Sing/Trolls: Both of these are cases of me being pleasantly surprised, after having to listen to my daughter play the (unimpressive to annoying) trailers on YouTube over and over for months, only to discover the movies themselves were both well-written and enjoyable, with actually-pretty-good soundtracks. So okay, Maddie, thanks for making me watch with you.

• Like I said, The Case of the Gilded Lily: you GUYS, I couldn't just have that link open above and seriously expect myself to wait until after the new year just so I wouldn't mess up this LIST, when I had a spare 40 minutes and it was CALLING to me. This is the mocku-noir the Poe Party team made, and it is further full of hilarity. These folks are geniuses, somebody make them famous beyond the internet already.
• Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2: we watched on Netflix Friday night while the kids were at their grandparents. I, naturally, most appreciated the on-point use of classic rock music-- even that UGHHHH "Brandy" I hate that song so friggin' much, but I have to admit it was USED excellently (and actually sort of highlights some of what makes the song so disgusting). Did I mention the on-point use of music was one of the things I loved so much about Legion, too? Okay, enough.
• Then, as promised, we finally squeezed in a matinee of The Last Jedi Saturday afternoon, and the theme of on-point music cues continues, because I'm pretty sure John Williams was the main reason I cried for the whole last like twenty minutes or something. When the moment, I'll avoid spoilers but I'll just say, my favorite original trilogy theme to play on the piano started up, I couldn't hold back the eye water, and more original trilogy themes from that point on kept me suitably moved. Not to mention a moment in the credits, likewise. WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT CARRIE, PEOPLE. It's been a year and I still cry when I think about her. Ahem anyway, the movie was absurdly long and could probably have done with some trimming up, but that's the only negative I have to say about it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
EDIT FOR POSTERITY: This happened:

1. Homemade Blankie Tails: I've wanted to do something with all my scrap fleece for ages, and I saw those Mermaid Tail Blankets and was like, yeah, Maddie has a mermaid thing, and both kids love to cocoon themselves in blankets to the point they wear their sleeping bags out. Sam's not so much of a mermaid dude, and I'd seen a lot of "boys' versions" that made it look like a shark was eating you instead, but that didn't seem very Sam, either. Then I remembered the inflatable blue orca they liked to take to the pool, and thought Sam would love to be TOTALLY INSIDE an orca, with the head as like a hood? Both of these took longer to make than I thought they would, but the kids assure me it was totally worth it. Here is them sleeping snuggly:  
2. This Freakin' Rainbow Alpaca Maddie had an excessive Amazon wishlist, and on it was this "rainbow alpaca" that was one of those one-cent-plus-shipping-from-someplace-in-China things, and I was like what the heck, we'll throw that in, and I was expecting it to be like Beanie Boo size but it's like a foot and a half tall, and it came after the other things, so I wasn't sure how to wrap it, so I just set it under the tree looking cute. Then Christmas morning I hear Maddie squealing "OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD" and I'm like, what on earth is causing THAT reaction. And it was this alpaca! She apparently did not even know how badly she wanted it until she saw it live, and now it's her best friend and lover and goes with her wherever she goes. WHO KNEW. 
3. The MP3 Player: Maddie has been stealing my phone to look up videos of songs she likes, and I'm thinking, when I was her age I had a boom box and cassette tapes of my favorite songs. What would be the equivalent nowadays? Now, earlier in the year I had bought myself a cheap mp3 player, but I kept forgetting it existed, so I thought, maybe that would be better for Maddie for her own music collection. I started that collection by going through my own collection for songs I knew she loved or thought she would like at least, then I added some more I never would have added for myself, mostly through Freegal, things like the soundtracks to Trolls and the My Little Pony Movie. I also borrowed some old Disney soundtracks from my parents to add, and purchased the soundtracks to Frozen and Moana. Speaking of music by Lin-Manuel Miranda, I even left "The Room Where It Happens" on there just to be obnoxious (she thinks Hamilton is annoying), and she STILL thinks Santa Claus was the one who curated that mix, not her former deejay mom. ;) According to Maddie, her favorite gifts from Santa are this and the alpaca, and her favorite gifts from ME are the mermaid tail and the doughnut sweatshirt I made her.
4. A New Mattress: Sam sleeps in Jason's childhood bed-- his whole childhood bed, including 40-year-old mattress. So Sam has actually been asking, quite awhile, for a new mattress to help him sleep better, and hey, I'm all for that, since he's always a nicer kid when he gets enough sleep. I thought it would be kind of fun to see a gift as big as a mattress under the tree Christmas morning, but as it is, mattresses actually get delivered super-vacuum-packed. Though that's still a pretty big package:  As not-a-toy as that present is, he was very happy with it: 
5. Matching Reindeer Sweatshirts: I wasn't sure what to get my Dad or brother, then I wondered if there were any cute Christmas fleeces at JoAnn's that I could turn into festive sweatshirts. I found a pre-cut "blanket" swatch with reindeer and snowflakes, that was "2.5 yds" long but I don't even know how wide. When I cut it out I realized I had a lot of extra fabric, so I also made a festive sweatshirt for Jason and Sam, and STILL had enough scraps left for a slightly different style of sweatshirt for Maddie. You know what we forgot to do, though? Get a picture on Christmas Eve with EVERYONE wearing their reindeer sweatshirts. Here's my dad though: 

BONUS: Cthulhu 

1.  A Storage Cabinet: I have a large pile of fabric in the corner of my bedroom. I'd love an easy way to access/organize it and yet keep it out of the way, so I put a random storage thing that would do the job on my Amazon list. But my mother-in-law found a proper cherry-wood-looking-at-least cabinet with shelves inside. It is currently still unassembled on the floor of their living room, because it won't fit in our car to transport it, so we need to wait until J's dad can use his truck to bring it. But it WILL definitely come in useful.
2. Jo-Ann Gift Cards, obvs: So I can buy more fabric to no longer leave in a pile in the corner.
3. ...in a cute little BB-8 tin: My sister gave me her JoAnn card in this very cute little tin (I think that's the one, though the size listed seems small). There was also candy in the tin, so bonus.
4.  Pretty wrap cardigan: Quick selfie: It's from my parents and it exactly matched the skirt I was wearing Christmas Eve, except the shirt I was wearing was too bulky for me to put this on top of it.
5.  Books: Got the aforementioned Betsy Bird's scandalous history of children's lit; the two illustrated Harry Potter editions I didn't yet have, a Muppet coloring book and... I think that's it, in the way of books. 

1. Thomas: We're trying to convince Sam to part with his huge Thomas Trackmaster collection, if only because he never plays with it anymore and it takes up a lot of space. The BEST way of course is if he gives it to his little cousin, who has just started getting into trains-- that way it's still in the family, and if someday the cousin no longer wants it, he can give it back to Sam. It was hard, but he started with one box that he filled with some tracks, a tunnel, and one Thomas engine with cars. The little cousin LOVED it, and Sam felt a little better about giving it. 
2. Switch: Sam, meanwhile, wanted one thing for Christmas: a Nintendo Switch. We were NOT going to freaking get him a Nintendo Switch. But his Grammy said, That's all right, I'LL get it for him, so, well then. He was definitely... pleased puts it mildly.
3. VR headset: This was sort of for me in that it was for the whole family. My parents must have found a deal somewhere. We had some trouble finding an app that would work with my phone, but the kids are getting the knack of it a lot faster than I am.
4. Karaoke machine: This might also be a terrible gift, depending how you look at it. But it's a really cool little karaoke machine, with colored lights and everything. It was from my parents to my kids.
5. Doughnut mold: My sister had these on her wishlist, silicone doughnut baking molds. I nearly got them for her myself, but I'd found too much else for her. So my brother got them for her, instead. Maddie is totally jealous.

1. "Mission Statement of an Information Scientist": Librarians are rebels, yo.
2. "Truth vs. the Stories We Tell Ourselves": me kind of working up to that later post
3. "A Note About Invisible Racism (for Fellow White People)": painful observations I made of a library patron and her family. BTW, the little girl now goes to the same daycare I read The Polar Express to the other week, see above. She's really tickled that I come to her school but she already knows me from coming to the library.
4. "Political/Fictional Parallels": in which I notice that a piece of writing I've mostly given up on still has a lot of very relevant things to say about real life.
5. "More on Racism and Fascism": Because I've got something to SAY, thanks.

1. "Am I Different? On Claiming Identities": I did a lot of writing on labels and identity this year, but this is the post that kind of sums everything up.
2. "How We Did Our Minecraft Birthday Party": Sam's birthday didn't make my list of notable real life events above, but it probably could have.
3. "What Are Your Movie Adaptation Non-Negotiables?": The Wrinkle In Time trailer had the nerve to come out the day after my gallbladder surgery. I had so much to say but I couldn't sit at my computer to type it! Somehow over the next week I managed to pull this together!
4. "A Beginner's Guide to Grocery Store Gifting": "Hey," somebody suggested on the GeekMom Slack, "how about instead of trying to put together typical gift guides, everyone picks a specialized topic to do a gift guide on instead?" What specialized topic could I offer, books? Heh. But suddenly I thought of this thing I do almost without thinking, and I put my name down for doing it before I could stop myself, and I kept writing it in my head, though while I was typing it on the computer I was like, "This is so obvious, why would anyone care?" On the contrary, it seemed to really resonate with a lot of people. 
5. "How Deep Is Your Geek?" Another one that really seemed to resonate with people.