Magnolia Plantation.

I can't even remember where I came across this website for Magnolia Plantation & Gardens in South Carolina but I totally want to visit. Besides these gorgeous gardens (doesn't one right below look straight out of the Secret Garden movie?), the picture of the "swamp garden", with the trees rising out of the green foam really got my imagination going. It's otherworldly.

image sources top to bottom: 1, 2, 3 & 4, 5

Books of Elsewhere = YES.

I am so pleased to say that I need to go shopping.  It's time to add a new old-fashioned children's novel to my collection; the first in the Books of Elsewhere series by Jacqueline West, The Shadows.  Who hasn't wondered what it would be like to travel inside a painting? 

illustrated by Poly Bernatene

I don't like to write reviews; I'm not about to pretend I can go on and on about people's craft.  I'll just say that the book has a great premise and is very well written - meaning even a critic like me forgot all about the writing and just wanted to know what happened next.  

via Dibupoly

This review excerpt by the Bulletin for the Center for Children's Books will do better justice:

"The atmospheric old house is a new home for eleven-year-old Olive, and though she finds it fascinating, with its colorful contents that include a collection of arresting paintings, she also finds it creepy. Her instincts prove to be accurate: the vivid paintings are actually portals into other realms, accessible to her if she’s wearing the spectacles found in the house. Advised, albeit cryptically, by Horatio, a talking cat secretly still resident in the house, Olive dabbles in exploration of those realms, but she also unwittingly comes ever closer to enabling the evil trapped inside the house to break free. West creates a delightful concoction of quirky humor blended with a rumbling ominous undertone (“This house belongs to someone else,” Horatio warns Olive, “And that someone may not want you here”); venerable fantasy tropes such as talking cats, animated paintings, the sinister and secret old house, and conveniently distracted parents parade out in enduring and endearing form. ..."

If you or your students liked Neil Gaiman's Coraline or in general like slightly scary classic middle grade, go for it.  The characters are delightful and the talking cats - oh, the talking cats are awesome, just exactly how talking cats would sound and act.  Check out the link above to the Amazon page for more plot info and reviews, or my previous post for the trailer, and enjoy! 

via Upstart Crow Literary

New books in at the library.

I just got three new potential old-fashioned-children's novels in from the library.  I'm so excited to read them and hopeful I'll have some new favorites to share!  For a sneak peek, you can watch the awesome trailer for one of them here:

Becoming Jane.

film stills via Eras of Elegance

The other night when I was home alone, I watched Becoming Jane again, likely in the hopes of becoming Jane.  The 2007 film is a wonderful, smart imagining of what Jane Austen's life (and romances) might have been like and how they might have inspired her novels.  Unlike a lot of works that piggyback on the steady popularity of Jane Austen's novels, the movie is well done and of course, tres romantic.   

I may have saved a photo of the lovely, well-cast Anne Hathaway playing Jane Austen writing to inspire myself.  On my computer desktop.  I keep running into people talking about the power of visualization lately and it so happens that in addition to Jane Austen probably being my favorite writer ever (yes, even though not a children's novelist!), strangers sometimes tell me I look like actress Anne Hathaway a bit.  I must not look like her very much or those close to me would probably agree more, but I must admit I agree a bit with my students and coworkers.  That said, I also feel like I look a bit like Jeff Goldblum, who by the way acted like he knew me once at a press party in LA.  Maybe he thought I was a long lost illegitimate daughter.

I'm also working on convincing myself that there's something very glamorous about sitting in a chair and working on my novel (in order to get myself in said chair, because glamour seems a pretty good motivator for me.)  This helped.

Happy Birthday to me.

Thanks to the generosity of family and friends, finally have I started my collection of the Penguin classics hardcovers designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith.  Happy birthday to me!