This is going to be a bit of a stub review so as not to spoil anything for new readers.

Beddor has an interesting take on the Wonderland universe. Redd is Alyss’s Aunt, who attempted to usurp Alyss’s rightful place as Queen of all Wonderland. Alyss is currently Queen, and is of the Spades deck. But, she has a problem. The Clubs and Hearts decks are working against her, and not only that, but the powers of Imagination have been taken away by a unique weapon of war. Alyss’s Imagination is the source of her power, but fortunately she also has a good head on her shoulders and is able to think things through, ah, but isn’t that a part of imagination? To be able to find ways to solve a problem. Imagination is indeed slowly returning, but very slowly. In the mean time the Clubs decks are rounding up all the Imaginationists, painters, poets, etc, who are unable to create works of art due to the loss of the Power of Imagination.

The prologue starts with Alyss trying to find out if there are any clues on how to help Wonderland on Earth. In so doing she becomes stuck on Earth, unable to return to a Wonderland that requires her attention. That in itself is a symptom of something being very very wrong in Wonderland. This causes the reader to wonder, what made Alyss desperate enough to return to earth, and how is she going to get back to Wonderland before everything goes all to hell? The prologue essentially acts as a hook to make the reader interested in reading on. It worked.

There are also many World War 2 parallels, such as the rounding up of Imaginationists into relocation camps (not everyone has an imagination), propaganda speeches, hypocrisy, etc. There is also a clear distinction between the good guys and the bad guys, and I must say Redd is, of course, the ostentatious obnoxious kind. She is working with Arch the Head of the Clubs, who is better at being evil than she is. The Oracles, who are the caterpillars (which I found amusing), are giving prophecies to both sides of the conflict, declaring loyalty to an Everqueen, protecting her and the Heart Crystal. But no one has a clue who this Everqueen is. It is one more thing that Alyss has to deal with to try to figure out how to heal Wonderland.

Beddor has given the Alice in Wonderland story more breadth and depth. It helps to be familiar with the original Through the Looking Glass story, or to have seen or read some rendition of it (Movies, Disney, etc.), but not entirely necessary. In fact, there is enough information in this novel that I was able to understand and glean what had occurred in the previous novels without having read them (which I haven’t). Though, I’m sure I missed out on some subtlety. I like Dodge, the fellow in love with Alyss, and I like Hatter. Hatter is cool. I was amused to see a weapon’s diagram of the AD-52 (Automatic Dealer). The entire world is WEIRD. Of course! This is a Through the Looking Glass story. It’s Wonderland. Of COURSE it’s going to be weird! It’s in the nature of the beast.

The novel is classified as Young Adult Fiction, ages 12 and up. I have no arguments there. So, if you’re looking for something bizarre and interesting to read, this is it.

The idea that students can choose for themselves what it is that they are writing needs to be true. I recall in seventh grade my teacher saying that we were each going to write a story about anything we wanted. We each had to tell her briefly what we were going to write about. I, being a fantasy fan, wanted to write about fairies and elves. She told me I couldn’t write it, because the story had to be based in reality. I was devastated. She had said anything. However, that is not what she meant. She meant anything within a certain context, and that context was our own world. I managed to get away with writing a story about a family taking a hike in the woods, coming upon some strange creature that could possessed people, and then everything seemed fine at the end but the younger brother had red eyes indicating possession. My teacher really liked the ending. Was it completely based in reality? No, but it was close enough that she allowed it, thank goodness. I don’t know what it is that teachers have against fantasy or science fiction stories. It requires the same amount of work, more so even to have the imaginary world make sense since you have to build the world and the people, customs, culture, from the ground up, along with consistency and continuity to avoid storyline pitfalls or loopholes.

It’s also a bit hypocritical. In elementary school many of the books that are read to students are anthropomorphic, which is not based in reality at all. Then there are books like the Magic Tree House series or the Adventures of the Bailey School Kids where things happen that are not possible. What? A tree house that can transport Jack and Annie back and forth through time using books as the medium? Impossible! But children love it! And teaches a bit of history at the same time. What? Strange unexplainable things happening at a school with genies and unicorns and such things? Impossible! But what fun to read! So, the message is, we can read fantastical stories but we can’t write them? Does that make sense? Just because a piece of writing is not based in reality does not mean it doesn’t have any value. I dare say, it even helps people talk about things that are very difficult to talk about since what’s happening in the story is not real, but we can still relate to it. No matter the genre being written the author still draws upon his or her knowledge and experience when writing.

Now, if an assignment is to write a persuasive piece or a journal then fantasy writing would not be appropriate, but with those pieces of writing the parameters are set. After you figure out the purpose of your writing, then the writing process is the same. Why should it matter if a child chooses to write a story that has elves traveling in spaceships instead of about humans traveling in airplanes? I believe that it is important to allow students the creative freedom to write any kind of story. I recently read a story by a first grader that was about a mom killing a baby, finding someone to help her kill everyone, then the two killed everyone but then they had no one else to kill so they killed each other. The illustrations were quite gory. One might think that this was a disturbed child but the child was exposed to horror movies by her older siblings and this was her way of working out what it was she was watching. Students need that freedom of expression and creativity.

I remember in high school art class that while we could pick the subject matter of our pieces, we always had to work within the medium provided, be it embossing, watercolor and ink, or tempura paints. At Yuba College, I took a Creative Arts Class that was geared towards preschool aged children. We had to work with the very tools that we were going to ask our preschoolers to use and do the activities we would ask them to do. Ramona Knight explained what was expected of us (lots of art projects with directions for a portfolio), and after talking for about 45 minutes she said, okay, get to work. I raised my hand and asked, what are we doing? She said, whatever you want. I was flabbergasted. What did she mean whatever I wanted? After establishing that she really meant whatever you want, I was in a state of shock. I did not know what to do. I literally spent the next hour and a half out of that three hour class doing nothing. Miss Ramona (we called everyone Miss so and so, it’s a preschool thing) after a while suggested that I look through the textbook to see if anything caught my eye. Time was ticking by, and I didn’t want to be left with nothing to show for my three hours of class. So, I picked blotto art, and I was really happy with the results. I still have it. Once I managed to get over the hurdle of really having a choice I was able to enjoy the class. It was. . . liberating.

I was so used to having someone tell me what I had to do, especially in an academic setting, that for a while I didn’t know how to do something completely on my own. There is something wrong with that. There are times when it’s good to teach specific techniques and how to use certain tools, but sometimes we need to have the choice to really do what whatever we want.

Tompkins, G. E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st Century. A Balanced Approach. 5th edition. Allyn & Bacon: Pearson Education.

Hazel’s teacher, a few of the parents, and Robert all found the suggestion quite humorous.

My husband was adamantly against facebook and I decided it wasn’t worth the strife in our marriage and let it go.

Patience is a good thing.

I started getting friend requests from people that I hadn’t seen in years that I still cared about, and also from family that I never get a chance to talk to we’re all so busy. There were also fan pages at San Jose State University which get more frequently updated than the main website pages, like the career center page.

So, I approached Robert about facebook again, months later. He was annoyed, but said he’d think about it. I would wait a long time, and then ask if he’d given it any further thought. So, over time, and mentioning that I wouldn’t let facebook distract me from doing what I need to be doing.

Just yesterday I asked him about it again, and he said he was fine with it. We’ve basically made a pact. I get to use facebook as long as it doesn’t prevent me from doing what I need to be doing. If I ever start getting on facebook instead of doing what needs doing then no more facebook for me again.

I think it’s a fair trade.
And, it was worth the wait.

I sat down at the computer to start doing homework and saw what she wrote. I laughed hard. My husband was like, what? So, of course, I had to have him read it because I just couldn’t read it to him. This is exactly what she wrote. Enjoy.

“I love my mom. She is good a lot. She helps me a lot.29+1=30 We like her. We do work together. My mom is nice. She is great. Mom goes to school! But she is at school all day long! BOO said the pumkin 30+1=31 We give hugs and kiss. I coler for her. Its omost Halloween! I love Halloween!! You are a good! 100+0=100 My mom loves me a lot! I help her a lot! I go to school just like my mom!! 1+100=101 I think dad and my mom is very cool. My mom and I have fun times but not a lot . My dad is lazy. He is a bump. Me and mom are not lazy.”

Note: My husband was laid off back in April. I think that’s where she’s getting her idea from. . . that, and sometimes he’s in a lazy mood and will say, I’m feeling lazy.

I remember syllables being a frustrating topic in school. It was my mother who made it interesting for me. We didn’t do clapping in school, we simply had to count the syllables on our fingers. My mother had me do clapping. After a while the clapping got boring so we switched to tapping, snapping, head bobbing, and using simple musical tunes. We wouldn’t sing the words, we would speak the words with rhythm, much like the character Professor Henry Higgins played by Rex Harrison in the movie My Fair Lady. That was fun. I was also shown how to separate words out by their syllables. My mother showed me how the dictionary does that very same thing at the time as telling a user how to pronounce a word. There was some disparity there however because the way we speak and the proper pronunciation of words, and consequently the number of syllables in a word are different. A common one is the word family. When we speak we often say fam-ly. However it should be fam-i-ly. While one can come to grips with the commonality of lazy speech it gets particularly annoying in poetry where syllable count matters. I remember reading a free verse poem where the poet had three line stanzas in a 7-12-7 pattern, if I recall correctly. I do not remember what the poem was about, but what do recall was seeing the word family at the end of a line and immediately thinking the poet had gone over the syllable count. Then it occurred to me that the poet was using fam-ly not fam-i-ly. This inconsistency is something to watch out for, especially when you start having your students write Haiku’s. I recall seeing in my daughter’s Kindergarten class at the end of the year the teacher asked the kids to provide words to figure out the syllables to. One child said family. Guess how many syllables they clapped together? Yep, you guessed it. Two. I silently twitched out of politeness.

My mother is a musician, which is probably where she got the idea to incorporate rhythm songs with syllables, and as such she passed on some of that musicianship to me. Because of this background I found the beats analogy annoying since the length of sounds are not taken into account. For example, take the long a. It takes a bit longer to say the word “shake” then it does to say the word, “can”, but both constitute one beat. In music if the quarter note gets the beat and the note lasts longer than a quarter note then the note does not equal one beat, it’s two beats or a beat and a half. If you say, “Will you shake this for me?” the word shake lasts longer than the other single syllable words. So why is shake only one syllable and not one and a half? It is also longer than the other words. The length of a word, according to Cunningham, is supposed to be a clue in about how many syllables a word has. (2009). Yet, at the same time, you can have a four letter word that has two syllables such as “very.” The word very has four letters, the word shake has five letters, but “shake” is monosyllabic while “very” is disyllabic.

In essence I believe that a teacher needs to consider these issues when teaching the concept of syllables. It needs to stay novel. After a while clapping gets boring, so shake it up with other syllabic activities. Some students need to see how the word is broken up into syllables. They also need to be made aware that there is more to figuring out the number of syllables than the way we speak and how many letters a word has. This is where seeing the word broken up syllabically can be of great help in the classrooms. It can also lead to discussions on why there is such a difference between the spoken word and proper pronunciation. We want the subject to be engaging, not an eye roller. If it weren’t for my mother I probably would have thought of syllables as one more dreaded thing to deal with at school. Instead it was something I understood and could help struggling classmates with.

Cunningham, P. M. (2009). Phonics They Use: Words for Reading and Writing. 5th edition. Allyn & Bacon: Pearson Education.

Many children are obsessed with having magic powers. My daughter Hazel pretends she’s powerful like a character in Naruto or Avatar. Hazel told me last year in the beginning of the school year that she wanted to be powerful. She was mostly playing, but I took the opportunity to sit her down and ask her if she wanted real power in real life, that’s not pretend. She emphatically said yes. So I told her that knowledge is power. I asked her if she knew what knowledge was. She shook her head no. I told her it was knowing things, and that she needed to know as many things as possible, and that she needed to think about things deeply, otherwise people would be able to trick her into doing things she didn’t want to do. Her eyes were big and wide when she asked, “How do you get knowledge?” The answer was, you start by learning how to read and then it’s by learning as much as you can. After that she was more motivated to take the risk of reading on her own. This strategy also worked on her best friend Minhtri, an ELL boy, who is also a Naruto fan. He can now read better than many of the students who have English as a first language. It helps, of course, that he has support from his parents to learn how to read English, but it doesn’t change the marked improvement I noticed in his reading ability after explaining that knowledge is power and how to obtain said knowledge.

I believe that we are still having a literacy power struggle. The basal readers kids are required to read are uninteresting, and in my opinion are worse than Dick and Jane books. There’s no substance to them. They seem to discourage reading. Insisting that children read thirty minutes a day leads many parents who are not avid readers to tell their children they have to read for thirty minutes because their teacher or principal said so. Such tactics demotivate reading. And the less you read, the less good you will be at It, and as a result the less knowledgeable you will be.

The math curriculum is another problem area in this. It is only recently that it is shifting to something more than arbitrary rules and rote memorization. Math is a dreaded subject for most students, and Hazel had already developed a bit of math anxiety. She didn’t want to do any math outside of school. So I asked her, do you know what math is? She said no. I told her it was simply playing with puzzles and patterns using numbers (and shapes too). Her entire view on math changed and she does math for fun now. Sometimes we do it together. This has aided in her ability to think more thoughtfully on things. Mathematics is a precursor to critical thinking skills since you need to understand the fundamentals of statistics, as well as proper procedures in conducting valid studies so that when you read an article about some new study you’ll be able to determine whether or not the study is valid. If you have little to no understanding of what the numbers mean or how those conducting the study came to their conclusion then you will be easily duped by bad science and propaganda.

Public schools generally do not teach children how to become critical thinkers. In most classrooms the teachers have a, do as I say or else, kind of atmosphere and as such do not encourage children to learn how to effectively argue with her if they disagree with her. I teach Hazel how to argue with me. She does not get anything when she fusses, whines or pitches a fit in any way, but she often gets her way when she can present her argument logically and calmly. For example, if she asks me to let her watch an episode of Avatar and I say not right now, she will ask a clarifying question, such as later today? This is good, because it removes false assumptions. I encourage this kind of behavior. If I say, later today, she will look at the time and if it’s nigh onto evening she’ll then say, but Mom, you’re going to be making dinner soon and after dinner we have to clean up and then it’s bed time, I won’t have time to watch it later. I had just told her she could watch it later today, but her argument is reasonable and sound and delivered calmly. As such, she gets to watch Avatar sooner rather than later. However, if she pulls the same argument but has a conniption fit instead she doesn’t get anything. Of course, she doesn’t always do this perfectly. After all, she is only six years old, but it has dramatically increased her reasoning capabilities and has thus aided her at school, church, and in her social life.

When you are a child, building the foundation for knowledge, and thus power, is much simpler. When you are an adult it is harder to learn how to think critically. You end up challenging preconceived notions which can be a scary thing, and it stretches your brain in ways you are not used to. Many adults start the process but do not finish the process of becoming a critical thinker. I believe that those in politics and other positions of power prefer it that way. After all, the less knowledge you have the more easily manipulated you are and the more susceptible you are to various propaganda. It also means that even if you know in your gut that you right about something but you don’t know how to logically back it up and the opposing position does, then you are on the losing side of the battle.

I work hard to foster the quest for knowledge and reasoning capabilities in children I have influence over. I believe that doing so is vital to their future. I haven’t heard any complaints yet!

Botelho, M.J., & Rudman, M.K. (2009). Critical Multicultural Analysis of Children’s Literature. Mirrors, Windows, and Doors. Routledge.

Hazel: Mom, if babies aren’t cut out how do they come out? Does it [making belly popping gestures] pop? [she had a that-doesn't-quite-make-sense look]
Mom: No, the baby doesn’t pop out.
Hazel: So, then how does the baby get out?
Mom: [sighing since there doesn't seem to be any way out of the conversation, then looks straight at Hazel] Through your v-.
Hazel: [big eyes, hands covering her v-] Owwwww.
Mom: But it’s not a big deal because your body prepares for it.
Hazel: [pauses and takes a few bites of egg - yes I made eggs for dinner] So, how does the baby come out through the v-?
Mom: [surprised that the conversation isn't over] Contractions, your muscles in your abdomen start moving like this [makes exaggerated contraction motions with hands].
Hazel: How does that make the baby come out?
Mom: The muscle contractions [makes exaggerated contraction motions with hands] help push the baby out.
Hazel: How does it get through the v-?
Mom: Well, the contractions let the body know that it’s time and it makes the v- bigger. It’s small like this [curls forefinger and thumb together] and then when the contractions happen it slowly gets bigger like this [slowly makes about a ten centimeter circle with hands] so it’s big enough to let the baby through.
Hazel: [nods] Oh. [a few minutes later she asks] You know when I came out?
Mom: [what this conversation isn't over yet!?] Yeah?
Hazel: How did you know I was done?
Mom: The contractions. You don’t get them until it’s time [really my water broke first but I was opting for the KISS method].
Hazel: What if it hurts too much?
Mom: Oh, the hospital has medicine for that.
Hazel: Did you have medicine?
Mom: Yep.
Hazel: You couldn’t handle it?
Mom: Only because I wouldn’t listen to Daddy.
Hazel: So, you could handle it if you listened to your husband, if you didn’t listen to your husband you couldn’t handle it?
Mom: That’s right.
Hazel: How long did it take you to get me out?
Mom: From the time my water broke at 10:20 to 3:35 [counts on my fingers and thinks, oops, I hope she doesn't ask me what "water broke" means] was five hours and fifteen minutes.
Hazel: And the contractions made me come out?
Mom: Yes, but at the last part the doctor said I had to help push you out and I only had three pushes.
Hazel: How did you help?
Mom: It’s kinda like when you go poopy, but not.
Hazel: Like this? [makes pushing motions and noises]
Mom: Sort of.
Hazel: [after a bit of thinking, and here Mom notices that whenever Hazel is looking to her upper left she's mulling things over and getting ready to ask another question] How do you get the baby?
Mom: What do you mean?
Hazel: How do you get the baby so that it doesn’t go bonk, pth bleh [makes baby hitting its head on something gestures and noises], and not get hurt?
Mom: Oh! That’s what the doctor’s there for.
Hazel: The doctor catches the baby and helps the baby come out nice and safe?
Mom: Yes.
[A few minutes later while Mom is clearing the table and putting away extra food, Mom realizes the conversation isn't over.]
Hazel: Mom, [turns around in chair towards kitchen] if the baby is in your tummy what happens to your food?
Mom: Well, we say it’s in our tummy but it’s not really. The baby isn’t in your stomach where your food goes.
Hazel: Oh, it’s not?
Mom: No.
Hazel: Where is it then?
Mom: In your uterus.
Hazel: Uterus? [makes a weird face] But where does your food go? [gestures wildly at the trunk of her body]
Mom: Hazel, is your brain the same as your heart? [points to each organ as she says them]
Hazel: [shakes head]
Mom: Is your heart the same as your stomach?
Hazel: [shakes head]
Mom: Then does it make sense for your stomach and uterus to be the same?
Hazel: [smiles] No.
[This led to a discussion of the digestive system, complete with Mom drawing a simple diagram, with Hazel trying to figure out how the body absorbs what it needs. It also led Mom to draw a simple diagram of the uterus and making it slowly get bigger and bigger. After this Hazel was satisfied. Yay! But then she asked]
Hazel: How come only girls can have a baby?
Mom: Because boys don’t have a uterus, only girls do.
Hazel: Why?
Mom: Because boys are different from girls.
Hazel: How?
Mom: [exasperated going back to the basics, thank you Kindergarten Cop] Look boys have a p- girls have a v-.
Hazel: P-? [gives me the what-are-you-talking-about look]
Mom: [sigh] Okay, you know what what Daddy looks like naked? [that's a funny story right there]
Hazel: Yeah.
Mom: That’s not a fat v- [as Hazel previously asserted many moons ago] that’s a p-.
Hazel: Oh. So, why do boys have a p- and girls have a v-.
Mom: Because God made us that way. It’s just the way it is.
Hazel: Okay.
[Done! Huzzah! YAY!]

I didn’t start asking such in depth questions until I was nine, I was happy knowing that having babies is something that big people can do. . . Dang. No wonder her school teacher said that Hazel was academically ready for third grade. Geez. . .

Edit: Note, all instances of “v-” refers to the female nether regions that start with that letter, and all instances with “p-” refers to the male nether regions that start with that letter. I changed it because I have been having some spam issues and I am hoping that they will cease since they started soon after this post was created.

I’m pretty anal about this sort of thing, especially when it comes to the internet. What you write, and how you write is ALL that people have to go on.  So, if I am using the improper word then it looks like I’m an ignorant git which can cause people to not take me seriously.  I remember playing Shadowbane nearly five years ago.  I was typing into guild chat saying something like, Your crazy. I then saw my typo and typed into guild chat a correction, *You’re.  The response was an immediate, Oh my god,  someone actually knows the difference! and Thank you for displaying intelligence, and Hey, it’s nice to see a newb who understands these things.  Those responses caused me to be even more careful about my writing, especially since I almost didn’t bother with making the correction. The less careful I am the more stupid mistakes I make (hey, maybe there’s a life lesson in there somewhere).

I remember in an online class I had a while back one of the students always used the word “are” in place of “our”. I politely mentioned it to her in a private email because she did have some interesting things to say but the error was distracting and made her posts harder to read. Her response? She didn’t care because her way was easier and everyone understood what she was saying anyway. Gah! I couldn’t believe it. My response was, Okay, if you want to make yourself look like an idiot go right on ahead. If our roles had been reversed I would have been grateful that someone cared enough to talk to me about it. In fact, I remember confusing the words retribution and restitution. I was grateful when someone pointed it out to me when he heard me use the wrong word in a conversation. It was embarrassing, sure, but I’d rather feel a bit embarrassed for a brief moment than perpetuate an error.

I’m not saying that I have to write absolutely perfectly every time, nor does anyone else. Typos happen, no matter how careful you are. I do know that some people have language disabilities so they mix stuff up a lot or suck at spelling, but disabilities are no excuse to not try. What I am saying is that we need to pay attention to how we are expressing ourselves with the written word. It makes a difference in how we are perceived. Communication in writing is fostered best (and dare I say in speaking as well?) when we take the time to think about what we want to write, how we’re going to write it (which may involve a bit of research), and to reread, read aloud, and revise when necessary what it is we are writing.