Words of Wisdom from Norton Juster

I reread The Phantom Tollbooth earlier this month, and if you know anything about my reading habits, you may know I don't reread books often. This was one novel that had been on my mind for a while—actually, I even mentioned wanting to reread it someday in the post I just linked to—and it just so happened that reading a children's book was one of the categories in this summer's book challenge! (Okay, so that category might have been totally planned to encourage me to reread The Phantom Tollbooth. I guess that's one of the perks of being the challenge host!)

Anyway, the point of all this rambling is that this book is absolutely fantabulous. I couldn't stop telling people about how great it was when I was reading it. If you haven't read this book in the past five years, read it again. It's a quick read and definitely worth your time to remind yourself of some very important life lessons! Including ...

Birthday cuteness, round two.

I know, I know. My sister and I are adorable. But we were even more adorable in 1992? (looks like Mom waited a while to label these photos). And again, look how Abby (right, giggling at the thought of being an only child again) delights in making me (left, seemingly attempting to strangle myself) suffer.

My dad e-mailed me this photo just a few minutes ago—I'm assuming because he saw my post earlier today—so you can thank him for the opportunity to be exposed to this cuteness. :) Happy birthday again, Abby! And happy weekend to all my lovely readers.

Travel Tuesday: Week 12

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Travel Tuesday! This week's topic is a throwback: What’s the best school field trip you ever went on as a kid? As always, you are free to write about anything travel-related; don't feel obligated to answer my prompt. And, of course, don't forget to link up below!

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As I've mentioned before in this link-up, my central California hometown was within day-trip distance of some pretty cool places. Hence, I got to go on some pretty neat field trips. The best, however, was when I was in sixth grade: My class went to The Tech Museum in San Jose, and it was awesome. (Granted, I couldn't remember the name of the museum and had to post a plea for help on Facebook. Ah, the beauty of crowd-sourced information. Big shout-out to Jessica for identifying it!)

Playlist: Childhood Alternative

Source: Uploaded by user via Tori on Pinterest

Remember those posts I start and then never finish? This is one of them. I've been meaning to share with you my ultimate 90s rock-alternative playlist since I posted my first playlist back in January, but just hadn't gotten around to doing it. Finally, two things happened that convinced me to finally sit my butt down and finish this post: 1) I found this playlist on Spotify, which Thought Catalog called "The Best 90s Playlist Ever, Ever," and 2) I won an iTunes gift card from a giveaway at The Lovely Mist! Well, I did a little analysis of the 317 songs on the Spotify playlist, and this is what I determined:

Travel Tuesday: Week 11

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Travel Tuesday! This week's topic is traveling with kids. How do you feel about it? If you're a parent, how do you decide what trips your kids get to go on? If you're not yet a parent, at what age do you think you'll start taking your kids on vacation with you? As always, you are free to write about anything travel-related; don't feel obligated to answer my prompt. And, of course, don't forget to link up below!

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I'll be honest, I don't have much of value to write this week. Like I said last week, traveling with small children is just something I've always wondered about. I am aware that I am not a parent, so any observations made during this post are purely hypothetical. Perhaps when I have children of my own, I will feel differently, but I do have some pretty basic views on traveling with children.

The Book Chat: Best fictional friendship.

This week's Book Chat topic is: Share the best fictional friendship. BFF, get it? (Yes, haha, very clever Jessica!) The first great fictional friendship that popped into my head was Harry, Ron and Hermione, but A) I think I've written about the Harry Potter books enough on this blog, and B) Jessica used it as a (great!) example in the prompt, so I wanted to come up with something different.

Psst ... stick this post out until the end to learn about a fabulous giveaway!

Instead of J.K.'s trio, I decided to pick (prepare to hold back your tears!) Jess and Leslie from Bridge to Terabithia. As someone who didn't have more than one really close girlfriend until my teen years, I was "one of the boys" growing up. There's something so innocent and beautiful about a boy and a girl who can be purely platonic friends without anything romantic or sexual getting in the way. There was love alright—Jess and Leslie definitely loved each other—but it's a sweet, childish love that can't be tainted, and I love that. Plus, remember how distraught Jess was over Leslie's death? Absolutely heartbreaking. This is a true friendship for the ages.

Source: Uploaded by user via Sierra on Pinterest

Also, I have never seen the movie, but I was searching for images for this post, and I realized JESS IS PEETA! Well, now I like him even more. And he's taller than AnnaSophia Robb in the movie. That's a plus. :)

P.S. — And for the giveaway I promised you: My lovely blogger friend and sorority sister Kristen is giving away a $20 iTunes card on her blog, The Lovely Mist. It's super easy to enter, too! You get one entry for following her, another for leaving a comment and a third for blogging about it (like this!). Giveaway ends Friday. Good luck!

Cheapskate Tooth Fairy

Source: flickr.com via Betsy on Pinterest

I found this article a few weeks ago and found it quite amusing. Apparently, the average compensation for a tooth from the tooth fairy last year was only $2.10, which is a 17 percent decrease from 2010. The article was accompanied by a picture of a sobbing little girl, and I thought, "Girl, please!" I remember the time my sister got three pennies from the tooth fairy. (Literally. Why even bother, Mom Miss Fairy?) I remember going to school and my friends bragging about the coloring books and marker sets they found under their pillows the morning after losing a particularly big tooth. Really?! Talk about playground jealousy.

So tell me, what were the tooth fairy traditions in your house? How much moolah did your little incisors get? Or, if you're a parent, what do you do for your children's lost teeth?

P.S. — My theme for Travel Tuesday this week will be: Where did you feel the most unsafe when traveling? What did you do about it? (And starting this Tuesday, I'll start posting next week's question with the Travel Tuesday post, so you can plan ahead of time!) Thanks to everyone who participated last week!

30-Day Book Challenge: Day 21

Edited to add: The Book Chat topic today (May 17) at Sweet Green Tangerine is favorite childhood books, so I'm pulling this gem out of the archives. Enjoy! Of course, Harry Potter only isn't included here because I already used the series too much in this challenge (yup, that's six times!). Plus, though I started reading the series when I was 8, I read them into my high school years, when it ended, so I don't know if I would qualify the whole series as "childhood" books. Also, see my post on The Baby-Sitters Club series—another childhood favorite—here.

Day 21 - Favorite book from my childhood

Image via Goodreads

The Velveteen Rabbit. And here I go again with the sadness. I don't know what it is, but I just think books, movies and music are infinitesimally better when I have to fight back tears. This also could have worked as "Favorite book turned into a movie," but The Velveteen Rabbit worked for both categories and the one I ended up choosing for the book-turned-movie didn't.

Honorable Mentions: Anne of Green Gables (I actually had that one planned for here, but then I found out it fit somewhere else as well), The Giving Tree, Bridge to Terabithia, Tuck Everlasting, Where the Red Fern Grows and Ella Enchanted.

So tell me, which childhood book(s) will you definitely be reading to your children? 

30-Day Book Challenge: Day 16

Edited to add: The Book Chat topic for May 31 is Favorite Female of Fiction, so I'm reusing this old post. I also wanted to share the adorable button Jessica made for this week. Click on it to check out the other posts in the link-up:

Day 16 - Favorite female character

Image via Goodreads

Anne of Green Gables. I always fancied myself as (a blonde version of) Anne, and I loved her spunky sense of adventure. And then, of course, she grew up to be an aspiring magazine writer. Sound familiar? :) It's been a while since I've read one of her books, but I would love to revisit them someday. I only wish she hadn't grown up so fast....

30-Day Book Challenge: Day 12

Day 12 – A book I used to love but don’t anymore

Hmm, this one is tough. I don't often re-read books, so the only thing I can think of is to pick a book I loved growing up that I probably wouldn't enjoy today. In this case, it's actually a series.

The Baby-sitters Club. (I never noticed that had a hyphen until just now.) My sister and I had a huge bookcase full of these books growing up. We had the regular books, the "Super Specials," the mystery editions.... They were quick, fun reads when I was little, but I'm sure they wouldn't hold the same fascination for me now. I particularly remember how Ann M. Martin would spend pages describing each club member and their interests near the beginning of each book. I thought this was so cool growing up because that was my favorite part of writing - the descriptions. I wanted to write novels full of descriptions without any plotline whatsoever! However, I'm sure today that repetitious information would annoy me to no end.

Did you read The Baby-sitters Club growing up? How about Sweet Valley Twins? That was our other big book collection. My mom thought Sweet Valley High was too racy for me, though. Ha.