Orville and Wilbur Riot are two brothers who never stop. Never stop talking, stop joking, stop hatching plans. Whether it’s Pufferbelly Point Punt (popcorn table hockey) for breakfast or leading a lost mummy to the Egypt room at the museum, their exuberance, admiration for one another, and manic, funny antics are a hoot to read.
Colonel Mustard and I couldn’t stop giggling. One of our favorite parts:

“Orville starting scrubbing his toes with a toothbrush and singing.
We laughed.
Mom came in. ‘Orville! It’s disgusting to use your toothbrush for that.’
‘I’m not using my toothbrush,’ he said. ‘I’m using yours. And my piggies love it!’
Mom made Orville’s little piggies march over to his little piggy bank. He had to give her his own money to buy a new toothbrush.’

Pure, silly fun. We’re off to find Riot Brothers books #1-3.

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Aside from being delighted overall, I’m encouraged that it was for this story. I’ve been describing it as a humorous middle grade murder mystery starring classroom pets at midnight, but the truth is, no one else has read it yet and I really wasn’t sure what others would make of it. MALCOLM’s a little bit…unusual. A mixture of kids’ writer “no-no’s” and old-fashioned middle grade: Talking animals. School hijinks. Some second person point of view. A mystery. Silliness. Complete with…footnotes.

When I told Colonel Mustard, he was just as excited as I was. MALCOLM’s been our bedtime story for…well, a really very long time, according to him. Now I guess I need to finish it up. And, furthermore, I think I deserve the day off from running tomorrow!

Colonel Mustard and I celebrate with our $1.99 Malcolm from IKEA.

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3. done

Once I got past my jealousy of not thinking of doing “Toon Reviews” first , I had to check out the site 100 Scope Notes used to create his comics: Bitstrips, http://www.bitstrips.com. It was so very much fun that now I’m thinking of how I can use them in the library with students. Yes, we will probably do our own “Toon Reviews”  because I love that idea. But with library orientations looming in front of me, I’ve been thinking about having the older students take a library rule or procedure and create a comic for it. Then we’ll share them with the younger students.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this: a conversation I had yesterday with Colonel Mustard.

Related Links

Go Animate (create your own cartoon!)

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We now have a couple of Frankie Pickle fans here in our house! Frankie doesn’t see the point in cleaning his room–it’ll just get messy again. So when his mom finally agrees with him, he’s delighted. Only…things get really deep and dirty and smelly fast. Of course, Frankie sees the light and straightens up in the end. Told through a mix of graphic (the dramatic adventures Frankie imagines) and regular text (what’s really happening), there’s enough visual and verbal humor sprinkled throughout it all to keep everyone chuckling. Perfect for my almost-ready-for-chapter-books boy reader (Colonel Mustard).

View all my reviews >>

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Colonel Mustard came across them on the shore of our lake right in front of our cabin. He thought they might be bones. They’re not. There were about 50 or so, scattered and curled around a shallow hole scooped out of the shore.

 That’s right; turtle eggs! At first, we were afraid something (a raccoon?; hopefully not our dogs) had dug up the nest in the night and feasted on them. The shells were pretty scattered around on shore. But later, we were poking around the water’s edge near the nest and we found this guy.

So at least one survived. (Don’t worry, after a short stay in our critter keeper, we sent him back out into the world.)

So what have you found on a walk lately that stumped you at first?

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Mr. E and the Critter Keeper

We’re calling it a “critter keeper.”

Some background: our cabin is very much a “cabin” and not a “cottage”. In other words, there’s no carpet, cutesy northwoods décor, or even a TV or a phone. It’s much more akin to camping than what most people call their “cabins.”

At the cabin, Mr. E and Colonel Mustard love sloshing around the weedy, muddy shore in their tall boots, exploring, fishing, and catching things. For the last few years, we had an old aquarium that we’d fill with water. They kept their critters there—snakes, toads, frogs, salamanders, fish, water bugs, you name it, for the weekend. But it was a pain to fill the tank, and we’d always worry about adding fresh water to it, feeding whatever was in it, or if it was in the sun and the captives were getting too warm. Not to mention that it had a big crack in it and we were waiting for the day it’d break.

But no more! Nana came through with the critter keeper, which she ingeniously designed out of some window screen, garden stakes, and a chain. She sewed a loop around the bottom, threaded the chain through, sewed the screen in a circle, and added sleeves for the stakes. There’s no bottom. All you do is unroll it and stake it where you want it—land or water. The weight of the chain pulls the screen down to the bottom. Of course, it’s not perfectly escape-proof, but since we always release our animals anyway, we’re okay with the occasional fugitive. Now we’re got a pen for our finds that stays cool, keeps fresh water available, and even give the critters access to a snack or two—all in their natural environment. And when we’re done, we pull up the stakes and roll it up for the next weekend.

Thanks, Nana!

Aunt Ruby, Nana, Colonel Mustard and the Critter Keeper

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What do you think picked these fish apart? We searched around for clues. We think we’ve solved the puzzle. What’s your guess?

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Hmmm. How much, indeed.