Rarest Kind of Best

So after the end-of-school frenzy and Canada Day hoopla things here at RarestKindofBest have slowed down quite a bit. Such is the beauty of summertime. I’ll post whenever I can but Activities of Vital Importance will continue to get in the way (ie. trips to the beach).

this is what my yesterday looked like

Another reason for my neglect here is that I am currently putting together the curriculum for a Summer Writing Camp for Kids. Information about this venture is on my other blog, my “officialish author’s blog“. If you know kids who are interested in writing, you might steer them to that site, as I’ll try to post writing tips, prompts, and examples there. I’ve also got animation related posts and links to great short films there, as well as (wait for it) information about my YA novel Eldritch Manor.

Enough self-promotion… Happy summer everyone!

(Photo credit: Will Clayton)

Hard to believe, but this blog is 2 years old and still plugging along! I see in my stats I’ve written 262 book reviews and 71 movie reviews. Hmm. Time to watch more movies…

Thanks to everyone who follows this humble little blog o’ mine, especially through the lean months last spring and summer when I was too caught up with moving mayhem to post. (I wrote 300 posts in my first year, but only 96 in my second! So embarrassing.) Now I’m glad to be back on track, diving once more into the library stacks in search of buried treasure. This blog is truly a labour of love, and I am glad to share my findings with you.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to my book: the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, esquire… he’s just about to meet up with Smaug!

Happy reading!

(Photo credit: Abee5)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some people go to the gym when a new year begins. Me, I unleash a flurry of daily blog posts!

The last eight months have been quite the crazy time… May for household disruption, June for packing madness, July for driving across Canada, August for unwinding and house hunting, September for paperwork and having a book published (visit kimthompsonauthor.com for details), October for moving into our new house, November for unpacking, and December for… well, December is just always crazy, isn’t it?

(I have another blog that deals with these events – something I call Toronto to Saltspring.)

Stress levels are finally subsiding, and we are truly enjoying our new rural island life. As I get back into gear I have many projects on the go, but I’m still committed to this blog and swear to you that I will be posting more often!

If you take a look at my Lists (above) you will see the basic bones of my reading list – I’ve been working my way through the Caldecott Medal winners (finished), and Greenaway Medal winners (nearly done), and now I’m turning my attention from picture books to older chapter books, with the Carnegie Medal and Newbery Medal winners.

For my movie reviews, I will continue to look at vintage Disney, as well as any other deserving films. In both books and movies I am most interested in the oldies, the classics, which can be so easily lost and forgotten in the constant deluge of the new, loud and novel. I will continue to unearth the old classics and hold them up to the light of day, for the good of parents and children everywhere.

That is my plan, anyway.

That is all.

(Happy New Year everyone! Best wishes for 2013!)

(Photo credit: Camera Slayer)

Hello friends, sorry for the lack of posts but apparently when my house is turned upside down so is my life and everything I love to do gets put on hold… which includes writing! I’m glad to say though that the worst seems to be over with and I will happily putter along writing as much as I am able until the next big upheaval in July (a cross-country move, nothing serious).

Many apologies for lack of posts this week. Home reno makes life so interesting, er, I mean difficult! Will return to my desk when kitchen and basement no longer in a total shambles and massive yard sale over and done with – hopefully next week. (?)

Still basking in the 1st birthday glow, I received a welcome blog encouragement from bundleofbooks (a booky blog with thoughtful reviews that I enjoy very much) – in the form of 3 peer blogger awards! (Thank you so much!) Even after a year I’m still a bit of a newbie, so it took me a while to figure out what goes on with these things, but here’s what I found out…

They’re a bit like those old chain letters, but in a good, non-intrusive, non-threatening, warm and fuzzy, pay-it-forward kind of way. I thank and link back to the person who gave them to me (here’s bundleofbooks again if you missed it). I put the award images on my blog. For the Kreativ blogger and the Versatile blogger I’m supposed to write a few things people may not know about me. Which is here:

1. When I was ten I wanted to be a musketeer. I kinda still do.

2. I’ve been to a lot of operas, and enjoyed many of them, but I still can’t warm up to Wagner.

3. The first movie I ever saw in a theatre was The Sound of Music, and when the nuns came in near the beginning I said very loudly, “What are those?”

4. My favourite colour is a deep, cranberry red.

5. My favourite comic strip is Pogo.

6. Everybody knows I’m a history geek, but few know that I went through a period when I was totally obsessed with Nixon and Watergate. I even read the transcripts of the White House tapes, even though of course all the expletives were deleted.

7. Seeing That’s Entertainment changed my life.

8. I do not care for beer. Yuck.

9. My number one party trick in the early 1980s was imitating Joan Crawford smoking a cigarette, a feat which masked the fact that I couldn’t inhale.

10. My favourite actor is Alan Arkin.

Finally these awards require me to share the love and pass them on to other deserving bloggers of blogs with less than 300 followers. This is a bit of a challenge for me, since I have so little time to follow blogs, and most of the ones I do check in on from time to time have quite a lot more than 300 followers. But I’ve come up with three that I quite enjoy, and now I bestow the above blog awards upon them:

We Too Were Children, Mr. Barrie is a beautifully written and researched site dedicated to out of print children’s books written by 20th century authors more well-known for their books for grownups.

Happily After All has terrific reviews of children’s books. I love her enthusiasm and obvious love for these books.

Vintage Books My Kid Loves is a fond look at older, classic children’s books.