What do books, measles, and enjoyment have in common? Not much except I’ve read some interesting things about all of them recently.

Books

They announced the Newbery and Caldecott winners last week.

I’m excited to read this year’s Newbery, The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, mainly because it’s an entire novel written in poetry, and not just one long epic poem either but different types. I wonder if it’ll have me speaking in meter like I found myself doing when I read Skellig (review) several years ago.

My dad has been helping us build our Newbery collections every year for several years now. Looking at this year’s Caldecott winner, The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat, I think we need to start building our children’s Caldecott collection. The illustrations I’ve seen are just gorgeous. Add in the fact that I’ve never read a book from the perspective of an imaginary friend before, and I’m very much intrigued.

In the non-children’s book department, I’ve just been made aware of the book Alphabetical: How Every Letter Tells a Story by Michael Rosen, and it’s now been added to my list of books I’d like to read. As part of my alphabet non-fiction challenge I read a book about the history of words in the English language – The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English by Henry Hitchings (review). This book is the history of the letters in the English language. It would probably be a good idea to read about the history of the letters that make up the words I’ve read the history of already. That, and it would make for some fun non-quantum physics small talk topics.

And then there’s this piece of awesome book related music. Jimmy Fallon as Jim Morrison with The Doors singing the Reading Rainbow theme song.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/eBRYsAfchkY[/youtube]

Measles

I thought Scientific American’s explanation on the level of vaccination needed for different diseases to keep them from becoming epidemics was interesting. I had never heard of how they calculated that, or even that there was a way to do so. I was especially surprised at how contagious measles is to other diseases. It’s one of the highest.

And in light of the dropping vaccination levels in our country, I liked the brief summary NPR did on how doctors should approach vaccination questions with their patients and the parents of their patients. I didn’t go to medical school. The majority of parents did not. But our pediatrician did. And I am capable of reading actual research (not scare blogs, on either side) on the topic. After the research I’ve done and continue to do, I’m trusting our pediatrician.

Enjoyment

And finally, if you want to enjoy something, do it with people you enjoy. It’s the shared experience, and the ability to continue to share it in memory, that makes the experience extraordinary. Put this in the category of things that it seems like we shouldn’t have needed to research but someone did the research on anyway. Because of course it makes sense that humans, extremely social creatures, would need the social experience to enhance the emotional experience. Even as an introvert I can get behind that conclusion. It’s just that as an introvert I’m good with sharing an experience with just a small number of people, like 1 (hi Brett!), and not a larger number.

Thanks for sharing this blog experience with me.