Our July spotlight pick for Best of the Month in Teens is Seraphina, Rachel Hartman’s brilliant debut fantasy novel that takes place in a world of dragons and humans, narrated by a young woman who is both.  Even for readers who don’t typically gravitate towards books with dragons, this is the book to make an exception for. Seraphina is detailed and complex without becoming dense or cumbersome–I absolutely loved it, and so have other readers in the office.  Seraphina has received starred reviews and praise from best-selling authors like Christopher Paolini and Tamora Pierce who wrote an exclusive guest review for the book that you can only find here (or here).  At the end of the post we’ve also got a short book trailer that’s pretty awesome.  If you already love books with dragons, which one is your favorite so far?

Tamora Pierce is a best-selling author of fantasy books for teenagers. Her books, known for their teenaged girl warriors and wizards, have received critical acclaim and a strong fanbase. Her newest book, Mastiff, is the third book in The Legend of Beka Cooper series. 

In Seraphina’s world, coldly intellectual dragons can take on the shapes–and feelings–of human beings. Sometimes this results in a surprise. Seraphina’s father married a beautiful musician, and discovered too late that she was a dragon. She died, leaving him with a daughter who confuses him and his new wife and children.

Now the half-dragon Seraphina is the assistant to the cranky royal music master. She is in charge of Princess Glisselda’s music lessons; she books performers for the 40-year celebration of the peace treaty between dragons and humans, and she rehearses the rowdy court musicians. She has to hide the scales on her arm and around her waist, and she can never let anyone find out that Orma, her music teacher, is actually a dragon.

When she plays the solo for the funeral of the realm’s murdered prince, Seraphina is suddenly raised into entirely new, visible levels of peril. People she always avoided are noticing her. She has to attend social functions, where she is caught up in court politics, between those who support the treaty and those who want to destroy it. She runs afoul of conspirators who want to start the war again–one of them may be her own grandfather. She even discovers that Prince Lucian, who is betrothed to Princess Glisselda, is not only very sharp-eyed but also very agreeable to be around. He appreciates her insights on intrigue at court and in the city and uses her as an unofficial investigator into the ongoing unrest.

The plot thickens. A new religious order plots riots and revolution. Exiled knights return to report an unregulated dragon flying near where the old prince was murdered. The dragons are trying to send Orma for corrective surgery–they think he’s gotten too human and they want to cut those parts out of his brain. Seraphina fears that if she tells the prince and the princess what she is, they’ll hate her forever, but their work to preserve the treaty celebrations is bringing them closer together. And all of them are terrified that the dragons will decide that humans are not worth the trouble, and will destroy them at last.

I loved this book even more the second time I read it than I did the first. The characters are interesting and engaging, and I love the new look at dragons. For all that she’s half-dragon, Seraphina is a very believable human being, caught between different loyalties and just trying to keep everyone she loves alive. But don’t take my word for it–read it yourself!

–Tamora Pierce

This week’s featured Summer Reading for Kids & Teens author is one of my personal favorites, Rick Riordan.His latest book, The Serpent’s Shadow, is one of our Editors’ Picks for summer reading and I’m looking forward to spending a lazy August day reading the short stories and and insider info on his characters in The Demigod Diaries (available August 14). 

Recently the title and cover of the third book in the Heroes of Olympus series, The Mark of Athena, were revealed and of course I can’t wait to see what will happen next. Luckily, when we sent Riordan some questions from our Facebook fans and Omni readers one of them asked for a sneak peek at The Mark of Athena.  You’ll find his answer (and yes, he gives a sneak peek!) to this and other questions in the exclusive video below.

Jack Gantos is the author of this year’s Newbery Medal-winning book, Dead End in Norvelt, and he’s also the perfect guy to kick off our Summer Reading for Kids & Teens destination as our first featured author.  Gantos is a fantastic writer and he’s really funny–after watching the special video he created for us below we were laughing out loud with big goofy grins on our faces, because Gantos makes reading fun.  It’s  another of this author’s’ many talents–if you’ve got a reluctant reader, give them a Jack Gantos book.   Check out our author adventures kick-off video, courtesy of Mr. Jack Gantos, who reminds us all to “read a lot, or your brain will rot!”

Summer Reading Recommendations from Jack Gantos:

• Dead End in Norvelt (naturally)
• Breaking Stalin’s Nose
• Inside Out & Back Again
• Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key
• Joey Pigza Loses Control
• The Cricket in Times Square
• Time Cat
• Heads or Tails
• Everything on a Waffle
• Jack’s Black Book

Divergent, the first book in Veronica Roth's trilogy, has been especially popular with Hunger Games readers–a tough act to follow, I know, but Divergent really is that good.  Also like The Hunger Games, once you read the first book you must get your hands on the next, and at last, book two, Insurgent, has arrived.  No disappointments here, we even picked Insurgent as one of our Best Young Adult Books of May–only I will tell you that after you've powered through this one it's going to be a while before we see book three… Luckily there are lots of other great reads to tide you over. 

We asked Roth if she had a musical score for her writing time, or if she prefers the sound of silence–not only did she share her playlist, but she also gave us some specific lyrics that are meaningful to her.

Veronica Roth's Playlist for Insurgent

I always listen to music while I write, and the music selection process can be tricky, because if I can't find the right song, sometimes it's hard for me to work, which is not ideal! I don't pay attention to genre at all—only to what kind of scene it makes me see. Here are a few of the songs I listened to while writing and revising INSURGENT:

1. “Timshel” by Mumford & Sons

Death is at your doorstep
And it will steal your innocence
But it will not steal your substance.

 I don't think anyone could describe Tris as “innocent” after the things she's done and seen, but I do think of her as a person of substance, so these lyrics struck me.

 2. “Giants” by Now, Now

There isn't really a specific part of this song that applies to the book, but I listened to it during quite a few action sequences while writing the book, so the general feeling is right.

3. “Hysteria” by Muse

I'm not breaking down
I'm breaking out
Last chance to lose control

I believe this qualifies as a Dauntless-on-the-verge-of-war song.

4. “The Catalyst” by Linkin Park

God bless us every one,
We're a broken people living under loaded gun,
And it can't be outfought,
It can't be outdone,
It can't be outmatched,
It can't be outrun.

This one sort of surprised me, because I heard it randomly one day and just stopped in the middle of what I was doing, because it captured the situation of Insurgent so perfectly—a group of people who Tris calls “creatures of loss,” facing an enemy they don't feel strong enough to defeat.

5. “Under the Waves” by Pendulum

I am deep in a river
Waves above my head
Held with no spirit
We descend
We reach the end.

There are a lot of moments in INSURGENT in which Tris feels overwhelmed. This song is good for that sort of thing.

[The editors at Omnivoracious are grateful to John Irving for this very special guest post about his new novel, In One Person, selected as one of our Best Books of the Month for May.]

In One Person is about a young bisexual man who falls in love with an older transgender woman–Miss Frost, the librarian in a Vermont public library. The bi guy is the main character, but two transgender women are the heroes of this novel–in the sense that these two characters are the ones my bisexual narrator, Billy Abbott, most looks up to.

Billy is not me. He comes from my imagining what I might have been like if I’d acted on all my earliest impulses as a young teenager. Most of us don’t ever act on our earliest sexual imaginings. In fact, most of us would rather forget them–not me. I think our sympathy for others comes, in part, from our ability to remember our feelings–to be honest about what we felt like doing. Certainly, sexual tolerance comes from being honest with ourselves about what we have imagined sexually.

Those adults who are always telling children and young adults to abstain from doing everything–well, they must have never had a childhood or an adolescence (or they’ve conveniently forgotten what they were like when they were young).

When I was a boy, I imagined having sex with my friends’ mothers, with girls my own age–yes, even with certain older boys among my wrestling teammates. It turned out that I liked girls, but the memory of my attractions to the “wrong” people never left me. What I’m saying is that the impulse to bisexuality was very strong; my earliest sexual experiences–more important, my earliest sexual imaginings–taught me that sexual desire is mutable. In fact, in my case–at a most formative age–sexual mutability was the norm. What made me a writer was definitely a combination of what I read and what I imagined–especially, what I imagined sexually.

Billy meets the transgender librarian, Miss Frost, because he goes to the library seeking novels about “crushes on the wrong people.” Miss Frost starts him out with the Brontë sisters–specifically, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. She expresses less confidence in Fielding’s Tom Jones, which she also gives Billy. As she puts it, “If one can count sexual escapades as one result of crushes–"

Later, when Billy has become an avid reader and he returns to the library confessing his crush on an older boy on the wrestling team, Miss Frost–who has earlier given Billy novels by Dickens and Hardy–gives him Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. (This is the same night she seduces him.)

“We are formed by what we desire,” Billy tells us–in the first paragraph of the first chapter. He adds: “I desired to become a writer and to have sex with Miss Frost—not necessarily in that order.”

Later in the novel, Billy realizes this about himself: “I knew that no one person could rescue me from wanting to have sex with men and women.”

My first-person novels are confessional stories about sexually taboo subjects. The 158-Pound Marriage is about wife-swapping. The narrator of The Hotel New Hampshire is incestuously in love with his sister. Johnny Wheelwright, the narrator of A Prayer for Owen Meany, is called (behind his back) a “nonpracticing homosexual”; his love for Owen Meany is repressed. I always saw Johnny as a deeply closeted homosexual who would never come out. In One Person is a much shorter novel than Owen Meany, and Billy is an easier first-person voice to be in–Billy is very out.

Billy says: “I wanted to look like a gay boy–or enough like one to make other gay boys, and men, look twice at me. But I wanted the girls and women to wonder about me–to make them look twice at me, too. I wanted to retain something provocatively masculine in my appearance.” Billy remembers when he is cast as Ariel in The Tempest, and Richard (the director) tells him that Ariel’s gender is “mutable.”  (Richard tells Billy that the sex of angels is mutable, too.) Billy later says: “I suppose I was trying to look sexually mutable, to capture something of Ariel’s unresolved sexuality.” He concludes: “There is no one way to look bisexual, but that was the look I sought.”

Billy doesn’t start out so sure of himself. “You’re a man, aren’t you?” he asks Miss Frost, when he discovers that she used to be a man. “You’re a transsexual!” he tells her, accusingly.

Miss Frost speaks sharply to him: “My dear boy, please don’t put a label on me–don’t make me a category before you get to know me!”

As Billy learns–in part, from being bisexual–our genders and orientations do not define us. We are somehow greater than our sexual identities, but our sexual identities matter.

*More – watch John Irving discuss In One Person:

• Video 1
• Video 2
• Video 3

(Author photo by Jane Sobel Klonsky)

Today on Omnivoracious, we're delighted to launch a month-long weekly advice column by Augusten Burroughs, who makes his move from memoirist to self-help strategist with This Is How (available May 8). He starts by answering a frustrated plea from a mom whose husband's foot-dragging makes the whole family cranky. Then he digs into the deeper reasons a "well known, happy, funny, kind, 25 year old" may have been dumped by their best friend. 

My husband, the father of our two teenaged sons, works from home as a project manager for a large international corporation. During any given day, our lives will require that someone make a foray out of the house for band practice, food, lessons, doctors appointments, etc. Most of our outings are appointments where we are paying someone money for an actual unit of their time to be dispensed at an agreed up time.

This is the problem. My husband many, maybe even most times, in full knowledge of the rapidly looming time commitment, fires up a phone call, starts an email, sits down for a long personal moment in the bathroom. The rest of us are left seething until he presents himself ready to go. We now leave at the last possible minute, all cranky and out of sorts. If cars and traffic and every other variable aren't perfect, my husband's choices have left us NO wiggle room.

 It's simply awful. I have tried to talk to him about it just because it angers me, but also because I don't think it sets the greatest example for our teens. Just the miasma of furor and unsaid words is poor parenting, I think.

What do we do? He has to be involved—so we need a way to get through to him. It's enough to drive me back to drink, which is a country I'm not welcome in any longer. Help. – Cate

Dear Cate,

I wish I knew even more. Does your husband’s differing degree of respect for punctuality result in real-world problems? Do you end up being late frequently and missing scheduled appointments you’ve already paid for? Or do you pretty much always make it, but it was just so close you aged like a month from the stress of it? 

 If the answer is the former, I have more questions. Is your relationship healthy and strong and good in other areas? If you’re talking to him about this, that at least tells me the two of you do communicate to some degree, right? Because if you and your husband are a good pair and the family is working, this might be like when you buy something you truly, deeply love at the store and when you get home, you realize there are extra hidden costs: it doesn’t come with batteries, you need a subscription, you can’t wear it until you have electrolysis, whatever. And as annoying as this can be, if you’re otherwise happy, sometimes you just have to fork over the extra. 

 It could also be that you and your husband are equally matched and diametrically opposed with respect to this issue. He may view appointment times more like serving suggestions. His mind might automatically add an “-ish” after every “3:45” appointment he’s told about. 

And you may be undesirably neurotic about appointments; a person who arrives early and secretly feels a small superiority for this.  If your own punctuality is a source of pride for you, it’s possible that you’re going to need to rewire your brain with respect to punctuality, for the sake of peace keeping and your own sanity.

I am somebody who arrives early. If I have a flight that leaves at seven a.m., I will wake up no later than four. I’ll be ready to leave by 4:45. And then more often than not, I end up with a fat chunk of time once I’ve cleared security to sit around and wish I’d slept a little later. I’ve been this way my whole life. I was the kid who had to know what he was going to wear to school the night before. 

My boyfriend is more like how you describe your husband. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve ended up running across busy Manhattan intersections to make it somewhere just in the nick of time.
I have to say, I like my boyfriend’s method better. It makes my life more interesting. I could say, “more stressful” because we often end up rushing, but it’s not stressful. I won’t allow it to be. The fact that he does something so unlike the way I do it throws a massive helping of randomness into my life. 

And this is a very good thing. If your husband were to follow your clock to the last tick, the two of you would never veer from the path you had chosen. But because of him, there’s all this last-minute chaos.

And chaos, my friend, is where everything new is born. –Augusten

What if you're a well-known, happy, funny, kind, 25-year-old and your best friend of 10 years ignores all your plans to hang out then replies one day with "I have no desire to hang out with you anymore"? –Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

The statement “I have no desire to hang out with you anymore” is many things, but vague is not of one them. If someone in your life has spurned your repeated attempts to get together and then delivered this clinical-strength rejection, I think you’re looking at a very unsatisfying, puzzling and possibly forever-unresolved end of a ten-year-long friendship.

I’ve had relationships that have ended amidst loose ends, unanswered questions and misunderstandings. It’s incredibly frustrating because when somebody says to you, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore,” it’s only human to crave the answer to “Why?” But after your attempts to get together were rejected—possibly in the passive-aggressive spirit of hoping you’d “take the hint”—your friend was as clear and explicit as anyone could be, leaving zero room for discussion. You have to take their statement at full face-value and make no contact. I know you must want closure—which almost nobody gets, ever, for anything—and the chance to ask questions and express an alternate point of view. Your project now is realizing and then accepting as fact that you aren’t going to have resolution or answers or your friend anymore.

It’s frustrating and it’s not fair because almost nothing is organically fair in life, but when one party wants out of a friendship, the friendship ends for both.

I want to add one thing, though. In your description of what’s going on, you said this: “What if you're a well known, happy, funny, kind, 25 year old.” It didn’t escape my notice that each of these adjectives could be seen by many as a “selling point.” Who wouldn’t want a famous, funny, kind young friend?
But I want you to take out your white jacket, your magnifying glass and your stainless steel lab tray and pin those words down so you can examine them.

Why did you phrase your question that way? Why didn’t you simply state, “My friend of ten years has repeatedly rejected my invitations to get together and recently told me they no longer want to hang out and be friends”?

You added an extra layer of information to your question, a very interesting layer. A couple of different things might be possible. What relevancy does the fact that you are well-known have on this situation? Why did you mention that, specifically? And why did you place that first?

Were you trying to influence me, with respect to my reply? Because when you stack up all of those positive features of your personality, yes, that friend does seem crazy for not wanting anything to do with you. And if you’re doing that with me, are you doing it with other people in your life? I’m asking whether it’s possible you are using your celebrity, youth, kindness, and good humor as a form of currency, as payment for the services of being your friend?

I’m also well-known, and I can tell you that I would rather date somebody who had never heard of me than somebody who had all of my books on their shelf. Better to have somebody like you for you and not for what you do. –Augusten

Get more brutally honest, compassionate advice from Augusten in This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. It's one of our Amazon Editors' top 10 picks for the Best Books of May.

This is a big Rick Riordan week for us as not only does the final Kane Chronicles book, The Serpent’s Shadow, release today, but the author himself is coming to town–and we want to ask him your questions.

What would you like to know?  Questions about Carter or Sadie Kane?  Percy Jackson?  What Rick Riordan does on his day off?   Send in your questions for Rick via the Comments section and we will compile a list to ask him on video this Friday.  We’ll let you know when it’s ready to watch, don’t worry, it won’t be long!  This Thursday, May 3^rd is our cut-off for questions–I can’t wait to see what our readers come up with!

Speaking of waiting, it’s been a year since we last saw Carter and Sadie Kane in The Throne of Fire and in that time we wondered, what do Carter and Sadie read when they aren’t tangling with angry gods or trying to save the world?  If you’ve been asking yourself this same question, you’re in luck because we have the answer in this exclusive straight from the Kane’s themselves:

Sadie Kane: “Reading? You should talk to my brother the genius… Sometimes I read books about London and occasionally I try to learn new hieroglyphics, but mostly I’m too busy with trainees and trying to defeat Apophis.”

My Reading List:

• The Symbolic World of Egyptian Amulets by Philippe Germond

• Treasures of the British Museum by Marjorie Caygill

• The Annotated Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

• City Secrets London: The Essential Insider’s Guide by Robert Kahn and Tim Adams

• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

• Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian by R.O. Faulkner

• Egyptian Love Spells and Rituals by Claudia Dillaire

• Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Carter Kane: “I read a lot. That’s why Sadie calls me Mr. Wikipedia. My dad is a pretty big history buff, so I read classics and try to learn as much as I can about Egypt and my ancestors. It’s good research when you’re trying to saving the world.”

My Reading List:

• The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations by John Haywood

• Falconry: The Essential Guide by Steve Wright

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

• The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Martin Luther King and Clayborne Carson

• The Egyptian Book of the Dead translated by Robert P. Winston and Wallace Budge

• Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

• The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt by Elizabeth Payne

• The LA Lakers: 50 Amazing Years in the City of Angels by the LA Times Sports Staff

• Britannia in Brief: The Scoop on All Things British by Leslie Baker and William Mullins

• The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Animal House, one of the most-loved movie comedies of all time, is hotter than ever. There’s a Broadway show in the works and a new, behind-the-scenes book called Fat, Drunk, & Stupid by producer Matty Simmons, who talks to us about what Hollywood first thought of the script (hated it!), what got cut, and why there was never a sequel.

Some highlights from the interview:

On getting the green light: My junior partner at the time was Ivan Reitman [who went on to make comedy classics including Ghostbusters] and we went into [Univeral Studios chief Ned] Tanen’s office and he said, “I hate this movie. Everyone’s drunk or having sex or getting beat up. Do you think you could make it for less than $3 million?" Now I had never made a movie. Ivan had made a couple of movies in Canada for about $8. I said, “Absolutely.” And I didn’t know what I was talking about. We made it for $2.8 million, and overall, everything in to date, it’s grossed about $600 million.

On the unforgettable audience response: We screened that movie in Denver … and at the end of that movie, the audience was standing on chairs and screaming and applauding and yelling. No one had seen anything like it. And then when they brought it back to Hollywood, they did a test screening and it got the highest rating in the then-history of the ratings system.

On getting Animal House to Broadway, with music by Barenaked Ladies: I had the idea about four or five years ago and it took me that long to convince Universal to do it, because they own the rights. They said, “Well, if you bring in the right team.” So I brought in a top Broadway producer, who many years ago was my publicity man and has since won about six Tonys (Jeff Richards), and the director of the Book of Mormon, the hottest show on Broadway (Casey Nicholaw).

Read more on the Amazon Studios Hollywonk blog.

Scott Speer is a director already well known for his music videos and films, including this summer’s Step Up Revolution (hitting theaters in July).  Speer is also the author of Immortal City, the first book in an action-packed new young adult series that brings together Guardian Angels (for those who can afford them), star-crossed romance, and a serial killer–check out the cool book trailer below.

For today’s YA Wednesday feature, Scott Speer joins us as our guest blogger with a special Top 10 list you’ll only see here.–Seira

 Hi all, this is Scott Speer, author of Immortal City and director of the upcoming Step Up Revolution.  Being a director as well as an author, I’m particularly interested in books that go on to become movies. Here are ten of my all-time favorites. 

Jaws: I’m a huge Steven Spielberg fan, and this is one of his earliest – and still best.  It’s also a great example of streamlining a subplot-heavy novel for the screen. 

Twilight: Catherine Hardwicke’s hip, well-cast, indie-film-in-sheep’s-clothing gave Stephenie Meyer’s novel the edginess it needed to explode into a worldwide phenomenon. 

Forrest Gump:  Robert Zemeckis is another all-time favorite of mine, and this has to be one of the all-time best adaptations. 

The Notebook: It’s rare to see a film so perfectly capture the essence of a book, but I think Nick Cassavetes did that here. 

The Color Purple: Yes, yes, I’m a huge Spielberg fan.  The Color Purple for me is a wonderful example of a film that ultimately is a different tone and vision than the book, but is just as valid. 

To Kill a Mockingbird: I saw this movie in freshman English and never forgot it.  Years later I revisited it and realized what a fantastic piece of storytelling it is.  Thanks Mr. Pachilio!

The Shawshank Redemption: Stephen King is my favorite author and this film has gone on to become one of the greatest examples of modern cinema.  I just love the characters. 

Gone with the Wind: I can’t resist old movies and this is one of my favorites.  Gorgeous photography and lush, old school storytelling.  They don’t make them like this anymore. 

The Shining: Is there a movie that better captures Stephen King’s mastery of slow-burning dread?  The Shining stands the test of time not only as great movie but a truly scary one.  One of Kubrick’s best. 

Jurassic Park: Jurassic Park?  Yes.  JP holds a very special place in my heart.  Like many directors who grew up in the 90s, I saw this at a  young age, and this was one of the key movies that inspired me to start making movies.  It’s a landmark film in every aspect, and it would not have been possible without the vision of Michael Crichton.  Authors and directors really do make a great team!

Book Trailer for Immortal City:

Twenty years ago, a feisty kindergartner named Junie B. Jones stepped onto the book scene via a smelly school bus.  Since that day, Junie B.’s funny, tell-it-like-it-is style hasn’t changed, nor has her popularity with young readers (maybe you were one of them?).  With kindergarten in the rearview mirror, there are now 27 books in the series (a brand new book, Turkeys We Have Loved and Eaten, comes out in August) and Junie B. has gone on to adventures with tropical birds, missing teeth, and everything in between. 

To celebrate the 20th anniversary, there is a new full-color edition of Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus that includes special features like an interview with author Barbara Park (conducted by guess who?).  Lucky for us, Junie B. found time in her busy schedule to tell us a few unknown facts about herself in this Amazon exclusive:

10 Top-Secret Personal Facts about Me, Junie B.

By Junie B. Jones

 1. My birthday is Junie the 1st!

2. My mother’s name is Susan, Susie, Suz, Mommy, and Mother. Plus sometimes Daddy calls her Buttercup. That is ridiculous I think.

3. My favorite food is yummy, delicious lemon pie. Plus also I like ‘pasketti and meatballs and whipped cream in a can, and sugar cookies! I do not like peas. Or Tuna Noodle Stinkle  (that dish does not smell delightful). 

4.  When I grow up I would like to be the janitor of my school. The janitor saves people from danger. And paints litter cans. And carry keys that unlock the bathroom. Without the janitor we couldn’t even go to the toilet. I would also  enjoy being Beauty Shop guy, I think.  

5. My grandma, Helen Miller has a pet bird named Twitter. (Only I hate that dumb bird).

6.  I am not actually a fan of roosters either. One time, a boy named meanie Jim said that roosters can peck your head into a nub. And that is not pleasant, I tell you.

7. The name of my school is Clarence somebody or other Elementary School. 

8. I usually take the stupid smelly bus to school.  Only some mornings I accidentally spill cereal down the front of me at breakfast. And then I accidentally dance with Teddy instead of changing clothes. And so I accidentally miss the bus. Then Mother has to drive me. She is not pleasant when that happens.

9. When I am scared in the dark, I grab my bestest stuffed animal named Philip Johnny Bob. And then both of us sing, “The sun will come out tomorrow” from the hit musical ANNIE.

10.  My favorite fruits are fruit loops, cherry jello, grape Kool-aid, orange popsicles, strawberry shortcake, blueberry pancakes and chocolate covered raisins.