Santa came to my mailbox yesterday. Fun, fun!

Yesterday when I arrived home from my last day of school until 2011, I was excited to see a package on the table for me that said Book Blogger Santa Swap on it! This is the second time I've participated in the Book Blogger Santa Swap, and it is really fun. The main reason I like it is because I get to make a connection with a new book blogger, and I love participating in the book blogging community, but the gifts I got were fabulously fun, too.

Laura, from The Calico Critic in Vero Beach, Florida, was my Santa. The beach in Florida is not exactly where I expect to find Santa, but admittedly, she's quite a good one! She gave me a package full of all different kinds of treats. There were homemade cookies with the recipe (super yummy - I broke into those right away), cocoa and a fancy chocolate bar, tea (has she heard I'm always doing the Game On Diet?), bookmarks - I may have mentioned how I'm always losing my bookmarks and now I have a whole dozen of them! - lovely handmade soap, Santa Claus kleenex(who knew they even made such a thing!), and TWO books! One of the books is by a favorite YA author of mine, Andrew Clements, and another is a non-fiction book called The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. So happy to have the next 17 days off to do a bunch o' reading!!!

Laura also gave me ten other books via a post on her blog about some free books being available for Jane Austen's birthday. I downloaded them all to my Kindle. We love that.

I will definitely be checking out her blog in a lot more detail over the break as well.

Hope your Santas are all as good to you as Laura was to me! I was the Santa for Briana over at The Book Pixie blog, by the way, and she has lots of great YA recommendations, not to mention some killer flamingo photos there, so you might want to give her blog a look as well. Thanks to the good folks over at http://holidayswap.wordpress.com/ for setting the whole thing up! I'll be back next year.

Santa stopped by WOMS today!

Prizes were awarded for the fine, fine gingerbread houses the 6th graders designed, and Santa himself came and gave out the prizes! So much fun. I also have to say, these were the best gingerbread houses I've seen in many years of judging. Voting was SO hard! Well done, everyone.

Have a wonderful vacation

Hope you have a wonderful and relaxing break filled with lots and lots of books!

Birthday bonanza!!

Wowza! Who knew there were SO many December and early January birthday here at WOMS??!! Happy, happy birthdays, everyone :-)

Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly

Wow, I just LOVE Jennifer Donnelly. She needs to write a lot more books. This book is a stunner, and it was one I could hardly put down. I read a lot, so it's not unusual to find me with a book in my hand, but I'm not often laying on my bed reading in the middle of the day or going to bed early just so I can read, and that's what was happening a LOT with this book.

The book goes back and forth between a modern day storyline of a young woman who's struggling after the death of her younger brother and the journal of a young woman who lived during the French Revolution. I found both storylines fascinating and loved, loved, loved how Donnelly wove them together. I felt like I was right there in the French Revolution and in Paris in present day, too. And I'd really like to be in Paris right about now, let me tell you.

The character development of this story was incredible, the writing beautiful, the description and dialogue realistic, the storyline compelling. It was just all around great. 100% loved it and highly recommend it. I will b buying it for the WOMS library, but in the meantime, you can find it at the Multnomah county Library.

Happy birthday!

Now doesn't this just look like the perfect book for a birthday girl? I mean who doesn't enjoy a little murder and mayhem on their birthday,right? And there is ice cream... Happy, happy day!

Lots of December birthdays

I was gone last week, so I'm way behind on birthdays! Hope everyone had a great Sagitarrian experience. Enjoy :-)

"It's a book!" a funny little video

You have to watch this. It is hilarious! Enjoy :)

Mrs. FB

We're on the Vision Tour blog!

Go check out the cool write up we got on the Vision Tour blog from Dr. Everhart! Go, go, hurry up now, what are you waiting for???

Get a $15 gift card for WOMS from Borders!!!

Give a gift to wOMS and get yourself a book, bagel or latte!

On Dec. 4 and Dec. 5, any Borders customer making an in-store purchase, whether of a book or a bagel or a latte, will receive a $15 gift card to donate to a public school of choice through DonorsChoose.org, an Internet-based charity. Anyone purchasing the book "Waiting for 'Superman': How We Can Save America's Failing Public Schools" will receive a second $15 card.