I love Meetup.com, an online network that exists to help people connect in real-life groups on a local level. I belong to Meetups for San Diego homeschooling, families with deaf and hard-of-hearing kids, and a women’s book club. Email notifications of park days and outings land in my inbox every week. A quick glance at […]
Continue ReadingThe other night, a bunch of us GeekMom writers fell into a Twitter conversation about Downton Abbey. Readers of my author blog know I’m crazy about that show. Crazy. An intricate, suspenseful drama about the intrigues of family and servants on an early-2oth-century English country estate, this show feeds that British period drama craving that […]
Continue ReadingI got my first glimpse of First Second’s new Nursery Rhyme Comics at Comic-Con this summer. Several of its contributors attended a gathering for children’s book writers and artists I’d helped organize, and they had a hot-off-the-presses advance copy of the book to pass around. For me, it was love at first page-turn. Comics creator […]
Continue ReadingIf your teen is anything like mine, she’s been counting the days until the release of the Hunger Games movie next March. Heck, if you’re anything like me, you’ve been counting! We got our first peek at the film in a short trailer that aired at MTV’s Video Music Awards on Sunday night. What did […]
Continue ReadingSomething that jumped out at me at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con was the abundance of panels that focused on comics and graphic novels for teens–so many YA-centered panels I wasn’t able to attend them all. But I did make it to two of them: Comics for Teens and the art-focused Teen Comics Workshop I […]
Continue ReadingMy sixteen-year-old daughter was keen to attend a manga-drawing workshop at SDCC. We arrived at the appointed room nearly an hour early, having been unable to get into the Jim Henson panel I had hoped to see. Our disappointment quickly turned to delight when we discovered that the panel before the manga one was a […]
Continue ReadingOne thing that struck my kids about San Diego Comic-Con was how much the convention spills out into the streets. The crowds engulf the entire Gaslamp District, packing its sidewalks, restaurants, and hotels. When my twelve-year-old, ten-year-old, and I left the convention center to meet GeekMom Kristen and my little goddaughter for lunch, my girls […]
Continue ReadingFriday was another day of fantastic costumes, stimulating panel discussions, and total sensory overload at San Diego Comic-Con. Today I’m taking two of my kids in for the fun–it’ll be the first comics convention for my ten- and twelve-year-old daughters. They’re especially excited to meet author/illustrator Raina Telgemeier, whose wonderful middle-grade graphic novel, Smile, won […]
Continue ReadingI’m writing in the brief lull between Crazy Thursday at Comic-Con and Even Crazier Friday at Comic-Con. Yesterday was a perfect day at the con–the crowd-size was respectable but not overwhelming, the panels I attended were terrifically interesting (more about those in a future post), and there were plenty of costumes worth swooning over. This […]
Continue ReadingIn Part One, we talked about circles. In Part Two, we tackled profiles and privacy. In Part Three, we discussed finding friends and people to follow. Today I want to share an assortment of Google+ tips I hope you’ll find useful. Like everyone else at this brand-spanking-new social network, I’m learning as I go. The […]
Continue ReadingIn Part One of this series, we took a look at Google+ circles. In Part Two, we tackled privacy and profiles. Today let’s talk about the first thing most people want to know when they join a social network: how do I find my friends? Finding people to follow on Google+ • If you click […]
Continue ReadingPossibly the only thing that could get my kids and me more excited than a new Studio Ghibli movie is a Studio Ghibli movie based on one of our favorite books. So, yeah, this trailer for the upcoming U.K. release of Arrietty–a Studio Ghibli film based on Mary Norton’s classic children’s novel, The Borrowers–has us […]
Continue ReadingIn Part One, we talked about Google+ circles: what they are and how to use them. Today, let’s tackle privacy and profiles. Many Google+ users are thrilled to discover that privacy concerns have been taken very seriously by the network’s engineers. Unlike Facebook’s baffling labyrinth of privacy settings, G+ keeps things straightforward. Still, there are […]
Continue ReadingI was lucky enough to land an invite to Google+ right away, thanks to fellow GeekMom Jules, and within minutes of my first exploration of Google’s new social networking platform, I was completely smitten. For me, Google+ combines the best things about Twitter and Facebook, and offers more besides. (Jules gave us a great post […]
Continue ReadingMy kids and I spent the morning on board our ship, the research vessel Caroline, trying to find our way around the waters of The Floating City. I’m the skipper, Captain Bee Whillikers, and I totally don’t know what I’m doing–but I’m having fun. The Floating City is the brainchild of Thomas Dolby–that’s right, the […]
Continue ReadingAt heart, I’m really kind of a lazy mother. If I have to go to a lot of trouble to set up a fun activity, I’m apt to find a million excuses for putting it off until tomorrow. But that tendency conflicts with my desire to be a mom who says yes, a mom who […]
Continue ReadingI actually gasped when I saw the words onscreen. Pottermore. Coming soon… The Guardian reports that J. K. Rowling has launched a “mysterious new website” called Pottermore.com: No other details about the new project have yet been revealed, but an editor at the fansite HPANA said they had seen a “sneak preview” of Pottermore “and […]
Continue ReadingI read something scary on Twitter the other day: words so alarming they actually made me gasp. Only six weeks until SDCC! Six weeks until San Diego Comic-Con?! It hardly seems possible! And yet it’s true. Actually, since that tweet was several days ago, there are less than six weeks until the biggest event of […]
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