Saint Michael’s Fundraising Event This Weekend! Five Fab Finds!

Saint Michael’s Parish will host a fundraising rummage sale this Saturday, April 3, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Father Kahl Liberius says he expects a great turnout, insofar the weather cooperates, because parishioners have cleaned out the deepest, dankest corners of the church basement and scoured the building from altar to vestry all in the name of Saint Zita, patroness of housekeepers (“and this weekend, spring cleaning,” adds lay leader Wayne Spiggot).

All money raised stays with the church to help with operating costs and summer youth activities.  The church invites everyone from the community to come to the church and checkout some of the amazing items on sale, both donated by members of the congregation and those found in the church basement.  What great finds did parishioners find?  Here are five guaranteed to be popular!

Hitting the Roof: 7 Ceilings as Seen by Johnny Dixon

Professor Childermass has often told Johnny Dixon to keep his chin up.  But when Johnny does, what does he see?  There is not always a lot to examine but whatever it is can often be better than nothing!

What seven ceilings has Johnny examined?

Killer Robot Eyes, Ranked

The Eyes of the Killer Robot (1986) turns thirty this year. In this tale, we learn that an insane inventor, Evaristus Sloane, created a fiendish, baseball-pitching robot in the early years of the 20th Century.

Professor Childermass, Johnny Dixon, and Byron "Fergie" Ferguson travel to Stark Corners, New Hampshire, and find the 50-year-old machine in pieces. Packing the contraption into the prof's car, the three re-assemble the man-shaped machine at a party back in Duston Heights.

Here are the two glass eyes of the robot, ranked.

Proof Reading: 6 Misspelling of "Sorcerer's Skull"

John Bellairs wrote books and humor articles, Brad Strickland has written books, radio plays, poetry, and more - and they've all misspelled their fare share of words.

What title has seen the most misspellings? We'd wager The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull (1984). Here are six ways other people have written the title over the years.

7 Foods Cooked Up By Professor Childermass

We all know that after a long day teaching history at Haggstrum College that Roderick Childermass drops the “professor” bit once he arrives home and instead plays the part of a chef, whipping up ooey-gooey greats such as sacher tortes and black forest cake.

Who hasn’t been a just a little bit jealous of his friends when you read about the items they get to try - and apparently quite often, too?

So what seven delicious foods will the prof cook up next?

Answers Blowing in the Wind

I was on the mend a week or so ago from a dog bite when a flood of questions entered the mind. Would I have to get a tetanus shot? Would the dog have to get a tetanus shot? Should I have bit back? Why are idioms called idioms and not, say, qualinyms? The amount of questions reminded me, when I found my pending posts file at the Bellairsia office, that I have been meaning to post a few words about questions and answers as a way to address those pointless websites where people ask questions that they couldn't manage to find answers to themselves.

Shall I Not Lie In Publishing A Truth?

There’s been a post or two on this blog about artwork and continuity: how people like to collect only the Edward Gorey hardcovers, how Bart Goldman reintroduced Lewis Barnavelt in the 1990s for the new books in that series, and even how contemporary e-book editions all have a uniform look even if they all are something you wipe your hands on.

Alternate Histories in Children’s Literature

An email appeared late last week regarding an entry at the Academic Call For Paper Database seeking scholarly papers on the subject of alternate history in the children’s literature genre:

Historical fiction as a genre within children’s and young adult literature has been traditionally viewed by some as unpopular. Alternate History is fiction where something has changed in the historical timeline: take a known and tweak it. The resulting story can be about that change or the backdrop for a story, where the “what if” is less about the Changed World Event and more how that Changed World Event changed the world, people, culture and their points of view. It can also be great fun for the person who is familiar with the history, to find references to famous people, places, and things that are now just a bit different.

Bibliofile: Lewis Barnavelt Series

We recently came across a rather unique set of covers for the 12-book Lewis Barnavelt series. We’re not really sure the publisher or the format (for all we know these could be another slew of e-books...hooray) except they’re void of a lot of clutter. It’s a weird color scheme: titles labeled in light black on a dark black background with some sort of light black colored pictorial representation of something from the book. It’s sort of nice to see these – more so, to know they exist. After years of pen-and-ink hash marks and ornate color paintings, these simplistic two-tone covers are a refreshing back-to-basics approach that is both cute and clever.

Ouch. We said cute. Sorry 'bout that. Anyway...