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Chris Pratt was my favourite. He is a great actor, and I loved the way he treated his raptors like dogs. That was kinda cute. I also liked that it was a little less gory than the originals. I'm all for survival movies, but I don't like watching people get chomped in two. I prefer not to see the actual blood spurt, 'cause that's nasty. I like to let my imagination "realize" what just happened. That's just me.

Owen Grady

I also liked the younger brother, Gray. (That could also be because he was in Iron Man 3, and I quite liked his character of Harley.) The older brother, Zach, grew on me a bit, but I never fully warmed up to Claire. She was a bit too "business" for my taste, and though she ended up being a bit more spunky at the end, she never really grew out of the business enough for me to find a good connection with her character.

Claire, Owen, Zach, Gray

 
I really appreciated the occasional "nod" to the originals, such as when the two boys stumble into what I'm positive was the original HQ in Jurassic Park, or when the funny-weird computer guy with the glasses wears his Jurassic Park t-shirt he bought on eBay because dude, they had the real thing. That Mr. DNA thingy. (As an aside, I'll just say it was weird for me to find out later how different Vincent D'Onofrio, who plays Vic Hoskins in Jurassic World, looks with hair.  He plays Wilson Fisk in Daredevil, and he looks quite different.  Observe.)

Watching Jurassic World, I decided I have no problem with the herbivore dinosaurs. I admit, it would be pretty cool to have a park where you can see brontosaurus (brontasauri?) roaming around and minding their own business.  I don't understand this fascination with the Tyrannosaurus Rex, or velociraptors, or any big creature like that who would eat you as soon as look at you. Why would you WANT to have a beast that size come back to life?

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Though, I guess I'm not being fair. After all, I rather like dragons, and what are dragons but the fantasy version of dinosaurs?

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It gives a fascinating account of the flood and how the world is the way it is today. I'm using it because I have an idea brewing for a novel that might involve a crisis like this, as well as pyramids, haunted areas around the world and the Bermuda triangle. Mostly I'm reading IN THE BEGINNING because it's just really interesting how the world "started over" after such a major catastrophe, and how the earth reformed after the flood waters had settled. I'm researching pyramids and haunted areas because the story that I have out on submission to an agent (while it is a stand-alone novel) does have the potential for companion novels to be written about worlds within its world... if that made sense. So this new story idea I have brewing would be a companion novel. (Besides, I needed a reason to write about pyramids. And nightmares. Yes, somehow the two will be interconnected. BOOM!)

I finished Jonathan Stroud's two new(ish) books of LOCKWOOD & CO, titled respectively The Screaming Staircase and The Whispering Skull.  Oh my goodness, I LOVED them. They were a little bit creepy (think Supernatural creepy, without so much gore) and just as funny and unique as his Bartimaeus books. It's about agents who are hired to rid houses of ghosts, and as only children can see the various types of ghosts, the agents tend to be in their teens. Rapiers may or may not be involved. I *believe* the third book in the series is coming out in September, titled The Hollow Boy. My only comment to that is GIMMME!

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That's all for today, except that my singing final was yesterday and I feel like I scored really well on both songs. (I sang both FLARES by The Script and L' ULTIMA NOTTE by Josh Groban.) So, yay on that!

Now if I would just get my new harp string in the mail so I can fix my harp and start re-teaching myself how to play... Guys, I need a bigger house.


Tra la la! That's all for today!

God bless!

I don't know why I remind people of cats, but I do. We'rd.

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I am one of the teachers for our 6-8th grade Sunday School class. I love those kiddos and all the questions they ask. They make me think. Today, we discussed the fact that Abram was told by God to leave his country, and to leave his father’s family. God said He would lead Abram to…

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A little bit later than expected but we have a winner for last month’s competition “Where’s Anthony?”. The correct answer was of course, the pyramids in Egypt.

The first correct answer came from Sophie in Essex, UK. Congratulations Sophie, your prize is on it’s way!

Anthony was in Egypt on a research trip for the next Power of Five book. Keep watching this space for a new blog from Anthony coming very soon!

 

 

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The Trailblazing Life of Daniel Boone: and how early Americans took to the road, painstakinglyl written and illustrated by Cheryl Harness, National Geographic Society, 2007

For folks a certain age, there is a fair amount of confusion between Daniel Boone and another American iconn, Davy Crockett, due to the late 1960s television program about Boone which starred Fess Parker (a.k.a. Davy Crockett. ) The TV folks clapped a coonskin cap on Daniel (no doubt trying to tie-in to the success of Parker's earlier series) and forever melded the two men in the mind of a generation.

Harness takes-on that issue early in the book by describing Boone's headgear.

...some frontier folks like the look of a jaunty striped tail, dangling from the back of a "coonskin" cap, but not Daniel. He generally wore a wide-brimmed felt hat.

She includes a full page illustration of Daniel with his gear, powder horn, tomahawk, buckskins britches, leggins etc. all clearly labeled. Life on the Kentucky and Missouri frontier is richly described with its need for self-reliance, the brutal Indian wars, hunting and trapping, pelt theft, and land disputes . Daniel and his family scratched out a living on the outposts of civilization and held on to that life tenaciously. At one point the Shawnee kidnapped Boone and held him so long that his wife Rebecca thought he was dead.

The fragility of human life in the wilderness is underscored by a poignant story of Daniel's brother in law, John Stewart who disappeared while hunting. His body was found years later only identifiable by his powder horn carved with the initials J.S.

I enjoy the style of Cheryl Harness's books. She provides a very high rate of information per square inch through her use of engaging artwork and text. A timeline of world events runs across the bottom of each page. I loved knowing that while Daniel was trapping for pelts in the wild, Handel was composing "Music for the Royal Fireworks." There is also an excellent list of resources, other reading, "places well worth visiting" and an index. Harness also describes the process she uses to create the pen and ink pictures through out the book.

Daniel Boone's life is the stuff of legends and this book tells his story in the context of the times with depth and detail.

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