Book Review: The Composer is Dead

The Composer is Dead by Lemony Snicket (with music by Nathaniel Stookey)

This is a fabulously fun book to introduce children to the orchestra.  Written with Lemony's famously wry style, it made the Spozo and I laugh out loud a couple times as we listened to it (which you really should do as it is read by Mr. Snicket himself and the music makes it much more fun).  The basic premise (as you might have surmised) is that the composer is dead and the Inspector must figure out who in the orchestra has committed this heinous crime.  The music is modern Berlioz-ish sounding for much of it, but plays with some other styles too as they introduce the different instruments.

Two of my favorite parts are:

(One, from the very beginning of the book) "'Composer' is a word which here means 'a person who sits in a room, muttering and humming and figuring out what notes the orchestra is going to play.'  This is called composing.  But last night, the Composer was not muttering.  He was not humming.  He was not moving, or even breathing.  This is called decomposing."

(Two, just a couple more pages in) "The violin section is divided into the First Violins, who have the trickier parts to play, and the Second Violins, who are more fun at parties."

The illustrations are also delightful.  I highly recommend this book!  (And thanks to Roni and Romgi for the awesome Christmas present!)
~

Catch-Up is Impossible

But very necessary.  Roni, this post is for you!  =)

You'd think from looking at this blog that the poor Boo is still a tiny baby.  But she's not!  She's a very inquisitive almost-2-year-old.  She likes to do knock-knock jokes.  Sample:
Boo: Knock Knock!
Me: Who's there?
Boo: Orange!
Me: Orange who?
Boo: wild laughter
She is trying out sentences.  One of my favorites is "I love you!"  Most of them begin with "I want" like, "I want breakfast!" (Which sounds more like,  "I-wan feh-feshhhhhh")  Another favorite (of mine and hers) is, "Audrey push!"  (To which I usually reply, "And you pushed Audrey!")  Some more favorites:  her favorite letter is W; her favorite colors are pink and red; her favorite shape is a heart.  She loves birthday cakes and calls them "Happy!"  For her birthday, she wants a heart-shaped birthday cake that is pink and red and wants to blow out the candles.  She calls my iPhone "Babies" and can navigate to where she wants better than I can sometimes!  All things animal are still fascinating to her, but her especial love right now is for birds.  She still loves baby dolls, but now wants to feed them or change their diapers with wipes.  Lots of wipes.  Maybe because they begin with a W?  Who knows?  What we do know is that she is still adorable and smiley and sweet.

The Sita has also grown.  She wanted her hair cut short.  Now it is short.  She has so much of it that I think she is glad to not have so much of it making her hot all the time.  I do miss her beautiful locks although she looks adorable with her new do.  She has a constant little chatter of storytelling going on which can be very entertaining.  Her favorite song is I Love to See the Temple (although she did let me sing He Sent His Son instead when I put her to bed last night).  She is an awesome Big Sister most of the time and invents new things to do with Boo all the time.  Most of the time they play babies but the other day they were playing in a storage container like it was the funniest thing they had come up with yet.  The Sita still wants her "snuggles" every morning and loves to eat more berries than are good for her.  She and I have been reading the Little House series together and are now on These Happy Golden Years.  Reading ahead of where we are is one of her guilty pleasures.  We still find her distractingly beautiful.

The Dude is almost grown up!  Well, not really, but it sure seems that way.  He is still the same old Dude in many ways, but has picked up a few new interests recently.  He is into Origami spending hours folding water bombs and airplanes and flowers and swans and hearts.  The Legends of the Guardians series (books about owls and their society) have captured his imagination and he has read most of the 15 books (the ones he hasn't read are ones he didn't get for his birthday or Christmas).  His violin playing is getting better and better!  Right now he's practicing the Hunter's Chorus and having fun with the bowing.  Probably the thing he is most proud of is that he is really good at "skinnies" (apparently a very technical term regarding handball on his school playground).  He is also learning a bit of Korean because most of his friends at school are from Korea and learning English.  Second grade has really helped his writing take off and now our house is covered in all sorts of advisory notices - like this one found on his room:
(spelling, grammar and punctuation replicated as faithfully as possible)

1. warning! you Must be exactly 4 or 6 or 7 to entr the secret bed or (club) as we call it! no, that is Not our only place we use (we also use the passege way to mom and dad's room) and we will still make more.

and an excerpt from another:

you have to be able to solve this problum 900+970
(no students so far because noone has applyed) (we love highlights) our job is to read them) reffering to (we love highlights)(highlights is shortened to them)

I am so glad that these little preciouses are mine, mine, mine!