I'm waiting....

to get over my latest Harry Potter phase. I always get thoroughly Pottered when major disruptions, like moving, occur. I don't know why this is.

I'm mildly obsessed with Slughorn, and I'm quite eager to see what Rowling does with him in the final book. I've chosen Luna Lovegood as my in-book counterpart (well, I did that ages ago - she's the character I most identify with).

I've re-read Half-Blood Prince twice in a week, and I - like every other person on earth - am wondering about Snape. What strikes me on these read-throughs is Snape's insistence - repeated insistence - that Harry not call him a coward. To me, this gives me a smidge of evidence that Snape is really on "our" side after all, that perhaps he is doing something desperately brave but must be misread as cowardly by everyone.

*** Aside from Pottering, I've been giving loads of brain-time to my Lilo & Stitch paper (unwritten, but in mind for years now). I'm seriously contemplating writing up a proposal and sending it off to the modern critical approaches conference (Middle Tennessee State, sponsor). UC Knoepflmacher is keynote speaker, and it would be fantastic to see him. I'd REALLY like to get another conference paper under my belt (so to speak) in the next year or so. and I'd like to hit the ChLA conference next summer as well, even if I don't present. Perhaps I'll be able to wrangle a bit of cash to get to that...Norfolk isn't THAT far from Pittsburgh, especially since I have friends in the DC area with whom I could stay to break it up.

Over on child_lit, a conversation about child prodigies has erupted, with some attention going to a person called Adora. Because I am largely out of the mainstream-media loop, I hadn't heard of her before, and after viewing this website, I feel both ill and angered.

I HATE trick children. Hate them. Not them, so much as the adults around them who put them on display. I haven't read any of this girl's writing, but I'm willing to accept that she has some talent, maybe even a lot of it. But her website is written in the third-person "Precocious and curious Adora!" who loves to help. Contact her for free editing! for advice on how to teach (THIS i have real issues with, for a variety of reasons). It sounds more like a product is being shilled, than a girl is being praised.

Her name is alarming, too; even a totally uninspiring, mediocre child named Adora would bring on my gag reflexes, but a child meant to be admired and - yes - adored for her precocity being named Adora? Ugh.

Okay. I just listened/watched a snippet of some morning show reading Adora's work, and I'm unimpressed. all her characters "said" their dialogue, but the presenters were just as awful and patronizing.

Adora's main skill seems to be typing fast - 60 words a minute!- and we "watch her go" on national tv.

exploited kid....I wonder what the scoop on her parents is?