Cute and Creepy Critters for Halloween

Here is a cute little treasure I came across last week.

A friend of mine, who knows I love to crochet, found this at the library and brought it over to show me. Creepy Cute Crochet by Christian Haden has got some of the most adorable creepy critters to make for Halloween. All of the creatures have the same basic pattern to follow for the head and body, and then there are lots of embellishments and accessories to make or add to your creation. My three favorite creatures are the skeleton bride and groom, and the corporate zombie. So, if you have a knack and/or passion for crochet, this is a great little book to add to your pattern collection.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is such an amazing book! I could not put it down, and when I HAD to put it down, I kept thinking about it nonstop. Whenever my husband called me from work, I would always start telling him about what I had just read. Such a powerful book that stays with you for a long, long time.

The Help is about white women in Jackson, Mississippi, and the black women who work for them. It takes place during the civil rights movement in the 1960's, and tells of one woman's efforts to show society what life is really like for a black woman working in a white woman's home. She works very hard at befriending the maids in her friends' homes, and getting them to trust her enough to share their experiences with her.

Stockett does such a wonderful job at showing this topic from all angles and perspectives. She does this by frequently changing narrators throughout the book, so we can hear from several main characters and take in all of their memories and experiences at once.

Stockett gently and carefully explores the themes in her book, showing not only the ugliness and inhumanity of segregation, but also the love and tenderness many of these women felt for each other, regardless of race, age, or background.

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What is Gibbee?

Remember that book you read in school that changed your life? You vowed that a copy of that book would be on your bookshelf until the day you died.
How about that copy of a book all your friends passed around, and when you finally got to read it, you lied and said you lost the book, just so you could keep it - it was that good!.
Or the book that just spoke to you like nothing else ever did. As you read, you swore the author had found a way to read minds, because it described you better than you could.

This is Gibbee.

Books have such a profound impact in our lives — in the way we think, how we look at other people, where we choose to go in our careers and relationships, what social causes we get involved in. Books add depth and color to our lives. They broaden our understanding, our feelings, our curiosity, our passions.

This is Gibbee.

You can't find Gibbee in just any book. It has to speak to you. It has to move you. It has to permeate your thoughts. Gibbee won't be the same for everyone, and it will change with age and experience. When I was a young girl, Gibbee was Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes. I loved the suspense. I loved the logic. I learned it was ok to admit you were smart — in fact, it was very cool! As a young adult, I found Gibbee in The Tiny One by Eliza Minot. It was amazing to see how her writing style, linking memories and experiences together one after another, was the way I thought about memories and experiences. It was as if, given the chance, she could write down my thoughts as they came to me. As I grow older, I find Gibbee in new books and genre that I wouldn't have ever considered reading before. I relate to things differently, I think about things differently, and it's so exciting to find Gibbee in places I never thought it would be.

What is your Gibbee?