More on Summer Reading

I flipped through "The Dangerous Book for Boys" yesterday. I was most interested in the lists and short essays, though I think my kids will enjoy the instructional pages on knots, etc. My brother was pretty excited that I got the book. He had been thinking about getting it himself. Definitely a book for short attention spans or for reading in places that are loud or filled with other distractions.

Harry Potter mania is beginning in our house. My ten year old is reading his second Potter of the summer, "Order of the Phoenix." Reading has not ever been a chore for him, but I can't recall a time that he has read as voraciously as he is this summer. He was up pretty late last night and then scared himself. Oh, to be ten again.

Our five year old was making some pretty interesting comparisons yesterday between Dobby in the Harry Potter books, and Yoda from Star Wars. He said they were both small and green and they both used the force! I have to say, I was pretty impressed. I hope that he keeps all this up in the fall in Kindergarten.

I haven't had my untrained political commentary of the week yet. You probably heard that a Chinese official in the equivalent of the FDA was executed this week. He was convicted (?) of taking bribes and then allowing substandard or fake products into the Chinese market. Ten people died as a result of taking some bad antibiotics. I'm sure that this was done mainly for show, in order to regain US confidence in Chinese products. Recently there have been reports of poisonous toothpaste, dog food, kid's jewelry with excess amounts of lead, bad tires and fish with dangerous additives. Yikes! I don't easily scare, but this does frighten me just a bit. How do we know that our imports are safe? There are some safety measures in place to ensure imported food is safe, but not all imports are tested. (See the FDA website for details http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/import.html ). The obvious way to stay completely safe is to never use imported products but this is ludicrous. I doubt there is a single person in this country who would be able to successfully avoid all imports, especially since some items aren't labeled as imports, IE some seafood. The only thing to so is stay informed.

Time to antagonize the children! Have a lovely day!