Fan of Newsies? Fan of picture books? Fan of biographies?

Fan of Newsies, picture books, AND biographies?

Check this out.

This is actually a pretty good book about the actual events (not the Disneyfied version of history) of the strike. Among other things, the hero is Kid Blink, who actually was a leader in real life... unlike in the movie where the leaders are all the pretty guys and Blink is a very minor background figure. (Fan of fixing the erasure of disabled people in history?)

Don Brown (not who you're thinking!) has rapidly become one of my new favorite picture book authors because of his biographies, and this one is no failure. You really should check out a copy.

Today at dinner we were playing "find words with the FFF sound"

Theoretically, if we do stuff like this enough we'll improve Evangeline's phonemic awareness.

Eva said phone.
I said fish.
Ana said foam.

Eva said (after thought and some prompting) firetruck.
I said frog.
Ana said fire.

Evangeline needed some help, so I suggested "something you shouldn't do... fff... f..." and I pretended like I was about to punch her, angling for "fight" of course.

Evangeline: Fuck?

This is where I died.

Evangeline: No, no - punch!

Ana: No, fuck starts with an f. I think she meant fight. Yeah, fight!

Me: *still dead*

Once I recovered, I reminded Evangeline that she's not supposed to say fuck, and so that therefore I would never try to direct her to that word. Ana asked why, so I explained that we don't say "fuck" because it's an impolite way of talking about having sex.

Ana: Wait - it is? I thought it was just something you said when you were angry! Like, today when you sent me for the paper towels, I said "I don't CARE about the fucking paper towels!"

Ana was also reminded she's not supposed to use that word, of course. *headdesk*

And yes, I explained that since sex deals with private parts, words used to describe it are often considered impolite because it shouldn't come up in public anyway. But it's also, Ana, a word you say when you're angry... mostly because you're not supposed to be saying it anyway. This explanation, surprisingly, seems to have made perfect sense to her.