Splashing into Summer Reading 2016: Girl Underwater, by Claire Kells

Girl Underwater

Claire Kells

Dutton: New York, 2015

ISBN: 9780525954934

OH HELLO MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND.  Finally, you have arrived. Finally, it is nearly the summer.  Finally, I can soon get away with athletic wear tuxedos and/or no pants on the reg, eating two pints of blueberries for dinner and regretting nothing (except…), and finding new and creative ways to apply sunscreen to my own back.  But enough about me.  Because it is now officially white pants season, I think it is high time to start your summer reading assignments.  And because the Olympics are coming, I gift you a sports book. Sort of. Not really. Whatever. Pipe down. Behold: the first title on your 2016 Summer Reading List: Girl Underwater.

Tidbits: Olympictures and other such bookish things

I'm going radio silent (unless Finnick is cast or Dumbledore comes out of the closet again) for about the next week, as I will be frolicking through the rolling hills of North Carolina, like our girl Katniss (except I will not be playing Fight Club for kids - just eating a lot of popsicles).  So until then, keep yourself busy with some of these links:

Make this a poster already, J.K. Rowling!

• Why isn't this a poster already? I want it every Harry Potter chapter illustration on my wall, yesterday.  I'm totally serious, I would spend money on this, J.K. Rowling.   You know, in case your children need another very expensive tree house (that I would like to live in as a real house). 

• Don't let Mo Willems drive the bus, ever stop writing fantastic children's books, or ever stop sharing his adorable fan mail with the Internets.  EVER.  

• The dames over at ForeverYA have created a Code Name Verity inspired cocktail.  I think James Bond would approve.

• Do you like to read, and find yourself in need of a bathing suit? These two seemingly unrelated interests, can, in fact, pair well.  Best website of the summer contender. 

• Today, I tuned into the Olympics at just the wrong moment, causing my jaw to drop like a gymnastic judges when, during the USA v. China women's volleyball announcer shouted "Destinee Hooker was stuffed out of the middle!"  I mean...I am a boy of fourteen trapped in the body of an adult woman.  There was no way this would ever fly under my radar.  And then someone sent me this link, to the best best names of 2012 Olympians (totally some Cases of the Terribles amongst them).  Some I think are a stretch, but I am delighting in numbers 10 and 16. 

• After seven or so misguided years spent playing girls basketball in my youth, I was delighted that the BBC Olympic body match quiz would finally prove to my parents what all 5'2" of me has known for years: I was not a basketball player.  I was pleasantly unsurprised to be assigned a category I'd long suspected: gymnastics.  And then, mid fist bump, I realized it was...men's gymnastics.  Yep. 
   
• If you are in London, and are one of the many people blowing up my feeds with spoilerz of Olympic proportions, I think you owe it to both of us to go and visit this maze of books while you take a time out from the spoiling.  Additionally, not a chance I wouldn't accidentally knock it over.  None.