Monday Morning Miscellany v. 4

 Here's the latest version of  Monday Morning Miscellany. I hope you find some news you can use.

• If you haven't heard already, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel will be out on November 13, 2012.  Get all the details on the Diary of a Wimpy Kid site.  Dog Days, the movie, will be out on August 3.  Jeff Kinney's website answered my earlier question - Why is the 3rd movie titled after the 4th book?  Apparently, the movie is a mashup of The Last Straw and Dog Days. Mystery solved. Enjoy!

• The best news of my day?  Catherynne Valente has penned a new Fairyland book: The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There.  I have not see it as I write this post on Sunday, but rumor has it that The Book Rat will post the book's trailer on August 30.   I'll be checking that out for sure! The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making was my favorite book of 2011.  It's going to be hard to wait until October, for this one! 

• Don't have time to check all of your favorite blogs every day? Have you tried the Carnival of Children's Literature?  Bloggers are invited to contribute their best or favorite kidlit-related post of the month. The July Carnival of Children's Literature is available now. Anastasia Suen of Booktalking is the host. 

• It's Nonfiction Monday again. Today's host is Check it Out.  If you're a regular reader or contributor, please note the new Nonfiction Monday "about" page.  It appears that Anastasia, our roundup coordinator, has finally found a place of her own on the Internet.  Best wishes with your new site, Anastasia!   Next week's Nonfiction Monday roundup will be here!  Please join me.

Shakespeare by the Sea

•  Last night I enjoyed a small-scale production of Shakespeare's "A Comedy of Errors," in a lovely nearby park.  The performance was preceded by a short lecture in which I learned the following: Although the average modern speaker of English has a vocabulary of approximately 7,500 words, in the time of Shakespeare, the average vocabulary was a mere 500 words!  (My husband, a man of few words, noted that he could probably get by with only 500. I believe him.)  Shakespeare, on the other hand, found it limiting.  So much so, that he added approximately 2,000 words to the English language.  Fascinating! 

And one final tidbit of "noteworthy" news ...

• In what may be the first and last instance of its kind, my daughter loved her required summer reading book, Nathaniel Philbrick's, National Book Award winner, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.   Personally, I can offer no greater accolade. Read a chapter from In the Heart of the Sea here.

Have a great week!