Post TLA Reading

At TLA I was finally shamed into rejoining my awesome co-workers on Oops! I am thrilled to be back! TLA as always was awesome and as usual inspired me to get it together. But first, a shout out to the lovely Delacorte Dames and Dude group for making me look good moderating their panel! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Ok so post TLA readings. Jenn H. got all of the good stuff on the exhibits floor this year and I stole this one out of the bag she left in Nichole's car.

Little Blog on the Prairie by Cathleen Davitt Bell

This one's for all the girls who LOVED Little House on the Prairie growing up. Which definitely included me!

And Gen's mom. Gen is 13 and her mom has the whacked out idea to sign her family up for 2 months of 1890's frontier camp living. The only way she convinces Gen to go is to show her the cell phone she will get as a reward when they come back from camp. Tricky, tricky mom. Gen can't help herself and sneaks her new cell phone into camp where she secretly texts her friends back home. They turn her texts into a blog, Little Hell on the Prairie.

And a little hell it is too! On the first day Gen accidentally pees on her bloomers because she can't really figure them out in the completely dark, disgusting outhouse! She has to sleep in the same bed as her 10 year old brother! In the same tiny loft as her parents! This vacation from hell brings a whole new meaning to family togetherness!

Gen's blogs and her descriptions of farm life for the modernly clueless are hilarious! Her previously Martha Stewart-esque cooking mother can now only make beans and grits. And that's all they eat for weeks! But of course there are lots of fun parts too - there are other families at the camp; kids get into mischief, not everyone is obeying the rules, and did I mention a potential love interest?

This book book has everything I love in a chick littie novel - heart, humor, and other people's suffering. 4 1/2 stars. It comes out from Bloomsbury in May.