week 9 storytime video: The Forgiving Prince

The Forgiving Prince from Jonathan Michael on Vimeo.

(no need to add a code, just hit ENTER and it'll play)

visit the The Jesus Storybook Bible site to learn more
buy the book: here
download audio on  or amazon

Dicken's Christmas Carol: the marked up manscript

Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in just 6 weeks to raise much-needed cash in September 1843.

Printing the manuscript was a Christmas rush job, so there wasn't enough time for Dickens to make a clean manuscript copy. As a result, the copy that went to print is heavily marked up and extremely difficult to read. It has all of Dickens’s additions and subtractions in his own hand.

The manuscript is housed in the Morgan Library. And every year they turn the page so you can look at the next spread. This year, for the first time, all 66 pages are available online. (So you won't have to wait 64 years to see the entire book.)













The watercolor of the Ghost of Christmas Present, above left, had to be redone because the spirit was supposed to be wearing green, not red.

Here's just two of the changes he made to the text (so brilliant!):

On page 3, he inserts “his eyes sparkled” to amplify the portrait of Scrooge’s nephew, whose beneficence is crucial to the plot.

On page 12, where Scrooge takes Marley’s ghost to be evidence not of the supernatural, but of his own indigestion, (“more of gravy than of grave,”) he converts the offending bit of food from being a “spot of mustard” to a less digestible “blot of mustard.” (Genius!)

Read more here.

Listen to an interview here.

He's Here - a Christmas story

Here's a Christmas video to share... (if you want to rate it with lots of stars on YouTube and give it fabulous reviews, of course do feel free! I won't mind.)

Posted via web from slj's stuff

week 8 storytime video: The girl no one wanted

The Girl No One Wanted from Jonathan Michael on Vimeo.

(no need to add a code, just hit ENTER and it'll play)

visit the The Jesus Storybook Bible site to learn more
buy the book: here
download audio on  or amazon

bad weather

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

-John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)

IN OTHER NEWS:

The Ultimate Guide To Grandmas and Grandpas has won the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Best Book Award 2009. So maybe now's the time if you have anyone tiny in your family... to get hold of this invaluable handbook on how to look after your grandparents (in case you didn't know you actually need to dance for them, kiss them, hold their hands, let them eat your ice cream, and other lovely things like that...)

More here.

Christoph Niemann

Christoph Niemann in Abstract City in The New York Times has a great piece on Bio-Diversity... sound a bit dull? No it's not. It's very funny. For example (to get you started):

(Niemann is the author of two children's books and many of his illustrations have appeared in NYT, New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly and basically a genius.)

More here.

week 7 storytime (ANIMATED) video: The Present

The Present from Jonathan Michael on Vimeo.
(no need to add a code, just hit ENTER and it'll play)

visit the The Jesus Storybook Bible site to learn more

buy the book: here

download audio on  or amazon

David Suchet Interview: School Days

The Daily Mail Online in the UK did an interesting article about David (whom we were lucky enough to get to read the complete audio of The Jesus Storybook Bible). Some of it is pretty Dickensian. The maths teacher: I think I had the same one...

Read more: here.

School days: David Suchet, bottom left, with members of the Wellington School tennis team

IN OTHER NEWS: to anyone in the UK, the deluxe edition is available on amazon! (It was originally wrongly listed as the "deluze" edition which made it sound like the lounge singer version) You can find it here.

Dreams That Come True

in case you were worrying about something or dreaming about something and thinking you could never in a million years... here's an incredible story from Nicholas Kristoff in the New York Times about a poor uneducated woman in Zimbabwe and how she set about her dream...

More here.

week 6 storytime video: Son of Laughter

(NOTE these are ANIMATED versions of the book with the audio
recording from David Suchet. They are extra wonderful and you are the first to see it and they come courtesy of the fabulous Jonathan Michael at Zondervan.)

Son of Laughter from Jonathan Michael on Vimeo.

(no need for a code, you can just hit ENTER and it'll play)

visit the The Jesus Storybook Bible site to learn more
buy the book: here
download audio on  or amazon

THIS JUST IN...

Japanese Edition released... and hits #1 in 1st week! Link here.

(Thanks to Asako Hirohashi who did the translation!)

lovely scrumpdildlyumptious Englishness

from my fab friend (and fellow Brit) Josie, comes super delicious extra English things: home-made marmalade, chutneys, and more. If you get your order in you can get some for Christmas!

Here's how it began:

"It was November 2007, and the pressure was on. My husband was between jobs, bills were mounting, and it seemed my two young children would be staring at an empty tree for Christmas. That’s when a good friend suggested I turn my passion for food into something more..."

She sent out an email and hoped to sell a few dozen jars so she could buy presents for her children. She ended up making nearly 500 jars. And two years later and she has a new site, a professional commercial kitchen and Josie's English Kitchen.

Cool eh? Find out more here.

week 5 storytime video: A Giant Staircase to Heaven

A Staircase to Heaven from Jonathan Michael on Vimeo.

(no need to add a code, just hit ENTER and it'll play)

visit the The Jesus Storybook Bible site to learn more
buy the book: here
download audio on  or amazon

happy birthday sesame street: 40 today!

laser art

Section of Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, captured in minute detail with laser scanners

This new cutting edge laser technology (from the Glasgow School of Art) is helping preserve and conjure up what buildings actually looked like ages ago, in effect turning the clock back on ancient sites.

As well as being a kind of time travel, it turns out to be an art form. I love that it also happens to be utterly beautiful.

More here