Jiu cai he zi

- Half bundle of green chives
- 3 eggs
- spring roll wraps
- mung bean noodle
- salt, sesame oil, vegetable oil

Stir fried eggs (a bit more oil and longer cooking time will taste better)
Mix diced chives, noodle and eggs
Seasoned with salt, sesame oil, soy sauce, MSG (optional), Chinese pepper oil
Wrap in spring roll wraps

Medium heat, some oil, fried 2 minutes, turn over, fried 1 minute, cover with a pot lid, fried two more minutes.

*Cook immediately after wrapping.

The Everything Guide to Writing Children's Books

by Lesley Bolton

1. History
- A Book for Boys and Girls; Country Rhymes for Children (1686), by John Bunyan
- A Little Pretty Pocket Book (1744), by John Newbery.
- The Newbery Medal was established in 1921 by ALA.
- Macmillan opened the first department solely for trade children's book in 1921.

2. Types of Children's Books
- Standard categories: fiction, nonfiction, faction.
- Picture books:
  • -- most structured: 24-32 pages, 200-1500 words.
  • -- every page (including 1st) should contain action (capture kid's interest, and leave for illustration)
  • -- cliffhangers to motivate kids to turn the page
  • -- types of picture books: board books, wordless books, novelty books (pop-ups, pull tabs, graduated page lengths, holes, accessories), concept books.
- Early readers
  • -- for children who are learn to read
  • -- 48-64 pages, word count up to 1500 words
  • -- some publishers have vocabulary lists
  • -- simple text with occasional big words, simple sentence structure, and simple plot
  • -- use actions, dialogues, and rich language to keep it moving
- Chapter books
  • -- 48-80 pages, word count between 1500 and 10000.
  • -- simple plot with focus on one specific concept or problem
  • -- familiar experience, recognizable setting, with a child as hero/heroine
  • -- full of action, humor, dialogues.
- Middle grade books
  • -- for independent reader, 80-192 pages, word count between 12000 and 30000.
  • -- most popular form: series
  • -- conflict driven plot, main character is someone a child can related to and the problem solver.
  • -- relay the story from only one child's perspective
- Young adult books

3. Education Resources
- Writer's groups (local)
- Courses (e.g. The Institute of Children's Literature)
- Organizations:
- Seminars and Workshops

4. Research the Market
- Types of Market
  • -- Trade market (bookstores; hardcover, high price, high quality)
  • -- Mass market (grocery, newsstand etc.; paperback, low price, low quality)
  • -- Institutional market (textbooks)
  • -- Electronic market
- Trade magazines
- Newsletters
- Writer's Magazines
- Children's magazines

5. Illustrations
- Do not submit writings with illustrations (by other artists), publishers will find illustrators.

6. Find a Publisher
- Traditional (The Children's Writer & Illustrator's Market; Literary Market Place; The Children's Book Council)
- Subsidy (not recommended)
- Self-publishing (The Self-Publishing Manual, by Dan Poynter)

7. Agents
- Association of Authors' Representatives
- Literary Market Place
- Writer's Digest Guide to Literary Agents
- Agent Research & Evaluation

8. Compensations
- Flat fee (work-for-hire, turn over all rights)
- Royalties
  • -- advance (earn back the advance before collecting royalties)
  • -- royalty (equally divided between author and illustrator; can be on list price or net price)

9. Grants and Awards
- writers' organizations
- Finding Funding: The Comprehensive Guide to Grant Writing by Daniel M. Barber

Writing Book Reviews

by John E. Drewry

Types of Reviews:
- objective
- subjective
- judicial (a scholarly appraisal, a critique)
- impressionistic (a book is interpreted against a background of the author's avowed purposes and a common sense estimate as to whether these have been achieved. Descriptive. For mass media.)

Different Genres:
1. Biography
(a). Novelist invents situations that will rouse a reader's emotions; biographer brings out the significance of situations that already exist.
(b). Types of biographies - autobiography, letters and diaries, authorized biography, campaign biography, debunking biography (depreciatory), fictionized biography, panegyric (eulogistic).
(c). Questions to ask:
  • - Does the book give a full-length picture of the subject?
  • - What phases of the subject's life receive greatest space? Is there justification for this?
  • - What is the point of view of the author?
  • - How are peculiarities, idiosyncrasies, weaknesses, foibles, and the like treated?
  • - How is the subject-matter organized?
  • - Is the treatment superficial, or does the author show extensive study into the subject?
  • - What source materials were used in the preparation of this book?
  • - Is the work documented?
  • - Does the author endeavor to get at hidden motives?
  • - What important new facts about the subject's life are revealed in the book?
  • - What is the relationship of the subject's career to contemporary history?
  • - Is the subject still living?
  • - How does this book compare with others about the same person? by the same author?
(d). Qualities of a good biography - courageous and uncompromising in search for facts and honest in interpretation; emphasizing multiplicity of vital energy at the heart of a single soul.

2. History
(a). Questions to ask:
  • - The training of the author?
  • - What else has the author written and how did they received?
  • - The historical period of the book?
  • - The sources of the book, how thorough?
  • - Broad outline or detail?
  • - Is the style reportorial or interpretative?
  • - What's the author's point of view?
  • - Is the treatment superficial or profound?
  • - Who's the intended reader?
  • - The use of dates, maps, illustrations, charts?

3. Contemporary Thought
(a). Questions to ask:
- Is the subject-matter or the style more important?
- Who is the author, and what right has he to be writing on this subject?
- What seems to have been the author's purpose in writing this book?
- What contributions to knowledge and understanding are made by this book?

4. Travel and Adventure
(a). Questions to ask:
  • - The credibility of the writer?
  • - The purpose of the book?
  • - Anything new in content and treatment?
  • - Contributions to man's knowledge of geography, government, economics, folklore, customs?
  • - Does the book has news value?

5. Fiction
(a). Dominant injunction: do not give away the story
(b). Four essential elements to the novel: the characters; the plot; the setting; the style.
(c). Questions to ask:
  • - What are the sources of the characters?
  • - Is the direct or indirect plan used?
  • - How are the elements of plot (introduction, suspense, climax, conclusion) handled?
  • - What's the relationship of plot to character delineation?
  • - Is there a sub-plot?

6. Children's books
(a). Indicate the ages and/or interest group for which the book is intended.
(b). Describe the type(s) of illustrations used, naming the illustrator and his qualification.
(c). Keep literary criticism brief but explicit.

* The author was the first dean of Grady School of Journalism at the University of Georgia, and a co-creator of the Peabody Reward.

War On the Middle Class

- How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back

by Lou Dobbs

Host of CNN's famous "Lou Dobbs Tonight," with an annual salary over 6 million, Lou identifies himself with the voice of middle class. A bit ironic, isn't it?

And he comes from a loyal republican to become a populist. He is against outsourcing, lobbying, illegal immigrants and he is anti-China.

His writing is as dull as of his voice, and as a self-absorbed journalist, he daunts us with numbers and couldn't care less about quoting a source.

But he is fearless, just like any other man with great fortune and fame. He names so many names.

This is a book for a politics savvy. Too boring for a cultural and social oriented mind.

The Street Lawyer

by John Grisham

Just like the Last Juror, story line is not the strong side of this work. It's the social background - the world of homeless in D.C. Obviously the author has done his research and preached his agenda.

For now, this is the last one of Grisham for me.