Wild Wild Animals

Here is the latest revision of a sample page from my Wild Wild Animals Alphabet Book. This eight year project has been through more changes than a rainbow chameleon, the latest being a complete text revamp.

A wise editor at a SCBWI conference a few years ago suggested I use rhyming text as a way to give more rhythm when read aloud. Perhaps it was also a subtle challenge to see if I could pull it off.

I can now state that writing in rhyme is not for the impatient or easily pleased. It has been a bear of a job and on more than one occasion I've thrown up my hands in frustration.

Now, with plucked up courage and generous critiques from my writing group, the manuscript is well on the way to completion.

I See What You're Thinking

Apple this week announced the release of a new iPhone application that may be the ultimate in social networking. Named iThink, the free app will allow friends for the first time to know each other’s thoughts instantly from moment to moment, even while asleep.

IThink uses nano-technology in which tiny electrodes are placed in the cerebrum of user’s brains. Once implanted by Apple technicians, thoughts are wirelessly sent to friend’s iPhones and read as text messages.

Critics immediately complained that our thoughts, our last bastion of privacy, will now be on display to the world. But social anthropologist Barry Golson of Chicago’s Institute of Cognitive Behavior believes this may not be a bad thing.

“If everyone knows our every thought,” he said, “we will be forced to clean up our acts. We may be finally seeing the end of all negative thoughts.”

In a related story, Russian hackers have reportedly broken into thousands of European iThink user’s brains, wreaking havoc. IPhones across the European Union have now begun texting Slavic drinking songs.

When asked to comment, Apple’s EU Director of Information Nigel Perryman had this to say,
“Crikey, now I don’t know what to think!”