fruity gazoodie

do you wash your fruit before you eat it, or just peel the sticker off and munch away? if you wash it, how much do you wash it -- like, with soap, or only a quick rinse? if you don't wash it with soap, might you just as well not wash it at all?

speaking of fruit, finished the first two lemony snickets. very much in the vein of roald dahl, and less like jk rowling. rowling has built an entire world, and snicket's characters do live in the known world, although it's somewhat skewed and contains some elements of snicket's imagination - specifically: fictional businesses and made-up animals. it's not a whole new world like rowling invented; it just has some different elements. school plays a large part in harry potter's life, while the baudelaire kids in the snicket books don't seem to have school in their lives at all. all three -- dahl, rowling, and snicket -- and a great many popular children's writers use the construct of the children being orphaned or in some way on their own & left to their own devices. kids in these books get themselves into & out of fixes, spots, dilemmas, perils, dangers, trials, and tribulations. cs lewis used the device of independent children in the narnia series, also. it's not realistic for children to be quite this independent, but it makes for excellent reading, especially if you are a kid, imagining what it would be like to be on your own.