What’s The Eight-Year-Old reading this week?
Our mostly-weekly survey of the tidbits that cross The Eight-Year-Old’s desk. This week, we meet the not-so-newly discovered Hellboy dinosaur and mourn the loss of the world’s oldest living cat.
A sampling of this week’s books:
Pioneer Cat by William H. Hooks
My daughter’s favorite part of her second grade year was the time they spent studying pioneers traveling the Oregon trail. She was particularly fascinated by the idea that there were no cats in Oregon at the time. If you wanted a cat, you had to bring your own. Problem was, no pets were allowed on the wagon train. As you might imagine, this is one story that captured The Eight-Year-Old’s complete attention.
Call of the Wild: A Mutts Treasury by Patrick McDonnell
I have loved Mutts for years, so was very disappointed when The (then) Six-Year-Old wrote this delightful strip off as “boring.” This week, however, The Eight-Year-Old discovered Mutts again on her own, and tore through our entire collection in an afternoon. Time to fire up the old library card and bring home a few more.
The Original Illustrated Strand Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Too long ago to remember I picked a copy of The Original Illustrated Strand Sherlock Holmes out of a bargain bin. Or maybe that was Daddyo. Regardless, The Eight-Year-Old stumbled across it on one of our green bookshelves earlier this spring, and has been dipping in and out of it for weeks now. This edition contains facsimiles of each of the 56 short stories and 2 Sherlock Holmes novels that were published in Strand magazine in the late 1800’s. The pages both look and feel like the pages of a magazine, which helps The Eight-Year-Old pretend that she’s reading the original old-timey magazine.
In the news:
Hellboy Dinosaur unveiled in Canada (ABC News)
Artist’s rendering of the not-so-newly discovered Regaliceratops peterhewsi (Image via Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, Drumheller, Alberta)
After a decade of work, paleontologists at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada have finally unveiled the skull of Regaliceratorps peterhewsi. Discovered by a member of the public in 2005, the skull was encased in unusually hard rock. The difficulty of the excavation as well as the skull’s resemblance to a certain Dark Horse Comics character earned the dinosaur the nickname Hellboy. (His name actually translates to “royal horned face.”)
The world’s oldest cat, Tiffany Two, dies at 27 (ABC News)
Sharon Voorhees with Tiffany Two on Tiffany’s 27th birthday. (Photo: Guinness Book of World Records / ABC News)
Here at Caterpickles Central, we are mourning the loss of Tiffany Two, the world’s oldest cat. Tiffany Two passed away in her sleep on May 22 at the age of 27 years, two months and 9 days old. Although she held the title of oldest cat at the time of her death, Tiffany Two is not the world’s longest-lived cat. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, that title belongs to Cream Puff, who lived to the ripe old age of 38.
Related Links:
- What’s The Seven-Year-Old reading this week? (Caterpickles)
- What’s The Eight-Year-Old reading this week? (Caterpickles)
- More Book Reviews on Caterpickles
CATERPICKLES 
What are you thinking?