What’s The Nine-Year-Old reading this week?

This week, The Nine-Year-Old reviews The Dandelion Caper by Gene DeWeese and Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves Deputy U.S. Marshal by Vaunda Michaeux Nelson.

What’s The Nine-Year-Old reading this week?

While we were in Washington, DC last week, we visited the International Spy Museum on F Street. Since we’ve been back, The Nine-Year-Old has been consuming one spy related book after another. Her favorite from the week is Enigma Alberti’s Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring.

What’s The Nine-Year-Old reading this week?

This week, The 9 year-old reviews Cobblestone Magazine from Cricket Media and The Smell of Old Lady Perfume by Claudia Guadalupe Martinez.

What’s The Nine-Year-Old reading this week?

This week, The Nine-Year-old reviews Lunchbox and the Aliens by Bryan W. Fields and President Taft is Stuck in the Bath by Mac Barnett.

What’s The Nine-Year-Old reading this week?

This week, The 9 year-old reviews If Your Name Was Changed at Ellis Island by Ellen Levine and The Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl by Daniel Pinkwater.

What’s The Nine-Year-Old reading this week?

This week, The Nine-Year-Old reviews First Light by Rebecca Stead and Abrakapow by Isaiah Campbell.

Caterpickles thinks too much about Christmas carols: “How do you troll an ancient Yuletide carol?”

Thanks for turning in for another special holiday edition of Caterpickles thinking too hard about holiday songs. This week, we’re wondering just what it means to “troll an ancient Yuletide carol.”

What’s The Nine-Year-Old reading this week?

This week, the 9 year-old reviews Niall and the Stone of Destiny, a biography of King Niall, a 5th century High King of Ireland, by Lance MacNeill, and Stowaway in a Sleigh by C. Roger Mader.

Caterpickles cleans house, Part 4

Taking the summer off from answering questions on the blog would have worked a lot better if I’d established a Caterpickles Agreement with my daughter that she would take a summer off from asking them. I did not, alas, so now it’s time to catch up by answering several short questions about the history of tape, whether fire truck sirens are taped, and the relative heights of David and Goliath.

“Why did California ban paper money in 1850?”

While researching the question of whether miners would have actually bought supplies with gold dust anywhere other than on a Hollywood movie set, I discovered a surprising fact. When California became a state in 1850, its first state constitution explicitly banned the use of paper money. Now, why would California do a thing like that?