The Rose's Grove

For the last few years, we've struggled to get Squidling to accept fiction. I'm not sure when it started, although he always liked nonfiction (and... well, also things like the paint chip catalogue, which... when people ask me how I knew he had autism before he was diagnosed, I'm always like "Well, when he was little we moved house and there was this paint chip catalogue, you know, like what you get in the paint section at the hardware store? And he used to make me read that to him almost every day...").

Anyway. For a long time when he was little I could read him Beatrix Potter stories or Old Mother West Wind, or stories from a collection of Native American myths, or whatever. But then he Got Opinions and started refusing anything except nonfiction. And... I like nonfiction a lot, okay? I really do. I love reading to him about dinosaurs and scientists and deep sea creatures and butterflies and all that! But I'm also me, and I believe that stories are part of how humans learn to handle the world. And the older he got, the more I worried that he wasn't going to have that because he would refuse to read stories.

He wasn't even watching TV with stories, for a long time. Only documentaries. Short ones, long ones, science YouTube videos... but the only fiction he would accept for a long time was Cars, Cars 2, or Wall-E.

Then, as if by magic, he discovered the Dogman books. And he loved them. So I held my breath and got him all the Dogman books I could find. And then a friend of ours gave him a bunch of his old childhood books, and Squidling discovered Garfield.

Then I caught him reading one of the Calvin and Hobbes collections on our bookshelf!

And then, hallelujah, he was reading Captain Underpants and Bad Guys! And I was able to get him to read another graphic novel series, Max Meow, when the library didn't have any Dogman available!

As if a floodgate had been opened, he remembered that, at one point a while ago, we'd convinced him to watch some DinoTrux, and he decided he loved that again, so we watched more. And then, finally, this summer, we decided we would watch a movie every Wednesday night for summer break, and we would trade off picking movies. He got to pick first, and he kept talking about picking a documentary... but when the day came, he picked the Bad Guys movie, and he LOVED it!

Today was the second movie night of the summer, and he was begging to watch Bad Guys 2, but we insisted on being fair and sticking with trading off picks. Tonight was The Boy's pick, and he chose the 2010 Karate Kid movie. Squidling fought us and complained, and I thought he might refuse, but we made popcorn and he watched... AND HE LOVED IT. ♥

Peter Jackson Doing Serious Prep-Work Toward Making a Movie or Mini-Series of 'Temeraire'

Napoleonic War with dragons, done by Peter Jackson and WETA. Eeeee! ♥

Why must Hollywood cast men I hate every time they do a Robin Hood movie? First Kevin Costner, and now Russell freaking Crowe. With Cate Blanchett, damn it! Thus ensuring that, once again, I will probably like every damned person in the movie except the star, who I will want to strangle. *Headdesk*

Article, courtesy of TheOneRing.net

At least with Costner, I could explain why I hated him. Russell Crowe, I just plain detest. He's not a bad actor, precisely, I just find myself unable to give a freaking damn about a single character he's ever played.

Oh, and comments about my movie preference as a child, narsilion, are strictly to be kept to yourself. :P

I forgot to talk about Batman!!! I saw it yesterday with Kari and Dora, and it was really very good. I didn't feel the same amount of relief that most people did, I think, because I've honestly only seen bits and pieces of any of the previous movies, but it was very fun nonetheless.

( Cut for spoilers and my usual verbosity - 'Batman Begins' )