August CYBILS Scribbles Roundup
Welcome back to Scribbles, reading friends!
And just like that, summer 2025 is …nearly history. I hope you made time to get outside, touch grass, and read all the fun-and-not-work books that you could! As the school year begins and a lot of us return to classrooms and fewer away weekends and vacations, we’ve got a lot to look forward to - cooling trends, the inevitable return of the PSL, more apples, more flannel, and more twinkle lights and long autumn evening adventures. But first: school, where anything can happen!
It’s not an Olympic year, but we’re into the games around here all the same - though why play the same sports we did last summer when we can try something new? How about a boat race? The folks in Havana, Arkansas have had so much fun at the Cardboard Regatta at Blue Mountain Lake that other cardboard boaters around the state have joined in the fun. The best sports are the ones that invite someone else to play.
It’s not like we won’t read books in any form, whether digital or traditional, but are you into gorgeous books like we are? We are enticed - nay, obsessed - with the SpecFic trend towards detailed covers, gorgeous endpapers, interior illustrations, and fore edge painting - that’s the technical, official name of the artwork on page edges. The beautiful blue geometric art of Peter Burns’ The School for Thieves gives us goosebumps. The transparent layering of tentacles on the cover of Shaun David Hutchinson’s The School for Invisible Boys is just - *chef’s kiss* gorgeous. Art: it’s not just for picture books! Do you have any cover faves you’d like to share? Don’t hesitate to share them in the comments!
Scribble Smiles
You’ve heard of the ‘dog days’ of August – fun fact, they have to do with the period of time that Sirius is in the sky. Sirius, known as the dog star, is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, also known as the "Greater Dog.” *The More You Know*
Speaking of dogs, the 47th president doesn’t have one, but previous presidents who had fun pets include Benjamin Harrison, who had two opossums named Mr. Reciprocity and Mr. Protection, Theodore Roosevelt, who had forty pets, one of which was a badger named Josiah, and John F. Kennedy, who had a rabbit named Zsa Zsa. (One wonders what actress Zsa Zsa Gabor thought of that!)
Crash Course first produced a kid-friendly series of videos on STEM subjects like life science, space science, and engineering a few years back. Now, CC Kids is finally back with BOOKS! Crash Course Kids Literature has created The R.E.A.D. Agency for 3rd to 5th-graders, and are making case files on fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and fairy tales. Their first detective ‘case’ is on Charlotte’s Web!! We love that for Littles - everyone should grow up with the magic that is Crash Course.
Happy Reading! Cheers for the last beach reads &bbq, and onward to an autumn of awesome ….