Our family of five has lived in three homes in three different states in the 19 years since the twins were born. This has meant being either far away or very far away from extended family at different points in time. In order to see them, travel was a necessity. Travel by airplane is an expensive proposition, and when you take the cost of a flight times five, it’s highly impractical, so the travel method of choice for our family was road tripping.

Seemingly endless road trips are not the joy of most small children, so to make the trips more bearable, we often listened to books on tape while we traveled. What a difference that made! An all-time favorite is a book from 2002 by Sara Pennypacker called Stuart’s Cape. Goodreads summarizes it like this: A quirky, inventive chapter book featuring an unusual hero – an 8-year-old worrier.

At the start of the story, we find that Stuart wants to have an adventure. Because his family just moved to a new town, his packed-up box of toys mistakenly got picked up with the garbage, and he doesn’t have any friends yet, Stuart has to get creative. While conceiving adventure by imagining becoming a superhero, Stuart determines that adventures only happen to people in capes. He creates his own cape out of items all found in a box in the hallway labeled Stuff from Great Uncle Nester’s Magic Act. With the rusty stapler he discovered, Stuart fastened together all one-hundred ties he found along with a lone purple sock stapled inside to create a secret pocket. Best cape ever. Continue reading →

When I was eight, a man who had undergone a sex change was making news by suing the United States Tennis Association to gain the right to compete in the 1976 US Open as a woman. I’m not sure where I heard of the story, but I do remember being aware of it and wondering about the concept of a sex change. Continue reading →