Reading Challenge: Read all of the Nebula Nominees

I am on a mission to read all of the Nebula Award Nominees before the awards are presented on May 20th. This was prompted by the fact that I see these awards all of the time and I have only recently gotten hooked on science fiction so I think it is important to understand what the community thinks is the best of the best. I plan to do the exact same thing for the Hugos, but I have time.
Unlike childrens' book awards, in which awards do not in any way equal popularity, readers seem to like to award favorites.

It's no secret I am just crazy about N.K. Jemisin and her writing. Honestly it is because of she and Kameron Hurley and Becky Chambers and Jacqueline Koyanagi and Charlie Jane Anders and John Scalzi and James S.A. Corey (both of them) that I find myself absolutely loving this genre. I have NO desire to go back and read early science fiction with dorky cartoon covers featuring sexy aliens and white dudes holding Jetson-esque blasters. I want to read forward. I like where science fiction is going.

I have less than a month to read:
3 novels
4 novellas
6 novelettes
2 more short stories

As I complete each category, I will pick who I would like to see win.

Already a side effect from all of this reading is that I have found two new authors to watch.

If you would like to read along with me, I'm using this list that has many free links to the stories. I'm using the library for some of these titles and I bought a few too.

Okay, back to reading.

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How to Make a Sharknado for Your Shark Craft

I have had an insane amount of fun this summer, but I always try to do something for Shark Week. This year I called it Shark Lab and we are making three crafts I have never done with the kids before.

But for ME, I wanted a Sharknado.
Inspired by this post, and I tried several different dish soaps and NONE of the tornadoes looked as good as they did in this lady's posts. She must have magic soap, but it really works!

Then I went to three stores to find either plastic sharks that would be light enough to float and not just sink to the bottom of the jar and/or shrinky dink material (make my own damn sharks!) Both hunts were fail, so I made them myself using a template I cannot find again. Sorry.

I flipped the images, cut them out, glued them together and then book-taped the hell out of them! Presto, waterproof.

The jar needed something....so I made a small label with
"Sharknado" bookended with some fancy orange chainsaws and voila!

One Sharknado for the parents to play…

Teddy Bear Storytime

Tonight's storytime followed the same format I use for all of my day storytimes as I have temporarily suspended my idea of doing storytime in reverse in order to get the kids sleepy. They only seem to run out into the library to pick out movies and books and the effect is lost. So here is what we did tonight.

Our theme was teddy bears, but our night storytime is always wear jammies, bring a lovey, and low action.

My opening song is Hello Bubbles which I learned from Read Sing Play here. BTW this woman is a storytime goddess and I have picked up many great ideas on her blog.

Story the 1st: The Red Hat by Lita Judge

Why? Because I want to get across to my kids that books do not always have to have words in order for us to "read" them, and I want to give pre-readers a chance to feel proud they finished a book on their own. I plan to try to read or highlight at least one wordless read for the next couple of storytimes.

Flannel Board: Ten in the Bed
I used a modified versi…

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