Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

After long, long, LONG last, my Reading Rainbow kickstarter rewards FINALLY arrived. How "lucky" am I that my package was one of the last ones to be mailed out? From their status email, about my rewards: "[they are] at the very tail end of shipping!" (italics theirs). I felt more like they were teasing me than informing me in a happy way.

As one of my rewards was a 2015 calendar, getting it mid-February was something of an issue. It had originally been promised to be here before Christmas.

Oh well. This probably sounds grumpier than I am about it. I'm totally in love with the mug (I brought it in to work so I can show it off here), and the calendar is really spiffy (has tons of authors' birthdays and book-related holidays in it). Plus I have a car decal, magnet, and some bookmarks. (Not sure what I'll do with the decal, I've never put a non-official sticker on my car before.)

Oh huh, my calendar tells me that Levar Burton's birthday is on President's Day. Learn something new every day!

Butterfly in the sky
I can go twice as high
Take a look
It's in a book
A Reading Rainbow~

The Reading Rainbow Kickstarter has reached its second half. It blew its one million dollar goal out of the water, though sadly it looks like it might not reach the new five million goal. ($3,850,905 made and 13 days left to go.)

The goal of the project is to bring Reading Rainbow (thus a love of reading and books) into classrooms everywhere. You can read more about it at the link above.

While I donated early on, I had been depressed that I couldn't get a copy of the Reading Rainbow calendar (it was a $150+ pledge reward). I'm not sure how many people use paper calendars anymore, but I do at work, so I was really hoping to get one.

Yesterday they changed the reward system, so now you can get a number of items (t-shirt, bumper sticker, mugs, etc) as an "add on" reward -- for $25 or $30 more, you can get the reward you want. So I pledged $25 more and now I can get the calendar, yay!

Why would you want the calendar? Check out the artists who will draw art for it! MARY GRANDPRÉ ("is best known for her iconic work as the artist and illustrator of the Harry Potter books"), BRETT HELQUIST ("is best known as the illustrator behind the beloved children's book series, Lemony Snicket"), the Penny Arcade team, two different Marvel/DC artists, and MIKE MAIHACK (webcomics and Jim Henson company artist). All are doing artwork for free for this project! The remaining pieces will be drawn by fans, voted on by everyone who contributes.

So if you'd like the calendar or some other prize, just donate $5 (or more if you can!), then donate $25 more (or $30 for a t-shirt). It's a very good cause, plus the prizes are spiffy!

But you don't have to take my word for it...