Books

Susan Hood, author of Spike: The Mixed-Up Monster, will be reading her book at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk on Saturday April 20th to celebrate Earth Day. The book is appropriate for children four and older, and is about an axolotl, a Mexican species of salamander (and one of many creatures in The Maritime Aquarium’s “Frogs” exhibit). Spike keeps trying to frighten other animals until he learns that fear is not the best way to make friends. Hood will be reading at 10:30 and 11:30 a.m and will stay to greet kids in the afternoon in the “Frogs” exhibit.

Dr. Jay Walshon will be near the “Meerkats” exhibit to read from his Eye See You Africa, at 1:00 and 2:15 p.m. which uses images paired with riddles and rhymes to bring young readers “eye to eye” with a variety of extraordinary animals.

Both book readings are free with Aquarium admission. Both authors will be selling signed copies of their books. Check and see if the one of the four museum passes for the aquarium is available before heading down discounted admission to the aquarium.

For more information about Maritime Aquarium exhibits, programs and IMAX movies, go towww.maritimeaquarium.org or call (203) 852-0700.

So what were the happiest years in the last century? I was driving home on April Fool’s Day listening, as always, to NPR when this fascinating segment aired on analyzing the use of emotional words in books over the last century. A bunch of researchers in England decided that it would be interesting to use a computer program to track the use of hundreds of “emotion” words from millions of books published over the last 100 years and digitized by Google. All kinds of books were included from novels to technical manuals. (Who knew that technical manuals had emotional content!) The original idea was to see if certain words became more popular at certain times, but the researchers didn’t really expect much. However, what they discovered surprised them.

Check it out for yourself! Read (or listen to) the the rest of the article on the NPR Health Blog.