The Passion in My Car

There is the agony of chauffeuring the kids from soccer practice to play date, and then there is the ecstasy.

This book, Garden Spells by my new wanna-be-best friend, Sarah Addison Allen , has blissfully-entertained me, via Book on CD as I have transported my kids from points A to B to C to C and D…

Check out this little tid bit from Sarah Addison Allen’s bio page:

Garden Spells, my mainstream debut, didn’t start out as a magical novel. It was supposed to be a simple story about two sisters reconnecting after many years. But then the apple tree started throwing apples and the story took on a life of its own…and my life hasn’t been the same since.

There is one cardinal rule we Moms must never break, for the sake of sanity.  Those kid CDs full of their favorite tunes do not work in the car.  Only in their rooms.

Books on CD can get you through weeks of monotonous carpools. You can usually find a great selection at your library. Of course, the trick is to find a book that entertains your passengers as much as you.  Garden Spells did that by introducing a little 5-year-old girl, Bay, who drank milk with sugar, with her favorite food, Pop Tarts.  Of course, there’s also Evanelle, who thoroughly delighted  my kids because she just  “hates summer.” Little do they know why.

Yes, there were a few times when I did have to shut down the CD because the dialogue got a little, how do we say it, too hot for little ears, but there are pause buttons designed for that exact purpose at your convenience with a push of a fingertip.

Once, at a particularly climatic moment, we were almost home.  I had to bypass my driveway, because I literally “could not put the steering wheel down” and ran an extra errand just so I could hear what would happen next.

Sometimes, it’s the little things that get us through the day.  So thank you again, Sarah  Addison Allen, for the passion you put in my little Volvo.  And also, thank you for the recipes.  Mabye I can work up some spells up of my own.