The Weblog Review

Hoosier’s Journal is the first Bravenet blog I have reviewed, and I have to say, I think they have some rather nice features available for their members.

The page has a pleasant abstract background that coordinates with an original piece of art by our author. The entry background is black and the lettering red, which sounds hard to read, but surprisingly wasn’t too bad. Though a larger font would be appreciated.

I checked the Profile link and found our blogger lives in the midwest and likes her job, is married with no children (yet) and is politically liberal.

I began reading entries and found mild rants about current events in her personal life or in the news, but most were written in a lighthearted style that wasn’t in your face. Occasional entries about movies or television were common. There were a fair number of spelling and grammar errors that of course are annoying to us all. I am not immune myself. But that’s why I run things through the spell checker!

As to content, there is nothing earth shattering here, though there are a few little gems. I enjoyed reading her account of trying to convince her husband they should buy a pair of Vespas and start their own biker gang.

The archives are accessed through a calendar style system, which I prefer. The only thing that would make it even easier to use would be a “next” and “previous” function. But I don’t think our author has control over that detail.

I especially liked the “tag board” on the right hand side of the page, where you could leave a quick note, very much like a chat board. I kind of liked the “mood box” also, that listed what mood the author was in, what music she was listening to, what book reading, she added a rather quirky choice to the list… what the current price of gasoline was in her area. These are fun additions to a blog.

But overall, I thought the content was rather weak, and the writing pretty ordinary. The author did not reveal much of herself in the posts, therefore reading all the trivia kind of got old. So I am giving points mostly for a nice looking blog with some entertaining features. My suggestion for improvement would be to open up a bit. Tell us who you are. It would make for more interesting reading.

Hoosier’s Journal

When I first entered this blog, I was greeted with a very crisp and clean looking page. At the very top, was a photo of a lady sitting in an arm chair. This really set the page off with a nice touch. Once I was finished with the basics of looking over the page, I began to look for a bit of info about the author so I could get a feel of what the posts were about.

As it turns out, the author (Rozette), is a 14 year old high school student. She is also a web designer, a guitarist/vocalist, etc. Rozette seems to have many talents.

At this point, I began to read the entries. The entries were basically based on Rozette’s everyday life. There are a couple of posts where she will give her opinion on different subjects such as political issues etc. Some of the writing in her entries is not in English , so I really couldn’t understand a majority of them.

When I got through with Rozette’s main page, I really didn’t get much out of it. What I mean by that is, it just didn’t interest me in the least. At that point, I started going through her archives, hoping that maybe I could find better reading. I was very disappointed. Since the author has various talents as I mentioned above, I assumed there would be more to her entries.
Rozette has talked about trips she had been on and even posted photos, which were very nice, I might add. But in my opinion, the photos were the only things that made the blog stand out, (so to speak). A good majority of the entries just appeared to be “ramblings”, and nothing more.

The blog consists of a two column layout, with several links on the right hand side. There are also a few of the links that don’t seem to be working. The only thing I really enjoyed about this blog are the photos. Maybe in time, Rozette will make some changes to her blog, but for right now,it is not a blog I recommend reading if you are looking for an interesting or entertaining read.Whapak!

When I initially poured through the list of sites to be reviewed, the title Of Reading To My Kid immediately jumped out at me and I knew it was something I wanted to check out. As a fellow rapidly approaching 30, I have already begun a small library of children’s books for the child I hope to have someday – so the title definitely piqued my curiosity. Imagine my delight when I got to the weblog and found out its intent. The purpose of the blog, in the author’s own words is as follows :

The weblog is an exploration of the issues involved in children’s literature and reading to a child, which seems to me both political and emotional. It’s intended for parents, publishers, authors, critics, and anyone interested in books for young readers.

Fantastic! This would be something I would be very interested in, and I immediately plunged into the page.

The blog is written by the mother(referred to only as “E”) of a little girl who is referred to as “Tulip” – in homage to the character of the same name from the Rosemary Wells book, Benjamin and Tulip . The core of the blog is the review of all the books that the author reads to her little girl, and they are skillfully intertwined with a few short tales of her daughter’s exploits (Amazing Grace on the subway) which are always delightful to read. All the reviews are very well done, and I even picked up a few solid recommendations that I will have to look into. My only complaint, if you could call it that, was that there simply weren’t enough because the archives only went back to the beginning of February. I was able to read the entire site in one sitting, and found myself eager for more. This is a small bone of contention, however, as I am sure that the material will grow and grow over time.

The layout is very basic and is a page hosted on blogspot. Seeing as how this is a fairly new endeavor, I can understand hosting it there for now – everyone has to start somewhere. One thing that did interest me, though, was the incredible number of links on the sidebar that pointed to various other sources for children’s literature, and I thought this was simply fantastic.

The blog certainly wouldn’t be of interest to anyone who has no reason to be interested in children’s literature. To those who are interested, however, this page provides an invaluable resource in the way that it shows you both the good and bad points about the titles selected by the author, and does so in a friendly and easily readable way.

My suggestion to the author would be to continue the great work she’s doing and eventually looking at hosting the site on her own .com domain and sprucing up the presentation so it would be more easily accessible to the masses.

A fantastic site, with only the lack of material preventing it from being a perfect 5/5!

Reading to My Kid

The Mommy Blog is the brainchild of Mindy, a mother of three living in the San Francisco Bay area. The layout is fun and quirky, with a header featuring a variety of ‘mommy-centric’ quotes and a picture of a playful, laughing woman — presumably Mindy herself. Based on the design, I expected a whimsical look at the life of a mother, with a touch of humor in each post.

I dug into the archives, which go back to late 2002, and found pretty much what I expected — lots of stories and anecdotes about Mindy’s kids, and the experience of bringing up a group of youngsters. The posts are entertaining, ranging from ‘awwww!’ moments about the cute and innocent things the kids are saying to the harried (but often hilarious) pull-out-your-hair moments that mommy Mindy occasionally endures. Taken together, the stories paint a full and eye-opening picture of the ups and downs — but mostly ups — of motherhood, as seen through one witty, upbeat woman’s eyes.

The entries are fairly sparse until the summer of 2003, when the post frequency grows to several each week, and later to multiple posts just about every day. This is also the time when Mindy begins to expand her range of topics a bit more, and write about other areas of her life. The majority of material is still devoted to her ‘kidlets’, but the recent posts provide a more complete picture of the author. And the best news is that Mindy has been downright prolific in 2004, entertaining her readers daily with a variety of tales, snippets and links to other sites.

Mindy’s doing a fantastic job of letting her full personality shine through — it’s fantastic to see how her weblog has grown from a rarely-updated record of the best and worst of her kids’ adventures into a creative outlet, filled with enjoyable and often humorous snippets of her life. Many of the features and ‘extras’ that you’d find on other blogs are here — comments, a search box, a CafePress shop, and various blogrolls — but it’s the writing that really sets this site apart. If you’re interested in reading about motherhood, or you’re just looking for an entertaining read, then you should really enjoy The Mommy Blog. I give the site 4.5 out of 5.The Mommy Blog

My first impressions of “The Mommy Blog” were very good- a very professional looking site with a nice title bar and a tasteful colour scheme, which is skinnable.

I headed straight for the About Me page after a quick glance around. It is informative and makes it clear that the author, Mindy, is a working Mum with three kids. The rest of the site is pretty straight forward – a three bar layout with links, archives, search boxes and um… more links. I sometimes wonder whether all the stuff people put in sidebars is really necessary, or whether people just put stuff in them because they can (especially MT users, who are offered a plethora of features of this kind). Not sure how useful they are though – something that crossed my mind whilst I was looking around this site especially. I am also not a big fan of loads of linkage. Less is better for me as I am never going to have time to click 100 or so links and read a weblog too. As impressive as the site looks, it is designed commercially by a third-party, so I can’t give the author too much credit for this, though I guess she could have had some input in to the process. No disrespect, the overall feel of the site is a good one, just a few niggles really.

Ok, on to the content then. Well the major theme, as can be ascertained by the title itself, is the personal life of Mindy and her family. These are all honest, fairly in depth and often amusing (along the lines of “don’t kids say/do the funniest things”). Its pleasant enough to read with few spelling or grammar mistakes and I felt like I soon became a part of Mindy’s world, particularly her home-life.

One criticism of the blog though is there isn’t much else besides the home-life stuff for readers to get their teeth in to – unfortunately it is a bit of a one-horse blog in that respect. Ok so there are a few memes, links to other blogs and witty topics as well as a couple of work related posts, but generally these are sparser than the family posts. Fine, if you like families. In fact great, I expect (at least if the comments are anything to go by). Not so fine though if you like, say, motorbikes or new-age therapy or Marxist philosophy or something. Best off trying elsewhere for those kind of things, methinks.

Overall then, reading “The Mommy Blog” is a pleasant experience and gives people a great insight in to family life. I would say it probably only has lasting appeal to those with similar lifestyles though, despite the flash template.
The Mommy Blog