Author: admin

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

Well, I was a little skeptical about reviewing this blog at first, but after I went through a lot of the archives, I figured, “hell, why not”. I will review it and be objective about it.

When I first heard the title “The mommy blog”, I assumed that it was going to be a blog all about a lady and parenting.

The first thing I saw upon entering the page was , a photo of a lady at the very top of the page. To the left hand side was a photo of her child. Well at least I figured that’s who it was.Well after reading a few entries on her main page, I was a little confused.
She mostly talked about her job and her co-workers. The couple of times that she mentioned her children, she talked about them “throwing up”. Now i can understand when children are sick. I have children of my own. But I really don’t think too many people would like to hear the details of when they threw up. What I mean by details is, what it looked like ect. Then there were more entries about her job and co-workers. I started asking myself “why in the hell is this called the “mommy blog”.

At that point I started going through her archives. Believe me, she has a lot of them.

It was in her archives that she started to talk more about her children and her husband. My favorite posts were the ones where she talked about the conversations she had with her children, word for word. They were very funny. Kids can say the strangest things and act so grown up for their age.Several of her posts had only one or two lines. A lot of them really didn’t have anything to do with the blogs title. Some of the posts were very confusing. I even went to her “About Me ” link which is located on the left hand side, to see if I could get a little more info on this lady. But there was very little about her.

The best thing I liked about the blog, was the layout and design. It’s a 3 column page (“which I don’t usually care for), which looked good. She had links on both the left and right hand sides, a few photo’s here and there of her children (which are really cute) and of other people. On the right hand side, she even has a “Blog Status” section which i found quite interesting because you don’t see all that many bloggers with those.

To conclude the review, I would just like to say, it would be o.k. to visit from time to time, but I wouldn’t visit on a regular basis.The Mommy Blog

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