A friendly reminder from your fave book blog and the San Francisco Office: metal in the microwave, even if it’s in the inside of your Google mug, will spark and may cause something to explode and may even make the bottom to blow off.

What have we learned?  If you’re going to be academic for the day and you try to reheat your tea and walk away from the microwave in a metal travel mug, make sure that there’s a fire extinguisher.

Have a great weekend, readers, and if you like my hijinx, try this great kids book:

While we’ve spotlighted green book sources before, I do believe that Better World Books might be the only place you’ll be shopping in the future.

Here’s what makes them so great, and my new top pick for book buying:

1. All books sold help fund high-impact literacy projects around the world.
2. Not only do they sell new books, but they collect and sell donated books as well. Not only is this a great way to reduce/reuse/recycle, it also has helped to generate $4.5 million in funding for literacy and education. So far, over 6,000 tons of books have avoided landfills.
   
3. To date, Better World Books has donated over 1 million books to literacy programs.
4. Every order is shipped carbon neutral, using offsets from Carbonfund.org.
5. The company was started by college students who knew first-hand about the importance of passing on textbooks, literacy and business with a social conscience.

Ah, that feels good… like a warm towel after a shower.  Head over to Green Daily for great tips on how to greenify your life, a little bit at a time, and a sweet “Top Ten Green Kids’ Books” list that I’m way jealous I didn’t think of first.

StoryTubes is here! From New York to California, kids in Grades 1-6 are talking up their favorite books. You can too!

Along with your parent or guardian, follow these simple steps:

–Make a 2-minute video about your favorite book;
–Upload the video to YouTube; and
–Come to this StoryTubes website and send in the link to your uploaded YouTube video using the online Contest Entry Form.

>Voting mania will then begin and happen each week in May! At the end of each week, one lucky contestant will win $500 in books. Their sponsoring organization (school, library or designated organization for home-schooled youth) will receive $1,000 in books.

Four Video Categories:

Hair-Raising Tales
From or For the Heart
Of Heroes and Heroines
Facts, Fads and Phenoms

Tell the story about your favorite book today. When entering, please don’t use your last name in the video. Entries will be evaluated on creativity, content and performance.

OK kids and parents, “let’s see the videotape!”

The top 50 children’s books

1 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, C S Lewis

2 The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle

3 Famous Five series, Enid Blyton

4 Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne

5 The BFG, Roald Dahl

6 Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, J K Rowling

7 The Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton

8 The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

9 Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

10 The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson

11 The Tales of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter

12 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

13 Matilda, Roald Dahl

14 The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

15 The Cat in the Hat, Dr Suess

16 The Twits, Roald Dahl

17 Mr Men, Roger Hargreaves

18 A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

19 The Malory Towers Series, Enid Blyton

20 Peter Pan, J M Barrie

21 The Railway Children, E. Nesbit

22 Hans Christian Fairy Tales, H C Andersen

23 The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

24 The Witches, Roald Dahl

25 Stig of the Dump, Clive King

26 The Wishing Chair, Enid Blyton

27 Dear Zoo, Rod Campbell

28 The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Judith Kerr

29 Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jan Brett

30 James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl

31 A Bear Called Paddington, Michael Bond

32 Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

33 Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak

34 Aesop’s Fables, Jerry Pinkney

35 The Borrowers, Mary Norton

36 Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling

37 Meg and Mog, Jan Pienkowski

38 Mrs Pepperpot, Alf Proyson

39 We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Michael Rosen

40 The Gruffalo’s Child, Julia Donaldson

41 Room on a Broom, Julia Donaldson

42 The Worst Witch, Jill Murphy

43 Miffy, Dick Bruna

44 The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery

45 Flat Stanley, Jeff Brown

46 The Snail and the Whale, Julia Donaldson

47 Ten Little Ladybirds, Melanie Gerth

48 Six Dinners Sid, Inga Moore

49 The St. Clares Series, Enid Blyton

50 Captain Underpants, Dav Pilke

(The survey was carried out by Booktrust, an independent charity set up in 1921 to encourage people of all ages to read.)