Oh! THAT'S why I didn't see any of these so-called commercials!

Hahah! Actually, he was 16 at the time. Tended to act and appear younger because he's on the autistic spectrum, and always a fan of being read to (or listening to audiobooks) over reading himself… but still, it was mostly just me wanting to read it aloud. I foisted it upon him.

Good guesses! Got the first two; probably would help to know that I'm a children's librarian for the second two: Sam-I-Am, and Sam the Onion Man from Louis Sachar's HOLES.

Wee Free Men was my first and it will always have a special place in my heart. When I finished reading it, my younger brother was staying with me at the time, so I just immediately started reading it out loud to him whether he wanted to hear it or not. Luckily he liked it.

Nation is such an incredible book! I fear it gets forgotten too much because it's Not Discworld (and perhaps because it's YA but I'm a Youth Services librarian and that excuse makes me roll my eyes and grit my teeth). I want to wave it at more people now.

I was wondering that, too, but I'm comforted by the fact that this last book he's finished has the word "Shepherd" in the title, which could definitely refer to Tiffany (or family)!

I have this problem where every Queen song I'm currently listening to is Freddie Mercury's Finest Performance. He just makes a song feel that way.

GO, RIGHT NOW, IMMEDIATELY TO NETFLIX AND MARATHON FREAKS AND GEEKS.

That was actually the only movie (that I thought had a chance at a relatively major category) that I was seriously rooting for this year. :(

As a huge Freeman fan, you have no idea how RELIEVED I was that there wasn't a Sherlock sketch. I'm so sick of him being lumped in with Cumberface at every opportunity. He's done SO MUCH MORE than that.

I thought, "You know, the name 'Tripplet' could be a code, right? Maybe there's two more of him hanging around somewhere?"

It IS Betty.

I imagine she actually had a music box that played that as a baby.

I thought the hamfistedness was deliberate. Irony and all.

I noticed, and all I know about those characters is what people have said in comments here and places! I thought, Hey, I think some people in the comments section will appreciate that clue!

That's why I'm here several days late….

I was going to comment on that article but then my Internet went down, that those songs really focused on one number, whereas this one has been used for— okay, 11 different versions (good thing I didn't post then, I would've said 12). It definitely isn't JUST a #12 song! (Also I'm a big Ladybug Picnic fan so I would…

I've had this tab open for the past … three, four days (when was this posted?) waiting for time to read it, so every time I've gotten on the Internet it's popped into my head just glimpsing the tab. And then gets in everyone else's head because I go around singing it.

I was pretty freaked out by him, too. But not as badly as the manic guy who ran around sticking letters on people. That guy was literally my monster under the bed. Or I guess he was my Anything-Muppet under the bed.

But that's the opposite of this issue. The reason students are arriving at college without those skills is not because education has been trying to be entertaining and rooted in things students relate to, but the opposite: it's so focused on TEST RESULTS that everything is learning to spit back rote material and…