What Makes a Baby?

One of our library's new acquisitions: What Makes a Baby?, which is a bit remarkable for being probably the most inclusive "where do babies come from?" book I have read -- rather than trying to account for every possibility, it strips down to the basic facts: some bodies make eggs. Some bodies make sperm.

It really makes one realize, if one hasn't thought about it too hard, just how restricted the standard narrative is.

It also has very lovely and bright illustrations.

Much Ado About Nothing (with hackers)

Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing was cute and fun! But not the best Shakespeare I've seen this summer (Comedy of Errors at Central Park, though the plot is ridiculous).

It's a hard play to make work in the 21st century. No matter how you play it, pretty much, Claudio seems to be made of terribly poor stuff, that he believes slander about Hero on so little evidence, and that he shames her so viciously in front of all her friends and family, and... it's hard to believe that Hero and Claudio getting married is really a happy ending.

So: Much Ado About Nothing, as a contemporary YA novel!

Claudio and Benedick have just come back victorious from L.A., where their high school robotics club won the national competition. Beatrice and Benedick used to be friendly and flirty with each other, but now she's feuding with Benedick; they were working together on a thing for robotics club, but he used a piece of code she wrote without giving her any credit, and as a result she wasn't one of the club members who got picked to go to L.A. Benedick knows he screwed up but has a hard time with the whole apology thing. Meanwhile, Claudio asks his girlfriend Hero, Beatrice's BFF, to the prom. Everything seems to be good between them. Claudio and his friends contrive to have Benedick overhear that Beatrice still likes Benedick, if only he'd apologize and stop taking credit for her stuff; Beatrice and her friends contrive to have Beatrice overhear that Benedick totally respects her abilities as a programmer and feels awful about how things went down.

But one of the other robotics club members, jealous over the relationship between Claudio and Hero, hacks into Hero's facebook account and makes it appear that she was cheating on him with another dude while he was out of town. It's really convincing! Claudio is devastated! But it's the night of the prom, so Claudio promises to himself that he's just going to go and have a good time and have a serious conversation with Hero afterwards. So Beatrice and Benedick and Claudio and Hero all are riding in the limo together to the prom, and Hero makes some remark about their planned backpacking trip to Europe for the summer (I guess these kids are all pretty well-off?) and Claudio says "Oh, are we still on for that?" without really thinking and Hero says "Dude, we bought the plane tickets last month, why wouldn't we be?" and Claudio says "Well since you're hooking up with some other guy..." She denies it; the evidence seems undeniable; it escalates into a major fight. Hero is heartbroken and devastated and pissed off.

The limo arrives at school. Beatrice tries to comfort Hero but Hero insists that she go have fun at prom with Benedick. She finds Benedick... but only to vent about what an ass Claudio is being, which does not exactly endear her to Benedick, who says "Maybe if she didn't want something like that to happen she shouldn't have been hooking up with another guy," and Beatrice says "You don't actually believe it went down like he says, do you?" and raises the possibility that her Facebook could have been hacked. Benedick isn't fully convinced either way, but he asks her to sneak into the computer lab with him and try to find evidence. "You and me are the best programmers in this school, and between us we're going to figure out what really happened," he says. "You and me are the best programmers in this school, and I totally screwed up, taking credit for something you did."

With the help of the school's otherwise rather hapless gossip bloggers, Beatrice and Benedick find the evidence proving Hero's innocence. Beatrice and Benedick celebrate, and kiss; Claudio apologizes to Hero; Hero forgives him; everybody dances at prom.

(I am unable to update the whole fake death/ marrying Hero's cousin plotline. I could probably think more about it, but I don't feel like it. Everything with Don Pedro and Leonato kind of went out the window because parents just aren't that involved in their kids' love lives anymore...)