Mo Willems has a new book coming out in a little over a week: Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed. I believe it will have the distinction of being one of the only picture books ever written about a naked mole rat. I was introduced to the existence of the naked mole rat through the kickass zine Library Bonnet (oh, how I wish there were more Library Bonnet!) and caught a glimpse of a few of them in the Animal Kingdom at Disney World earlier this year. Weird creatures, they are, but who knew they liked to dress up?

Catch Willems on tour if you can!

Originally published at LibrariAnne.

Wednesday we headed to the Animal Kingdom, but before we left I saw this outside our resort food court:

Hooray!!

At the Animal Kingdom we took the wildlife safari and saw a variety of creatures. It turned out to be fairly cool out that day, but that was good as the animals were more active than they might otherwise have been.










After the Animal Kingdom, we headed over to Downtown Disney to shop and have dinner. The lego store at Downtown Disney is crazy! They've got a wall where you can pick from an incredible assortment of blocks.




They also have some giant lego sculptures outside.


Our dinner at Downtown Disney was my favorite of all our meals. We went to Raglan Road, an Irish pub with live music and a step dancer. The food was unbelievably delicious, the beer flights were tasty, the atmosphere was perfect, and the whole evening was just awesome.








To make the night even better, we had Bono looking over us as we enjoyed ourselves.

Originally published at LibrariAnne.

Last weekend Karl and I embarked on a big vacation: a trip to Orlando, for my first-ever visit to Walt Disney World (he's been before, though not in a decade). We hadn't taken a vacation since about two and a half years ago, so we were well ready for some fun and relaxation. We flew AirTran from DTW to MCO and despite being seated in the very back row of the airplane, we were not noticeably uncomfortable.


We had gorgeous weather for our travels. Did you know that airlines now advertise everywhere?


Once we landed at the Orlando airport, we happily ignored baggage claim and headed straight to check in with Disney's Magical Express.


This bus delivered us to the Disney property and we checked in at Disney's All-Star Sports Resort.


We got settled in at our room and discovered that we were right next door to my sister and her hub, so we had adjoining rooms! Hooray!


Susan and David are Disney pros, and acted as our vacation planners and WDW tour guides throughout our trip. It was fabulous not to have to think about things and to not feel overwhelmed or like we might miss out on something because of poor planning or not knowing well enough in advance.

Being such experts, S&D had made dinner reservations for our first dinner at Boma, one of their favorite restaurants. It's located in the Animal Kingdom Lodge at Disney's Animal Kingdom, which is gorgeous and huge.


The food was delicious! It was one of the most extensive buffets I've ever visited and we got to sample some of my favorite dishes from the trip, including a carrot and ginger soup that I could have eaten an entire pot of. It was difficult not to eat too much of any one thing.

It was an awesome start to an awesome vacation.

Originally published at LibrariAnne.