Elijah David

Yesterday's prompt for the April Fae art challenge was Portal. Since I've been doing a poem a day this month as well as the art challenge, I started brainstorming what a portal poem might be like -- and what portals have been special to me over the years. The tendency in fantasy movies and shows like Once Upon a Time is to have a swirling vortex as the gateway between worlds. (I'm not immune to this image. In fact, the main method of inter-world travel in the Non de Velai books is a shimmering silver pool, though it often appears between two trees.) But the portals that appear in fiction are often more varied than that. The first portal stories I can remember seeing were The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland . The portals in these stories are naturally occurring phenomena: a tornado/twister/cyclone (whatever term you prefer) and a rabbit hole. While tornadoes weren't common where I grew up (outside of hurricane season), holes in the ground were common enoug...

Welcome back for another Top 10 list! This month, I'm taking a look at my favorite animated TV shows (including a few anime). (I am only including shows that I've seen all the way through at least once, though I do have some honorable mentions that don't meet that requirement.) Without further ado, to the list! Gravity Falls One of the newest shows on my list, Gravity Falls is the story of Dipper and Mabel Pines -- twin tweens who are sent to spend the summer with their great-uncle Stan in the middle of nowhere. As the summer progresses, they encounter all kinds of strange creatures lurking in the woods around Gravity Falls, and eventually wind up taking part in a battle to save the universe. The series puts some clever and touching spins on preteen/tween growing pains tropes and features some gripping storylines. I highly recommend checking it out if you're unfamiliar with it (though some of the later episodes have some very weird/disturbing moments that younge...