Welcome welcome one and all.. to the first letter of the alphabet.
The letter A. You’ll join Amanda and I won’t you?
I am so looking forward to seeing what others have to say. It’ll be fun eh?
For my part, I am intending to be talking about all things Canadiana as we go through the alphabet. Some will be obvious.. Like the provinces in our fine land, and others I am hoping, will be a bit more obscure. All in all I hope that we all can learn more about my lovely land of opportunity….. CANADA! 🙂
Today we start with Sidney Altman, a scientist who received the Nobel Prize in 1989 for his work in Chemistry.
Born in Montreal, Quebec in 1939 the son of working class immigrant parents. His dad owned a grocery store and his mom worked in a textile mill. Learning from his parents the value of hard work and determination, which served him well in the long run. As a youth he read anything he could get his hands on. Reading a book Explaining The Atom by Selig Hecht got him hooked on science.
Educated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in physics, he later changed his major to biophysics. He studied chemical compounds called acridines, focuses on how they affected the replication of viruses that infect bacteria.
He had many false starts and job changes over the years, eventually finding himself working in England, which is where he started on the path leading to the Nobel Prize. His work led him back to the United States. Working with RNA (Ribonucleic acid) he, over a period of 20 years, discovers catalytic RNA, thus earning the Nobel Prize.
If you want to know more about this work
. This is a GA Henty book that took us quite a while to finish. We did it as a read-aloud, starting with it being a lunch time book and then a bed time book so we could get it done. I found it very wordy and often summarized sections with my lad. BUT the tale itself is well done with it becoming not only a story about Egypt but of people coming to the know the Lord and how, in time, it changed an entire people group. Excellent story.
I read this one for myself a while ago and it’s been sitting in my “put this on my blog” pile. 🙂 Good read, want to read more in the series. It’s a typical protect the world from the bad guys type of fantasy fiction. Good read though. Character development, interesting scenes.. 
. I freely admit that I love Anne McCaffrey books, and the books she writes with her son Todd… love them too. The Dragonriders of Pern are one of my favourite fantasy books. Dragons, danger, people, mystery, drama and they have everything. I really hope that when my lad gets a touch older that he will love this series as much as I do. Time will tell eh?
. My son and I absolutely loved this book. It was a quite read, held our attention, taught us alot about Egypt and her people, and was just a great mystery. We were on pins and needles as we waited to find out how the bad people would be stopped. Rest assured they were. Definitely recommend reading this one.
as well as 
. I am currently awaiting in the release of book three of this series.. patience is sometimes hard come by… 🙂 Anyways, Mags and Amily have work to do in both of these books. Can they help Valdemar? We are introduced to some interesting characters in both books. I particularly liked the addition of a special needs fellow (his name currently escapes) who is able to help out the rangers. Can’t talk well but can do amazingly specialized weapons and works of beauty. Bands of informants created by both Mags and Amily that work two different sections of society. A lot of a kindness in these books despite the danger and evil that sometimes surround. Probably why I like them so much. 🙂 
