I gave the blue ones away to our girls. As of today, our youngest doesn’t know where hers is. That pretty much sums up my reaction to the Field Notes Sweet Tooth Quarterly Edition.

For their quarterly editions Field Notes will, on occasion, attempt to shock its subscribers to the point that they begin to reconsider their subscriptions. They’ve changed the size, changed the shape, and used plastic paper that seems to work with only one or two ballpoint pens.

For the Sweet Tooth edition they did a good thing (offered a notebook with blank pages); a neutral thing (added perforations to the pages); but then did something that made the notebooks unusable (made the pages the same color as the cover).

When I got them I tested out a few pens and quickly realized that although the 70# paper was fountain pen friendly, the red only really worked with black ink and inks with sheen.

I quickly gave the blue ones (aka Blu-Raspberry) away and then tried to think of a use for the Redish and Yellow (aka Tangy Orange and Banana Split, respectively). I finally decided to use them in my class by making them the books for any “yellow cards” and “red cards” I give out. I can hold up the notebook, announce the card and then write the students’ names in the book.

The Banana Split and the Tangy Orange with a special warning stamped on the front.

In my system, three yellow cards equals a red card which equals homework. I will also give them out to an entire class during special activities where no Japanese is allowed. (The record: four red cards.)

The class yellow and red cards are noted. Please note the perforations. (Also: the colors are reasonably accurate here.)

That’s about all I can think of for ways to use this book. Some people use them to leave notes, others actually enjoy them for the artistic possibilities.

Although some of the experiments on the quarterly editions have been surprisingly good, (Arts & Sciences and Byline) this one is disappointing. The colors are great, but I’d rather see the colorful cover and blank pages; or to see lines or dot-grids that match the cover.

Once their gone, I’ll need a new red and yellow card system, but I won’t miss the Sweet Tooth much.