Aileen Stewart's Blog, page 29

Children's Book Week and Diversity

Normally my children's book reviews show up every Monday, but in honor of children's book week, I thought I would squeeze in an extra review. Since the only book that I haven't yet read at my house is Henry & The Incredible Incorrigible, Inconveniently Intelligent Smart Human by Lynn Messina, a trip to the library was mandatory. But don't worry, the review for that title will be forthcoming in a few weeks.

While at the library browsing, I noticed a book with a great cover that immediately made me think of the book diversity conversations that have been going on in social media lately. So I scouted around a bit  more and found some other books that looked diverse and decided that's what I would post about today.

The book whose cover caught my eye, Our Community Garden, provoked a conversation between the children's librarian and I. She informed me that our town, Shelby, Ohio has it's very own community garden. I wasn't aware of this and as soon as it stops raining, I think I will go down and have a look see.

Meanwhile, I really enjoyed reading Our Community Garden which takes place in San Francisco. Several school aged children live next door to a community garden where they each plant something different. Tom`as grows tomatillos for his famous salsa, Cassandra grows carrots, Allison Chin grows asparagus beans, and Audrey grows skinny, purple, eggplant. When harvest time roles around, everyone makes a special dish out of the vegetables they grew and they all have a community feast.


Not only does this book show a diverse group of children, it also promotes community which seems to be lacking quite a bit in this day and age. I heartily recommend this book!

As I continued to wander the aisles looking for any books that might catch my eye, I saw two additional books by an author I had previously read. A while back, I read Everybody Bakes Bread, by Norah Dooley, which I enjoyed immensely. So when I saw Everybody  Brings Noodles and Everybody Cooks Rice, I knew they were must reads for my diversity post.

In Everybody Brings Noodles, Carrie helps arrange a neighborhood block party. Everyone is making something special to eat, and each dish turns out to be a noodle dish. This thrills Carrie to pieces since noodles are her favorite food and she has a blast trying noodles dishes from all around the world.

In Everybody Cooks Rice, Carrie's mother sends her off to fetch her brother for dinner. As  Carrie visits each neighbor where she thinks her brother might be, they are all cooking rice dishes from different countries around the world. Each family offers Carrie a small helping, and by the time she returns home,  she is too full to eat the rice dish her mother has made.



What I love about these books are the glimpses into a community of diverse families and the different ethnic recipes they are preparing. And a beautiful bonus to each book is the inclusion of recipes at the end. Not only do these books entice me with their interesting stories, but they appeal to the cook in me as well.  And speaking of rice, if you want to add a new recipe as well as new reads to your diet, here is a rice recipe that is a favorite at our house.

Yellow Chicken Curry (Indian)

1 pound skinless boneless chicken diced
1 TBS Red Curry Paste
2 TBS Sugar
1 TBS Yellow curry powder
1 can coconut milk
1 can cooked sliced carrots
1 can sliced white potatoes
2 cups instant brown rice cooked

In large skillet cook chicken and set aside. In now empty skillet add curry paste, sugar, curry powder, and coconut milk. Mix thoroughly and simmer on medium heat. Next, add carrots and potatoes which have been drained. Last, add chicken and stir well. Simmer for about ten minutes so the flavors can blend. Serve over prepared rice.


Well, that about wraps it up for today. Join me next week for another exciting episode on my normal Monday. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.

Busy And Much Better!

This past week was busy and much better, with Bobby, Emily, and I finally all feeling back to normal. At school, the third graders put on an Economics Fair and sold products, to the K-4th grade students, from the businesses they established . Emily and her friend, Ella, ran a bakery and  sold peanut butter fudge and chocolate chip cookies. The fudge didn't set up, so they became creative and put it in snack bags, offered it with a spoon, and called it spoon o' fudge. Some of the other businesses sold flowers, jewelry, candy cars, horsehair key chains, popcorn, snow cones, and cotton candy. My favorite happened to be the book marks that looked like farm animals. Since the teacher gave me a fake dollar to spend along with the students, I purchased a chicken book mark because it just goes so well with Fern Valley.




I also read to the second grade students at Mansfield Christian School. I chose the second story from Fern Valley titled, The Brothers. It is a story that involves a family of pigs consisting of one sister and six brothers. The children were so attentive and had really good comments. My favorite comment was from an excited boy waving his hand wildly. His thoughts went something like this, "If you had six brothers or six sisters, your family would get poor really quick." A very funny point and probably pretty accurate.



Two special events, my birthday on Saturday and Mother's Day on Sunday, also took place. My birthday was fabulous. Three people sang Happy Birthday to me. Over a hundred people sent me FB birthday wishes. Bobby, Emily, and I had lunch next to the creek at our local park, and then I invited Grandma and Auntie Kay over for a cook out. I threw hamburgers, turkey burgers, and elk burgers on the grill and whipped up some fried potatoes. Then we wrapped it up with a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Concert Bobby had on dvd. I just love Will The Circle Be Unbroken. Mother's day was pretty nice as well.


And last but not least, I finished the chapter book I had started reading the last time I posted. I was reading, Surviving The Applewhites, and mistakenly thought I was reading the second book in the series. It turned out that I really was reading the first. While not the type of book I normally read, usually I read shorter children's books, I did enjoy it tremendously and could hardly put it down. The Applewhites are a very unique and artistic family of poets, authors, play directors, dancers, sculptors, furniture makers, and so forth. All, that is, except E.D. who craves stability, order, and normalcy.

To make matters even more complicated for E. D., the family homeschools which leads them to take in a troubled youth whose last opportunity is to survive time with the Applewhites or end up in juvenile detention center. Tough, foul mouthed, and looking the part with multiple piercings and dressed in black, Jake Semple, arrives and tries to get a rise out of everyone. But the Applewhites are just plain different and don't react to Jake's defense mechanisms.

How the family and Jake come to terms with each other and how each person finds their niche in this crazy patchwork group is a joy to behold. If you have middle grade children that are looking for a  read that is anything but ordinary, you should really check out this book!




Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.


   

A Rough Start But ...

It was another rough start to the week. Emily had to stay home early in the week because she was attacked by some kind of bug that both her father and I caught. Lots of prayer, juice, and homemade chicken noodle soup helped us through the week.


But despite the rough start to the week, I did start a new chapter book called Surviving The Applewhites. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to finish the book yet, so the review will have to wait until next week. So far I am enjoying what I have read. It is actually the second book, but I don't always hold myself to reading books in order.


Since I don't have a fresh review, I thought it would be nice to mention another chapter book, that I really enjoyed previously, called The Year Money Grew on Trees. It is a superbly written story of a determined boy. Goaded into an agreement by his conniving neighbor, Mrs. Nelson, and trying to evade the summer job of doom lined up by his father, Jackson Jones works diligently to live up to the bargain of restoring a neglected apple orchard. Jackson enlists the help of his siblings and his cousins and spends a summer learning as he goes. Will he manage to grow a crop of apples worthy of selling? Will he be able to sell the apples once they are grown? Will he fulfill the bargain made with Mrs. Nelson and in return become the true heir of the orchard. The answers to these questions and many more await you in this wonderful book written by Aaron Hawkins.


Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.

A Wonderfully Made Built-In Home

This past week was a bit rough at my house as I was under the weather, so there weren't any funny anecdotes, enticing recipes, or fun photos from trips to share except for a few from Emily's Laura Ingles Wilder Celebration at school. I didn't get as many pics as I wanted because one, only one boy dressed up and two, I only stayed until noon.

 
But once I was feeling a bit better, I decided it was time to review a book by Christian author Janis Cox called Tadeo Turtle. Miss Cox approached me a while back and asked if I would review her book. She sent me a free e-copy for my unbiased, honest, opinion.

As I began reading, I was quickly drawn in by the attractive water color paintings that accompanied the rhyming text. Written as a Christian example of how we are all lovingly and wonderfully made, it was a sweet story. There was one spot where the story did not flow as well as it might have, but over all it was fun. As an added bonus, the book also included several turtle crafts which were quite cute and would provide lots of extra entertainment value for children between the ages of four and nine. To learn more about Miss Cox stop on by website, He Cares For You, and look around!


Tadeo Turtle reminded me a bit of a book we already own called A Home For Little Turtle. It is out of print, but used copies are still available on Amazon. Although not written from the Christian perspective, the idea that a turtles shell is a wonderfully made built-in home is the same.


Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.

Rain, Snow, Mud__ It Has To Be Spring

Here in Ohio we started spring in the normal fashion with rain, rain, and then a little bit of rain. There were a few sunny days in-between, but on the rainy days, Emily and I whiled away the hours playing Uno and Jenga. And after the long, harsh, cold winter, we were happy to welcome spring rains. And then it happened, it snowed one last time. Yep, it was almost seventy one day and it was thirty and snowing the next.

As I looked at all the beautiful daffodils that had bloomed just days before, I saw their poor faces bowed to the ground with the weight of the frozen, fluffy precipitation heavy on their slender backs. I worried that the cold would kill them, but for the most part, they survived and returned to their upright positions, sunny faces looking skyward.

What turns out to be so interesting about this is the first book I picked for review this week had similar occurrences. It was called Mud Flat Spring and it was the story of all the creatures in  Mud Flat and the different things each group did when spring arrived. Some did the happy dance of spring. Some went back to bed. Some looked at the beautiful flowers. But then__ it snowed. Few of the characters seemed to be bothered much, and they went about enjoying the snow as much as they had the beginning of spring. Some of the animals bemoaned the fact that the snow ruined spring, but my all time favorite line from the book had to be when one of the characters replied, "when this snow melts, we'll have spring all over again." What a lovely way to look at it!


The second book I read was a book of poetry since we still have a week left to celebrate National Poetry Month. It was called A Whiff of Pine, A Hint Of Skunk, A Forest Of Poems. These poems actually celebrate all four seasons of the year, but Eau De Forest, A Woodsy Cologne reminded me of how we spent Easter Sunday afternoon. We did a little geocaching, did a little hiking at Gorman Nature Center, and had a little picnic lunch. The hiking and the geocaching offered me the opportunity to take some pictures along the muddy trails. I did indeed partake in a whiff of pine, but thankfully not of skunk.

 Geocache Finds A Blue Bird House
 One of our geocaching sites was at a very small and very old cemetery. Cemeteries happen to be one of Emily's favorite geocache spots and she is always curious about the people who lived so long ago. On this particular trip, we saw some small rounded head stones that had the names on the tops instead of the sides. Some were so worn that we could barely read the names, so Emily decided to make a grave stone rubbing. Her constant curiosity reminded me of the third and last book I read titled  A Chick Called Saturday which happens to be by my very famous UK friend, Joyce Dunbar.   Head Stone Rubbings Momma chicken has seven little chickens, each one named for a day of the week. All of the chickens behave well accept for Saturday. It isn't that Saturday is bad, it's just that he is full of curiosity. Saturday finds himself in all kinds of trouble until he finally figures out what he is meant to be when he grows up.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.

So Let Them Eat Cake...

As you have probably figured out by now, I like to take whatever has happened in my week and somehow connect it to the books I review. The past week involved my monthly get together at the library with my Cookbook Club. 



Two of my Cookbook Club pals Crystal and Amy!

 Each month when the Cookbook Club gets together, we have a theme. April's theme was spaghetti sauce. Now it is true that I love to cook from scratch, but spaghetti sauce isn't one of the items I attempt. My idea of spaghetti is to open a jar of Ragu, add ground beef and pour it over cooked angel hair pasta. That being the case, I chose to bring a dessert that I thought would go wonderfully with the various versions of spaghetti, an Italian Cream Cake.

Not having made many cakes from scratch in the past, I boldly went where I had not gone before... my mother's house. Okay, so I have been to my mother's house before, but that just sounded so dramatic that I couldn't resist. The reason I had to go to my  mother's house was to borrow two nine inch cake pans. I had two eight inch pans, I had a ten inch pan, I had assorted sizes of spring form pans, but not a single nine inch pan did I posses.

I then went home and set about to bake my cake. The only problem I ran into was that the recipe called for the batter to be put into three pans. But, being the creative soul that I am, I simply split the batter between two cake pans, and put the remaining batter in a bowl. Once the first two cakes were done, I washed the pan and baked the third. Problem solved. It smelled great when I was baking it, looked delicious when I was frosting it, and tasted fabulous when I was eating it! Everyone else must have thought it tasted fabulous as well, because all I came home with was one small slice.



Italian Cream Cake
Since I had also attended a volunteer brunch that same morning (I am a library volunteer), I squeezed my book choosing session in-between the two feasts. Since I had so lovingly baked a cake to share with friends, I thought it would be fun to review a book involving a cake. The book I found was Splat The Cat Takes The Cake an I Can Read Level One book.





Splat the cat wants to enter a cake contest, but his first attempt is a disaster. A very tired Splat goes to bed and dreams of a solution. He bakes a super cake and takes the super cake prize. His cake wasn't the tallest, wasn't the prettiest, and it wasn't the widest, so how did he win? To find out, you will have to be sure to read this book for yourself. And if you want to try your hand at an Italian Cream Cake, my recipe is as follows:

 Cake 
 
1 cup buttermilk 
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup butter softened
2 cups sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup shredded coconut
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups flour

Icing

8 ounces cream cheese softened
1/2 cup butter softened
1 tsp vanilla
4 cups powdered sugar
2 TBS milk
1/2 cup chopped pecans                                                                 Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease three nine inch pans and flour them. Set aside. In a small bowl dissolve baking soda in buttermilk. Set aside.
In a large bowl cream butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla beating until well mixed. Add coconut, flour, and baking powder. Pour into pans and bake for thirty minutes or until toothpick comes out of center cleanly. Allow to cool.
To make frosting, combine cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and sugar. Mix well. Add milk a little at a time until desired consistency is reached. Spread between layers and then frost tops and sides. Sprinkle top with chopped pecans. (My picture doesn't show nuts because we have a member with nut allergies).
Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel,  Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpses into my days.

Variety Is The Spice Of Life

Usually my weeks are pretty much a series of routines, which makes sense since I am basically a very organized type of individual. I take my daughter to school on weekday mornings, I pick up groceries on the way home, I return home to feed the cats, do the dishes, clean the house, and exercise, I wait for the bus to bring said daughter home, I help her with homework, I fix dinner. You get the picture.  But then there is this other whole side of me that sparkles, shimmers, and shimmies with creativity of every kind. The part of me that loves to learn or try something new, the part of me that wants to travel somewhere new, the part of me that yearns to build, bake, create, reshape, dream, and make something new. The part of me that craves variety.

That is why I spent most of last week looking forward to Friday. What did I do on Friday, you ask? Why I traveled to the Polaris Fashion Place outside of Columbus, Ohio to meet with some of the ladies from my Blog Ohio group. I love this group of ladies, and I sit humbly at their feet, or maybe just at the same food court table, reveling in the knowledge they so willingly impart about blogging. Most of it goes over my head, but sometimes a bit sinks in, and I put it to good use.
 Blog Ohio Moms

And the really great thing about meeting at Polaris was, that afterwards, I had the opportunity to explore the very lovely Barnes & Noble store. I was a woman with a mission. I was a woman bent on using the extraordinary book offerings to  make a spine poem in honor of April which is National Poetry Month. Now for those of you who have never created spine poetry, I heartily encourage you to do so. You can use books from your own collections, books from the library, or books at your local book store. Spine poetry is very addictive and once you get started, it is difficult to stop!

 Spine Poetry
Friday was a lovely day of variety spicing up my routine life. So when it was time to sit down and write this post, something I do routinely every Sunday afternoon, I decided to review a few books that were random books, books without a theme, simple books to add a little variety to your upcoming week.

First I read Someday by Eileen Spinelli. I was sure I would just love this book, after all Eileen is so very close to Aileen. And do you know what? I did enjoy it. It was a beautiful book, a book of great aspirations, a book of dreams. It was a book about a child imagining what she would do "someday" in the middle of all the every day things she was doing right then. It made me stop and ask myself, As an adult, do I still dream of what I will do someday? Yes, yes I do. Someday I will go on a cruise, and someday I will visit Alaska, and someday I will be a traditionally published picture book author with an agent all my own. What will you do someday?



Next I read Perfectly Percy by Paul Schmid. It turns out that it is terrible to be a small porcupine when your favorite thing in the whole wide world is playing with balloons. That is unless you are Perry. Perry puts on his thinking cap and thinks long and hard until he comes up with a solution to his balloon popping problem. Perfectly Perry puts a new spin on the term, Thinking Outside Of The Box.



Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel,  Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpses into my days.


Meeting Friends At The Library__ Sort Of__ Part Two

Last week I wrote a piece about finding books at the library written or illustrated by friends. I also shared my friend Dandi's good news. On that same trip to the library, I saw the name Ohi on the spines of two books.  At first I thought it might be works by my friend, Debbie Ohi, the illustrator who  delights me with her daily doodle drawings. She is also the illustrator who is designing the new covers for the soon to be re-released Judy Bloom books.


The books I pulled off of the shelf, however, were written and illustrated by her sister, Ruth Ohi. It's not often that you find two such talented people in the same family, so I grabbed The Couch Was A Castle and Chicken, Pig, Cow and added them to my stack.

The Couch Was A Castle is an adorable book that reminded me of my very own living room couch that so often turns into a fort. You just have to love the imagination of a child, creating fantastic dreams from an ordinary every day item. Be it a castle, a leaky boat, or a dark cave, a couch can be an incredible thing. Ruth's book is also an incredible thing with adorable illustrations and incredibly cute characters.


Chicken, Pig, Cow was also a fantastic book. I loved the characters, I loved the illustrations, I loved the drooly dog that solved the barn door problem. I loved the fact that cow passed out when the drooly dog cuddle  up to him, but claimed he had made a new friend when he woke up. A very fun book for children four to eight.


Not only do I find being an author incredibly fun, but I find exploring the works of my friends to be incredibly fun and rewarding as well.

Signing off for now with wishes for a bright and beautiful day!

Meeting Friends at the Library__ Sort Of

I try to make a trip to the library every week or two in order to choose books for my reviews. And some of the best trips, are the ones where I meet friends at the library. I don't really meet my fellow authors and social media friends, but every time I see their names on the spines of the books I am glancing at, I feel like I have.

This week I found a book, I had yet to read, by my friend Dandi Daley Mackall. What made this find even more exciting was the news she recently shared. You see, not only is Dandi a fantastic children's author, she is also the author of, My Boyfrien'ds Dogs, a young adult  book which is being made into a Hallmark Movie. Currently, she is getting ready to fly to Canada to watch the filming. I am so excited for her, I can hardly express it with mere words. So while she is off learning the intricacies of  turning a book into a movie, I will be sharing with you her book,


And the amazement doesn't stop there because A Girl Named Dan is the true story of how Dandi won an essay contest entitled, Why I Want To Be A Batboy. Unfortunately, the Kansas City A's wouldn't let her be a batboy, because she was a girl. Despite this first taste of rejection at such a young age, Dandi has gone on to become an award winning author of over 400 books for children and adults. I'd say that is pretty amazing and the stuff dreams are made of.

I am so glad that I met Dandi at the 2012 Kentucky Book Fair. Not only is she a tremendously kind and interesting person, but she is an author worth emulating. I only hope I turn out to be half the author she is. So if you haven't read A Girl Named Dan, I suggest you do. Either that, or one of her many other fabulous books.

Signing off for now with wishes for a bright and beautiful day! 

Waiting For Spring...

Now that we've entered March, we know that spring is just around the corner. March, however is an unpredictable month full of roller coaster temperatures. Take, for instance, this past week in my beautiful state of Ohio, sixty degrees one day and twenty the next. So as I sit here writing this blog post, I am grateful that the books I chose to review this week are books that gently remind us of what awaits. Books that will hopefully linger on our minds like the delicate beauty of newly blossomed violets.


The first book in my lineup is Chicken In The Kitchen by Tony Johnston. Told in rhyme and accompanied by deliciously cute illustrations, this book takes us on Dog's journey to make his chicken happy. Dog's chicken runs willy nilly about the kitchen until Dog finally figures out what his chicken wants. Once he figures it out, Chicken is not only happy, but Dog's ends up with an unexpected surprise. Pretty sure both your boys and girlies from ages four to eight will enjoy this happy book.


Next I read The Imaginary Garden by Andrew Larsen. Such a great book to read as I notice small growing things begin to emerge in my flower beds. In The Imaginary Garden, Theo and Poppa enjoy passing the time of day sitting in his garden underneath a beautiful tree. But one day Poppa moves and there is no room for a garden in his new apartment. All is not lost, however, as Poppa teaches Theo to use her greatest gift, a glorious imagination. Children and adults alike will enjoy the imaginary garden that Theo and Poppa create, and who knows, perhaps it will inspire you to create an imaginary garden of your own!


Wrong Way, by Danish author Mark Macleod, turned out to be a delightful book about a mother and her three baby ducks. Wrong Way isn't like his siblings, and doesn't do anything quite the way Momma tells him. But even Momma comes to recognize that doing things differently isn't necessarily wrong. You might have a harder time fining this book unless you find a used copy, but it's worth checking to see if your library carries a copy.


And last but certainly not least, I read Fluffy and Baron which was written and illustrated by Laura Rankin.  Baron is a gorgeous German Shepherd who makes friends with a small duckling named Fluffy who comes into his life. Soon they do everything together, that is, until some wild ducks show up. will this be the end of Baron and Fluffy's friendship, or will Fluffy come back to him?


This last book reminded me a bit of the Fluffy that came into our life. Our Fluffy is a cat and not a duck, but we love her none the less. She likes to hide among Emily's stuffed babies. Can you find her?

Where In The World Is Fluffy?Signing off for now with wishes for a bright and beautiful day!