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November & December 2020: Shared Meals / Food-Based Gatherings
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I really enjoyed this one, too.
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Shows a wonderful array of old time Swedish Christmas, including food and partying traditions, highly recommended but quite text heavy and definitely more for older children and adults, although the diverse traditions could easily be read aloud to younger children in small chunks.
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You should, it is a very fun book with engaging illustrations.
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Why not check if it is available; you might luck out.
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I see several others that I need to add to my lists, thank you Gundula and all!
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The Peterkins' Thanksgiving This is a fun and unusual little Thanksgiving story adapted from "The Peterkin Papers". I usually don't go for adaptations, but in this case Wendy Anderson Halperin's illustrations overrode any qualms. I don't remember the story from the novel, so I cannot speak to the quality of the adaptation. It is a funny one involving the hijinks of getting the Thanksgiving dinner dislodged from the dumbwaiter. I can't say I was quite as charmed by the story as I expected to be, given the classic status of the Peterkins stories, but it was diverting. One small stylistic bit about the story (the way the letter to the Dear Lady in Philadelphia was interspersed throughout the rest of the text) was a little awkward (and would be hard for a read-aloud). The real charm here for me is Halperin's illustrations. I love her work and it is so well suited to the sweet, old-fashioned family fun of everyone all dressed up for Thanksgiving dinner :-)
An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving I didn't actually write a review of this one but it's pretty classic Alcott fare with the loving family doing for others, etc. It does have a bit of a somber overtone with one of the mother's relatives very ill and the mother needing to go tend to her (leaving the children alone to make the Thanksgiving meal) but all ends well.
Queen of the Hanukkah Dosas We really enjoy this one! It’s about a family where the mom is Indian and the day is Jewish, so they’re preparing for Hanukkah by serving traditional Indian food. The majority of the book is around preparing for the meal (shopping, cooking,...) but they do sit down to eat together at the end.
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That sounds like fun... but is Indian food kosher?
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It could probably be made kosher by using the appropriate ingredients.
Cheryl wrote: "Shoshanah wrote: "Queen of the Hanukkah Dosas We really enjoy this one! It’s about a family where the mom is Indian and the day is Jewish, so they’re preparing for Hanukkah by servi..."Not by default. But I believe most Indian dishes don’t use pork, and considering a lot are vegetarian you don’t really need to worry about mixing milk and meat.
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Sounds good!
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Sweet Potato Pie
Hanukkah Cookies with Sprinkles
Cooking with the Grinch
Kathryn wrote: "Here are a few that look good but I haven't been able to get my hands on them as yet:Sweet Potato Pie
Hanukkah Cookies with Sprinkles
Cooking with the Grinch...”
My daughter is receiving Hanukkah Cookies as a present this year. I read through before I wrapped it and it’s cute. A girl sees a man digging through the trash for food and then starts leaving out food and gifts for him. At the end they invite him to eat dinner with the family.
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I still have a hold on this book from the library, so I have not yet seen it, but here is the publisher's blurb:
In this lively, rousing picture book from Caldecott Honoree Jillian Tamaki, a crew of resourceful neighbors comes together to prepare a meal for their community. With a garden full of produce, a joyfully chaotic kitchen, and a friendly meal shared at the table, Our Little Kitchen is a celebration of full bellies and looking out for one another. Bonus materials include recipes and an author’s note about the volunteering experience that inspired the book.
This book is also on the GoodReads Mock Caldecott 2021 List.
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Thank you for explaining.
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Recipes included in the back for:
Peurto Rican Chuleton
Chicken Soup with Lemon (Avgolemono)
Southern Corn Chowder
Italian Lentil Soup
Miso Shiru
Beet and Cabbage Soup
Barbados Oxtail Soup
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I loved this! But, then, I love books that show similarities and differences in customs around the world. So, it's my cup of tea. Still, I think it's done well. The illustrations are warm and evocative of each country depicted and the text is informative without being dull. There's not a story here, though. It's just small blurbs about various countries and what the children in those countries leave out for Santa (or whatever he may be called locally). Bonus points for the maps: the one inside the front cover shows Santa's route and highlights the countries discussed in the text and the map in back shows pictures of each cookie discussed and labels which country it belongs to. Fun! Now, I imagine that these are vast generalizations as there are only a few sentences per country so take with a grain of salt. I also had an issue with the handling of the USA. In the chronology, Santa travels to the USA, then he goes to Canada, then he goes to Alaska and then Hawaii. First, why are Alaska and Hawaii separate from the rest of the USA? I guess the author wanted to highlight the tradition of Kanakaloka in Hawaii and... Eskimo cookies in Alaska (really? I'm not sure about that one). But, it really makes no sense to put Canada in between the USA and the Alaska and Hawaii bits. Strange. Still, overall, it's a charming book if you're into this sort of thing. Several recipes are included in the back and you can find more at:
www.worldofcookiesforsanta.com
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LOL! ;-) Glad I'm not alone! ;-) (And it really was just so odd to me and made it sound almost as if Hawaii and Alaska are their own countries.)
Santa's itinerary is by time zone not country so it makes sense that Alaska and Hawaii wouldn't be included with the mainland. Flight of the Reindeer: The True Story of Santa Claus and His Christmas Mission has a great map and of course NORAD always has their Santa tracker.
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Well, yes, I thought of that. But I still don't understand why Canada is in between the USA and Alaska and Hawaii in the chronology? He does a sweep East to West of the USA then East to West of Canada so the time zone thing really doesn't make sense. Also, I believe that Atlantic Standard Time is one hour ahead of Eastern Standard Time, so he should have gone to Canada first by that logic. Also, Puerto Rico is mentioned then Santa goes to Costa Rica and Mexico before coming to mainland USA so, again, time zones don't work. I know it's a nit-picky thing ;-) but it's labeled as non-fiction at the library so I guess I read it with an eye to education and felt like it would have been an easy fix and it would make just a bit more sense for children trying to keep track of the countries and locations. I guess it's a good springboard for a discussion of geography and time zones! ;-)
Thanks for the recommendation of Flight of the Reindeer. Sounds good!
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Well, yes, I thought of that. But I still don't ..."
Well, the time zones in both Canada and the USA go both East to West and North to South (and both Canada and the USA have multiple time zones). But it does feel a bit confusing.
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Yes, I guess it's just one that educators can add more to the discussion. (Ditto for clarifying that in some of these countries (i.e., India) only a very small percentage of the population actually celebrates Christmas!)
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Yes, it's much the same concept.
I did check out All-of-a-Kind Family Hanukkah since there were still copies available at the library even this week. I enjoyed it, but I did have similar reaction to you and Cheryl as regards the portrayal of the mother, especially.
My review:
I think I would have enjoyed this more had it not attempted to be part of the All-of-a-Kind Family series. I agree with other reviewers, such as Manybooks and Cheryl, that the mother is not portrayed her as I remember her from the books (she would have been more compassionate and more imaginative in finding a way for Gertie to be included in the preparation of the latkes, IMO, and moreover I think it would have been natural for a girl of four years old to have had something useful to do in the kitchen especially in these days) and nothing about the way the family was portrayed would have made me think it was "the" All-of-a-Kind family had it not been for the names. I would have liked it better if it was a stand-alone about a new fictional family of the time. That said, it's still a charming story and I appreciated the back matter, too. I wasn't sure how I felt about Zelinsky's illustrations at first (I wanted them more full of period details) but upon reading his illustrator's note, I really appreciated his approach and it made me like the illustrations more.
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Yes, exactly my own reaction as well especially with regard to the mother.
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I finally received the library copy. This was a delightful book about a number of multi-ethnic people of different ages and abilities coming together to make a meal for the community. Tamaki has also written graphic novels, so the illustrations here are in the style found in a graphic novel, but they are not in panels. The cooks make salad from the produce in the community garden, they make bean soup from canned beans supplied by the food bank, and they make an apple crumble. They also had day-old bread donated by a bakery. Then they carried the food out to the table where other folks joined the meal. On the front endpapers is an illustrated recipe for vegetable soup, divided into 7 steps (each step is illustrated). On the back endpapers is the illustrated recipe for apple crumble, in 4 steps. A very enjoyable story.
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I'm having trouble getting many holiday-themed books in right now -- they are usually popular, of course, then everything is slower with the quarantine as it takes an extra five to seven days for books to be checked in. So, I'm not sure how much else I'll be able to offer this month.
We did finally get Bear Says Thanks and we really enjoyed that. It's good for Thanksgiving but not specifically Thanksgiving-y. The Bear books are so charming. This one is all about Bear's friends bringing dishes to an impromptu party at Bear's den. Bear starts to feel badly that he has no food to add himself but his friends remind him that he has stories to share. I liked this -- showing that there is more than one way to contribute to a celebration, more than one way to be a good friend. (I couldn't help but think of our discussion of Frederick and how some of us were bothered that Frederick's poetry wasn't more appreciated!)
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But.
The myths about the 'first thanksgiving' in Plymouth Colony are racist and inaccurate. This is not a book, but an important read for educators and families, by #OwnVoices:
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles...
For example, "Around 1614, we really start to see a rapid shift—the tipping point—in the impact that the Europeans are having on the Wampanoag nation, in part because of slavery, but also because of disease and sickness that was brought with them as well."
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But.
The myths about the 'first thanksgiving' in Plymouth Colony are racist and inaccu..."
The only picture book regarding the so called first American Thanksgiving that I tend to find even remotely acceptable is Joseph Bruchac’s Squanto's Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving and even this has some aspects to it which some Native Americans find really problematic.
Most of the picture books about the Pilgrims published in the last 20-30 years are accurate enough. I've been to Plimoth Plantation (now Plimoth Patuxet) several times. The native peoples deserve the right to tell their story but they didn't exist in a virgin land unaware of who Europeans were and what they were about. The first generation of colonists were barricaded in their palisade trying to survive while Massasoit watched and waited. He made the strategic decision to help the colonists because it would be mutually beneficial. The colonists had guns, metal pots and other junk Massasoit wanted that would make him look important to his people. They were terrified of the Mohawk from the north and to a certain extent, the Narragansett from down here just east of Plymouth. The colonists were terrified the Spanish, French or Dutch would come and attack. When the colonists held a harvest feast in 1621, it was the same kind of feast they held back in England. It was not a thanksgiving. Thanksgivings were days of fasting and prayer usually spent in church. The Wampanoag heard shooting coming from the colonists' palisade and got nervous. They came to see what was going on, crashed the party and stayed three days.
What people don't understand is that the harvest feast of 1621 was a)not a Thanksgiving and b)modern Thanksgiving has nothing to do with that harvest feast and everything to do with the growing tensions over slavery just before and during the Civil War. Sarah Josepha Hale. She romanticized the stories about the Pilgrims and Indians into a great American myth to try to bring the country together and teach immigrants how to be an American.
Some of the books about Thanksgiving on Debbie Reese's blog have nothing to do with that 1621 harvest feast!
Plimoth Patuxet has the classics still for sale (their own publications) and varied books about Thanksgiving meals.
https://www.plimoth.com/collections/p...
https://www.plimoth.com/collections/t...
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Thank you for your insights and information!
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While I think it's extremely important for the Native American side to be shared, and the romanticizing of Pilgrim/Native relations is deeply troubling, you raise an important point that Native Americans faced war and other terrors from other Native Americans. Of course, what happened to them at the hands of settlers and, later, the US government was atrocious but I think sometimes there's also this romanticized view that all was peaceful on the continent before white man arrived which wasn't really the case.
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Or that all Native American tribes respected and lived in harmony with nature. The Hopi, for instance, had farming methods that were really hard and nutrient depleting on the soil and this caused their civilization to flounder long before European settlers arrived in the Southwest.
Plimoth Patuxet (fka Plimoth Plantation) is amazing and my gold standard of museums. They really try to tell the whole story as we know it. Obviously, what we know comes from William Bradford. The interpreters in the Wampanoag site are happy to answer lots of questions and sit and chat. The stories about Thanksgiving mostly get it wrong that everyone sat down together and shared a meal. The English MEN sat down and had a meal. The English WOMEN cooked and served that meal and ate the leftovers when the men were done. The Indians crashed the party but brought their own food and housing.
I also highly recommend a visit to the Mashantucket Pequot Museum on the Mashantucket reservation in CT. It's owned and operated by the tribe and very well done.
The indoor museum at Jamestown is also incredible and worth spending a whole entire day there alone. I learned a lot about colonial-Indian relations and about slavery. The reality was way more complicated than most people believe or want to believe.
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Yes, that, too :-(
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Thanks for all the insightful comments and this last statement is so true of so many aspects of history. Well said!
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Love the art. Love that we get to see a different side of the experience of slavery, and we see how love and hope and dreams are powerful. Poor Nathaniel, though. And no notes.
Cheryl wrote: "Finally got a chance to read A Strawbeater's Thanksgiving. My review is short:Love the art. Love that we get to see a different side of the experience of slavery, and we see how lo..."
I liked that one too, especially the illustrations. Melodye Benson Rosales illustrated the original 3 books about Addy, an American Girl of 1864:
,
,
.In the library hardcover I read the title page lists principal sources and an author's note appears on the first page.
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Love the art. Love that we get to see a different side of the experience of slavery, and we see how lo..."
That sounds excellent.
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Before COVID, and before kids, back when grocery shopping could be a leisurely and unguarded activity, I used to love going to grocery stores and finding new items. It was a special treat to stop at World Market and check out their culinary treats from around the world. It was always delightful to visit grocery stores when we'd travel, seeing what local specialties might be offered. Reading this book brought back that feeling of fun and exploration with regard to grocery stores.
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The illustrations shine. I love the way the illustrations blend the present-day family life along with Abulea's memories. The details are wonderful. The inclusion of Spanish words in the English text is nice, and my only quibble is that the cursive words were a bit hard to read for someone fairly unfamiliar with the Spanish language. The author's note is touching, too, as this is a true story. Though this may not resonate for other readers in quite the same way it did for me (I tend to love books like this), I do still highly recommend it to those looking for new Christmas picture books and/or books featuring Mexican traditions.
message 149:
by
Cheryl, Host of Miscellaneous and Newbery Clubs
(last edited Jan 28, 2022 06:44PM)
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Children's Books
Books mentioned in this topic
Let Me Fix You a Plate: A Tale of Two Kitchens (other topics)Bone Button Borscht (other topics)
Salma the Syrian Chef (other topics)
Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods (other topics)
Everybody Serves Soup (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Linda Elovitz Marshall (other topics)William Bradford (other topics)
Sarah Josepha Hale (other topics)
Jillian Tamaki (other topics)
Jillian Tamaki (other topics)
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That's been on my to-read list for a long time. I'll try to get it this month.