Category — Books

At Amy’s urging, the girls and I finally made it to the Albany Children’s Book Festival. This annual festival has been growing each year, and today’s event included about 70 children’s authors and illustrators, exhibitors, and kid-friendly entertainment. It’s held at The Albany Academies, which judging only from the Albany Academy for Girls’ athletic center, is quite seriously posh. The event itself is exceptionally well-run, with scads of volunteers pointing us toward a parking place outside and offering assistance hither, thither, and yon inside. Food was available from Bettie’s Cupcake Bus and Dave’s Wood Fired Pizza Truck (sorry: can’t find a link, but it looked & smelled delicious).

We were only able to fit in a quick visit between other obligations, but I could have spent the entire day, easily. The girls might have gotten restless. Before we went, I told the girls that I would buy each of them one book, but any additional purchases would have to come out of their own pockets. We did take notes on a bunch of other tempting books. The Longest Night (by Marion Dane Bauer, illustrated by Ted Lewin) looked like an ideal candidate for Grandpa’s annual Christmas-time story book.  J was delighted that there’s a new fairy series, Silverlake Fairy School (by Elizabeth Lindsay, illustrated by Anna Currey), and I was pushing The Little Bitty Bakery (by Leslie Muir, illustrated by Betsy Lewin) as a great choice for J, because we’d spent the morning baking and the illustrations were freakishly adorable, like so many of Lewin’s books.

M settled quickly on  The School for the Insanely Gifted, the latest children’s novel by Dan Elish. An excellent choice for her, I’m guessing, just based on the entertaining goofball title. M loves books that make her laugh, and the author was having enough fun at the event that I’m hopeful that the book will be fun, too. There’s nothing better than hearing M laugh out loud when she’s alone reading a book, so I’m looking forward to her finishing her current book (which is a bit tween-girl-angsty) and jumping into this one. An added bonus would be if the smarty-pants, gifted-musician girl protagonist would help improve M’s current attitude about cello practice. My fingers are crossed!

Dan Elish

J, meanwhile picked Goose Chase by Patrice Kindl. This book is recommended for ages 10 and up, so it’s a bit old for her, with some sophisticated vocabulary words, but we’ll do it as a read-aloud, anyway. Just like with M’s choice, I almost could have predicted this one for J, because she’s a huge fan of fairy tales. We both liked it right away because the description of the protagonist began that she’s “as lovely as the dawn. But that is only one of her problems.” When it came to this author’s table, I kind of wanted all of her books. Her latest is Keeping the Castle, and one of the reviews said that I’d love it if I’m a fan of I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, and I totally am a fan of I Capture the Castle! In fact, if you need a delightful, light romp of a novel (Jane Austen romp; not 50 Shades of Grey romp) for a vacation, it’s a perfect choice.

Patrice Kindl

Then I couldn’t restrain myself, and I picked a book, too. I bought The Twelfth Stone by Jana Laiz. At the time, I really just chose that one because her entire table tempted me for the girls, but the author recommended this one as an adult/YA crossover book, so I grabbed it, figuring that after I read it,  I could leave it on the shelves for them, too. Now that I’ve had a chance to look, though, I think the timing is excellent, because I’m just finishing Lady Macbeth by Susan Fraser King. That one’s filled with all sorts of Celtic history and magic themes, and The Twelfth Stone is about Celtic and faerie myths and legends. So now I might have to jump into that one first and ignore the two books in my to-read-for-book club-queue.

Jana Laiz

Once I got a better chance to look over all of our choices , I’m excited to see that everyone went for what look like “girl power” books. That’s because I started out by raising them on Girl Power Picture Books. Score another point for the mama! Whoop, whoop!

After the enormously difficult task of choosing our books was over, the girls went to listen to author Ruth Anne Smalley read Sheila Says We’re Weird (illustrated by Jennifer Emery). I didn’t take a picture of her because after the reading, she was talking about environmentally friendly things that we could all do. And M volunteered that we’d given up composting because it kept attracting a skunk. And then I felt mortified and guilt-ridden, and I couldn’t work up the courage to ask for a pose. I know, I know: why should it take courage to ask an author if you can feature her in your blog? That’s just silly. I know. And I am silly. Which is too bad, because she had a super-adorable mushroom girl puppet that I was going to ask her to include in her portrait.

At this point, the girls were slightly less festive, but I’d spotted one more table that we’d missed, with author/illustrator David Hyde Costello. He was sketching small pictures for kids by request and quickly painting them with a set of watercolors which looked just like the  humble little set that you probably have stashed in a drawer at your house. M asked for an elephant, and J wanted a fairy. Tragically, my photography skills are such that you can only sort of make out the elephant under his chin. But he was kind and patient, and I thought it was a lovely little souvenir for, no doubt, scores of kids who visited today.  I loved that the girls could see him make such awesome little images with a basic pen, paints & paintbrush, a water cup, and a single tidy little paper towel. So much of the arts and craft stuff that they do at home is just overflowing with all sorts of crazy materials. Maybe I’ll bring a couple of drawing books home from the library, just to see if anybody’s inspired.

David Hyde Costello

So, would I recommend going to the festival next year? Yes, of course! But I think that we would have loved this event even more if we’d checked out the authors who were coming ahead of time and taken a trip to the library to do a little bit of preparation. There were some more well-known authors and illustrators, but many of them (indeed, all the people pictured here) were new to us. And it’s lovely to meet new people, of course, but it’s even more thrilling to meet someone you’ve admired from afar. If I had a very outgoing child, I might suggested that (s)he do some writing or illustrating ahead of the event, then consult with the professionals for advice on their work.  The festival folks had provided a special passport as a way to get kids speaking to authors, but my kids roll their eyes at that sort of thing and consider it busywork, so they ignored it. In fact, J reported back to me when some (no doubt friendly and well-meaning) author tried to get her to discuss the passport, and she sounded mildly alarmed and annoyed. Oh, well: good try.

And finally, you know I’m not a shopper, but this is clearly a shopping excursion. And I am generally too cheap to buy many books (I’m a library/friend exchange/Paperback Swap gal), but there are so many awesome books and so many authors and illustrators who’d really like you to buy them. Plus, a carefully chosen, signed copy of a book is an excellent gift. So next year, I think I’ll spend some time ahead pondering about  the children, nieces, nephews, and teachers whom I know and the many gift-worthy occasions that will present themselves in the upcoming year, and I’ll just spend freely. Who knows? I could knock out a third of my Christmas list before summer.

I just realized that I forgot to post about M’s favorite activity during our Mother-Daughter Camp-out: fairy houses!

One of the dads had encountered amazing fairy houses in his travels. (A little closer to home, you can find some fairy houses at the Berkshire Botanical Garden.) He and his daughter were excited to share the fairy joy. The younger girls (3rd graders) jumped on it first:

He’d brought along this Fairy House book by Tracy Kane:

She’s got a whole series of them, along with a website with tons of information and photos.

The girls caught on quickly and built like crazy. The dad’s daughter displayed the kind of technical expertise that comes from experience:

Now, you might recall that J’s been a consistent supporter of All Things Fairy, including two fairy themed birthday parties (the second of which involved making homemade fairies and lovely fairy gardens) as well as constructing fairy habitats and corresponding with fairies on her own.

I feared that M would consider herself somewhat too sophisticated for fairy houses. But she and her friends jumped into their construction projects with gusto. Practicing engineering and artistry outside: what’s not to like?  True, she and her friends weren’t serious believers like the 3rd-grade girl who spent Sunday morning displaying the precious gift of dried fairy wings that had been left at her fairy house overnight (to my jaded adult eyes it looked like a helicopter, but I could be wrong). Still, M and her friends had a wonderful time. If I hadn’t dragged her away, I think that she could have worked on it all day.

Once we arrived home, M and J started creating a whole village. Our setting is a bit less rustic, so they incorporated a few non-fairy elements, like this big ol’ cinder block:

They had a lovely time. I think you could take a couple of photos and sell them as castles or forts if your kids aren’t quite as fairylicious as my girls are.

This is my favorite new three-of-us-from-the-back picture in a long time, from today’s visit to an African marketplace!

Okay: not really. We visited go: where children discover the world, the exhibition space for the World Awareness Children’s Museum in Glens Falls. It’s small but fun and worth the trip. I’ll be writing a more detailed review soon.

We also stopped by the Crandall Public Library, both because they have an exhibition of award winners from the museum’s International Youth Art Exchange and because I’m a Library Slut. It’s funny: whenever I think of that post about visiting lots of libraries, I do a search using the term “library slut” because that’s what I called it in my head when I first wrote it. And every time I search, nothing comes up. Because at the time I didn’t want to use the term for fear of being offensive. That was more than two years ago, when I was a newbie blogger. Such a newbie that when I just went back to look, I realized that I let through a spam comment because it seemed sincere. I was so naive. . . . Anyway, I had to confess that I still think of that post as the “Library Slut” post. Besides, aren’t we all supposed to be reclaiming slut by now?

The girls liked the art as well as the child-sized easy chairs. I loved its sparkly cleanliness and huge windows.

We had a fun outing, and I think I have a little crush on Glens Falls now.

I was volunteering at the library today, and I stumbled on What Bluebirds Do by Pamela F. Kirby. It’s a gorgeous picture book full of photographs of a family of bluebirds that took up residence in the author’s backyard. Readers see the baby birds grow and learn all sorts of interesting facts that will be appreciated by both parents and kids, including how to tell the difference between a bluebird and a blue bird and what the parent birds do with all of that baby-bird poop. It’s a lovely appreciation of nature and introduction to birdwatching.

I was so pleased with the discovery that it made me think of other great nature-and-spring books. One that came to mind is an old classic, The Lady and  the Spider. Okay, the lettuce in her garden is full-grown, so it’s probably more like summer in the story. If you can get past the ladies 70s-era accessorizing, what you’ll find is a book about respecting nature and other creatures. It’s also a great illustration of different points of view. Of course, if you’re the type who sees a spider, screams, and tries to squash it, I wouldn’t read this book to your child. On the other hand, if it upsets you when preschoolers wantonly stamp all over, say, an ant hill, this book is a gentle reminder to treat other creatures with care.

Finally, I’m a huge fan of Sharon Lovejoy‘s gardening with children books. She draws her own lovely illustrations and in her Toad Cottages and Shooting Stars: Grandma’s Bag of Tricks book, she includes photographs from her own garden. These are longer books packed with information and suggestions for grown-ups, so they make an excellent mother’s day gift for a mama or grandma that you know. I actually did a phone interview with Sharon Lovejoy for an article that I wrote, and she projects that peaceful joy that you might recognize from, say, the best nursery school teacher you know, or your friend’s awesomely sweet grandmother.

So, those are my suggestions. How about you? Do you have any recommendations for great books to inspire your kids to love and appreciate nature? Any favorite spring reads?

I realized recently that J’s been asking to make what she calls “fruit pizza” for approximately forever. Okay, not really, but she’s  been asking about once every three weeks for at least 6 months. Which is an awfully long time when you’re little. It’s a recipe called “Viva Les Galettes” from the Southern Living Kids Cookbook, which we also used for a couple of Halloween recipes.

The picture was pretty, but I wasn’t convinced that we’d eat it all, since only Cute W is a big fruity dessert person in our family. So we made the recipe (which was two fruit pizzas) before the Super Bowl so that we could bring one to share with friends.

Lucky for me, someone else already took the trouble to type in the recipe. You can check it there. But basically, we mixed a block of cream cheese together with a can of sweetened condensed milk. First of all, that was yummy. It tasted very much like that sweet fruit dip that they sell in grocery stores which I refuse to purchase on principle because fruit is sweet and does not need a fruit dip. However, I will concede that it’s yummy. It was good as-is, but we spread the filling over the center of a pie crust, folded the outer inch inward, and brushed the outer edge with egg white and sprinkled it with sugar.

Sprinkling sugar around the edges

We baked it for exactly 23 minutes as they said in the recipe, but they were a bit overdone. Usually I check early, because I think our oven’s a little too hot. But I got distracted. Still, not too bad.

Crust & pastry are finished baking

J loved cutting up fruit.

Cutting fruit

J wanted to cut the fruit herself, and I gave her a small but very sharp paring knife. It made me nervous, but she was careful. Kids tend to be much more careful with knives than adults, I think, because using them is such a special occasion.

The recipe called for peach fruit spread, and we went with cherry jam instead, because that’s what we had. After putting the fruit on, it’s just refrigerated.

All done!

The verdict? It was pretty tasty, and one of the guests at the party where we shared it pronounced it “very elegant” before she found out it was prepared by a 7-year-old. This was also a great recipe in terms of plenty of hands-on activity for kids. Especially if you’re willing to let your child wield a knife!

I volunteer at the elementary school library, and lately M and her 4th-grade friends have been wild about a new series of picture books called Way To Be! Manners. It’s mystified me, actually, because they are little-kid picture books, officially designated kindergarten and up, but clearly a bit young for these sophisticated almost-tweens. The school librarian loves them, but I suspected that the girls’ fervor was a bit tongue-in-cheek. Tonight, M’s sleepover guest  actually brought two of the books along with her, and since I can’t get a straight answer out of M, I took a moment to quiz her about their appeal. “I love them! They’re funny! They’re just so obvious,” she gushed. She found a page of  the Manners on the Telephone book particularly uproarious:

Bryce says, “Sorry, my mom can’t come to the phone right now.” He does not tell the caller that his mom is in the bathtub. He is using good manners.

Well, all the little friends might think that the books are obvious, but when one of M’s friends checked out Manners at a Friend’s House I almost laughed out loud. This little girl had walked past a table bearing two kinds of chips, mini-pizzas, a vegetable platter, and pigs in a blanket to rummage on my kitchen counter and steal chocolates hidden under a towel at our Christmas party.  So hopefully between the giggles my daughter, her friend, and other kids will learn a thing or two.

Tonight during dessert, the girls were lamenting the behavior of their opposing soccer team at this morning’s game, and grudgingly conceding that they had a few less-than-shining moments themselves. I said that they should write a book called Manners on the Soccer Field, and they jumped to it with great enthusiasm. Here are some excerpts:

Alison doesn’t kick people’s ankles to get the ball. She is using good manners.

Matthew doesn’t brag about his goal. All he does is smile. He is using good manners.

Jonathan doesn’t play from the ground. He is using good manners.

Lily doesn’t push or shove people. She is using good manners.

Natalie doesn’t call the other team losers when she wins. “Good game,” she says. She is using good manners.

Yeah, it was a rough game. On the other hand, anyone know a good literary agent?

So I mentioned that a couple of weekends ago I was helping out with some craftiness at my church. I had organized two crafts:  felt ornaments , which we’ve done before, and wire-wrapped ornaments. I got the idea for a wire-wrapped star from this Family Fun how-to, but it was not as easy as it appeared. Basically, I was supposed to wrap 18-gauge wire around a star cookie cutter, and then kids could use lighter-weight wire to wrap around the star and make it pretty. Wrapping the wire was a pain in the neck, especially since I wanted to make a bunch for lots of kids to do. Cute W helped by putting some nails into a board, which made wrapping a bit easier, but it was still labor-intensive, and the stars weren’t too pretty.  Of course, I was figuring all this out the night before the event. Ugh.

I decided to wing it and go a little bit more free-form with the craft. First, I Googled and found directions for making these awesome and pretty word ornaments.  Luckily I had a variety of wires to use for the craftiness. I ‘d bought the thick, sturdier 18-gauge wire, but I also had 22- and 24-gauge wire. If you’re looking for wire like this, you’ll usually find it near the jewelry-making section at craft stores. Basically, the lower the number, the thicker, sturdier, more difficult to bend, and  usually more expensive the wire will be. Here are some of the ornaments that we made:

For me, the 22-gauge wire was great for just tooling around with shapes, but it probably wouldn’t have been able to have another wire wrap around it–you’d need a thicker “base wire” for that.  It was fun to just play around with it. Like, that little silver shape next to the heart seemed like a pendant for a necklace that I might buy.

A grown-up added beads to make this Christmas-tree-shaped ornament in just a few minutes:

Cute, right?

I had some leftover wire, and since then, the girls have been delving into it some more.  In fact, I had all of my leftovers set aside, because I planned to make a couple of extra-nice ornaments for the blog. But I didn’t share this plan with girls, and before I knew it, they’d commandeered the leftovers for their own craftiness:

Here are a couple that they made all on their own:

M made the musical note with craft wire, and the bird and matryoshka dolls are made from cut-outs that I’d prepped for the crafting event. They came from this unbelievably adorable  book, Fa La La La Felt, which will make you yearn to craft immediately. Many of the crafts are ambitious, but luckily, they can be taken down a notch to accommodate the patience and skills of children. And/or this blogger.

In fact, I feel a bit guilty, because in the book there are these bee-you-tee-ful matryoshka ornaments that are sewn together with a little batting to give them body, and I did a modified version, and then my kids stole the pieces and modified them some more.  Same deal with the bird: in the book, it was a lovely dove with a coordinating floral-patterned wing piece that I’d planned to make, but one of the kids just had a rick-rack and button party all over it. So these are cute, but the ones in the book are gorgeous.  And absolutely do-able, just not do-able for me right now when I’m also working on Christmas shopping and helping kids with homework and  keeping up with the blog. I was sad that there wasn’t one of those “Look Inside!” options so that you could see the Many Splendid Crafts in the book, so I poked around a bit and located the author’s blog, which is going into my Google Reader.

The wire crafts are going to be part of this year’s Crafty Girl Party. The book is on my Christmas list (hint, hint).

We’re traveling to visit family for tomorrow and Friday. Then we’ll be back in town on Saturday, in time for me to be the judge at the Albany Institute of History & Art’s LEGO® Building Challenge. I might just slack off and completely skip posting for a few days. Unless I’m inspired.

Tonight I’m decidedly uninspired. I was poking around the internet, looking for something that would put me in the mood to post. . . not much, really.

I did see a link to this book, Thank You, Sarah: The Woman Who Saved Thanksgiving. I haven’t read it, but I might have to order and/or convince my school librarian to do so.

I also saw information about a video contest for girls and young women, that asks girls to come up with a “Girls’ State of the Union.”  We’d jump all over this if the girls were older. It’s for ages 14 to 22, and the deadline is November 30th.

Beyond that, one of the things I’m thankful for lately is Moe Willems’ Elephant and Piggie Books. They are so easy to read and so funny that J can read them to me and we’ll both be laughing out loud. That’s priceless mother-daughter time, there. I even wrote Moe a thank you note/fan letter, because it is tough to find easy-to-read books that aren’t unbelievably boring.

I’m also thankful because M has been moving into a more thoughtful phase, offering to help me with dinner or carrying things, trying to calm J down when she’s worked herself into a frenzy, and generally being more pleasant to be around than usual. It’s a teensy (and if you ask Cute W, almost undiscernable) change right now, but I will take it and be grateful.

How about you? What are you thankful for? Anything the rest of us should know about?

Okay, I feel better today than yesterday. So thank you. Anyway. . .

I’m finally getting around to telling you about our visit to the New York Public Library. Way back before Disney, we went down to New York City from a family wedding. When we arrived, we had an hour or two to kill before we met up with everyone, and I practically begged my family to let us please-please-please go to the downtown public library for a quick visit.

Mostly, it was nostalgia. Yes, I’m a total geek, and the library was a home away from home back when I was in grad school. But it’s also a beautiful building. If you’re walking along Fifth Avenue and you see the big ol’ lions and you point them out and keep walking. . . DON’T DO THAT!  Because, really, it’s gorgeous inside. Go take a look.

We went in and I showed the girls how you ask for books, and then we spent quite a bit of time in the super-cool gift shop. J was quite camped out there:

Then we headed downstairs and out toward Bryant Park, and we stumbled onto a room that wasn’t there back when I was in grad school: a Kids’ Room! Yay!

With kid-sized furniture and some lovely artwork, and Something. Even. Better.

Okay, if you look in that picture above, over to the left, there’s like this weird little room-within-the-room? Here’s what’s inside!

The original stuffed animals that inspired A. A. Milne’s stories for Christopher Robin! I know, right? So we had a new bonus feature I hadn’t even anticipated, all conveniently located next to a bathroom! Woo, hoo!

After that, we headed out to Bryant Park, where I was delighted yet again with a small al fresco outpost of the kids’ library, with plenty of books (ignored) and piles and piles of dusty pebbles (quite popular with kids, but I didn’t want to focus photos with random children–that would be creepy).

I’d always liked Bryant Park, but this is so awesome and cute. Of course, my girls are suckers for a fountain: mysterious but true.

It was a lovely little visit. Sigh: I love that library.

This is a reader-written post from Amy, who’s contributing for the second summer in a row. This time in verse! Hooray and thank you, Amy!

During a recent heat wave, when it was too hot to go outside, I wondered what would we do, me and my kids number 1 and number 2? Would we stay in the entire day? What would we do? What could we play? She almost six and he almost two, was there nothing, nothing we could do? Then I spied it with my eyes, I saw it and knew. I knew then just what we would do.

On the porch there sat a cardboard box just looking at me, waiting, begging, saying anything but the heat, please. Really? Yes, really! So, I stepped into the heat and brought it inside. I brought it inside, that box, and that’s when I saw them, those two sets of eyes open WIDE.  And even wider still when given a fistful of sidewalk chalk. A fistful of chalk to draw on said box whatever they pleased.  Then they went to work, the two of them did. She drew swirls and he, maybe a squid?  She drew curtains and throw rugs and such. He made of that chalk his own personal lunch. But in the end, no matter the means, the box became “not a box.”  It became something much more. It became something to occupy the living room floor!

If you haven’t read it, rush out to your local library or bookstore and pick up Not a Box by Antoinette Portis.  The dedication reads: “For children everywhere sitting in cardboard boxes.”  I think that says it all.