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Book Feast: Eat Your Way Through A Great Book!

By on November 28, 2012   /   Book Lists, For Kids  

The next morning Mrs. Welsch asked, “Wouldn’t you like to try a ham sandwich, or egg salad, or peanut butter?” Her mother looked quizzically at Harriet while the cook stood next to the table looking enraged.

“Tomato,” said Harriet, not even bothering to look up from the book she was reading.

~from Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Books and Food. Food and Books. It’s holiday time and in the Brown house that means a happy family, good books and festive food. But books with food? Sure thing.

This holiday season how about holding a literary feast? It’s yummy. It’s fun. And eating along with your favorite characters brings a story to life in a whole new way. Who didn’t wonder at Edmund’s passion for the exotic sounding Turkish Delight (a candy that tastes, disappointingly, more like the inside of a jelly bean than a treat from an exotic land.) Or Harry’s mug of Butter Beer. Snow Candy with Laura Ingalls Wilder. Chocolate Cake with Matilda.

Curious second graders inspired my first intentionally literary feast. My class fell in love with Sara Pennypacker’s impulsive Clementine but most of the class had never heard of Boston Cream Pie- a mysterious dessert that’s more cake and pudding than pie. Or even Clementine’s namesake citrus fruit. To celebrate the last chapter and the end of the semester we got into the literary spirit with a Clementine feast. Would you believe every seven year old tried- and claimed to enjoy- lentils? Yes! Transformative. It was a book, a meal and a library period that none of us will ever forget.

Reading Because of Winn-Dixie? How about a feast of egg salad sandwiches, Dump punch, pickles and lozenges (I recommend horehound candies as a reasonable substitute for Kate DiCamillo’s mystical treats.) A family reading Kathi Appelt’s Keeper could have a wonderful celebratory meal of Blue Crab Gumbo. Harriet’s tomato sandwiches are straight forward- bread, mayonnaise and sliced tomatoes. Period.

Need a bit more guidance? There are oodles of cookbooks with middle-grade literary connections. Lots of them were even written by the original middle-grade authors. Check out

Mary Poppins in the Kitchen: A Cookery Book with a Story  P. L. Travers

The Redwall Cookbook by Brian Jacques

Jane Yolen and her daughter Heidi Stemple gather dishes from all across the story spectrum in Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook for Young Readers and Eaters

Eat like you’re on the prairie with Barbara Walter’s The Little House Cookbook.

Join the masses of Potter fans with Dinah Bucholz’s The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook: From Cauldron Cakes to Knickerbocker Glory–More Than 150 Magical Recipes for Muggles and Wizards. She has also written The Unofficial Narnia Cookbook, with everything from Turkish Delight to Fire Roasted Pavenders (a kind of small fish.)

Or satisfy Roald Dahl fanboys and fangirls with treats from Roald Dahl’s Revolting Recipes.

As a FROM THE MIXED-UP FILES exclusive, here’s my kid-friendly recipe for Momma’s Sour Cream Ambrosia, fresh from the fridge in my middle-grade novel THE MAP OF ME.

Sour Cream Ambrosia

1 packet Jello- cherry or lime are “traditional” but use any flavor you prefer, prepared by packet instructions

3 cups mini-marshmallows

1 8oz container sour cream (may use low fat)

1 8oz container whipped topping such as Cool Whip

1 small jar maraschino cherries, drained

1 small can mandrin oranges, drained

2 cups crushed pineapple, drained, juice reserved

1 cup toasted coconut (optional)

Mix all ingredients except coconut in a large bowl. If necessary, adjust to light moist consistency by gently stirring in some of the reserved pineapple juice. Sprinkle top with coconut.

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold [as the hobbits do], it would be a merrier world.” The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkein. So as you settle into the holiday season read, munch, and be merry!

What’s your favorite literary food?

 

Tami Lewis Brown believes you can never have enough hot buttered toast, whether dining with a hobbit or Mercy Watson.

 

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Indie Post: Creating Children’s Bookstore Memories

By on November 27, 2012   /   Indie Spotlight  

This month, with the holidays and the New Year coming on, Mixed-Up Files is saluting all children’s bookstores everywhere, and remembering a few individual gems we’ve featured in 2012.

www.takeyourchildtoabookstore.org

Kids can get overwhelmed with gifts of things, especially at this time of year. Yet we know that the most lasting childhood memories are not of things but of experiences, especially shared experiences.   A good book is both a thing and an experience, shared in a sense with the author and with everyone else who reads it. So isn’t a book the ideal gift?

And it’s so easy! Go online any time of day or night and in less than five minutes you can order your child a book tax-free at a big discount, and it will magically appear a few days later, even gift-wrapped, if you so choose.  Or, if you need the book sooner, you can wait until open hours at the nearest chain store where you’re bound to find something appropriate from their large selection.

Whoa.  What if, instead, you invite the child to come with you to real children’s bookstore to choose his or her own books,  even make a day trip to another town if there’s no such store where you live?  What will reward your extra effort?

A unique atmosphere

All online and chain bookstores are alike in predictable ways, on purpose. Chains are concerned with “brand” and want all their stores everywhere in the country to have a familiar look and feel.  And there are not many places to sit down (unless you buy something at the café), because they don’t want you to browse and read.  They want you to get to the checkout counter.

Each child’s bookstore is different in its own way, a unique world, created by owners who delight in children and children’s books.  It’s their dream come true of what a children’s bookstore should be. Can you stay all night and read at Barnes and Noble?  You can at Velveteen Rabbit Book Shop and Guest House in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. Can you get a moustache out of a vending machine there?  You can at Green Bean Books in Portland, Oregon.  Are the walls bursting with colorful art and the signatures of visiting authors?Are there live animals roaming the store—cats and chickens and chinchillas?   Encounter  them at Wild Rumpus in Minneapolis.

Browsing at Wild Rumpus

There’s a welcoming magic in children’s bookstores that children young and old (and the child in us) respond to immediately.

Real people

All physical bookstores have people in them.  But in a children’s bookstore, you can be sure these will be people who know children and books. Their main job is to help find just the right ones for a child, and they aren’t required to spend part of their time at a table up front, demonstrating and promoting their company’s latest e-reading device.    (Note to children’s authors:  these independent booksellers are also the ones who actually read, know, and hand-sell your books).

Real choice

At first it might seem that a big chain store could offer you a better choice of books than a small independent. But it matters who chooses the books and why.  Independent booksellers can and do choose to carry—or not carry— any books they like, and they can display and promote them however they want to.  Of course, you say.   But most of the titles in a chain store have been selected, not by the people who work there, but by remote company experts who have made a guess about what you will be likely to buy and who need you to fulfill their predictions. Independent booksellers are on-the-spot curators who can sort out quality from hype, and can lead you to their favorites and yours, often less-publicized great finds you might not otherwise have discovered.

Higher prices

Though independent bookstores may offer some modest sales and membership discounts, most have to charge the cover price for a book.  You may feel foolish, even guilty, paying full price plus tax for something you know is available at a deep discount and tax-free elsewhere, but in this case you  get what you  pay for.

A great time with the child

When you make a trip with a child to a children’s bookstore, inviting him or her to enter the atmosphere and browse and choose to his or her heart’s content, you create an experience neither of you will soon forget.  Priceless.

The chance to support a community

That cover price and tax you pay at an independent bookstore– where does it go? Some to the publisher, of course, but, unlike the money we spend online or at a chain, the rest goes to the local community.  Children’s bookstores stay alive by responding to the needs of their neighbors—listening to their preferences, developing personal relationships with customers young and old,  creating unique events and programs for them, and championing local authors as well as nationally known ones.  Aren’t such stores, and the communities that have the wisdom to sustain them, worthy of our support?

Hunger Games training camp, Little Shop of Storiesand championing local authors as well as nationally known ones.  Aren’t such a store, and a community that has the wisdom to sustain it, worthy of our support?

A chance to vote

Every time we spend money one way rather than another, we are casting a vote for what we value and want to see thrive.  So what’ll it be? Amazon and Barnes & Noble* or places like Blue Manatee, Eight Cousins, and The Little Shop of Stories?

 

 

 

 

Ask a child who’s been there!

 

*If online is really the only way you can buy children’s books this season, you can still order them through independent stores.  Many children’s bookstores fill online orders, including a number of the following that we have featured so far this year:

The Green Bean, Portland OR: www.greenbeanbookspdx.com
Blue Manatee, Cincinnati OH: www.bluemanateebooks.com

The Eight Cousins, Falmouth MA:  www.eightcousins.com

The Wild Rumpus, Minneapolis MN: www.wildrumpusbooks.com

The Little Shop of Stories, Decatur GA: www.littleshopofstories.com

Bbgb (Bring Back Great Books), Richmond VA: www.bbgbbooks.com

The Velveteen Rabbit, Book Shop and Guest House, Fort Atkinson WI: www.velveteenrabbitcookshop

Monkey See, Monkey Do, Clarence NY: www.monkeysread.com

Or you can go to the largest independent bookstore in the country at www.powells.com or to www.indybound.org and order from them.

If you and the children you love have fine memories of visiting a children’s bookstore, please tell us the story in a comment below.  Do you have a favorite shop you think we should feature in 2013?   Next month we’ll be talking to the folks at Reading Reptile in Kansas City.

Sue Cowing lives in Honolulu HI, 2,000 miles from the nearest children’s bookstore.  She is the author of a middle-grade puppet-and-boy novel, You Will Call Me Drog (Carolrhoda Books 2011, Usborne UK 2013)

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Books that Shaped Middle-Grade

By on November 26, 2012   /   Book Lists, Op-Ed  

I live near Washington, DC, and like many people who live in this area, a frequent lament of mine is that I don’t take enough advantage of the wonderful talks, exhibits and concerts that happen here. So, it was with great pleasure that I went to the Library of Congress with two writer friends, Sara Lewis Holmes and Madelyn Rosenberg, to view the exhibit, Books That Shaped America. It was a lovingly-arranged and thoughtfully laid out exhibit of 88 books, ranging from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, to Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage, to Dr. Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care.  The exhibit has since closed, but you can view the online exhibit here.

(If you’ve never been to the Library of Congress, you must visit on your next visit to Washington, DC. It is truly a place meant to ennoble the soul, with heavy marble floors and stairs, and grand painted ceilings. If you have no need to do any research yourself, there is a special place just for watching those who are. You will be on the same level of the likes of Shakespeare, Bacon and Beethoven, looking down into what seems like a well of knowledge.)

Many children’s books were on the list, many known and beloved: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Charlotte’s Web, The Snowy Day, The Cat in the Hat, Goodnight Moon. There were also ones which are perhaps more talked-about than read by children these days: Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick series, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A few children’s books had been left to history, including A Curious Heiroglyphick Bible and Peter Parley’s Universal History. Of the latter, the exhibit dryly notes, “[Author Samuel] Goodrich believed that fairy tales and fantasy were not useful and possibly dangerous to children. He entertained them instead with engaging tales from history and geography. His low regard for fiction is ironic in that his accounts of other places and cultures were often misleading and stereotypical, if not completely incorrect.”

In his introduction of the exhibit, Librarian of Congress (awesome title, right?) James H. Billington says, “This list is a starting point. It is not a register of the ‘best’ American books – although many of them fit that description. Rather, the list is intended to spark a national conversation on books written by Americans that have influenced our lives, whether they appear on this initial list or not.” And that is what I’d like to start here, a conversation of the most influential books that have shaped middle-grade books as we know them today. As one person, I am nothing but full of bias, but I believe each of the books I’ve listed below exploded a myth about children’s books and change the way we thought about them. I know there are more. Please contribute to the conversation in the comments!

You can’t talk about that!

Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume: Human sexuality was a hands-off topic for children – at least in any kind of accessible form – but Blume answered the questions that kids really had, all without embarrassment or condescension.

Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson: I recently met someone who was interested in writing children’s books and had not heard of Katherine Paterson. I struggled to find the words to describe Paterson’s place in children’s literature; I think I used the word “pillar” and it still felt inadequate. For 1998-2000, Bridge to Terabithia was one of the most frequently challenged books because of its theme of death, but of course, that’s exactly what makes it extraordinary.

That’s too complicated for kids!

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle: A Wrinkle in Time was famously rejected 26 times, with many editors complaining that the depth and complexity of the scientific and philosophical ideas presented in the book were too daunting for children. The popularity of A Wrinkle in Time proved that such ideas are exactly what kids love. (See also, The Phantom Tollbooth, kids don’t get wordplay.)

Children’s books should talk about how things should be, not how they actually are.

Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh: Fitzhugh was willing to go where few children’s book at that time had been willing to go: the dark underbelly of childhood with ugly feelings, unusual behaviors and positively cruel social dynamics. Harriet is also frequently cited as one of the first really strong and independent female heroines of children’s literature.

Children don’t read super-long books; and oh, adults don’t read children’s books.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling: You knew this was coming, didn’t you? Rowling showed that millions of children would happily read 500+ page books if properly written, and their parents would come along for the ride.

 

 

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