Foodie Friday: Chicks and Salsa and Birthday Cake

Today is my son Ethan's sixth birthday. Happy birthday, you brilliant, funny, scrappy thing! A tradition in our family is to allow the child or husband having a birthday to choose what meal I will cook for his or her birthday dinner. Ethan has chosen to have a quesadilla bar with chips and salsa, followed by cupcakes. His TexMex fiesta selection inspired today's Foodie Friday book, the fabulous Chicks and Salsa, written by Aaron Reynolds and illustrated by Paulette Bogan.

The chickens on Nuthatcher farm have grown tired of chicken feed, and the rooster decides to solve the problem. While perched outside the farmhouse window, he spots the farmer's wife watching cooking shows on television, and he decides to make salsa. He and the chickens "borrow" some tomatoes and onions from the garden and dine on chips and salsa. The ducks are then encouraged to use cilantro and garlic from the garden to create guacamole. The pigs similarly put together nachos. In all three cases, observant readers will be rewarded to see mice providing the more difficult ingredients such as chips and avocados. The animals plan a fiesta, but are disappointed to find all of the southwestern ingredients gone from the garden. The farmer's wife has made tamales for the county fair. Fortunately for the barnyard animals, she leaves a French cookbook at home.

Chicks and Salsa is a fun book, perfect for preschoolers through second graders. The colorful illustrations are clever with great touches of detail and terrific facial expressions on the animals which help tell the story. Plus, this book provides not one, but three recipes, Hog Wild Nachos, Quackamole, and Rooster's Roasted Salsa. Ole!

Minutes of the He Man Woman Haters/Pippi Longstocking Fan Club

Four boys between the ages of five and ten gathered in my minivan and home over the holiday break while their sisters played together elsewhere. I have tried to accurately record the events of that meeting.

1. One boy answered a question about gifts saying, "My sister got Polly Pocket stuff for Christmas. I hate Polly Pocket." All in attendance agreed that Polly Pocket is "stupid." Strawberry Shortcake and Hannah Montana were similarly denounced as "stupid, dumb, and too girly."
2. Hello Kitty was trashed even harder. "What kind of cat doesn't have a mouth?" was asked to much nodding in agreement.
3. Webkinz were played on the computer, but all "girly" activities were avoided.
4. An indoor bowling game was played repeatedly. The most exciting frames involved light sabers as well as the expected ball and pins.
5. Three vinegar and baking soda volcanoes were created and erupted.
6. A lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and/or quesadillas, pretzels, goldfish crackers, and cookies was heartily consumed. Several members insisted on either the Incredible Hulk or Scooby Doo lunch plates. The Barbie and Disney princess plates remained in the cabinet.
7. Total elapsed time: 3 hours 2 minutes.

Hours later, in a quiet moment alone with his mother, one of the five year old boys asked, "Pippi Longstocking isn't really girly, right? Anybody can like it." His mother agreed. After all, Pippi is an expert tree climber, can carry a horse, has a pet monkey, and funny is funny, no matter your gender.

Thoughts on the Three Kings

Today is the feast of the three kings, also known as the Epiphany, celebrating the arrival of the three wise men who came to see the newborn Jesus. I knew I would need to cover this yesterday in the fourth grade CCD class I teach. CCD is religious education for Catholic students who attend public school. I teach the class for several reasons including the facts that the program depends on volunteers, it gives me an opportunity to meet my kids' peers, and I have a hole to fill in my resume. My background is in teaching English, and I delight in situations where I get to use it while teaching CCD, such as when a student asked me if God actually used words like "thou" and "shalt" when issuing the ten commandments. I'll be honest, sometimes I sneak literature in there as well. I love when I have an appropriate story or poem to share with the class. Tomie de Paola's beautiful Clown of God was perfect to read before Christmas and really got the kids talking, and yesterday I was happy to read Langston Hughes' poem "Carol of the Brown King" with them:

Of the three Wise Men
Who came to the King,
One was a brown man,
So they sing.
Of the three Wise Men
Who followed the Star,
One was a brown king
From afar.
They brought fine gifts
Of spices and gold
In jeweled boxes
Of beauty untold.
Unto His humble
Manger they came
And bowed their heads
In Jesus’ name.
Three wise men,
One dark like me-
Part of His
Nativity.

It was fun to spend a few minutes talking about rhyme and point of view. Speaking of fun, I didn't lecture them on parody, but I could have with a little ditty my Aunt Mary Alice and Uncle Peter taught me decades ago that begins "We three kings of orient are, smoking on a rubber cigar. It was loaded. It exploded..." I've included the music to the original below in case you care to sing it. I didn't teach it though, as I felt the lovely and dedicated nun who runs the religious education program at our church might not appreciate it. Not that she doesn't have a sense of humor. In fact, she shared a cute joke with me last year about how things would be different had it been three wise women visiting the Holy Family. They would have asked for directions, arrived on time, and at least brought a casserole.

If you are someone who celebrates this day by looking for a trinket in your slice of cake or a treat in your shoe, I hope you find it.

The Princess or the Knight?

For several months now, I think since she read Cornelia Funke's wonderful Igraine the Brave, my daughter has had a sort of ice breaker/litmus test question she likes to ask of people. Actually, she only asks it of females ever since her brothers both answered the question with a snotty kind of "Duh" in unison. The question is this: Would you rather be the princess in the tower or the knight who saves her? The princess must sit up there, bored and waiting for rescue while the knight must endure hardship and danger. My daughter is certain she would prefer to be the knight. I generally agree, although on certain crazy days, a few months in a quiet tower sound idyllic. In any event, after reading Rapunzel's Revenge (remember how badly I wanted to read it back in December?), we both want to be Rapunzel. In this fantastic retelling by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale, illustrated as a graphic novel by Nathan Hale, Rapunzel is a real grab life by the horns type of girl. This version is a twist on the original story, keeping the long hair but setting Rapunzel's story in a sort of Wild West fairy tale land. She teams up with Jack (yes, of the beanstalk) in a witty and fast paced plot. Her adventures made my daughter and I jealous, and the illustrations and humor left us wanting a sequel. This book would make a great gift for tweens and older girls who appreciate comic books and girl power.

Books, Books, and Talking about Books

I wanted to like Larry McMurtry's Books: A Memoir which tells of his experiences as a book scout and antiquarian book seller. I really wanted to, but I didn't. I quit reading it last week at Chapter 34. Before you get all impressed, most chapters are only a page or two in length. I was interested in the early stories of McMurtry's childhood, but the many tales of where he found certain rare books, what he paid for them, and what they later fetched at resale failed to hold my interest.

On Christmas Day, however, I had a conversation with a bright, poised, and much cooler than I was at her age 11 year old girl which could also have been titled "Books: A Memoir." We started by talking about the copy of Twilight she had received for Christmas and had already begun reading. She also received some of The Clique series of novels written by Lisi Harrison and aimed at girls in grades five to eight, as well as a box of Nancy Drew books from her grandparents. She had my full attention. We covered other old favorites including Eoin Colfer. I've said it here before, if you want to get a tween talking, bring up Artemis Fowl or Half Moon Investigations. We moved on to how she organizes her bookshelves, and I was hanging on every word. She may not have penned Lonesome Dove or the screenplay to Brokeback Mountain, but this sixth grader kept my attention with her reading autobiography longer than Larry McMurtry did with his. I wonder if he has a favorite Clique book.

Foodie Friday: Pippi's Pepparkakor

While we did more than enough baking and eating over the holidays, we've done very little reading about food here lately. However, we started Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking as our nightly read aloud about a week ago. Not surprisingly, everyone thinks it's great. I can tell from all of the giggles, belly laughs, and predictions the kids let out while I read. I last read it 30 years ago, and it's even better than I remembered. Don't you love when that happens?

In case you aren't familiar with Pippi, she's the spunky nine year old heroine of this eponymous book first published in Swedish in 1950. Her mother died when she was quite young and her father, a sea captain, was lost at sea, although Pippi is convinced he has become a cannibal king somewhere. She moves into an old house, Villa Villekulla, with her horse and her monkey, Mr. Nilsson, and makes life much more interesting for her next door neighbors, Tommy and Annika.

My kids all laughed at the description of Pippi making pancakes for Tommy and Annika, getting cracked egg on her head, and declaring that she always heard egg yolk was good for the hair. Oh, those carrot red pigtails! Even funnier to my audience is when Pippi bakes pepparkakor, a type of Swedish cookie, by rolling out an enormous amount of dough on the kitchen floor. "Because," said Pippi to her little monkey, "what earthly use is a baking board when one plans to make at least five hundred cookies?"

We've decided to find a good recipe for pepparkakor, or, let's be honest, an easy looking one, and try it. Unlike Pippi, I plan to roll out the dough on the kitchen table. I'll let you know how it turns out.

In order to stick to my 2009 book blogging resolutions, I should say this is a good book for eight to eleven year olds to read independently and can be understood and enjoyed by children as young as five. We are reading a copy nicely illustrated by Louis S. Glanzman, but there are several other versions out there.

Aught Nine Resolutions

I haven't looked at other blogs yet this morning, but I'm assuming New Year's resolutions are the order of the day. So I will share a few of mine but only as they pertain to blogging about reading. (No need to bore you with stuff like good carbs vs. bad carbs, nagging my family less, and dressing like my inner cougar more.) Here goes.

1. Read and blog more frequently about young adult books. I do plan to go back to teaching middle or high school someday.

2. Read and share more poetry.

3. Try to mention all the important information- title, author, illustrator, and appropriate age or reading level.

4. Become more technologically savvy with images, links, and embedded videos. Trying jazzy new fonts is not enough!

5. Read and comment on more blogs in the "kidlitosphere."

6. Drink less Diet Pepsi as I type.

7. Post fewer pictures of myself in ridiculous holiday eyewear.

Happy New Year!

May 2009 bring you health, happiness, peace, love, and plenty of good reading!