A Little Nook for Books

Project Book Nook is finished! 

When my grandchildren come to stay, books are always part of the visit.  Always. When we remodeled our home three years ago, we created a beautiful library room downstairs, and lately I've been working on a little reading nook upstairs.

Because of the dormers in our two-story Cape Cod style home, both of our upstairs guest bedrooms have funny little "dead space" corners. I measured and found a sweet William Morris inspired futon cushion and throw pillow from DocATot.  The cushion can lie flat and double as a "floor bed" for any visiting littles at night.

In case there was any question that this can also be a reading nook, I applied this adorable "Once upon a time..." decal that I found on Etsy (from Old Barn Rescue Company).

I think it turned out to be a very cozy space!

LETTUCE GET IN TROUBLE

Lettuce Get in Trouble is a brand new picture book that gives kids a glimpse into the life of a small lady who had a big love for design, practicality, and problem solving. 

Meet Sara Little Turnbull, "a troublemaker of the best sort", whose favorite question was: "WHY?" 

Sara Little was a small dynamo (under five feet tall!) and is a wonderful example for young designers and thinkers. When I started exploring her bio I was immediately reminded of the THE INCREDIBLES diminutive costume designer Edna "E" Mode and her inspiration, Hollywood designer Edith Head.

The Center for Design Books is launching a children's book series called Sara Little Trouble Maker, which is based on Sara and her design work. This first book, Lettuce Get in Trouble, is available May 17, 2022. Author Linda Kuo and illustrator Mariana Rio have done a fabulous job in making Sara come to life in lively text and fun retro illustrations for children... 

Young readers will learn how Sara's wise mother teaches her to look at beauty in the shapes and colors of food as they cook in their modest Brooklyn kitchen. Later, when Sara is grown up and working in New York, we see that her gift for observation helps her answer lots of questions at the start of her career in product development.  

One of the most pressing problems she tackles is from the Ministry of Food asking for help because "children seem to have stopped eating vegetables."  Her response is, "Have you talked to the children?"

This is where the story gets fun! Sara brings children from all over the world to her Little Lab in New York City to explore not only the importance of vegetables, but the ingenuity of design in the colors and shapes of food.  She discovers that many of the children believe that vegetables only come from cans.

Sara teaches them about design ("To design is to look for connections" and "Good design solves problems and also makes the world more beautiful and fun") and why vegetables are important. Together they design a Grand Event. She encourages them to make fun and tasty creations under big tents in a park.

Inside one tent are Lotus leaf plates, lettuce cups, wild grass straws... a zero-waste lunch.

Lin rolls out wraps with the children and shows off her almond butter and strawberry jelly burrito.

One child sprinkles mint leaves on tacos filled with bright orange carrots and red peppers.

I think any child who reads this book will be inspired about design and try some imaginative food combinations of their own after seeing all the fun and colorful geometric illustrations! I certainly was!

The first person to leave a comment below is welcome to my beautiful review copy of Lettuce Get in Trouble. After you leave a comment, please email me at [spam]wendyb1963@[spam]sbcglobal.net to send me your mailing address.

You can read more about the real Sara Little Turnbull at https://www.saralittleturnbull.com/about and here in the Fortune article: https://fortune.com/2022/03/08/women-history-never-heard-of-design-careers-pioneers-work-success-sara-little-paula-rees/

A TASTE OF PARADISE ON BRIGHT MONDAY

Happy Bright Week! Christ is Risen! 

On the heels of Pascha (for all my Orthodox readers), and Easter for those of you who celebrated earlier in the West, I hope you're enjoying after-Pascha-treats from your basket. We certainly are! Especially my yummy Russian Pascha cheese, which kind of tastes like paradise. 

But that's not the taste I'm here to tell you about today...

I have a soon-to-be-released children's book to share with you:  A Taste of Paradise, Stories of Saints and Animals. 

This delightful picture book is by Katherine Bolger Hyde, illustrated by Anastasiya Sokolova. It's exquisite, and I love it! And I think your kids will too. 

It seems safe to say that most children love animals and animal stories, and this book is a wonderful way to introduce them to some extraordinary saint stories...

Long ago in Paradise animals and men walked side by side.  When we return to Paradise, the wolf will lie down with the lamb, and a little child shall lead them.  In the time in between, many holy men and women have befriended even the fiercest beasts through the power of God's love.  Come and meet a few of these saints and their animal friends in this beautifully illustrated collection of inspiring stories!

Starting with Modestos, the patron saint of animals, we are introduced to saints from around the world (St. Herman of Alaska, Elijah the Prophet and the ravens, St. Kieran of Ireland and a wild boar, and St. Melangell of Wales and her rabbits, to name a few). 

Anastasiya Sokolova's luminous illustrations will draw you into each of Katherine Bolger Hyde's beautifully descriptive accounts of the saints and animals - perfect for children ages 4-8!

Be on the lookout! This book can be ordered soon from Ancient Faith Publishing.

LOVE COMES DOWN

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!   

A bouquet of flowers I received for Valentine's Day from my young goddaughters are serving as the perfect backdrop for my highlighted picture book today. It's new from Ancient Faith Publishing...

Love Comes Down, is a song by Natasha Frasch, which she put into a sturdy board book form for little hands.  The sweet illustrations are by Avery Mefford.  

It's about the humble nature of God's love through the Incarnation of Christ. I'll start with a stanza from the end of the book:

For love always comes down, down, down

and cares for the very small!

And we can care for the least of these...

because Love came down and cares for us all.

Even young children will understand through the text and illustrations of the book how God cares for them everyday, and how He sent His Son to care for us that we may care for others in our world.  

There is even a QR code on the opening page of the book so you can listen to the song, beautifully sung by the author/composer!

Happy Saint Lucia Day

Click here for my Saint Lucia Day Remembrances post (we started having a St. Lucia Procession at our church when my daughter was only two and a half years old.  Now she's a Mama who bakes Lusseketter and shares in the tradition with her own children!)

A Day at the Seashore

This might seem like an odd title for a November post, but here in sunny Southern California, we get some of our best beach days in the fall.  Take for instance last week, when our temperatures hit the low 90's!

My daughter and granddaughters were visiting from Michigan to meet their new baby cousin, and we took full advantage of the hot day to go to the beach, equipped with sand toys, towels, and a little Golden Book about two siblings - Nancy and Timmy - who go with their parents to the beach: A Day at the Seashore.

Nancy and Timmy hop out of their beds one summer morning and help pack their swimsuits and lunch. And then it's off to the seashore! In a charming rhyme, this Little Golden Book from 1951 (then titled A Day at the Beach) describes what preschoolers will find there: "You can catch little crabs—if you're quick! You can draw great big pictures right on the beach with a piece of a shell or a stick."

Ah, the glorious days of childhood...

Time Traveling with the Saints, Beyond the White Fence

A bunch of curious (and sometimes feisty) cousins, a garden gate leading to time travel adventures, and a peacock to guide them - who could ask for a better juvenile fantasy chapter book??  Especially one where kids will learn about saints' stories - and actually feel like they are there!

If your child likes C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, he or she will enjoy Beyond the White Fence. It all starts with a grandmother's backyard and a girl named Katie... 

Katie discovers that the valley behind her grandmother's garden is more mysterious than it seems.  After tumbling into tenth-century England and encountering Saint Edith of Wilton along with her wild animal menagerie, she is helped home, wondering whether her adventure was truly real.  

But after Katie, her cousins, and a neighborhood friend are drawn back in time once again, she realizes her grandmother's garden gate is a portal into faraway worlds, where patron saints are real people making real-life decisions.

Join Katie and her cousins as they mingle with Rachel and Jacob, meet Saint Mary Magdalene up close, trek across the sand with the matriarchs Naomi and Ruth, and have a nail biting adventure with the heroic Saint Katherine of Alexandria. In seeing the richness of the family of God, they glimpse how very much they are a part of it all.

Author Edith M. Humphrey, a grandmother herself (of twenty!) does a great job of storytelling in this new chapter book for 9 -13 year olds (and precocious 8 year olds) from Ancient Faith Publishing.  A former teacher and lecturer of theology (at Pittsburg Theological Seminary), she does an excellent job of bringing Orthodox theological truths and historic saints' stories alive for kids - with excitement, humor, and even some movie references - in a non-preachy or didactic way.  She tackles the topics of marriage and sexuality with the same amount of matter-of-factness as sibling rivalry.

Written in five parts, the last one makes for an especially suspenseful ending - Humphrey's handling of the bravery and martyrdom of Saint Katherine is wonderfully told.  The reader will feel Katie's dread in anticipation of her patron saint's death, but it is reckoned with the power and glory of God in His Saints. It brought me to tears.

Beyond the White Fence is available now from Ancient Faith Publishing.

Sisters, Sisters...

There were never such devoted sisters!

My granddaughters are the cutest.

We love singing them the "Sisters Song" from White Christmas - especially in light of the fact that Maria (the youngest of my daughter's four children) was born in December - on Christmas Eve!

My husband recently found a long lost box high up on a shelf in our garage.  It was full of some of our kids' favorite childhood picture books!  I separated them out according to each (now adult) child so they can pass them along to their own kiddos.

When I came to the pile of my daughter's books I smiled as I thought of her little girls enjoying their mommy's old books...because they already love books!

Today I'd like to highlight a story about two sisters, Snow White and Rose Red, heroines of one of Grimm's fairytales. I remember it being a favorite of my childhood fairytales.  Growing up, we had a recorded version with a follow-along Little Golden book.

There was once a poor widow who lived in a lonely cottage. In front of the cottage was a garden wherein stood two rose-trees, one of which bore white and the other red roses. She had two children who were like the two rose-trees, and one was called Snow-white, and the other Rose-red... 

I loved Gustav Tenggren's illustrations of the blonde and brunette sisters, as different in their personalities as their red and white rose bushes - and I could never decide which girl I'd rather be. The story also features a bear, and an ungrateful dwarf (who always reminded me of Rumplestiltskin).

This beautiful version, Snow & Rose written and illustrated by Emily Winfield Martin, was gifted to me by my daughter! It's a nice chapter book version for kids 8-12, with beautiful illustrations throughout.

From Publisher's Weekly:

Sisters Snow and Rose once lived a charmed life in a grand house with a beautiful garden. After their father disappears into the woods, the girls and their mother are forced to move into a small cottage in the same forest. There, they befriend a boy named Ivo, discover a mysterious library filled not with books but objects, are tricked by a strange little man, and bond with a protective bear. 

Unfolding over episodic chapters that build to a well-deserved happy ending, this moody fairy tale emphasizes family, friendship, and the powerful bond of sisterhood. Martin’s characterization of the two contrary sisters is especially moving: Rose is the type of person who “holds on to a thing she loved as tightly as she could,” while Snow wants “to see or hear or taste something she loved over and over again, to remind herself that it was real.” 

The sisters’ contradictions make their relationship all the stronger, and Martin’s prim full-color paintings and spot illustrations tenderly highlight key characters and moments. Ages 8–12.

Incidentally, when Maria was born, I gifted her with one of Emily Winfield Martin's picture books, The Wonderful Things You Will Be.

And this past Christmas, we gave her a cute little stuffed doll of the protagonist baby (her doppelganger), who, along with sister Lexi, keeps Maria company day and night.

Oh, how I miss our little Snow (Lexi) and Rose (Maria)!  Such devoted sisters.

Love at Lent - Family Activity Pack Giveaway

Blessed Feast of the Annunciation! Today, I'd like to highlight Love at Lent, a new offering from Ancient Faith Publishing.  Orthodox Lent and Pascha are a bit late on the calendar this year, and so am I in getting this post out, but nonetheless, here you go... 

Michelle Bonanno Triant, along with illustrator Maria Constantinescu, has curated a sweet boxed set of 50 Lenten activity cards for the whole family that will encourage forgiveness, gratitude, generosity, prayer, and love. 

These daily tasks and prayer cards will get your family involved in the Spirit and work of Lent.  You can choose one each day of Great Lent and Holy Week to discover a new simple task to complete. The cards can also be utilized in other settings, such as Sunday school, church ministry groups, and homeschool cooperatives.

I just LOVE Maria Constantinescu's illustrations on the front of each card.  So bright and perfect for spring!

I think parents will appreciate that the tasks on the back of the cards are simple and straightforward, and not overwhelming at all. They don't even need to be done in a specific order (although there are a few that go especially with Holy Week and Pascha.) Along with the activities, all the cards include "Tips" and "Bonus Fun".

Here are a few examples of specific tasks:

Read a Bible Story

Say "I Love You" in Another Language

Give Away a Toy

Take a Family Walk

Dance

Decorate a Pascha Card

GIVEAWAY: I know this fun pack of sturdy activity cards will be anticipated by kids and used year after year!  I'd love to send it to someone.  

Be the first parent, grandparent, godparent, or Sunday school teacher to leave a comment and the pack is yours. Then send me an email {wendyb[spam]1963@sbclgobal.net} with your mailing address. 

*Of course anyone is welcome to leave a random comment and not enter in the giveaway, but please specify that. Giveaway is only open to my readers with children in their lives that could benefit.  Not to be re-sold under any circumstance!  The cards are available here from Ancient Faith Publishing.

A Hymn for Saint Brigid's Day

 Troparion

"St. Bride", John Duncan 1913

O holy Brigid, you became sublime through your humility,

and flew on the wings of your longing for God.

When you arrived in the eternal City and appeared before your Divine Spouse wearing the crown of virginity,

You kept your promise to remember those who have recourse to you.

You shower grace upon the world, and multiply miracles.

Intercede with Christ our God that He may save our souls.

The well-known founder and abbess of the Monastery of Kildare has been revered and loved throughout Europe for almost fifteen hundred years. While she was still a young woman, her unbounded compassion for the poor, the sick and the suffering grew to such proportions as to shelter all of Ireland. St. Brigid’s tonsure at the hands of St. Mael of Ardagh inaugurated the beginning of women’s coenobitic monasticism in Ireland. St. Brigid soon expanded it by founding many other convents throughout Ireland. The gifts of the Holy Spirit shine brightly upon all through her—both men and beasts—to this day. After receiving Holy Communion at Kildare from St. Ninnidh of Inismacsaint she gave her soul into the hands of her Lord in 523. [Source: http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/irishorthodoxchurch.aspx#brigid]

Happy first day of February - St Brigid's Day! You can read my past post, here, with a book recommendation for today The Life of Saint Brigid, Abess of Kildare, by Jane Meyer.

Tonight, on the eve of The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, we will have our candles blessed at church. This February 2 feast day (called Candlemas in the West) commemorates a prophecy and blessing given by St. Simeon in Luke chapter 2: 

"Lord now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace. 

For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation 

which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people. 

To be a Light to enlighten the nations 

and to be the glory of Thy people Israel."  

Tomorrow is also Groundhog Day - he'll be looking for light too! Will he see his shadow?  Traditionally, if the sun shone on "Candlemas Day", Europeans believed the hedgehog (groundhog) would cast a shadow and another six weeks of winter was inevitable.

"If Candlemas be fair and bright,

Come winter, have another flight.

If Candlemas brings cold and rain, 

Go winter, and come not again."

Need a Hug?

Around this time of year (and especially this year), we all could use a warm, cuddly hug. With  Groundhog Day and Valentine's Day approaching, I thought I'd share a heartwarming book with you that features a hedgehog (hey, it's pretty close to a groundhog!)

"Why will no one hug me?" Hedgehog sniffed. 

"You're just a little bit tricky to hug," replied Owl, "with all your prickly prickles.  But don't worry, there's someone for everyone."

The Hug, written by Eoin McLaughlin, and illustrated by Polly Dunbar, is a unique format picture book that flips over, providing two narratives - and two characters - to love.

Book description: Both a hedgehog and a tortoise are feeling sad and looking for a hug.  They ask all the animals they come across, but for some reason, no one will hug them. Until a wise owl explains: Hedgehog is too spiky; Tortoise is too bony.  And that's when they find each other!

What your child will like about this book: The story read from the front cover to the middle is Hedgehog's story; you turn the book upside down and read from back to middle for Tortoise's story.  Both creatures have the same problem: no one wants to hug them and everyone has an excuse.  Both their stories collide - with a big hug - in the middle of the book.  These two just had to wait until they found their match. 

One more from this writer/illustrator duo: While We Can't Hug, a new picture book for kids in response to social distancing. Hedgehog and Tortoise find other things friends can do besides  hugging - they can wave at each other, write letters, make funny faces, and sing songs...all in a show of their friendship.

Good-by Amazon, hello bookshop!

I don't know about you, but I'm doing all I can for local businesses.  Yesterday I visited a new independently-owned little bookstore in quaint Old Town Tustin, here in Orange County, CA. It's the Arvida Book Co. 

I've often dreamed of opening a little bookshop like this on Main Street, USA, complete with used and new books, a great children's area, cozy reading spaces, bookish merchandise, local art, and good coffee! 

 

Our local newspaper had carried a story about the bookshop, and I finally made it for a visit. The owner, Sam Roberston (who chose the name "Arvida" in homage to her South American grandfather) has really gotten this book space right - with tons of help from her friends and family. 

She and her husband Mike opened the shop in October of 2020 - right in the middle of a pandemic situation that has had everyone shopping online!  

Brave Mama (she has two young children) - good for her!

In a second interview (here), Sam said, "The pandemic has given Amazon this crazy leverage over everything. We're not going down without a fight. We're not going to play their game." 

Don't you love her?

Shopping here is waaaay more fun than Amazon anyway! And everything at Arvida is very Covid-conscious, in a non in-your-face way.  They've got cute little book pages and pillows on all the chairs and couches, as a gentle reminder not too stay and read (until this is all past us).  Masks required, of course.

Did I mention there's coffee? From White Sparrow Coffee. (The Robertsons' landlord introduced them to the local vendor.) I didn't get a cup, since it was too late in the day for me, but I can hardly wait to go back for a morning visit! 

With hanging plants and succulents, the whole space is light, bright, and open, but still cozy.

There's a hip, creative funkiness...

...but all the books and antiques make it timeless as well.

And, saving the best for last, there is an awesome children's corner!  Take a closer look...

Sweetly curated, but not too precious. Lots of rustic cubbies for used and new books, 

...and billowing cloth for a tent-like ceiling that hangs over a little table and tree stump stools. What child wouldn't want to plop down here with a book?

There's a campy feeling of the outdoors, with lots of greenery around (even lining the backs of the bookshelves!) It reminded me a little of Neverland.

This place is so fun and inviting. Truly a little "Shop Around the Corner".  Lots of other unique shops and restaurants surround it, all ready and waiting for customers. 

Here was my take-away: a gorgeous new Chiltern's Classic edition of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and a $2 used hardcover 1952 copy of Charlotte's Web. A good day. Even with a mask.

You might also like my past post, "Word Lovers UNITE! (With E.B. White and Others...), here.