Friday Reads: The Penderwicks!

This week I've been spending time with a really spectacular family: the Penderwicks! The Penderwicks inhabit three novels by Jeanne Birdsall, and they make for really fun, charming reading aimed at school-age children. The lady heroines are four sisters: Rosalind, the oldest and most responsible Penderwick; Skye, the tomboy/scientist/explorer; Jane, the imaginative writer; and Batty, the youngest and most whimsical sister. The four sisters work so well as a pack--they even have periodic MOPS sessions, or Meetings Of Penderwick Sisters--but they all have endearing voices and personalities of their own. Their well-characterized uniqueness turns their relatively average day-to-day life into a joyful adventure from start to finish.

Birdsall won the National Book Award for her first novel in the series, The Penderwicks. From there she has added to the lives of the Penderwick sisters in a Louisa May Alcott way, and the end result is an absolutely sunny series of books. I hope there will be more titles to come, but for now there are just the three:

The Penderwicks - The Penderwick sisters, their father, and their dog named Hound head to their summer vacation at an estate called Arundel. While there, the girls make new friends, have daring and dangerous adventures, and get into a pretty good amount of trouble for young girls.

The Penderwicks on Gardam Street - The Penderwick sisters are back home the autumn after their Arundel vacation, and suddenly their normal school lives feel turned upside down. Their father, under some duress, goes on a few dates, causing the girls to fear for their futures and plot to save the Penderwick unite. Meanwhile, new neighbors make for a bright spot in a season in upheaval.

The Penderwicks at Point Mouette - It's summer vacation again, but this time the Penderwicks are separated. Daddy is one place, Rosalind is spending her vacation with a friend, and the remaining three Penderwicks go with their aunt to Maine. The new relationship dynamics of a three-sister clan cause some amount of chaos, but the girls all develop their distinct personalities along the way.

Food Tuesday: Jambalaya

This week I was able to make one of the recipes I had saved to my desktop, thus making for a bit less clutter when I work at my computer: Jambalaya! I first ate jambalaya when I was in New Orleans for ALA Annual last June, and mmm was it tasty. Some time since then, my very excellent mother discovered, tried, and tweaked Ellie Krieger's Jambalaya with Shrimp and Ham into a new staple at her house. When I tasted it while home around Thanksgiving, I knew I would have to give it a go on my own.

I did my own bit of tweaking of the original recipe, namely using chicken breast and smoked turkey sausage in lieu or ham and shrimp. I cut the chicken breast into pieces and cooked it in a bit of olive oil in a frying pan while the rice was cooking in the dutch oven, and then for the last few minutes I added the sliced sausage just enough for it to heat through and begin getting some color. Just before serving, I stirred the meats into the deliciously spicy and savoury rice mixture. Absolutely delicious, and the leftovers potential looks to be quite favorable. Food Tuesday #2 of 2012: success!

Last Week at the Library: Pizza!

This past week, I met with one of my regular moms groups that brings in their young children (about 1-4 years old) for a story time. In these special story times, it can sometimes be a struggle to keep kids engaged for longer than five minutes, especially because of the relatively wide age range. I've found that simple--seemingly too simple, sometimes--programming is what does the trick. Pick a theme with which the children will have at least a basic familiarity, find two or three stories (on the shorter side!) to read, and mix things up with a rhyme/fingerplay and a participation activity. Last week I went with that yummy topic that is familiar to pretty much any American household: pizza!

I read two great, young child-friendly books during the story time: Monica Wellington's Pizza at Sally's and Virginia Walter's Hi, Pizza Man! Wellington's book gives a good nonfiction-style introduction to how pizza is made, while Walter's book is a bit goofy and invites audience response (what would you say if a kitty showed up at your door to deliver your pizza? "Meow meow, Pizza Kitty!" of course!). I separated the two stories with a rhyming fingerplay in which we used our imaginations to make pizzas, and I ended with a color matching game to reinforce color knowledge. Then to the craft: a simple piece of white card stock on which there was an empty slice of pizza, ready for the kids to color or paste their favorite pizza toppings. So simple, using no special supplies, and they loved it! And of course, we ended with the bubble machine--I shall never again underestimate the power of a bubble machine to thrill preschoolers.

Friday Reads: The House of the Spirits

I'm joining a book club next week! As a result, my first #fridayreads of 2012 is Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, a novel about a few generations of the del Valle and Trueba families in Latin America during the 20th century. This is a dense book, folks; there is so much rich description and detail that it is taking me a while to read it. What I have read so far, however, is definitely rich fodder for book discussion: a mermaid-like girl, a strict Catholicism amidst new socialist values, a bit of psychic premonition, and a cycle of pain and misfortune that seems to circle Esteban Trueba and his family. I'm interested to hear the discussions next week.

Also read this week: Why We Broke Up, written by Daniel Handler and illustrated by Maira Kalman. In the first few chapters, I was annoyed with how self-absorbed the narrator, Min, is while she's listing the reasons she and her ex Ed broke up. She goes through their relationship and the reasons for its demise with the help of small objects she kept throughout their time together--these make up Kalman's illustrations, which are her signature brand of brightly-colored, more-than-everyday portrayals of everyday things. As the novel went on, however, I really got to enjoying the novel despite never really finding Min or Ed very sympathetic. To me, they were just two teenagers who were too self-involved--of course they were going to break up! But maybe that's the point, this is just a close-up look at an everyday breakup, brightly-colored so that for the duration of the novel it's a bit more than just everyday.

Food Tuesday: Chinese Leftovers

What a better way to start off a year of Food Tuesdays than with leftovers---from 2011! I could try to make some sort of excuse for why today's entree isn't particularly stunning, but the reality is that I end up making this once or twice a month, so I'm not apologizing for it. It's good, it's resourceful, and it involves lots of veggies. So there.

There aren't very many lunchtime food options around my library. In fact, I can think of one place within a 30-minute-lunch-break driving distance, and three places that deliver. Of those delivery restaurants, the Chinese place is where my fellow staffers and I order from most. On occasional Fridays someone will suggest ordering Chinese food for lunch. Pretty soon three, four, five of us have opted in, writing our orders on a piece of scrap paper. I always get the same thing: L11, the lunch-size portion of beef and broccoli, with steamed rice and an egg roll.

The lunch-size portion is still pretty huge, so after eating the egg roll I only eat about half of the main bowl--except I'll eat all of the vegetables, leaving just half of the rice and beef. Voila, leftovers! When I get around to making the leftovers for my dinner some evening, I have two pans on the stove: one to reheat the rice and beef, drizzled with a bit of sesame oil and low sodium soy sauce; and one to steam more fresh veggies. I mix them up at the end to unify the whole dish. The end result is a tasty, partially-fried rice-based beef and broccoli chock full of veggies--often even more veggies than were in the original, since I can buy and add whatever I like. Filling, pretty healthful, and not a bit wasteful.

I know doctored-up leftover Chinese food isn't the most glamorous of dishes, but it's a realistic one that I can guarantee you I'll be eating at least a handful of times in the coming year. And I look forward to it.

Resolutions

While some friends and I were reflecting on our 2011 resolutions at last night's new year's party, I was pleased to confirm that I did in fact meet my three resolutions (two of which I blogged about) for last year: I read at least a book a week; I cooked for myself a lot more, including many new recipes; and I developed a taste--very limited, not very refined, mind you--for beer.

Now for my 2012 resolutions, in particular as they pertain to this blog:

1) To blog about my reading on Fridays (a.k.a. #fridayreads) -- this resolution is, effectively, another book-a-week resolution, as blogging about the same book Friday after Friday would be boring

2) To blog about cooking on Tuesdays (a.k.a. #foodtuesday), with a particular emphasis on trying new recipes

3) To blog about my library programming (on Sundays? we'll see), with the dual goal of sharing my successes and helping to develop my professional voice that will one day contribute to the library literature

I invite everyone to consider joining me in one of the above resolutions. If you like to read, blog/tweet #fridayreads. If you like to cook or want to cook more, share a recipe on #foodtuesday. And if you ever have a good idea for library programming, well, I want to know about it regardless of what day it is. I hope we'll develop a fun little community of reading and cooking interested folks this year!

I am also going to try to make an effort to log less screen time when I am at home. Since I'm in front of/around computers all day long at work, I want to focus on being more engaged with non-screen things in my off hours. My rationale is that having specific days for blogging about specific things will help this endeavor--I'll know when I'm going to be online, and then I won't be wasting time on random websites when I'm aimlessly on the web. Let's see what fun new things I can discover in my life when I'm not so tied to technology.

Happy new year, everyone!

Best Reads of 2011

I have mixed feelings about end-of-year lists, especially as there now seem to be so many of them. I figured, however, what is the point of keeping track of everything one reads in a year without reflecting back on those books?

I set out in 2011 to read the equivalent of one book a week, or 52 books total. I ended up with 79 titles on my list, with books for children, for young adults, and both adult fiction and nonfiction. I did not count picture books because, well, as a children's librarian, 52 picture books would present no challenge at all. Perhaps in 2012 I'll blog about my favorite picture books, too.

Here's how my reading broke down (yes, I really made a pie chart):

And, the real point of this posting, my ten best reads of 2011:

Best Children's Fiction, Fantasy: The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley

Best Children's Fiction, Historical: The Trouble with May Amelia by Jennifer L. Holm

Best Children's Fiction, Humorous: The Adventures of Sir Gawain the True by Gerald Morris

Best Children's Fiction, Realistic with a Female Protagonist: Faith, Hope, and Ivy June by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Best Children's Fiction, Realistic with a Male Protagonist: Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Parry

Best Young Adult Fiction: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Best Young Adult Series Fiction: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Best Adult Fiction, Comedic: The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

Best Adult Fiction, Dramatic: The Red Garden by Alice Hoffman

Best Adult Nonfiction: The Lost City of Z by David Grann

May the year 2012 bring you many wonderful opportunities for reading discoveries!