It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? is hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date, and adapted by Kellee at Unleashing Readers and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts with a children’s/YA focus. The Sunday Post is hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer. These weekly roundups are a great way to discover new blogs and bloggers, share titles, and add to your ever-growing to-read list.
It’s mid-September? It’s mid-September!! Halloween candies are in the shops! How is this possible?!?! Slow down, 2016, slow down!!!
OK, here’s what I’ve been up to this week:
Singable picture books! If you’ve got a kids’ program or story time coming up, you absolutely cannot go wrong with a singable picture book. Bounce, sing, dance and groove along with some of my all-time favourite singable picture books, and bring your next program to life.
Working with tweens/teens in a library, youth group or other social setting often involves crafts. This week for Nonfiction Wednesday I looked at Lazy Crafternoon, which has 50+ easy, affordable crafts that will appeal to the crafters in your school or library. Sometimes you just have to put the smartphone down and get your hands busy making something you can show off to your friends and family!
Have you heard of Canlit for LittleCanadians? I celebrated this fantastic free resource this week on the blog, and really encourage everyone to visit, bookmark and enjoy! Canadian children’s books tend to be overshadowed by the countless American imports that crowd our shelves, and it’s wonderful that Helen take the time to showcase all the wonderful Canadian titles that are available in libraries and bookstores across the country. Explore and share the love!
I am absolutely in love with the Poetry Friday community, and this week I shared another one of my childhood favourites, Dennis Lee’s classic Alligator Pie. Such a wonderfully zany poem, and Canadian, to boot!
Saturday was all about the #diversekidslit, with another round up of some of the best and brightest diverse kids book blog posts on the interwebs.
In other reading news, I’ve managed to get my hands on a few older editions of one of my all-time favourite cooking magazines, and I love it so very much that I just had to sing about it here on the blog: Yummy Magazine!! If you’ve never seen Yummy before, you NEED to find it somewhere – my local library has a subscription, and I couldn’t be happier. This English-language Filipino cooking magazine is AMAZING. The foodstyling and photography is just stunning, and it’s packed to the brim with the most delicious recipes, together with really interesting articles. I honestly knew next to nothing about Filipino cuisine or culture before picking up this magazine on a whim for the first time, and I’ve been both enlightened and inspired. Food is such an important window to any culture, and Yummy celebrates both traditional Filipino cuisine as well as international foods and fusion dishes. It introduces non-Filipinos to a really diverse, modern, vibrant culture that’s more than just one of the world’s largest producers of foreign workers.
I happen to come from a country that doesn’t really have a “cuisine” – sure there are a few dishes that people think of as Canadian, but then tend to be French-Canadian, and I can’t really relate to poutine on a personal level. It’s fascinating to me to explore a culture that has a long, vibrant food history, one that’s deeply rooted in the past, but is still changing with the times and moving forward into the future.
Anyway, this is a long ramble about a magazine, but what can I say, I love it!!
Have a great week, everybody!
I have the Crafternoon book Jane – it looks perfect, and as for Yummy – what a perfect name for a magazine! It’d be interesting to read recipes from other cultures and cuisines. And we’re a bit the same in Australia – no specific cuisine as such! (Do meat pies count?)
My friends and I are actually addicted to Master Chef Australia – it’s the absolute best version of the show! Cooking shows are also a great way to learn about another culture. Australia has Vegemite and pavlovas and lamingtons and Anzac biscuits and shrimp on the barbie! Lots of great cuisine!
Singable picture books? How fun. And Halloween candy? Way too early for that although I don’t mind the fall and Halloween themed candles and stuff i like all the fall scents lol.
I don’t think I’ve ever had Filipino cuisine. Looks like a nice magazine.
Halloween stuff is EVERYWHERE here, and it’s been here for weeks. It’s NUTS! Let’s not rush the rest of the year, please!
The picture books are delightful, and gazing at the cover of Yummy magazine made me hungry, even though I’m eating while I read this! lol.
Thanks for sharing…and for visiting my blog.
I love cookbooks and cooking magazines and cooking shows, but cooking? Not so much…I’m a big fan of eating, though!
Crafts…. Argh. I quilt and knit but have no patience for things I can’t USE. Still not understanding why the Maker Movement ended up in libraries!
Wonderful and varied books to love, Jane! I will check out CanLit. I do love that you and others share good ones from Canada.
It can be hard to break out for Canadian writers, illustrators and publishers when you have such a big next-door neighbour, so sometimes they need all the help and support they can get!
Yummy looks very yummy! And I love the idea of crafting with older kids. I was just talking with my mom about that today. Have a great week!
I remember leading a teen summer camp and being astonished by how excited young people still get about old-fashioned, hands-on activities like making things. I kind of assumed that it was all about the tech and the digital, but nope, there’s still lots of fun to be had with scissors and a glue stick!
I’m always looking for new recipes to try. I’ll have to keep yummy magazine in mind.
It’s really awesome – it’s neat to explore different cuisines from around the world.
What about Nanaimo Bars and Flapper Pie? Are they not quintessential Canadian? I get what you mean though about our lack of cuisine. Thanks for the reminder about the canlit site. I know of it, but don’t got to it often enough.
Flapper pie? Not familiar with that one, I’m going to have to look it up!
I appreciated the singable picture book list.
I’m glad! It was a lot of fun to make.
Mahalo for stopping by my blog. I like how you work with a teen group and craft with them. Art is important. And it is always fun to find new, interesting recipes and learning something new.
Yummy is now making me hungry.