Book Talk: Modern Elementary Fiction Part 2

Part 2 because I forgot some. And honestly, after every one of these I publish, I remember some I should have put on the list and didn't. So I'll just round up a few books I forgot on the last list, and then move on out of elementary.

May I Please Have a Cookie? by Jennifer E. Morris--This is a Level 1 reader, so for beginning readers. These types of books necessarily have very simple text, and they rely heavily on the illustrations. The illustrations serve a dual purpose: context clues for early readers, and entertainment. This was one that came home from school with my first grader, and I thought it was really well done.

Alfie the alligator schemes to get a cookie.

Hank the Cowdog series by John R. Erickson--I had never heard of these before moving to ranching country, but we have multiple copies of these in our school library. I don't know how widely available they are elsewhere, but they are worth seeking out for kids if you can find them. They are written by a guy who was a working cowboy for most of his adult life, and they're told from the point of view of a cowdog named Hank, who is Head of Security on a ranch (at least, he thinks he is). They're modeled on those old-fashioned private eye novels like Sam Spade, but they're very funny and totally appropriate for all kids. There are like 60+ of them in the series, and I would say they're for something like second or third graders.

Hank would definitely keep a wary eye on these bulls.

Black Ships Before Troy and The Wanderings of Odysseus by Rosemary Sutcliff--The first of these is an abridged version of The Iliad, written in prose instead of verse. The second is the same, but obviously for The Odyssey. Both are beautifully illustrated and bound, and are a good introduction to some great stories for kids that are much more accessible in this format. They're for older elementary, probably fifth grade and up, but they would also be good for middle school or even high school, for kids who aren't ready to read the more-difficult translations of these stories.

Do you have anything else to add to this list of more modern elementary fiction?

Friday Food: A Porky Week

Today is our first day of summer vacation. We're all ready for the break. 

Friday 

Short version: Pizza, raw fennel

Long version: One cheese pizza, one with leftover taco meat on it (better than it sounds), and no mess on the stove, hooray!

I may not be the quickest problem-solver, but I get there in the end.

Saturday

Short version: Pork and gravy, mashed potatoes, baked sauerkraut, green peas

Long version: I had actually cooked the pork shoulder roast the day before, when it was cooler. I had poured the liquid and fat off into a jar and pulled the meat off the bone that day. So to reheat the pork, I sauteed minced green garlic in the pork fat, then added the juices and chunks of pork with salt and pepper, and when it was all hot, some cornstarch in milk to thicken it all. It came out very well.

I had also baked the sauerkraut with the pork the day before. One bag from the freezer, and one jar that had been canned last summer. I just baked it in a covered casserole dish with some butter. I like it better cooked right with the pork, but not everyone likes it as much as I do, so I kept it separate.

Sunday

Short version: Fried chicken, sorta-cornbread, cucumbers, roasted sweet potatoes, leftovers, chocolate banana fake ice cream

Long version: I had just six rooster drumsticks still in the freezer that I had separated from the carcasses before I froze them. So I marinated those in yogurt, then rolled them in corn flour and fried them in corn oil and olive oil. 

The cornbread was actually the batter left from the buttermilk pancakes I had made after church. I used yogurt, and it made very soft, almost custardy pancakes. Some of the children were not fans, and I didn't think the texture was quite right, either. The ingredients were very like those used in cornbread, however, so I added another cup of cornmeal to the pancake mixture and baked that. It came out very well, actually. Better than the pancakes, anyway. 

It didn't really rise, but no one minded flat cornbread.

The kids had the chicken and cornbread. A. had leftovers from the night before. I had a salad with my lettuce, yay! Plus some of the roasted sweet potatoes and tomatoes and cucumber and leftover taco meat.

I hadn't made that fake banana ice cream in awhile--you know the kind that's just frozen bananas and milk or cream--and I'm always amazed at how well it works. It really is almost indistinguishable in texture to soft serve. I always add cocoa powder to it. And I discovered this time that it doesn't work in my blender. I have to use the food processor. Boo.

Monday

Short version: Quickie pork stir-fry, rice

Long version: Two bags of frozen stir-fry vegetables, the rest of the pork roast diced up, soy sauce, garlic powder, ginger powder, vinegar, peanut butter, and there's a workday dinner.

Tuesday

Short version: Sirloin steaks, garlic bread and rolls, leftover mashed potatoes, sauteed and raw green beans

Long version: I had made the rolls with some of the bread dough while I was baking, thinking I could use them the next day for pulled pork sandwiches. But then they all got eaten after dinner. Of course.

The leftover mashed potatoes were for A., who didn't eat the bread, and Cubby, who ate the bread and wanted more food. 

A. and I ate the sauteed green beans (mine in yet another salad--still my lettuce yay!), and the kids ate the raw green beans.  Pretty typical.

Wednesday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: Last work day of the school year! These leftovers were actually from the cafeteria, where they had pulled pork on Monday and the cook sent the rest of it home with me. Bread and butter or rice, frozen green peas, and there's a work day dinner.

Thursday

Short version: More leftovers. Plus celebratory spaghetti with pesto.

Long version: Last day of school. Spaghetti with pesto for the kids, leftover steak, and raw tomatoes.

I ate the last of the cafeteria pork and leftover sauerkraut. Cold, because it was 90 degrees and I had no interest in hot food.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

T.T.: Pizza and a Clean Stove

One of the items we get a LOT of in the excess commodities boxes given to us by our neighbors is low-sodium spaghetti sauce. It's not the best food item. It has sugar in it, which I don't really think is necessary, and it's kind of bland, so I add more salt and spices to it.

It does, however, work pretty well as a pizza sauce after those adjustments, but only when it's reduced a little. It's too watery in its original form.

I had not figured out a way to do that reduction, however, without making a HUGE mess of my stove. Spluttering tomato sauce is one of the worst things to simmer on a stove. Even with a sieve over it, the sauce would get through the tiny holes and get all over the place. 

I won't tell you how many times I just resigned myself to that and cleaned it all up afterwards before I figured out a better way. Which I did just last week.

So the sauce needs to have some water evaporated out of it, right? And the oven is on at a high temperature to bake pizza crusts, right? And what does the high heat of an oven do?

Right.

When I make pizza, I actually coat the entire surface of the dough with olive oil to keep it from drying out when it's doing the last rise in the pan. So what I did was bake the crusts most of the way at high heat, then spread the sauce on and bake it another five minutes or so before putting the toppings on. Because there is already oil on the crust, the sauce doesn't make the crust soggy before it dries out a bit.

Post-baking, pre-topping.

So many stove cleanings that could have been avoided if only I had worked smarter instead of harder, as they say.

Oh well. Better late than never, I suppose.

Snapshots: An Idiosyncratic Mother's Day

Want to see what I got for Mother's Day?

Flowers!

Our very first iris bloomed on Mother's Day from the bulbs A. brought from Blackrock and planted two years ago. I thanked him for getting me flowers for Mother's Day.

And a trip to a movie theater!

Blurry photo of the movie theater. (The feature film was Adventures in Babysitting, which is still entertaining forty years later.)

I know. It doesn't look like a movie theater. Lemme 'splain.

What I always really want for Mother's Day is some time by myself. That was a particularly difficult request this year because of the hot, windy weather. A. would normally take the kids out somewhere for a few hours so I could be by myself, but no one wanted to be out in that weather. 

However, since all I wanted to do was watch a movie on my laptop, and that can be done indoors, I decided to take myself out for a few hours. So I went to school.

Specifically, I went to my classroom at school, which isn't a regular classroom with desks and everything. It's more like an enrichment room, with different areas that have tables or carpets or even bean bags on the floor. It's air conditioned. There's wi-fi. There's a bathroom. There's an ice machine in the concessions kitchen so I could ice down the seltzer I brought with me. 

And there was no one there. Perfect.

Moving on . . .

Quite a few more irises have bloomed in front of the house.

All purple.

I've stopped harvesting the rhubarb, so it, too, is flowering.

This plant is particularly exuberant.

Cubby's teacher called us on Thursday afternoon asking if it was okay if he was given a Tylenol. He injured himself jumping for a football when he came down on the edge of a three-foot stump at the edge of the playground. He was wearing shorts, and in addition to a massive bruise, a inch-long piece of wood went into his thigh.

It was really nasty.

Miraculously, the mother of another student happened to be at school for an event and actually on the playground when it happened, and she is a practicing nurse. There was just enough of the wood sticking out for her to remove it with tweezers. Very luckily, it went in laterally rather than straight in and deep, so she could see that she got it all. Then she wrapped him up and they gave him the Tylenol.

Of course, Cubby brought home the piece of wood as a souvenir. He remarked that the blood stained it a very nice red color.

Match for scale. Yikes.

He's been gimping around a bit--mostly because of the giant bruise on his thigh--but there's no sign of infection, so he should be fine.

And last, let's end with something a bit less gruesome, shall we?

Sunrise on the range. (Still somewhat dimmed thanks to the smoke from the massive fires burning to the east of us. We're still in no danger, though.)

There you have it! My life, snapshotted.

Book Talk: Modern Elementary Fiction

"Modern" meaning anything published between 1980 and now. Although probably most of these are still going to be on the older side, because I am not generally very impressed with more-current fiction for children.

Superfudge by Judy Blume--Judy Blume wrote a LOT of books, and I suspect everyone had their own favorite. I always liked this one. 

Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary--I forgot to put this one on the previous list. It was published in 1977, so not very modern, but my favorite of the Ramona books.

Clementine series by Sara Pennypacker--These are for younger kids, probably second or third grade, and the main character is a mischievous little girl named Clementine who gets into all kinds of things. She is very like Ramona Quimby.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman--Definitely not for younger readers. Neil Gaiman's books are, well, weird. This one definitely is, as well as being macabre and perhaps somewhat disturbing for some kids. My boys loved it, and I read it and thought it was a very good book, but it is . . . weird. 

Amelia Bedelia series by Peggy Parish--This could be both old and modern, since the books featuring this character have been published continuously since 1963. I haven't read any of the newer ones written by the original author's nephew (although, in my experience, those sorts of situations usually result in a definite reduction in quality), but the original books are beloved by beginning readers. Amelia Bedelia is just so . . . silly. Younger kids love her, and they're good books for kids who are ready to move beyond leveled readers but aren't quite ready for longer chapter books.

Ranger in Time series by Kate Messner--There are a lot of these books about a time-traveling golden retriever named Ranger. He gets transported to various periods of history and helps children out in different situations like the San Francisco earthquake or a voyage to the South Pole. I've read these aloud with my younger children, and I found the premise a bit forced sometimes, but kids love these, and it's a very good way for them to learn about different historical events.

Jasper says he's just as good as a golden retriever and someone should write a book about him.

I Survived series by various authors--Another history-based series with a ton of books. If not for these, I myself never would have heard of The Great Molasses Flood of 1919. (Yes, it really was molasses, and it happened in Boston.)

With You and Without You by Ann M. Martin--This author is best known for The Babysitters Club series--which I loved as a kid--but I think this book is much better than those. It's about a girl whose dad dies of a terminal illness. The subject makes it very sad, but it is a remarkably sensitive story about a family handling death and grief. She wrote another book about a boy whose brother is autistic (Inside Out) and another one about a girl struggling with dyslexia (Yours Turly, Shirley). I really think Ann M. Martin was way ahead of her time when it came to writing about kids who were mostly not represented in children's fiction at that time. She's just a great author for kids.

Hush by Jacqueline Woodson--For older elementary, probably fourth or fifth grade. I read this and thought it was great. It's about a black girl whose family has to enter a witness protection program after her police officer father testifies against a fellow police officer. It deals with some pretty heavy topics, but it is definitely still a book about and for children. There's nothing inappropriate in it, but it is serious in a way that is rare for children's fiction.

What would you add to this list of modern elementary fiction?

Friday Food: Short and Sweet

I do not appear to have felt very chatty this week. How unusual.

Friday 

Short version: Beef stir-fry, rice

Long version: A package of tenderized top round steaks cut into strips and marinated, then combined with onion, carrots, mushrooms, green beans, and bell peppers from the freezer. Tasty stir-fry. Slicing all the fresh vegetables is definitely more effort, but it's also better stir-fry than using frozen. True of so much.

Saturday

Short version: T-bone steaks, garlic bread, carrot sticks, random roasted things

Long version: While I was baking bread, I shoved many things into the oven, including thinly sliced onions, a pan of potato chunks, another pan of carrots and sweet potatoes, and the garlic bread. After the garlic bread was gone, some people started in on the potatoes, so I guess it was a good thing I made them.

Sunday

Short version: Bunless cheeseburgers, potato salad, raw cabbage, leftover carrots/sweet potato, chocolate pudding

Long version: Yes, I cook my own Mother's Day dinner. But I made it easy on myself by mostly including things that could be prepared ahead of time.

I made this potato salad (except with Russet potatoes, apple cider vinegar, onion powder, and half the amount of sugar) because A. does not enjoy mayonnaise-based potato salads, and I love every kind of potato salad. This is a good one for the mayonnaise-averse.

Also a good one for anyone who has a lot of dill in their garden. Which is everyone who has ever grown dill. It is a prolific self-seeder.

And then I made the pudding because I had a lot of milk that needed to be used soon, I could make it ahead of time, and I really love chocolate pudding.

Monday

Short version: Leftovers

Long version: Hamburgers, steak, potato salad, the very last of the ram/rooster stew for A. You know, workday food.

Potato salad is also good leftover.

Tuesday

Short version: Ground beef and bean tacos

Long version: I added another two-pound package of ground beef to the pound or so left from making hamburgers, along with half a can of black beans that was languishing in the refrigerator, to make the taco meat. 

We had both tomatoes and lettuce for a topping, so it was tacos deeeeluxe.

Or something.

Wednesday

Short version: Tuna salad sandwiches, fruit shakes

Long version: A. took Cubby to the sports banquet at school. I was tired after working, and it was 90 degrees out, so I took the easiest and coolest way out.

In our house, smoothies=fruit shakes. I had a couple of bananas that really needed to be used up, so that worked out.

Thursday

Short version: Tacos

Long version: Leftover meat and beans in tortillas. And it wasn't even a work day!

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

T.T.: Do As I Do

I came across this old post I never actually posted for whatever reason, and decided it was sort of appropriate for a post-Mother's Day Tips.

One of the Pearls of Wisdom I have acquired since becoming a mother is that having children will force you to come face to face with your own failings . . . in your children.

This is most uncomfortable, particularly when I get mad at them for some kind of behavior that I then realize was exactly what I did when I was a kid.

Humbling. Very humbling.

But even worse than that is recognizing in my children some of my failings that I desperately wish they could overcome, because I know how those failings have affected my life.

For instance, I know about myself that I never want to do anything I'm not immediately good at. There are many things that I have an innate talent for, and those are the things I do. If it requires multiple attempts with the possibility of failure? Nope. I will avoid those things.

Obviously, this is not something I want my children to do. I mean, talk about an excellent way to limit yourself.

Unfortunately, this is a tendency I can see in at least one of my children already. I want to shake him and tell him forcefully, "Try the things you're not good at. Try the things you're afraid of. DON'T BE LIKE ME."

Not that he would listen. Kids often don't. But you know what they do do? They watch. They observe.

I hope he watches when I'm trying and failing to drive a screw that I'm still trying. And that I eventually got it.

I hope he sees me struggling to understand his math homework so I can help him, even if I don't always manage it.

I hope he sees me decorating the ugliest cakes ever and understands that I did it not because I am a talented cake decorator who can create beautiful cakes, but because I wanted to make my children happy.

It helps that almost ANY cake makes children happy, as long as their name (or, um, initial) and some candles are on it.

And I hope he tries, and fails, but does the hard things anyway.