Paddington’s Twelve Days of Christmas by Michael Bond, Karen Jankel and R.W. Alley (+ a holiday blog break)

~ jama ~ 31 Comments

Ho Ho Ho and Fa la la!

What better way to celebrate Christmas than with our favorite bear from Darkest Peru? Paddington’s Twelve Days of Christmas by Michael Bond, Karen Jankel, and R.W. Alley (HarperCollins, 2025) was just released in September and as far as we’re concerned, any new Paddington picture book is a special gift.

This story was actually first published in 1988 as Paddington’s Magical Christmas (art by David McKee), and then in 1993 (art by John Lobban). Now for this recently revised edition, longtime and current Paddington illustrator R.W. Alley has created brand new pen-and-ink and watercolor spreads that fairly sing from the pages with energy and pizzazz.

So what is dear Paddington up to this time?

One day while writing Christmas cards he overhears Mrs Bird singing — unusual in itself, but even more surprising since it was about her true love sending her a partridge in a pear tree. What a great idea! Wish he’d thought of it since he needs a special present for the Browns. But when he checks the garden, there’s not a pear tree or partridge in sight.

He then hears Mrs Brown singing that her true love had sent four calling birds, three French hens and two turtledoves — and another partridge in a pear tree. Paddington hurries outside again, only to find none of these things anywhere. What is going on?

And that’s not the end of it. Next, Judy breaks out in song. What was she given? Everything Mrs Brown received plus five gold rings! Wow! The Browns’ friend must be very rich to be able to afford so many presents.

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[review + recipes + giveaway] Celebrating Jane Austen’s 250th Birthday

~ jama ~ 30 Comments

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when a certain 18th century English author turns 250, worldwide fans who ardently admire and love her will want to commemorate this important milestone all year.

Today we’re celebrating Jane Austen’s birthday with a brand new historical fiction picture book and two teatime treats. Few writers have the distinction of being read and studied continuously for more than two centuries. We have Jane to thank for focusing on the internal lives of complex characters, and of course, her witty and ironic social commentary.

Because of my love for china, I was especially excited to read Jane and the Blue Willow Princess by Catherine Little and Sae Kimura (Plumleaf Press, 2025). Published especially to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth, this delightful story was inspired by a fragment of Blue Willow pattern china unearthed during a November 2011 archaeological dig at Steventon, where Jane spent the first 25 years of her life and drafted her first three novels.

As the story opens, we find Jane perched up in her treehouse calling down to her sister Cassy (who’s at her easel). She has so many story ideas she doesn’t know what to do.

Cassy is relieved when Mother appears in the garden carrying a tray with blue and white teacups and plates; Jane has been working hard and needs a break. As the three of them enjoy tea and cheese toasties (Jane’s favorite snack), Mother asks Jane about the story she’s writing for Father’s birthday.

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nosing around

~ jama ~ 25 Comments

“You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.” ~ John Green

I smell something funny.

“Running Nose #93” by Stephen Green (2011), via Saatchi Art.
BE GLAD YOUR NOSE IS ON YOUR FACE
by Jack Prelutsky

Be glad your nose is on your face,
not pasted on some other place,
for if it were where it is not,
you might dislike your nose a lot.

Imagine if your precious nose
were sandwiched in between your toes,
that clearly would not be a treat,
for you’d be forced to smell your feet.

Your nose would be a source of dread
were it attached atop your head,
it soon would drive you to despair,
forever tickled by your hair.

Within your ear, your nose would be
an absolute catastrophe,
for when you were obliged to sneeze,
your brain would rattle from the breeze.

Your nose, instead, through thick and thin,
remains between your eyes and chin,
not pasted on some other place—
be glad your nose is on your face!

~ from The New Kid on the Block (Greenwillow, 1984).

*

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Maya Land: a taste of the surreal

~ jama ~ 4 Comments

Hungry? Dive right in! Today’s Soup of the Day was cooked up by London-based surreal collage artist Maya Land. 🙂

We all crave something different from time to time; images that blend fantasy with reality can satisfy our sometimes quirky appetites. Until I recently stumbled upon Maya’s work, I didn’t realize surreal collage art was “a thing.” I’ve since noticed other artists who create similar pieces.

Surreal Collage Artist Maya Land.

But back to Maya. A native Londoner, she’s been interested in art since the age of 5. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Greenwich, then studied oil painting at The Art Academy. After graduating, she soon realized collage art was her true love and hasn’t looked back since.

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[peaceful review] Woods & Words: The Story of Poet Mary Oliver by Sara Holly Ackerman and Naoko Stoop

~ jama ~ 25 Comments

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, / the world offers itself to your imagination, / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things.” ~ Mary Oliver

Beloved American poet Mary Oliver is well known for her sensitive, pure-hearted observations of the natural world, but did you know she credited her love of nature and poetry with saving her life?

Thanks to Woods & Words: The Story of Mary Oliver by Sara Holly Ackerman and Naoko Stoop (Beach Lane Books, 2025), young readers will learn how a lonely girl survived a difficult childhood by finding refuge in the woods and writing about the wonders she found there. Her lifelong practice of walking in the wild and treating poetry as central to her very existence would earn her literary acclaim, but more importantly, the rare status of being a popular, best-selling poet in an otherwise poetry-indifferent age.

We first see young Mary in the woods, crouched in a grass-and-sticks hut she had stitched herself, “noticing” treasures like birdsong, velvet leaves, and “a glittering beam of light.”

Whenever she felt confined by classroom walls, she made the woods her school. There, she wrote, filling stacks of notebooks, alone except for books by favorite poets like Poe, Blake, and Whitman.

The spring after graduating from high school, Mary drove to Steepletop in upstate New York, where she stayed in an old farmhouse where the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once lived. She helped Edna’s sister organize papers and “wrapped herself in woods and words. What more could she ask for?”

One day, Mary saw a visitor at the kitchen table — it was love at first sight! Mary and Molly became inseparable, capturing the world around them, Mary with her words, Molly with her camera.

They eventually settled in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Mary continued to walk the woods or along the shore, searching for poems: “There were always poems if you paid attention,” whether under leaves, on the backs of black snakes, or prompted by the sweet or rotten smells she encountered. She carried a pocket notebook and stashed pencils in trees so she’d always be ready.

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