[happy review] Let’s Celebrate Korean New Year! by Michelle W. Park and Hyewon Yum

January 28, 2025January 24, 2025 ~ jama ~ 7 Comments

Tomorrow, millions of people around the world will be celebrating Lunar New Year. Although it’s commonly called Chinese New Year, there are other Asian communities who also observe this important holiday with their own set of traditions.

Since there are only a handful of picture books about Korean Lunar New Year in particular, I was especially happy to see this new title by Michelle W. Park and Hyewon Yum.

In Let’s Celebrate Korean New Year! (Random House BFYR, 2024), we meet Madeleine and Eloise, two sisters getting ready for their Lunar New Year party. As the big sister, Madeleine takes the lead in briefing Eloise about party attire, food, and games.

The story opens with Madeleine trying to rouse Eloise at dawn. Sleepy Eloise groans in protest, but Madeleine is raring to go. “First, we need hanboks!” She explains they need to wear traditional Korean clothing for the party, then helps Eloise put on her chima (skirt) and colorful jeogori (jacket).

Next, they race downstairs, where they see that their mom has already laid the charae-sang (ceremonial table) with delicious foods such as apples, oranges and persimmons as an offering to their ancestors. Before Eloise can grab an orange, Madeleine pulls her into the kitchen to help wrap dumplings.

Madeleine demonstrates how to fill a dumpling wrapper with a mixture of pork, glass noodles, garlic, scallions and soy sauce before carefully folding it. Unfortunately, Eloise’s earnest attempts aren’t very successful, with a ripped wrapper and too much filling. Impatient Madeleine takes over, assuring a disappointed Eloise that she can help next time.

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[festive review + recipe] Peter Rabbit: Christmas is Coming (+ a blog break)

December 17, 2024December 16, 2024 ~ jama ~ 12 Comments

Merry, merry, and jingle those bells!

Most kids will say that presents are the best part of Christmas, but our mischievous friend Peter Rabbit begs to differ. While he loves presents, what he most looks forward to is all the food!

Luckily, there are many tasty treats to munch on in his advent storybook, Peter Rabbit: Christmas is Coming (Puffin Books, 2020). Written by Rachel Boden and illustrated by Neil Faulkner, this Beatrix Potter inspired delight is the perfect warm and cozy read for families to share as they count down to the big holiday.

The treasury features 25 stories — one for each day of Advent + one for Christmas Day — paired with fun, easy “Christmassy” things to do or make suitable for kids 4+. The ‘stories’ are interlinked, so they can also be enjoyed by independent readers as one long chapter book. This will especially appeal to kids already familiar with the characters in the Peter Rabbit little books, since they feature in longer narratives.

In addition to Peter, his mum Mrs. Rabbit, and his sisters Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail, Peter’s cousin Benjamin Bunny plays a large role in all the action. When you have an enthusiastic partner in crime, almost anything can happen!

In the first story, Peter and Benjamin ‘argue’ over what is truly the best part of Christmas. Benjamin says presents (he wants a bouncy ball), while Peter is adamant about edibles:

I want roasted chestnuts and potatoes and parsnips and carrots and mince pies and cake and . . .

While this spirited sparring is going on, they make their way to Mr. McGregor’s garden (will they ever learn?), where they spy a row of turnips. Yes, they’re hard to dig up and heavy to carry — but Peter decides it’s worth the trouble since his mother could make a nice turnip soup.

After checking that the coast is clear (cat and Mr. M nowhere in sight), they furiously dig and dig and then tug, tug, tug at the turnip’s leaves. The turnip simply won’t budge. They keep tugging, unaware that the cat is sneaking up from behind.

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[chewy review] The Mochi Makers by Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson

December 10, 2024December 7, 2024 ~ jama ~ 11 Comments

Soft, chewy, stretchy — pink, white, or green — I love mochi!

Whenever I bite into a Japanese rice cake, it takes me back to my childhood in Hawaiʻi. While we often enjoyed store-bought mochi as an everyday treat, it was most delicious when the extended family gathered on New Year’s Day to make a homemade batch.

My uncle (whose wife was Japanese) was in charge of cooking and pounding the rice with a wooden mallet. At first he did this by hand, but in later years he acquired a mochi machine that largely did the work for him. When the mochi dough was ready, my aunts coated their hands with potato starch and twisted off pieces to form small round cakes. Each family took home a good share. How I loved fresh, oh-so-soft mochi dipped in a little honey!

You can see why I was excited to read Sharon Fujimoto-Johnson’s debut picture book, The Mochi Makers (Beach Lane Books, 2024). In this gentle, heartwarming story, a little girl makes mochi with her grandmother, learns about her family’s heirloom recipe, and then shares trays of mochi with family, friends and neighbors.

Told from Emi’s point of view, the story outlines the steps she and Obaachan follow to make this special treat.

First, Emi and Obaachan wash sweet mochi rice — “Obaachan with her strong, wrinkled hands and me with my small, quick ones.” It doesn’t matter if Emi spills a few grains; Obaachan reminds her “we only need clean hands and whole hearts to make mochi.”

While the rice is cooking, Obaachan tells Emi that the recipe originated from Emi’s great-great grandmother. When Obaachan emigrated to America to marry Emi’s grandfather (Ojiichan), she brought the mochi recipe with her “in her heart and hands.”

When the rice is done, Emi and Obaachan transfer the steaming mass into a stand mixer, where it’s pounded into a sticky mound. Next, they coat their hands with potato starch, twist off pieces and make small round cakes.

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[toe-tapping review] Animal Albums from A to Z by Cece Bell

December 6, 2024December 5, 2024 ~ jama ~ 21 Comments

#64 in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the alphabet.

As a teen I used to love browsing the wooden bins at our local record store. Which LP should I take home for $3.25? Decisions, decisions. It was always a conundrum when parting with precious allowance money.

Of course I had been trained early on by my music-loving dad to treasure the vinyl discs that lived in all kinds of interesting cardboard sleeves (hello, Mantovani, Les Paul, Mario Lanza). As I began building my own record collection, I also grew quite enamored of album cover art — its own genre of inventive graphic design showcasing photos, illustrations, and typography — all on a neat 12″ x 12″ square.

Now that I think about it, some of my fave recording artists have animal names: Beatles, Monkees, Byrds, Steppenwolf, Buffalo Springfield, Iron Butterfly (and later, Eagles). So you can imagine how ecstatic I was to see Cece Bell’s, Animal Albums from A to Z (Walker Books, 2024) — a unique, wildly imaginative, uber creative tour-de-force that easily ranks in my top three favorite alphabet books of all time.

Letters. music. art. song lyrics. quirky. handmade. heartmade. humor. nostalgia. food (soup and pie!). Cece knows me. She’s checked all the boxes. Mind totally blown.

She opens her 64-page, all-ages ABC extravaganza with a tongue-in-cheek Introduction extolling the varied talents of imaginary animal musicians, enthusiastic to share 26 albums from her personal collection. She notes that they date from the 40’s to the 80’s, “the heyday of recorded animal music,” such records being difficult to find today.

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[yummy chat + giveaway] Beth Charles on Apple Pie Tired

November 26, 2024November 23, 2024 ~ jama ~ 22 Comments

While I enjoy turkey and all the fixings, for me the best part of Thanksgiving is pie. Hello, pumpkin, pecan, and apple — all are favorites and I’m happy to make quick work of them. 🙂 You can see why I’m especially excited to welcome Vermont author Beth Charles to discuss her new picture book, Apple Pie Tired, charmingly illustrated by Hannah Brinson (Sleeping Bear Press, 2024).

In this scrumptious seasonal story, young Lola and her parents work together to bake hundreds of apple pies to sell at their family farm for Thanksgiving. Though it’s Lola’s plan to make Thanksgiving dinner while her parents make the pies, Mom and Dad need her help with every stage of this big job, leaving her without time or energy to cook.

Still, Lola is happy to learn about and participate in the pie-making process, from weighing and combining ingredients in a giant mixer, to making top and bottom crusts with the dough presser; to peeling, coring and slicing the apples with another big machine, before finally assembling the pies after adding sugar and spices to the apples. Can you imagine the sweet heavenly aroma of all those pies baking in the oven? Yummmmmm!

Come Thanksgiving morning, Mom and Dad are still baking as customers “bustled in and out” before purchasing five hundred and four pies! Unsurprisingly, Lola and her parents are “apple pie tired” after all that work. What to do when hungry aunts, uncles and cousins arrive for dinner?

Beth knows well the feeling of being ‘apple pie tired,’ since she and her family bake and sell hundreds of pies at their family orchard bakery every Thanksgiving. I was curious to learn about the logistics of such an undertaking and how she went about writing this appeelingly delicious story.