winter balm: soup day by melissa iwai

February 2, 2011December 7, 2017 ~ jama ~ 7 Comments

Why, hello. You’re just in time. We saved a place for you at the table.

Here we are in the depths of winter, when snow, sleet, ice, and slush are the order of the day. As we try to brave the elements, stave off cabin fever, and satisfy our color-starved cravings for something to nourish our bodies and warm our hearts, we realize the immense power and magic of SOUP!

Yes, we love soup. We want soup. We need soup NOW!

Well then, put on your bibs.

In Melissa Iwai’s Soup Day (Henry Holt, 2010) — clearly a story with my name written all over it — a little girl describes step-by-step how she and her mother make a hearty batch of soup together.

One snowy day, they set out for the Green Market, where they select the freshest vegetables with the brightest colors — celery, onions, carrots, potatoes, zucchini, mushrooms and parsley. At home, the girl helps to wash the veggies while her mom chops everything into different shapes — squares, circles, cubes, and confetti. Everything is sauteed in oil (sizzle!), and then stock is poured into the pot (sssssss!).

While the soup simmers gently on the stove, the girl and her mother pass the time playing games and reading. “Before long, our home smells like yummy soup.” Mmmmmmmmm. The mother adds some spices, and then the little girl gets to select what kind of pasta to include (from 9 different varieties). Guess what she picks? Alphabets! (I love this girl!) Once her father gets home, they all sit down and enjoy every drop of their soup together.

I love the charming simplicity of this story, and the subtle way little teaching moments are incorporated into the narrative. Hungry munchkins will be eager to help with soup-making from start to finish. The grocery store affords untold opportunities for recognizing colors, counting items and ingredients, and learning to make wise choices. Watching an adult slice veggies into various shapes is fun, too, and if old enough, a child can try cutting soft veggies like zucchini and mushrooms with a plastic knife. Of course there’s also the fun of identifying the different types of pasta (fettuccine! farfalle! rotini!).

The satisfaction and pride of eating something one has helped to prepare, as well as quality time spent together, are equally important seasonings for this nutritious, heartwarming soup. Iwai’s bright, cheerful acrylic and multi-textured collage illos clarify the process and capture all the warmth and coziness of this special soup day, where mother and daughter bond, new skills are learned, and good memories are forged.

This gentle story, perfect for preschoolers, is Melissa’s first self-illustrated title, and was inspired by her own experiences cooking with her son Jamie. It’s received glowing reviews, including a starred review from Kirkus, which praises Soup Day as “Ordinariness made extraordinary.” When the winter blues set in, or any time you need an extra dose of comfort and joy, reach for this uplifting, feel-good book. A recipe for Snowy Day Vegetable Soup (which I’m going to try very soon) is included. S – L – U – R – P ☺!

Here’s a video of Melissa making it.

SOUP DAY by Melissa Iwai
published by Henry Holt, September 2010
Fiction for ages 4-6, 32 pp.
Cool themes: Family, sharing, cooking, togetherness, mastering new skills, counting, colors, shapes, nutrition, vegetables.

♥ Be sure to visit Melissa’s official blog for more spreads and to learn about her other books. You’ll also find activity sheets, crafts, and more soup recipes! You can also learn about her process when illustrating a picture book.

♥ Don’t miss Melissa’s delicious blog, The Hungry Artist, where she shares easy, health-conscious recipes you can make with your children. Melissa is a self-taught chef, who won Cooking Light’s Ultimate Reader Recipe Grand Prize in 2010!

♥ Click here for Melissa’s guest post at Cynsations.

♥ A few blog reviews: Brimful Curiosities, Great Kid Books, Booking Mama.

♥ Quick! For a chance to win a copy of Soup Day, there’s still time to enter this contest at Val’s Kitchen (deadline: Sunday, February 6).

guest post: candice ransom and her mama’s southern pies

January 31, 2011November 15, 2017 ~ jama ~ 1 Comment

Speaking of pie, I hope you saved your forks, because today we’re serving up an extra delicious portion of Southern goodness thanks to the kindness and generosity of multi-talented, award-winning children’s author Candice Ransom!

I call Candice a human dynamo, because I’m in perpetual awe of just how much and how fast she writes. In a career spanning 25+ years, she’s published well over a hundred books in multiple genres — board book, picture book, easy reader, chapter book series, tween and middle grade fiction, biographies and nonfiction.

She has not one, but two graduate degrees: an MFA in children’s writing from Vermont College and an MA in children’s literature from Hollins University. She currently teaches in the MA/MFA children’s literature program at Hollins, is a widely sought after speaker at conferences and workshops, and can polish off a Red Velvet cupcake, blackberry bruchetta, or Devonshire cream scone with the best of them.

Impressive credentials aside, what I admire most about Candice is how completely she immerses herself in the time and place of her stories. She’s a diehard antique junkie who will travel to the ends of the earth to locate a cool artifact which might “belong” to a particular character, or a bit of ephemera that might inform a certain scene or illuminate an overriding theme. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more astute observer of human nature; Candice wholeheartedly loves and appreciates her Virginia roots, and conveys her enthusiasm in crackling prose brimming with telling detail.

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friday feast: tomatoes will never be the same

January 28, 2011December 22, 2017 ~ jama

Guacamole Goalie/flickr

TOMATOES
by Stephen Dobyns

A woman travels to Brazil for plastic
surgery and a face-lift. She is sixty
and has the usual desire to stay pretty.
Once she is healed, she takes her new face
out on the streets of Rio. A young man
with a gun wants her money. Bang, she’s dead.
The body is shipped back to New York,
but in the morgue there is a mix-up. The son
is sent for. He is told that his mother
is one of these ten different women.
Each has been shot. Such is modern life.
He studies them all but can’t find her.
With her new face, she has become a stranger.
Maybe it’s this one, maybe it’s that one.
He looks at their breasts. Which ones nursed him?
He presses their hands to his cheek.
Which ones consoled him? He even tries
climbing onto their laps to see which
feels most familiar but the coroner stops him.
Well, says the coroner, which is your mother?
They all are, says the young man, let me
take them as a package. The coroner hesitates,
then agrees. Actually, it solved a lot of problems.
The young man has the ten women shipped home,
then cremates them all together. You’ve seen
how some people have a little urn on the mantel?
This man has a huge silver garbage can.
In the spring, he drags the garbage can
out to the garden and begins working the teeth,
the ash, the bits of bone into the soil.
Then he plants tomatoes. His mother loved tomatoes.
They grow straight from seed, so fast and big
that the young man is amazed. He takes the first
ten into the kitchen. In their roundness,
he sees his mother’s breasts. In their smoothness
he finds the consoling touch of her hands.
Mother, mother, he cries, and flings himself
on the tomatoes. Forget about the knife, the fork,
the pinch of salt. Try to imagine the filial
starvation, think of his ravenous kisses.

~ from Velocities: New and Selected Poems 1966-1992 (Viking Penguin, 1994).

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Another good reason not to have plastic surgery.

This one socked me between the eyes. I’m not sure whether I’m more shocked or strangely humored by Dobyns’s police-blotter-like narrative. “Bang, she’s dead,” is so matter-of-fact and perversely comic, and makes me wonder: is this more a story about the narrator of the poem, or a dramedy of the son’s pathetic grief? As with many of his other poems, “Tomatoes” is informed by Dobyns’s journalistic training. I like how he pulled me in from the start and left me contemplating the more profound implications of “just the facts, ma’am.”

Today’s Roundup is being hosted by the lovely and always gracious Elaine Magliaro at Wild Rose Reader. I’m pretty sure she likes tomatoes, but maybe not the ones in this poem. ☺

May you spend a little time with some meaningful fruit this weekend.

eat me, drink me

January 27, 2011December 25, 2017 ~ jama

“One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.” ~ Lewis Carroll

Late, late, late — don’t be late for this very important date!

Today is Lewis Carroll’s 179th birthday!

by Sir John Tenniel (1865)

Don’t be surprised if you spot white rabbits carrying pocket watches running hither and yon, an abundance of hookah-smoking caterpillars, or spontaneous games of croquet involving flamingoes.

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