Bedtime Favorites

Our night time routine is as much the same as it was when my son was just itty bitty. Sadly the bedtime reading has only recently become more consistent. Even now my little guy doesn't sleep through the night. This coupled with work meant I was always more tired then not and getting M to sleep, more often than not, wouldn't include a bedtime story.

Over the last three or four months bedtime reading has returned as apart of our routine, and I'm loving seeing how M reacts to the books. He's just three months away from turning two, and he's showing attachment and understanding when prompted during story time.

Little Owl Lost by Chris Haughton (Amazon)


One day Little Owl falls out of his tree while he's sleeping! A squirrel decides to help Little Owl find his Mama Owl in the best way he knows how, through trial and error. The minimalist illustrations and silly misunderstandings between Squirrel and Little Owl make this book Monkey's first pick for bedtime reading. The very first page is Monkey's favorite since he gets to flip it back and forth to see Little Owl accidentally fall from his cosy nest. The first page says, 'Uh oh!' and it's his absolute favorite part. He'll say "Uh! Oh!" and flip the page back and forth over and over before he'll let me continue. On every page he'll point to Little Owl and say "Owl!" When I ask him which characters are which (considering I've read the book to him 100,000 times) he's to the point where he'll say "Bear!" or "Mama!" He absolutely loves this book, and every night I'll tell M, "Let's read the owl story." He gets so happy and will repeatedly say "Owl! Owl!" I plan on buying him Haughton's two other books Shhh! and Oh No, George! just because M likes Little Owl Lost so much. (Shhh! is the winner of the Irma S and James H Black Honor for Excellence in Children's Literature Award.)

Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney (Amazon)

In this sweetly illustrated story Llama Llama becomes worried just as soon as his Mama Llama walks out his bedroom door after their goodnight story. He calls out to her, and she says she'll be up soon. But soon is just not soon enough for Llama Llama! Obviously Llama Llama is already a pretty beloved character with many more books about him. I started introducing Llama Llama books to M pretty early on. This story is just one he seems to enjoy the most. When the book says that Llama Llama gets a kiss from his Llama Mama, M leans over and waits for me to give HIM a kiss! (We've also added that Llama Llama gets a kiss from Dada so Daddy can get in on the goodnight kisses, too. M always waits for me to say "And the Dada." before crawling over to his Dada for a goodnight kiss!) This is another book I can tell he loves because he can't wait to turn the pages, and knows exactly when they should be turned based on where we are in the story. He also always knows just when to lean in a get his baby kisses! I love it! I had to give this book a little break though so M doesn't get too tired of hearing it over and over. 

Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle and illustrator Jill McElmurry (Amazon)

In is very cute story a little truck's loving sweet friendliness causes even a big and 'important' truck to recognize and appreciate the 'small' people in his life. This was one of the books that Little Monkey didn't originally have much interest in. I don't know if it's because it was a little too long for his attention span. But, one day I read it with him and he suddenly enjoyed it. He started pointing to the little blue truck and saying, "Blue", in the most adorable way possible. Really it was one of the first books he started to point and interact with even though it was not one of his favorites.




Bedtime reading is so good for children's development, but honestly I get so much out of just seeing M's reactions to the stories. I love seeing more of his personality shining through in what he likes and doesn't like. I'm sometimes very surprised what catches his attention.

Review: Please Remain Calm by Courtney Summers

Title: Please Remain Calm

Author: Courtney Summers (Author Website)

Published: January 2015

Edition Read: Purchased eBook (Nook)

Level Recommended: Young Adult

Series: Sequel of This Is Not A Test (my review)

Overall: Please Remain Calm was a highly anticipated sequel for me. I devoured it's predecessor,   This is Not a Test, even in my sleep deprived state last summer. Please Remain Calm did not disappoint. I had so many feelings throughout this book that it's pretty much cemented Courtney Summers as my next go-to author. 

Summary: (From Amazon) In Please Remain Calm, the gripping sequel to Courtney Summers' This is Not a Test, Rhys and Sloane are headed for a safe haven when they get separated along the way. Rhys is determined to reunite with Sloane until he discovers people who might need him more--people who offer him the closest he'll get to everything he's lost, if they can just hold on long enough. Rhys thinks he has what it takes to survive and find Sloane, but in a world overrun by the dead, there are no guarantees and the next leg of his journey will test him in unimaginable ways...

Review:  This novella picks up right were This is Not a Test leaves off, with Sloane and Rhys in a car, trying to figure out what they are going to do next. The first plan is drive to the safe point that the radio keeps blaring on about. But, once they are attacked by zombies Sloane and Rhys are separated. Rhys finds himself alone, lost, in the woods. He's been saved by a man and his wife and daughter. Understandably, the man has little interest in keeping Rhys around, but something changes his mind, and the man lets Rhys in on a little secret.

There is no safe zone. There is only the dead, and over run cities. The man and his wife offer to walk with Rhys up to a certain point, since they are walking that way anyway, but after that Rhys is on his own.

Summers has a great way of making her books page turners. I'm not quite sure how she does it, but I find myself unable to out her novels down. When I should be sleeping I am not. I always seem to find myself at a point where my eyes are demanding to close and I tell myself 'All right, already, I'll go to sleep!'. Usually this how it ends.

I also always seem to find myself fighting with a character or two in her books. The way Summers gets me to care so darn much about characters in a book! I don't know. I just really, really wanted the happy ending. I really, really wanted Sloane and Rhys to find each other. I wanted the man and his wife and daughter to make it to their safe haven. I wanted everything to be tied up in a neat little bow, because I wanted that for everyone.

This is not Summer's style. No one gets happily ever after, and even though I didn't get what I wanted I still had to tell my husband all about it.

If you are looking for another great zombie read just before Walking Dead comes back on pick up Please Remain Calm. Trust me when I say that you will not be disappointed. 

Review:An Age of License by Lucy Knisley

Title: An Age of License

Author: Lucy Knisley (Author Website)

Published: September 2014

Edition Read: Purchased Book

Level Recommended: Young Adult/New Adult

Overall: Knisley made you feel you were having a conversation with a close friend instead of reading a travelogue. Honest and humble with her experiences, Knisley did not disappoint.

Series: Personal Travelogue 

Summary: (From Amazon) Acclaimed cartoonist Lucy Knisley ( French Milk, Relish) got an opportunity that most only dream of: a travel-expenses-paid trip to Europe/Scandinavia, thanks to a book tour. An Age of License is Knisley’s comics travel memoir recounting her charming (and romantic!) adventures. It’s punctuated by whimsical visual devices (such as a “new experiences” funnel); peppered with the cute cats she meets along the way; and, of course, features her hallmark―drawings and descriptions of food that will make your mouth water. But it’s not all kittens and raclette crepes: Knisley’s experiences are colored by anxieties, introspective self-inquiries, and quotidian revelations―about traveling alone in unfamiliar countries, and about her life and career―that many young adults will relate to. An Age of License―which takes its name from a French saying―is an Eat, Pray, Love for the alternative comics fan. 

Review: I've been familiar with Lucy Knisley's online work for several years. I've been interested in her published work for quite a while, but until picking up Age of License I hadn't read any of her published travelogues. I am also not really an autobiography person. In short I just did not know what to expect when I finally sat down and decided to read her newest travelogue An Age of License.


The graphic novel starts off with Lucy getting ready to jet off to Europe for a book tour and personal trip to France to meet her mother. Lucy is also candid about the fact that she is also recovering from having ended a very serious long-term relationship while wondering what will happen in that area of her life.



Reading any of Knisley's work brings up the feeling of speaking with a good friend about her travels. The story is personal and intriguing. The drawings are minimalistic and clean with watercolor paintings sporadically illustrating some of the people, sights, and food that Knisley sees along her trip. I found a lot of what Knisley wrote and drew really resonated with trying to find yourself. Lucy Knisley is continuing to find herself all the while chronicling about that time for everyone to see. That takes a lot of courage. I'm intrigued enough to read more of her published works.

Knisley has published Displacement, a travelogue about Knisley learning more about her grandparents and their time in WWII, and will publish two more graphic novels. Something New, all about her wedding and planning it with her husband, and New Kid, a memoir of her time as the new kid in four different high schools in four years.

For now, you can get a taste of Knisley's work in Stop Paying Attention and her blog. 

Comics Aren't Just Comics

One of my favorite TV shows growing up was Boy Meets World. It ran from 1993-2000 and followed Cory Matthews and his friends throughout school and straight into college. It was an excellent show that currently has reruns on MTV daytime and once in a while I'll re-watch an episode or three.

Recently the Disney Channel has created a continuation of Boy Meets World in the form of Girl Meets World. I've watched the episodes. They are fun and silly and sometimes they hit a little serious, but it has so far been a lot of fun to watch. 

In season two of Girl Meets World in the episode titled "Girl Meets The New Teacher" Riley, the daughter of Cory and Topanga Matthews, gets a new English teacher. Riley's teacher decides that on her first day of school she is going to have the class read the graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns written by Frank Miller. 

Gif Credit 

The principal of the high school tells the new teacher that she can't teach a comic book. He cites school policy stating that comic books aren't allowed in school. The whole episode ends with the new teacher getting praise for using an out of the box teaching method to get the kids to understand and possibly enjoy classic and modern literature. In this case they were also connecting viewers to the book To Kill and Mockingbird by Harper Lee with the English teacher's name being Harper. 

Gif Credits

As much as I loved that Girl Meets World and their writers are advocating for graphic novels as a form of literature I am also saddened that the way it is approached is with the idea that graphic novels are an innovative approach to getting kids to understand literature. 

I'm not saying that graphic novels aren't a great way of teaching students to love literature. I'm saying it should become a normal part of curriculum. Not the exception. 

Graphic novels should be as much apart of learning as any other form of story telling. Graphic novels should be taught because there is more to graphic novels then many people think. Graphic novels can range from the well known superhero comics to difficult and autobiographical stories like Art Spiegelman's Maus.

One college student recently learned this when she opposed the syllabus that her professor used for his semester concentrating on graphic novels as literature. 

The college student, named Tara Schultz, objected to four of the graphic novels on the syllabus stating that they were pornographic and that she'd "expected Batman and Robin" instead. At best Schultz and her parents expected the university to remove the books completely from the university. She would have settled for a label on the books warning students of the potentially objectionable content of the books. 

She didn't want other students being subjected to such "garbage". 

Of the four books challenged I've only read Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi. Yes, there is drawn nudity in the novel, but the book talks about the adolescence and teenage years of Satrapi during the Islamic Revolution. I read it and learned from her story. The nudity wasn't the focal point of the story. It was a method of expression. What made Satrapi's story even more interesting was that it was told from a female's point of view in a very biased environment. 

Personally, I don't understand removing something from the shelves just because you don't like it. As a librarian, I can't get behind the idea of labeling a book. You may find it objectionable, and someone else may not. I understand wanting to guard yourself or your child from what you find objectionable, and you are always right to do so. However, how you feel will not be how everyone feels. 

You find it personally objectionable.

Someone else may not.

Someone else may find something else personally objectionable that you do not. 

I commend this professor, and the university, for attempting to help his students to understand that graphic novels have their place in literature as well. Maybe it is Batman and Robin, but that doesn't lessen the ability of the story teller to create an interesting and thoughtful experience for the reader. 

I'd love to see more colleges and universities follow suit. 

Recipe: Stuffed Green Bell Peppers

When I cook I tend to have a set of recipes that I use as family staples. (Especially when I'm coming home from work and I'm exhausted, but we still need to eat. And no, we can't have fast food again. We need to have real food.) For me, this recipe doesn't take a lot of thought, and most of the time I'm trying to use up ingredients that need to be used up or else they have to be tossed out into the trash. 

In fact the first time I made this recipe it was because we had several green bells in our fridge and I didn't realize I'd bought even more bell peppers at the store just a few days before. Then we had some leftover Mexican rice that I'd made that always ends up getting tossed out because there just isn't enough for two people in another meal. 

A quick look at Pinterest on the proper temperatures to cook stuffed bell peppers and I ended up pulling this together. The recipe has changed a bit over time, but I have finally found one that I think works out for our family. As long as I have enough bell peppers in the fridge I can cook this up and have dinner on the table in 30-40 minutes. 

Recipe

1 lb Ground Turkey

1 cup Frozen Sweet Yellow Corn

1 cup Cooked Rice (approximately)

4 Medium Bell Pepers

1-2 TBSP Minced Garlic

1/4 cup diced White Onion

1 bag of Shredded Mild Chedder Cheese

Step One: Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Line 1 cookie sheet with aluminum foil and set aside.

Step Two: Wash and cut off the tops of your four bell peppers. Scrape out the seeds and insides of each bell pepper and toss the seeds and stem. Dice the tops of your bell peppers. You are going to sauté the diced bell pepper later.

Step Three: Once your oven is preheated you are going to place all four empty bell peppers on the cookie sheet into the preheated oven. I usually do this for about 15 minutes. Also I'm lazy. I don't want to boil the bell peppers or any of that. So I just bake them while I get the filling cooked. I still set the timer just incase something happens. I don't want to cook the peppers too long.

Step Four: Toss your diced bell pepper, onion, and garlic into a hot a skillet with some olive oil. Once they have cooked for about 5 minutes throw in the ground turkey and brown. I usually add about 1-2 TBSP of Knorr Boullion into the ground turkey and cook. However you can season the ground turkey however you'd like. I'm sure not everyone is a huge fan of Knorr Boullion. 

Step Five: Once your ground turkey is browned add in your frozen corn and cook until the corn is no longer frozen. The corn can cook pretty well with just the juices of the ground turkey. Once the corn is cooked add the rice. When it comes to my rice I am usually trying to use up the last of some left over Mexican rice I've made earlier in the week. You can use whatever kind of rice you prefer. 

Step Six: Lower the heat on your skillet and add in about 1/2 cup of cheese and mix until the cheese is throughly melted throughout the turkey.

Step Seven: Pull your bell peppers from the oven and set somewhere the hot cookie won't fall or burn you. Stuff each bell pepper with the turkey mix. Usually I have a little of the mix piled on top of the bell peppers. Sprinkle a little bit of cheddar cheese on each bell pepper and slide it into the oven again. 

Step Eight: Cook the bell peppers for 20 minutes and serve.