Did you know that our state lies on the ancestral lands of the Chickasaw nation, the Otoe-Missouria tribe, the Illini tribe, the Osage nation, the Ioway tribe and the Quapaw tribe? In last year’s blog recognizing Indigenous People’s Day, we learned a bit about Missouri’s Native heritage and featured some excellent picture book picks by Native authors. This year, I wanted to switch gears and highlight some chapter books!
Photo via Canva
All of the books in this list are written by authors who identify as Indigenous and come highly recommended by various Native American cultural groups and civil rights organizations. Several of these are recent publications from Heartdrum, a children’s and YA publishing imprint curated by Native author Cynthia Leitich Smith. More and more publishers are beginning to raise up Native voices, and it’s so exciting to finally see these underrepresented authors get the recognition they deserve. Please join us as we honor this year’s celebration and remembrance of Indigenous people past and present with a selection of chapter books for middle-grade readers! Continue reading “Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2022: Chapter Book Spotlight”
It’s fast approaching that spooky time of year again and, as another sequel to my previous Halloween posts, here is another batch of frightening books for older grade-school readers:
Happy October! I hope you’re enjoying the crisp chill in the morning air; the new hues of the leaves and grasses as they golden and rust; and the spice-warm scents of your favorite fall beverage. Besides welcoming in the seasonal shift from summer to autumn, October is well-known for another important phenomenon: it’s spooky season, y’all!!!
Happy autumn equinox! Today marks the beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere as the sun crosses the earth’s celestial equator and the amount of day and night are approximately the same. From here on out, days get shorter and nights get longer.
To welcome this shift and prepare for longer nights ahead, you might gather your kids for a read-aloud with blankets, hot cocoa and candles. Or, consider making a favorite fall treat and watching a spooky movie. Or, if you’re feeling extra adventurous, take your little ones — or big ones — for a neighborhood walk and see if you can find a Y-shaped tree branch or two to make this craft together, which was inspired by this wonderful book in our collection. For younger kids, be mindful of pointy edges and keep a close eye when assembling.
Materials needed:
Y-shaped tree branch or single straight branch
Yarn,
Scissors
Nature objects (optional)
A few things to keep in mind: Thick yarn and branches with a narrow Y shape make for quicker projects than thin yarn and branches with a wide Y shape. Younger kids may wish to wrap a single straight branch.
After finding your branch, begin by tying a double knot at the base of the Y section.
Did you know Missouri is the home for the only award in which children under the age of five pick the winner? It is called the Missouri Building Block Award. This year we have a great selection of books about sharks, lions, dinosaurs, skunks and more. Narrowed down from hundreds of nominations, the Building Block committee has chosen these ten titles based on how well each book reads aloud, appeals to children, how well the pictures and words work together and overall enjoyment.
Children are encouraged to read as many of the ten nominees as possible, then vote for their favorite between September and January. The winner will be announced next February.
The Sunday after Labor Day is recognized nationally as Grandparents’ Day. Maybe your family celebrated the grands in your life with Sunday brunch, or maybe your school put on a Grandparents’ Day celebration. Or perhaps this day quietly slipped you by. Maybe your kiddos lost their grandparents too soon or perhaps outside factors have led to strained relationships. Nevertheless, instilling an appreciation for the older members of our families and communities in the next generation is essential for the future health of our society. And when elders create connections with the young people in their lives, both groups are statistically proven to lead healthier, happier lives. In celebration of intergenerational relationships and everything elders bring to our children’s lives, I’ve put together a simply GRAND collection of picture books to share with all ages! Continue reading “Celebrating Grandparents and Elders in Picture Books”
Summer is winding down and school is here, but that doesn’t mean the adventures have to stop! With your library card, you can go on a virtual vacation from home using library resources.
To show you how easy it is, let’s travel to a location on my bucket list: Egypt!
CultureGrams Kids is a great place to start. You’ll find photos, recipes, maps, history and more. Did you know that Egypt has its own dialect of Arabic? It’s called Egyptian Arabic. This is similar to different dialects of English (think English spoken in the United Kingdom vs Missouri). My favorite part of any travel is trying out traditional food that I may not encounter in my daily life. CultureGrams provides recipes so that you can create this experience at home! I cannot wait to make Mahshi Krump (stuffed cabbage leaves) or Aish (traditional Egyptian flatbread). Continue reading “Adventures From Home”
Greetings, earthling readers! I have returned to discuss yet again what poet Sara Teasdale called “the faithful beauty of the stars,” a.k.a. the original night-lights. Except this time, instead of directing your gaze to the skies above, I’m suggesting that you can enjoy the stars indoors for days when the weather isn’t as cooperative or if you live in an area with too much light pollution. “How?” you might ask? By creating your own illuminated star-map! While school has started — perhaps making “school-time stargazing” a better title for this blog? — I will pedantically argue that it is still *technically* summer until the fall equinox on September 22. Better yet, this craft is adaptable for any time of year.
For this craft, I chose two map options: the first is a simplified version of just the constellation Leo, as a belated birthday celebration and homage (which, yes, is very Leo of me…🦁). The second is an entire map of the sky as it will appear here in Columbia on the evening of September 6, 2022, with a couple asterisms/constellations highlighted/incised: the three stars of the constellations Aquila, Cygnus and Lyra that make up the Summer Triangle (Altair, Deneb and Vega respectively); the constellation Libra; and Ursa Major/the Big Dipper.
The two different maps I chose to illuminate. On the second map, I highlighted the asterisms and constellations I will illuminate: the Summer Triangle is highlighted in red/orange; Libra is highlighted in light blue; and Ursa Major/the Big Dipper is highlighted in purple.
Illustration by Pauline Baynes, from p. 62 of “The Magician’s Nephew” (https://www.sutori.com/en/story/the-magician-s-nephew)
When author C.S. Lewis first began working on his classic children’s novel, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” which was released in 1950, he had intended it to be a standalone work. But he had so much fun imagining and writing about the fantastical world of Narnia that once he finished the book he decided to write a sequel, “Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia,” and then five more books in the next five years. The publishers of the Narnia series originally ordered the books chronologically by their release dates, but it turns out that C.S. Lewis preferred that the sixth book in the series, “The Magician’s Nephew,” be read first, so in 2005 they were re-ordered. Since I started reading the series as a child, pre-2005 and only made it through the fourth book, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” I never got a chance to read “The Magician’s Nephew,” so I decided to catch up with it to fill in my gaps in the Narnia series. Continue reading “Catching Up With the Classics: The Magician’s Nephew”
Summer is winding down and school is here, but that doesn’t mean the adventures have to stop! With your library card, you can go on a virtual vacation from home using 
