The Princess Protection Program -- Book Review

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Now over the years we have loved fairy tales and princesses. We have explored fairy tales in different cultures as well as real life princesses and fictional princesses. When Hazel was young, she loved fairy tales. Now that she is older, she discusses the inappropriateness of some of them. These discussions remind me of today's book. The book is The Princess Protection Program by Alex London. It was released last week and is recommended for ages 8 to 12.

The Book of Untold Stories -- a Multicultural Children's Book Day Review

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Today I am going to share the first of many multicultural children's book that I am reviewing for the 9th annual Multicultural Children's Book Day. On January 28, 2022, I will be co-hosting Multicultural Children's Book Day and you can visit here to see all the books reviewed and share your own reviews! Today we are sharing The Book of Untold Stories: Fourteen Prompts to Spark the Imagination by Sherri Maret and illustrated by Thomas Hilley. This book is recommended for ages 5+.

Exploring Japan with Books & Activities

 

Disclosure: I was sent these products in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Since Monday was Memorial Day and I spent the weekend with family and friends I didn't do my multicultural post this week. Today I am going to share some of the resources I have to explore Japan. I know Japan will be a popular country to look at this summer with the Olympics being held in Tokyo. We will start with All About Japan by Willamarie Moore and illustrated by Kazumi Wilds. 

Learning about China through Books

 

Disclosure: I was sent copies of these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

May is Asian American Heritage Month. Last week we focused on Vietnam and this week we will focus on China. I have two books to share with you today. One of them I reviewed an older edition several years ago. The other is a book of children's stories from both China and Tibet. I began to wonder about Tibet. Tibet was taken over by the Communist Chinese Government in 1949. The leader of Tibet prior to that was the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama escaped to India and lives there in exile with over 100,000 Tibetan refugees. (Source) We will start with Favorite Children's Stories from China and Tibet by Lotta Carswell Hume and illustrated by Lo Koon-chiu.

Review of Indonesian Children's Favorite Stories -- Multicultural Monday

 

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

January is always an exciting month here at Crafty Moms Share. It always represents Multicultural Children's Book Day since it is held the last Friday in January and the books are reviewed throughout the month of January. I am co-hosting once again this year as well as one of the many book reviewers for the event. Tuttle Publishing is always a sponsor of this event and although this book qualifies to be part of it I am not reviewing it today for Multicultural Children's Book Day. It is one I have on my review shelf before I started getting the books for the event. 

Multicultural Stories & Poem Book Round-Up

Disclosure: I was sent a copy of these books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Since Hazel was young she always enjoys a story from another country. She loves learning about other cultures and learning words in other languages and so much more. Today I am sharing a round-Up of books from various cultures to learn more about them. Let's start with a book of stories from India. It is Mangoes, Mischief, and Tales of Friendship by Chitra Soundar and illustrated by Uma Krishnaswamy. 

Imagination Builders -- Back to School

Disclosure: I was sent these products free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As always I am providing links to the book for your convenience.

Have your children started school yet? Almost everyone I know has or will this week.  I have decided to share products that will help everyone who homeschools or just supplements their kids' schools with learning at home. Today's focus is building imagination. For reasons why building one's imagination is important you can check out this article in the Wall Street Journal and this article at Huffington Post. The first item I am sharing is a new book by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston called A Child of Books. 

The Story of Passover -- Exodus

 Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of this map free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Today I am joining some other Multicultural Kid Blogs to bring you a Passover for Kids Blog Hop. This year I decided to focus on the Biblical story behind Passover. As a Christian I know this story since it is part of the Old Testament (in the book of Exodus chapters 7 through 14). To look at this story we started by looking at it in cartoon form on a DVD from the library.

Multicultural Monday: Product Review: Happy Kid Heart Empathy Kit

With the start of December and Advent, I thought I would share each post where our Mouse and the Miracle Mouse (Holy) has been up to. (He now has an elf friend named Elfie who often is hidden with him.) Also make sure you stop by Multicultural Kid Blogs to read my post on Advent Around the World!

Holy reading The First Christmas Night by Keith Christopher
(comparing it to what he remembers of that night!)

Disclosure: I was sent these items to review free of charge from Happy Heart Kid as part of the Multicultural Kids Product Promotion Services. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review.

Today I get to share with you a wonderful product from Happy Heart Kid. The product I reviewed is their Empathy Box. This box arrives with four complete activities to help teach your child(ren) about empathy. Hazel loved these activities!! 

Book Review: The Pandas and Their Chopsticks and Other Animal Stories by Demi

Have you entered my current giveaway?

Disclosure: Wisdom Tales Press gave me a copy of this product free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Today I am going to share a fun book which was recently released by Wisdom Tales Press. The book is The Pandas and Their Chopsticks And Other Animal Stories by Demi. I asked to review this book because lately Hazel has been really into panda bears and figured she would love it.

This book takes ten classic Asian animal fables and adapts them to have universal appeal. Each of the ten stories has a moral or lesson stated at the end. Needless to say Hazel loved it.  I enjoyed reading the fun stories and with morals like learning to share, being careful around people who brag, it is sometimes better to listen than talk, our faults will follow us unless we change them, who couldn't love to read and teach your child these lessons. Some of the morals were written in words that Hazel had trouble understanding, so each one was a starting point to talk about what it means with the story to illustrate it. I always love books that give us a starting point for conversations about things that matter in life.

The pages themselves are beautiful. The colors and illustrations make the story come alive with room for the imagination to full in the story as well. The stories are short and clear and presented beautifully on the pages. It is truly a wonderful book.

For more posts about books from Wisdom Tales and about Asia check out:

• Everyone Prays by Alexis York Lumbard
• Korean Folk Songs
• Asian Pacific Islander Book Round-Up
• Asian Kites
• All About Japan
• Learning Japanese with books and flashcards
• Exploring Japan with books and more
• Sora and the Cloud
• All About Indonesia 
• Mei-Mei's Lucky Birthday Noodles 
• Mulan and My First Book of Chinese Words

All About Japan By Willamarie Moore -- Book Review

Disclosure: Tuttle Publishing gave me a copy of these products free of charge. All opinions in my review are my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As in all my reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation.

Today I am going to review for you the wonderful book, All About Japan by Willamarie Moore. I absolutely love this series of books from Tuttle Publishing. They are packed full with so much information and they teach so much about the culture and life in the country. (I reviewed All About Indonesia by Linda Hibbs in July.) This book helps us center our exploration of Japan. It shares traditional stories, holidays, life in the city as well as the country (told by children who live there), recipes, crafts, dance, music, poetry, and so much more. 

With any book that has a recipe or craft in it, Hazel wants to try it, so we did. The book has three recipes in it and we tried two. I did not try to make Onigiri since I couldn't find the ingredients and I didn't really think Hazel would like them. We did try Okonomiyaki. It is described like a pancake with fillings but reminded me more of an omelet. I do not think I cut our fillings up enough and they fell apart on us when we flipped and removed them. Steve and I both thought they were all right and Hazel liked to eat the chicken filling instead. The pancake batter had cabbage in it which is why they are green.

Oknomiyaki

The other recipe we tried was mochi cakes. We made them the day after we read "The Grateful Statues" in Japanese Children's Favorite Stories by Florence Sakade. The story is about a kind, poor couple. The old man does something kind for some statues and his kindness is rewarded with a large mochi cake. Therefore making mochi cake right afterward was perfect. Now are mochi cakes did not turn out pretty. We should have looked at pictures of them first, but Hazel was having fun making shapes out of them. We also could not find sweet rice flour or mochiko and used regular rice flour. They were not as sweet as they probably should have been. I like them though.

Mochi is often a treat for O-Shogatsu (New Year), so it seems appropriate to also show you our Nenga-jo Greeting card. Since 2015 is the year of the sheep, we used a sheep rubber stamp and Hazel wrote on the numbers. Nenga-jo are usually postcards that are sent the first three days of January.

Nenga-jo

 This book also discusses some history of Japan including the samurai warriors. They have instructions to make a samurai helmet out of newspaper. Hazel of course wanted one and then modeled it with a sword.

And what exploration of Japan would be complete without some origami? The book shares a wonderful song about frogs and gives the instructions to make an origami hopping frog.

Hazel loves making origami and wanted to make lots of frogs. You can find similar frog's instructions here.

She also loved that they could hop.

She made one of every color and then pulled out her zoo mat to put them in water. She then gathered more zoo animals to go with her frogs. I love crafts that lead to her creative play!

All About Japan is the perfect book for anyone who wants to learn more about Japan, its history, culture, etc. There are so many activities throughout it from learning about haikus to writing Kanji. We would have done more of the Kanji if we hadn't had the other books.  The other activity we did do was trying the Bon Dance. I however did not get any pictures since I was doing it with Hazel. I am also almost done with a kimono for her doll. She picked a fabric that reminds me of sakura (cherry blossoms), so I'll wait until it is finished and share it with our cherry exploration! Stay tuned!!

For more books and activities to learn about Japan check out:

• Learning Japanese with books and flashcards
• Exploring Japan with books and more
• Sora and the Cloud
• Origami Butterflies
• Asian Kites
• Asian Pacific Island Heritage Month Blog Hop
• Asian-Pacific Island Book Round-Up
• Multicultural Christmas Books
• Play! Book Review
• Happy New Year Around the World
• My Multicultural Pinterest Board

Also check out some of our other reviews of Tuttle Publishing Books:

• All About Indonesia 
• Asian Kites 
• Mei-Mei's Lucky Birthday Noodles 
• Mulan and My First Book of Chinese Words

Winter Solstice

On Saturday winter begins where we live although with the weather this week, I think winter is already here. We have had two snowstorms since Saturday. Hazel has made her first snowman of the season! However the snow was a bit icy to make snow angels at least in the first storm. The second one she has not gotten to play as much since she got sick (after playing in the first snowstorm). We have been talking about the shorter days. Of course Hazel is trying to figure out what that means--are there less hours in the day?

Picture of Our Back Yard This Afternoon

To get ready for the first official day  of winter, I thought we would read some winter books and try a few crafts. After reading some winter books, Hazel decided we needed to make some paper snowflakes. This is one of her favorite things to do.

Then we read some more books. We went to the library and found a huge selection of winter books and here are some we got as well as some of our favorites from our own collection.

Although I keep explaining about there being less sunlight on the winter solstice, I am not sure Hazel gets the concept yet. I hoped some of these books would help her. The first two books in this collection are about multiple seasons. The third, Winter is the Warmest Season by Lauren Stringer may sound confusing, however the story is told by a boy who explains how his world becomes warm (for example, hot chocolate instead of cold milk, pajamas with feet) because of the cold temperature outside.

We also had to look at some books about snow. After all that is the best and the worst part of winter.  Red Sled by Rita Judge and The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats are two of our favorite snowy/winter books.

Three of these books have activities and/or crafts in them. The top two are just about crafts and activities. It's Winter by Linda Glaser has some winter activities and explorations to do at the end of the story. It goes through what the animals are doing while it is cold outside. In the Seasonal Crafts series, Winter by Gillian Chapman has crafts for many holidays and events. The craft we decided to do was make construction paper finger puppets to go with stories that the Inuit women tell on winter nights to pass the time.

Now the Inuit people live in the Arctic. As we can imagine their winter days are long and dark.  To pass time they shared stories. Many were about the animals they lived with and ate: the caribou, the walrus and seals. Then of course there are stories about the sun, moon and the Aurora Borealis. The Inuit traditionally lived in igloos in the winter.

Source: By Ansgar Walk (photo taken by Ansgar Walk) [CC-BY-SA-2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

 How would you like to live in here for the winter?

Addition on the Winter Solstice: We read the best book for the winter solstice tonight. It is The Winter Solstice by Ellen Jackson. It goes through history on how the winter solstice was celebrated as well as giving an experiment to try to understand the seasons. I highly recommend checking this one out!!






 





Looking for more winter ideas check out:
Winter Solstice
Let It Snow! Winter Wonderland Tea Party
A Wonderful Winter Book: Red Sled
My Winter Pinterest Board

Virtual Book Club for Kids: Mixed Up Fairy Tales by Nick Sharratt

This month the author for the Virtual Book Club for Kids is Nick Sharratt. We have really enjoyed his books. He has quite a range of books and then even more that he has illustrated. You can learn a little more about Nick Sharratt on his website.

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures--Blanca Rosa and the Forty Thieves: a Chilean Snow White Tale

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, I am going to share a few of the fairy tales from Hispanic areas of the world during the month. Today we will visit Chile to hear a version of Snow White, it is called Blanca Rosa and the Forty Thieves and I found it translated in English in Folktales of Chile edited by Yolando Pino-Saavedra and translated by Rockwell Gray. This is a story I shared with Hazel and we colored a Chilean flag together, but did not do any other craft.

Source

Before we get to the story, let's look at Chile a bit. It is officially the Republic of Chile and is in South America. It is a long narrow strip between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. (For more info on life in the Andes visit my post here.) It is one of two South American countries that does not border Brazil.It also claims several islands and part of Antarctica. (Source) The country is more than 2700 miles long which is about the distance from San Francisco to New York City and its width never exceeds 150 miles wide. This makes the length more than 18 times the widest part of the country. (Source)

View Larger Map

To the north Chile is desert and to the south it is mountainous with volcanoes and lakes and twisting peninsulas. The small central part of the country is where the majority of the population and agricultural resources are. In the desert there is high amounts of copper as well as other mineral wealth. 

Coloring Page Source: World Flag Coloring Pages

Prior to the 16th century Spanish arrival, northern and central Chile were under Inca rule and southern Chile was inhabited by the independent Mapuche. In 1818, Chile gained its independence from Spain. Today Chile is one of South America's most stable and prosperous countries. (Source)

Now onto our story. I found the similarities to so many of other versions of Snow White interesting. From the title, Blanca Rosa and the Forty Thieves we see the similarity to the Egyptian version that also had forty thieves.

In this story, the mother has recently died and left her daughter, who looked just like her mother, a magic mirror in which she could still see her mother and converse with her. The daughter's name is Blanca Rosa, which means White Rose. The father remarries and the stepmother thinks she is the most beautiful woman in the world and gets upset that Blanca Rosa spends all her time talking to her mirror. She takes the mirror from her and asks the mirror who is the most beautiful woman in the world. The mirror tells her it is Blanca Rosa. The woman gets very angry and orders servants to kill Blanca Rosa. The men take Blanca Rosa away and abandon her. A little old man helps her. 

The mother asks the mirror again and learns that Blanca Rosa is alive and find the little old man. She demands he kill her and bring her Blanca Rosa's eyes and tongue. The old man has a dog with blue eyes which he kills instead and brings the dog's eyes and tongue on a silver platter to the stepmother, but also sends Blanca Rosa into the woods on her own.

Blanca Rosa has a horrible time surviving until she finds the hideout of forty thieves. She is high in a tree when they leave and she drops down and discovers all sorts of jewels, treasures and food. All she cares about is the food. She helps herself and then goes back to the tree top to sleep. The thieves arrive home and wonder who has been through their hideout. The leader has one man stay behind the next day. This man watches as this beautiful woman comes down from heaven and is sure it is the Virgin Mary as he has never seen anyone so beautiful in his life. He is sure she is there to have them repent their sins of stealing. He runs to find the others in his group. They do not believe him and the next day, the leader has five men stay behind. All five have the same story as the first and finally the leader stays behind and meets Blanca Rosa. She tries to tell them she is not the Virgin Mary, but they do not believe her and they dress her with beautiful gowns and jewels. They give her whatever she wants. 

There is a rumor in the village about a beautiful woman living with forty thieves, but the stepmother refuses to believe it. She decides to ask the mirror though her question again. Again the answer is Blanca Rosa. The stepmother hires a sorceress to kill her stepdaughter once and for all. The sorceress dresses as an old poor woman and tries to give Blanca Rosa a basket of fruit to thank her for past kindness. Blanca Rosa refuses it since the thieves give her whatever her heart contents. The old woman asks to at least be able to touch her dress and hair. Blanca Rosa allows her and the old woman jabs her with a needle in her hair. The thieves come home to find Blanca Rosa dead or at least they thought she was. The put her in many beautiful clothes and jewels and into a casket made of silver and gold and sent it in the ocean. 

A prince who loves to fish was out fishing and sees the sparkle in the water and asks other fisherman to help him get it. He brings it home. He lives with his two old maid sisters, so he takes it directly to his own room. There he opens the casket to see Blanca Rosa, the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and she is dressed in such riches. He slowly takes off all her jewelry and clothing trying to find what could have stopped her breathing. Once she is naked he combs her hair and find the needle. He takes out the needle and immediately Blanca Rosa comes to live and is very confused waking to be naked with a strange man. She asks where her thieves are and he tries to explain what has happened. She just wants her thieves, so he sticks the needle back in and goes to think about what to do. His sisters are curious as to what he is doing in his room since he does not come out even for meals.

He wakes Blanca Rosa up again and tells her he could not find her thieves, but asks her to stay with him and marry him. He tells her that she does not have to leave her room if she does not want to. She agrees and does not leave the room. One day while the prince was out on business, the sisters break into the room to see what their brother has been up to and they find Blanca Rosa. They strip her of all her jewelry and fine clothes and throw her into the street naked. She wanders until she finds a kind cobbler who takes her in. The prince comes home to find his love gone and he goes and wanders aimlessly looking for her. He finds her and joyfully brought her back and began preparations for their wedding. He punished his sisters with a horrible death. The forty thieves came to the wedding at Blanca Rosa's instance and of course brought her many gifts. Blanca Rosa and the prince lived their lives happily together. 

As you can see there are some similarities to several versions, the fruit and the needle. Sending her in her casket to wander around aimlessly is similar to the Egyptian one, the Algerian one, and the Moroccan one. It is interesting to see how the versions are similar and how they differ.

I will be sharing this at the Multicultural Kid Blogs Hispanic Heritage Month Blog Hop and Giveaway. I hope you will join us at it as well and also visit all the great ideas linked up there! Remember each post shared is an entry for the amazing prizes and for those who do not have something to share, there is another way to enter!

Fairy Tales in Different Cultures--a Moroccan Snow White

While we have been in Africa for awhile with our Snow White stories I thought I would share one from Morocco too. Again this is a story that I have not shared with Hazel as it would definitely scare her.The story is called "The Jealous Mother" and I found it translated in English in Moroccan Folktales by Jilali El Koudia. 
 

Source: Google

Now for a bit about Morocco. Morocco is a country in Northern Africa. It joins Spain and France as the only countries to have coasts on the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The official name is the Kingdom of Morocco. The Arabic name translates into The Western Kingdom or The West. It is often called these as well. The capital is Rabat, but the largest city is Casablanca. Morocco has a history of independence unlike the other countries we have been sharing lately.

Source: Google

Morocco is a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. The King of Morocco has much power including the power to dissolve the parliament. His decision also overrides the parliament if there is a contradiction. 

Morocco has the coastlines and many mountains as well as the Sahara Desert. Needless to say the climate varies greatly. Morocco is also the only African country not in the African Union. (Source)

Now my experience with Morocco is very limited. I met a Moroccan man who claimed to instantly fall in love with me and want to marry me. He invited me to come meet his family in Morocco. I did not go. However several people warned me that if I did there were very strict things I needed to know about traveling as a single woman there. This made me look up some information on women's rights in Morocco. In 2004 the parliament tried to improve women's rights. What they passed included a man not being able to take another wife without his wife signing off on it. In 2006 a royal decision granted women to be able to pass their Moroccan citizenship to their children (previously it could only be passed by the father). In 2009, women were granted the right to divorce without their husband's consent. (Source) Needless to say it sounds like they still have some work to do there.

Now onto our story. Similar to the version from Algeria, the Morocco version has a beautiful mother who talks to the moon. The moon tells her that the child in her womb is more beautiful and of course the mother gets jealous. The mother has the trusted midwife bury the baby as soon as it is born and to replace it with a puppy dog. The mother paid the midwife a great deal of gold to do this. The midwife produced a puppy, but she took the girl away and secluded her inside her own house and took care of her. 

The husband of the beautiful woman was ashamed when he saw God had given them a puppy dog and threw the dog away. The midwife raised the baby as her own and named her Lalla Khallalt El Khoudra. She grew to be very beautiful and people would compare any woman's beauty to that of Lalla. Her birth mother heard of her and asked the midwife to send her over to help her untangle her ball of yarn. 

When the birth mother saw the girl she was overcome with jealousy. She gave the girl the ball of yarn and told her to walk until it was untangled. The girl ended up in the land of ghouls. Her mother cut the yarn when she guessed Lalla had walked that far. Lalla could not find her way home and night had fallen. When she saw all the strange creatures in the land she guessed she had entered the land the midwife had told her about and she was afraid she would be eaten alive. She hid herself in a thatch roof. The house that she chose to hide in was one of seven ghoul brothers. They had a slave to cook for them. Every morning the ghouls went out to hunt and the slave remained to prepare their food. The slave heard something on the roof and saw the beautiful woman. Lalla begged her for food and drink. She gave her some but advised her to stay hidden from the owners. Lalla repeated this every day. She would join the slave and help her prepare the food and then hide herself again. The brothers noticed a difference in the food. They wanted to figure out what was happening, so they had the youngest brother stay behind hidden to see what the slave was up to. 

The youngest brother stayed hidden, but saw the slave and Lalla cooking together. Then he jumped out. Lalla was scared, but the brother was kind and gentle and when he looked in his eyes he fell in love with her. The next day the brothers held a wedding ceremony for them. With the presence of Lalla all the brothers were happy. Lalla took over the care of the brothers. The slave became neglected, but she made Lalla promise her that they would always share everything equally.

One day Lalla tried to wake the slave to share a bean with her. Since the slave pretended to be asleep, Lalla put the half bean away, but it was lost when she tried to find it for the slave later. The slave was very angry and took revenge later by putting the fire out. Lalla had to go to a neighbor to ask for fire. She went to the ghoul next door, but he insisted on cutting her for the fire. She allowed him to do it and she dripped blood home. The next day he followed the blood to her and forced her to allow him to suck her blood from her finger or he would eat her. He did this every day.

The brothers began to notice the changes in their food and in Lalla. They did not understand why she did not seem happy when they showered her with gold, silver and jewels. The youngest brother stayed home to find out what was happening. He saw the neighbor come and drink her blood. He waited for his brothers and they decided they would all stay home the next day. They captured the neighbor, and set to kill him and then turned on Lalla for allowing him to visit. She wept and told them the whole story and they threw the slave into the pit with the neighbor and set them on fire. 

Awhile later a salesman who is referred to in the story as a Jew came selling his wares. Lalla came out and chose some and then gave him a large bag of silver and gold. She asked if he every knew a certain tribe and he said he did and she sent a message to her mother through him.

A few months later, he was with that tribe and her birth mother was purchasing things from him. She paid with a few balls of wool. He made a comment about how she did not pay like Lalla and the mother asked for more details since she was her mother. He told her how she was like a queen to the ghouls. The mother ran to  find a gift to send to Lalla and she wrapped a ring in a cloth and asked the salesman to give it to her next time he saw her.

In two months the salesman returned to the land of ghouls and saw Lalla. She bought some of his wares and he gave her the gift her mother sent telling her she suggested she put the ring under her tongue. She said she would and after the salesman left, she did. She became in a deathlike state and the ghouls came home that evening and found her frozen in the spot. They were so sad. They built her an attoush (a sofa like thing) and put it on a camel. The camel was told to go everywhere and stop for no one unless she heard her code name which was Naala or a shoe. The camel rode everywhere and eventually wandered into a kingdom of a rich and famous sultan. His guards told him about the camel with gold and silver on it and he wanted to catch it. The camel outsmarted the guards, but an old woman promised to get it and then lost her shoe and the camel stopped when she heard the woman yell about her shoe. 

When the sultan saw Lalla, he fell in love with her. He had his physicians examine her. When they found the ring under her tongue, they removed it and she slowly came back to life. The sultan married her. She however never forgot her seven ghoul brothers. When the camel had healed after all the walking, Lalla made plans to return. She waited until her husband would be gone for the day and she left, but the guards saw her and the sultan told them to follow her. The camel however once again outsmarted them. Lalla returned to her griefstruck brothers and they were all happy again.

Now part of what I like about this story is that the heroine does not stay with the sultan and goes back to where she was happiest.

Preparing for National Hunger Action Month

September is National Hunger Action Month. This year I thought I would get a head start. I am joining the amazing group of bloggers again called Moms Fighting Hunger. We are joining with No Kid Hungry to try to help combat childhood hunger in our local areas. Last year I challenged you my readers to join me in gathering food for local food pantries. Again I will extend this invitation to you. Last year I also helped plan a story time food drive at my local library, but since I got started late, it was in October. We used the theme of Stone Soup for it. This year I am starting earlier. I passed on Jen's from The Good Long Road idea of a food drive themed around The Very Hungry Caterpillar back in the spring, and we discussed doing a story time theme, but it hasn't happened. We are now thinking of doing some combination with the library's food drive around Thanksgiving. 

This year I wanted to do something bigger too. So I decided to gather emails for many local libraries and preschools and offer them the story time themes of Stone Soup and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I gathered craft ideas and story telling ideas for both on Pintetest boards: The Very Hungry Caterpillar Board and Stone Soup Board. I also put together outlines for both story times with options of additional books, story telling props and crafts and activities. (You can click picture or caption to get the free downloads.)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Set

I also did a generic flyer to advertise the story time with spots to fill in each places information (in red). The flyer is in Word, so it would be easy to change.  Here is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. A big thank you to Vickie from Mrs. Plant's Press and Chelsey from Buggy and Buddy for allowing me to use their pictures on my outline.

Stone Soup Set

For Stone Soup, I used pictures from our story time last year on the outline and including a tutorial on making the story stones we used. Then I made a generic flyer again for this story time theme. Finally I made a set of memory cards to go with Stone Soup. The ones I printed, I forgot to center the page so you could print double, but I have fixed it in the printable.

I figured it would be a fun activity and also an easy take-home activity. I have not found as much on Stone Soup as I did The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so I wanted to add some more to it.

I then sent these as attachments to the local libraries and preschools. Above is the e-mail I sent out. I am sharing all of these in hopes that others will want to use them. Either to send out to local libraries in your area or to plan your own story time food drive. 

The next thing we are doing for Hunger Action Month includes our long talked about butterfly party. Hazel made up a Butterfly party song she sang at the library yesterday while playing her ukulele. Sorry I couldn't figure out how to turn the picture with the software it was in. We sent out our invitation to the party asking people to bring fruit for a fruit salad and a can of fruit or vegetable for the local food pantry.

I included the video in the invitation and somehow my clip art did not show up. Oh, well. Hazel is so excited for it. I will post more as we get towards it.

So that is what we are doing for Hunger Action Month. Will you join us and get the word out to help our hungry children? After all, one in five American children are from a family who struggles to get enough food on the table. In a country as great as the United States, I think we can do better for our children.