Book Review: Sora and the Cloud

Disclosure: I was sent this book digitally to review free of charge from Immedium. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review. I am including links to each item for your convenience but do not receive anything if you purchase them.

Today we got almost a foot of snow. With all the cold, beautiful snow outside, I thought it was the perfect time to review this wonderful book by Felicia Hoshino called Sora and the Cloud. It is one of those wonderfully dreamy books that can never happen, but it is always so fun to think about happening.

This story is about a young Japanese boy exploring his world. Sora is a climber and one day he climbs a tree. Waiting in the branches of the tree is a friendly cloud. Sora hops on and the two become friends as they have an adventure. Throughout the story there are Japanese references such as food booths in a festival, kite flying and lyrics to a children's song about kites. The story has been translated into Japanese and both text are written on each page. After Sora returns to his family, his sister starts to check out the friendly cloud. It is an imaginative story about young children exploring and discovering the world around them. 

Felicia Hoshino has illustrated many books and finally she writes and illustrates her own. It is beautifully illustrated and is the kind of book you can imagine a child daydreaming about. Add the Japanese culture throughout the book, and it is a wonderful introduction for any child. The book makes me smile. The story is simple yet fantasy and it makes it that wonderful mix that makes you happy to read.

The book is available for $15.95 at Immedium. It is a wonderful addition to anyone's multicultural library!

For some more multicultural children book reviews check out:

• Year of the Horse
• Julie Black Belt Series
• Rainbow Stew
• Princess Grace 
• Civil Rights Movement Stories
• Hispanic Picture Books
  
• Multicultural Children's Book Day Blog Hop

February Happenings: Paul Galdone, Canada and Black History Month

With the busy start of February, I have not had a chance to preview the month for you. February brings some added events such as Valentine's Day, Presidents Day and Black History Month. We have joined some other great members of Multicultural Kid Blogs to bring you the Black History Month Blog Hop. We have already shared posts on Thurgood Marshall and the song We Shall Overcome. For Valentine's Day we have shared a simple sewing project of a felt heart so far.

Another event coming up this month is:

 International Book Giving Day is an initiative aimed at increasing children's access to and enthusiasm about books. To participate you donate or give books to children either ones you know or a charity or a classroom or library. Will you join us is celebrating?

For Virtual Book Club for Kids the author this month is Paul Galdone. Now most people know something of Paul Galdone's work since so many of his titles are classic stories. He illustrates them and tells the traditional tale. We will be sharing a Galdone book next week with you!!

For Around the World in 12 Dishes, we will be exploring Canada. This will be the twelfth country we have explored in this series!! We have had so much fun exploring the countries. Hazel is always asking where we will be exploring the next month. The new season begins in March. I hope you will join us exploring our neighbor to the north with food, stories, music and more!
Stay tuned for more reviews, giveaways and crafts!!

We Shall Overcome -- How a Song Affected the Civil Rights Movement

Do you know the song We Shall Overcome? Do you know its history with the Civil Rights Movement? I found some books to share it with Hazel. The song itself comes from an old gospel song, I'll Overcome Someday composed by Charles Albert Tindley. In 1945, workers were striking against the American Tobacco Company in Charleston, South Carolina, and the workers sang We'll Overcome (I'll Be All Right) to keep up their spirits. Their melody was closer to I'll Be All Right than to Tindley's version. In 1932 Highlander Folk School opened near Monteagle, Tennessee. Its purpose was to help unions in the South. In 1946 some members of the Charleston union came to Highlander and taught We Will Overcome to Zilphia Horton, Highlander's music director. That same year, Zilphia sang the song to Pete Seeger in New York. Pete Seeger had traveled with Woody Guthrie and later became a part of the folk group called the Weavers. Seeger altered the song to fit his own style of singing and changed the will to shall.



In the 1950s the focus of Highlander shifted from labor rights to civil rights. Many civil rights leaders attended training sessions including Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reverend Ralph Abernathy.

At an anniversary event for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Pete Seeger sang We Shall Overcome. It was the first time Dr. King heard the song and later found himself humming the tune. We Shall Overcome played a role in many important events of the civil rights movement like the March on Washington in 1963, the Freedom Riders and the Selma to Montgomery marches. At the famous, "I Have a Dream" speech, Joan Baez performed and sang We Shall Overcome.

Joan Baez 1963, Source: By Scherman, Rowland, U.S. Information Agency. Press and Publications Service. (ca. 1953 - ca. 1978) (NARA - ARC Identifier: 542017) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, people joined hands and sang We Shall Overcome. Lines in the song were added at some of the events like "We are not afraid." People reported that singing the song took away their fears even when facing a mob of Ku Klux Klan members.

To share this song with Hazel, I found two books at the library. The first, We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song by Debbie Levy, is the one I read to Hazel. It is a picture book with much information about the song as well as the lyrics throughout it. It tells how the students at sit-ins sang We Shall Overcome while being abused by the white patrons of the restaurants as well as throughout the movement.

The second book, We Shall Overcome: A Song That Changed the World by Stuart Stotts, is more of a resource book for older children. It gives more history and much less pictures. I used it as a reference for this post. It did come with a CD with Pete Seeger singing We Shall Overcome on it.

The best part of this song is that it traveled the world and was sung in other countries like India, East Germany, South Korea, and the list goes on.

Resources for this post: Wikipedia, We Shall Overcome: A Song That Changed the World by Stuart Stotts, We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song by Debbie Levy, and YouTube

Like my post last week on Thurgood Marshall, I will be adding this to the Multicultural Kid Blogs Black History Month Blog Hop.  Feel free to add your own posts on the Civil Rights Movement to the hop!

Sewing Lesson: Felt Heart

Hazel received a gift card (well actually several) for her birthday. With one of them she bought a children's sewing machine. She has really wanted a sewing machine since I sew so much.Her little sewing machine does a chain stitch and if you are not careful you can pull all the stitches out when you remove the fabric from the machine, but she loves it!

She has been practicing on scraps of fabric I have given her, but I wanted to find some simple project where she could actually make something. I found one on Pinterest. The website it comes from is in an Asian language, but the pictures were enough for me to figure it out. To make some simple felt hearts you need a piece of felt, a sewing machine and some scissors. 

1. Taking a piece of felt, fold it in half the long way (if you want you can cut it in half the long way--I found I liked just folding it). 
2. Stitch close the fold.
3. Unfold the felt and fold it over your stitches (so the stitches are inside the fold). 
4. Stitch close the cut edge.
5. Cut your felt into "strips". Each strip is a heart.
6. Now you can hand sew them to be a wreath or a garland. The site I got this from used wool felted balls in between hearts for the garland. You could also use other large beads.

Now I need to hand sew ours to make a garland. It is such a fun and easy sewing project and it got Hazel using her machine (though the felt was a bit thick for her machine) for something useful. I secured the ends on the ones she sewed, so we would not lose all the stitches. 

For some more Valentine's Day Ideas check out:

• For the Love of Geometry: Geometric Love Poems
• Strawberry Heart Muffins
• Felt Heart Gift--Hand Sewn
• Lavender Heart Sewing Lesson (Hand Sewing)
• Preschool Made Simple Valentines
• Valentine Tea Party
• Valentine Swap & Lots of Valentine Crafts
• My Valentine's Day Pinterest Board

Groundhog Day

February 2 is Groundhog Day here. This is the first year I think Hazel will truly understand the tradition and is looking forward to watching television tomorrow morning to see if the Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow or not. Now interesting enough Groundhog Day stems from Candlemas. Now the first time I heard about Candlemas was in the Waldorf School, but I didn't really understand what it was. According to old European sayings, the weather of Candlemas predicts the length of winter. 

The Old English Saying is "If Candlemas be fair and bright, Come, winter, have another flight; If Candlemas brings clouds and rain, Go winter, and come not again." A Scottish version is "If Candlemas Day is bright and clear, There'll be two winters in the year." A German version is "For as the sun shines on Candlemas Day, So far the snow will swirl until May; For as the snow blows on Candlemas Day, So far will the sun shine before May." American farmers have the saying, "If the sun shines on Groundhog Day; Half the fuel and half the hay." 

Since Punxsutawney Phil moved to Gobbler's Knob in 1887, he has seen his shadow 100 times with not seeing his shadow 17 times and no record 9 years. Groundhogs, also called woodchucks, eat dandelions, clover and grass and are members of the squirrel family. (Sources: Wikipedia and Stormfax)

For Hazel to get some understanding of Groundhog Day, we took some books out of the library. In each of these books (pictured above) a groundhog determines the weather on Groundhog Day. In Geoffrey Groundhog Predicts the Weather by Bruce Koscielniak, Geoffrey finds it easy the first year to predict the weather, but the next year he oversleeps and is woken up by the crowd gathered outside his burrow. He has no idea about his shadow with all the lights from the cameras and such of the crowd. He finally predicts the weather by calling his mother. In Punxsutawney Phyllis by Susanna Leonard Hill, Phyllis wants to take over when Uncle Phil retires, but no female groundhog has ever gotten to be Phil. She proves herself to be better at predicting the weather than Uncle Phil and her male cousins. In Gretchen Groundhog, It's Your Day! By Abby Levine, Gretchen is scared to go out to face the crowd. It is her first year at the job and she is shy. It is a wonderful story of how she ends up facing her fear with some United States history thrown in. In Gregory's Shadow by Don Freeman, Gregory is best friends with his shadow. He does not want to go out on Groundhog Day without his shadow, but he knows the people do not want him to see his shadow. At one point the two get separated and lost to one another, but eventually they find each other and Gregory figures out a way to go out with his shadow but not see him.

We also had some fun with groundhog crafts. We made the paper ones from a printable at DLTK Kids. Hazel colored hers and I used the colored template. 

I got the idea of using the paper plate from Kiboomu Kid Songs. I tried to do it from memory and did not get the placement of things and coloring quite right, but Hazel loved drawing the sun.

The idea of cutting a shadow of black construction paper came from All Kids Network. They also have a shadow matching game that we haven't tried yet, but looked like it would be fun.

Are you doing anything for Groundhog Day or Candlemas? I know I am hoping for no shadow tomorrow!! I cannot wait for spring weather to get here. It has been too cold this winter!