Dear Reader,

This Blog is designed for the parents, grandparents and caregivers of young children.  Each post will highlight a great book that all children should hear, with tips to enrich beginning reading skills.  You will also find fun recipes that go along with each story.  Enjoy reading and cooking with the children in your life.

*Read to the children in your life every day.  You are giving them a gift that will last a lifetime!

Tops and Bottoms             Adapted and Illustrated by:  Janet Stevens

Ages:  Preschool through Second Grade

In this clever story, Hare and his family have fallen on hard times and the rich Bear is very lazy and always sleeping.  This is the tale of how Hare outsmarts Bear through negotiating the use of Bear’s garden.  Through hard work, Hare and his family plant the garden while Bear continues to sleep.  In the end, Bear learns that he needs to take charge of his own life and the Hare is finely able to buy his own land for a garden.  They lived happily ever after as neighbors and that in itself is an important message.  This is a Caldecott Honor book for its amazing illustrations.

Continue reading Tops and Bottoms

Dear Reader,

This Blog is designed for the parents, grandparents and caregivers of young children.  Each post will highlight a great book that all children should hear, with tips to enrich beginning reading skills.  You will also find fun recipes that go along with each story.  Enjoy reading and cooking with the children in your life.

*Read to the children in your life every day.  You are giving them a gift that will last a lifetime!

Cook-A-Doodle-Doo!            By:  Janet Stevens and Susan Stevens Crummel

Ages:  Kindergarten through Second Grade

In our story, the Big Brown Rooster decides to follow in his great grand-mothers foot steps, the Little Red Hen.  He finds her cookbook and the fun begins.  Instead of making bread, Big Brown Rooster selects strawberry short cake and gets help from the Turtle, Iguana and a Pig.  This book really brings reading and cooking together.  The side bars on the pages are extremely informative regarding the cooking process.  Children will enjoy seeing how this unlikely team made a wonderful strawberry short cake and what happened to it.  The authors include the recipe on the last page.

Continue reading Cook-A-Doodle-Doo!

Dear Reader,

This Blog is designed for the parents, grandparents and caregivers of young children.  Each post will highlight a great book that all children should hear, with tips to enrich beginning reading skills.  You will also find fun recipes that go along with each story.  Enjoy reading and cooking with the children in your life.

*Read to the children in your life every day.  You are giving them a gift that will last a lifetime!

Because I Had a Teacher            By:  Kobi Yamada            Illustrated by:  Natalie Russell

Ages:  Preschool through Second Grade

This is Teacher Appreciation Week and it is our opinion that we shouldn’t have just one week to celebrate our teachers.  They need to be celebrated every day of the year.   As parents work with their children at home during the pandemic, we’re sure that they would now agree.  Because I Had a Teacher would be a perfect gift for any teacher that you know.  The last page of text says it all, “Because I had you, I learned to believe in me”.  Please reach out to a teacher and just say, “Thank you”.

Continue reading Because I Had a Teacher

Dear Reader,

This Blog is designed for the parents, grandparents and caregivers of young children.  Each post will highlight a great book that all children should hear, with tips to enrich beginning reading skills.  You will also find fun recipes that go along with each story.  Enjoy reading and cooking with the children in your life.

*Read to the children in your life every day.  You are giving them a gift that will last a lifetime!

Llama Llama Red Pajama              By:  Anna Dewdney

Ages:  Toddlers through Kindergarten

The Llama Llama series of books are a must read for young children.  Llama Llama Red Pajama deals with a common bedtime issue that many parents have when children do not go to sleep right away.  Baby Llama creates a lot of “Llama drama” before Mama Llama is able to console him.  This delightful book is done in rhyming verse and conveys a great lesson for young children.

Continue reading Llama Llama Red Pajama

Dear Reader,

This Blog is designed for the parents, grandparents and caregivers of young children.  Each post will highlight a great book that all children should hear, with tips to enrich beginning reading skills.  You will also find fun recipes that go along with each story.  Enjoy reading and cooking with the children in your life.

*Read to the children in your life every day.  You are giving them a gift that will last a lifetime!

Big Chickens            By:  Leslie Helakoski           Illustrated by:  Henry Cole

Ages:  Preschool through Second Grade

Big Chickens is a funny book about four chickens who thought they were actually “chicken”.  They were afraid of everything that they encountered, but in the end, realized that they were actually quite brave.  This hilarious book has amazing descriptive language and word play.  The illustrations are fun and help tell the story.

Continue reading Big Chickens