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I just saw via Jen Robinson that Marie over at a Readable Feast is having a contest too. She is giving away a basketful of books from Little, Brown, and Co. All you have to do is spread the word about her contest and she'll enter you in the drawing. Titles include: We Belong Together: A Book About Adoption and Families by Todd Parr (ages 3-6), Hug Time by Patrick McDonnell (ages 3-6) and seven

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by Shelia Hamanaka. Morrow Junior Books, 1994. This is a lovely little book that sings of the sweetness of all the children of the earth. Children who come in the

"roaring browns of bears and soaring eagles,
The whispering golds of late summer grasses,
And crackling russets of fallen leaves
the tinkling pinks of tiny seashells by the rumbling sea."

The illustrations show children joyfully dancing, playing and exploring their world with abandon. The faces are full of light and the bodies jubilant. The delicate colors wash across the pages with bright accents in just the right balance. See sample pages at Google books here.

There aren't many adults shown but a couple of pages show parents frolicking with their children or adoring them. The families are multi-ethnic and come in a range of skin colors. Hair textures are described as "bouncy baby lambs, flowing like water and curls like sleeping cats." I am enjoying reading this book over and over, just for the music and flavors thrown together.

There is just one thing that bothers me. The last page says "children come in all the colors of the earth and sky and sea." Somehow that struck me as jarring because children don't come in the colors of the sky and sea, unless they are green and purple and blue. I am trying to let that go and not be so literal about it, but I wish it ended on a chocolate, cinnamon and ginger note instead. In any case I think this is a book families with young children will enjoy reading together.

Read an article Hamanaka posted about Racism and Animal Rights here.

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by Susan Meyers, illustrated by Marla Frazee. Harcourt, 2001. This is an adorable picture book full of babies of every ethnicity and family profile. The facial expressions are completely endearing. Frazee's simple drawings perfectly capture the way babies show every emotion from surprise, contentment, pleasure, sleepiness and anxiety. The watercolor sketches of family groupings show affectionate, bewildered, exhausted, adoring, and smitten parents, grandparents, siblings and friends. There are traditional pairs, single parents, same sex partners, transracial families, multi-generational families, and neighborhood gatherings scattered across pages of babies being their precious selves.

The text is simple and repetitive: "Every day, everywhere, babies play games ~ peek-a-boo, pat-a-cake, this-little-piggy, roll-the-ball, ride-a-horse, jiggety-jiggy." Little ones listening to the musical rhymes will want to sing along after the first few read-throughs. People with babies or expecting babies will love browsing this book over and over. Big brothers and sisters getting used to the idea of a new baby will delight in studying this book. I especially thought of Jenna, as I remember she was looking for a book for her son that included illustrations of multiracial families including one sibling adopted by another family and a new baby on the way. This book does a beautiful job of including everyone in the joy of living with babies. It would be a wonderful baby shower gift or big sister/brother gift. Highly recommended!

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A board book by the Global Fund for Children. Charlesbridge Publishing, 2007. A review copy of this delightful little board book came in the mail this week. With very simple, sweet text and photo after photo of adorable babies from around the world it is a huge hit in our house. I had to hunt through the boy's room to find it squirreled away by Punkin, where he was holding it for further reading.

Babies from Guatemala, Thailand, Greenland, Mali, India, South Africa, Afghanistan, the USA, Spain and Iraq are shown close up in their precious finery. I know my boys are attracted to the vivid smiles and charming wide-open eyes of these cuties, but I am most struck by the tenderness of the way they are dressed. Some are in regular every-day play clothes but many are in their most colorful and carefully chosen finery. I can't help but see their parent's love and admiration in the ways they are held and presented to the camera. This little gem of a book is one to cherish. The message that children all around the world are beautiful, special and loved comes through loud and clear whether you read the text or just gaze at the photos.

On the back cover is this message:

Global Babies was developed by the Global Fund for Children, a nonprofit organization committed to advancing the dignity of young people around the world. Part of the proceeds from this book's sales will be donated to The Global Fund for Children to support innovative community-based organizations that serve the world's most vulnerable children and youth.

Click here for more of their books.

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Forgotten Book of the Week: The Duchess Bakes a Cake

by Virginia Kahl
Scribners & Sons, 1955
Reissued: Purple House Press, 1983

Baking mishaps seem like a recurring motif in children's literature, from "The Gingerbread Man" to "In the Night Kitchen" and onwards, and yet I don't ever seem to tire of it. I'm betting that a lot of kids don't, either. Which, of course, brings me to the delightful dottiness of Virginia Kahl's The Duchess Bakes a Cake. Here's how the book begins:

A long time ago there lived over the waters
A Duchess, A Duke, and their family of daughters --
Madeleine, Gwendolyn, Jane and Clothilde,
Caroline, Genevive, Maude and Mathilde,
Willibald, Guinevere, Joan and Brunhilde,
And the youngest of all was the baby, Gunhilde.

Whenever I read this intro, I can't help but be reminded of that other book from the 1950s about twelve little girls in two straight lines. But the similarity ends there. Kahl's story about the Duke and Duchess' prodigious family is set in a world given over to silliness, where adults and children alike play the fool. "They couldn't think often, and hadn't thought much."

The story begins with the angular, Olive-Oyl-Goes-Medieval-style Duchess, who usually likes to spend her time "reading and writing," growing bored and deciding to bake a cake. Being a noblewoman, she hasn't the faintest idea of how to go about making "a lovely light luscious delectable cake," but simply adds ingredients helter-skelter into the bowl:

In went the almonds, the raisins, the suet;
She added some vinegar and dropped in the cruet.
She added the yeast, six times for good measure.
(A light fluffy cake is really a pleasure.)

Predictibly, the cake rises to immense proportions, trapping the Duchess in the air on an enormous mound of dough. "I fear an improper proportion of leaven / Is taking my dear Duchess right up to Heaven," cries the Duke. How will she get back down? The castle folk all have ludicrously impractical ideas, but, of course, it is the Duchess's own children who create the best solution.

Kahl was a librarian, and you can tell: her rhyming text and clever rhymes beg for this book to be read out loud. As for her three-color illustrations, they seem like a cross between Lois Lenski and James Thurber. Thick lines delineate the characters and scenery, and Kahl uses little details to give the characters charm. The palace cook, with his long, upturned nose and spoon on his hip, looks like he fell straight out of a vintage New Yorker cartoon. The thirteen daughters, meanwhile, are simply adorable with their little red caps, white dresses and pudgy green arms. If I had read this book as a child, I would have loved to have a set of dolls that looked just like them.

Kahl wrote several books about the Duke and Duchess' family; this is the most well-known and is the only one that has ever been reissued. This loopy castle community is addictive; if The Duchess Bakes a Cake falls into the hands of any young readers you know, you may find yourself scouring used book markets to collect the whole set.

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