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My 2010 New Year’s resolution was to bake a pie every month, along with keeping fit and eating healthy. So far it’s been a challenge. Baking a pie every month has been a hard resolution to keep and in order to keep my other two resolutions, I have been giving my pies away. So far I [...]

“A wonderful student but…” is a phrase that would commonly show up on my report cards and I swear my dad’s eye would twitch each time he stumbled across one of those “buts”. The only complaint I ever got all through school was my lack of concentration. English class was spent deep sea diving, looking [...]

I try not to take this personally, but every time I come home my cat Binky bolts out the door. No enthusiastic greetings or purring declarations of how much I was missed, all I see is his hairy hiney disappearing around the corner. Read more after the jump. Fabian the cat, one of the heroes of [...]

This week we continue our themes of overwhelming cuteness and wombats. Read more after the jump. Following the success of Sometimes I Like to Curl up in a Ball, illustrator Charles Fuge launched Little Wombat into a collection of board books becoming both the author and the illustrator. Following the same successful format as his first [...]

Church

My dad is weird. Besides claiming to be from Mars, my dad has a freezer full of dead goldfishes. Okay, “full” might be an exaggeration; there’s maybe half a dozen or so. My dad stopped raising goldfish after they all died. Instead of flushing them down the toilet or throwing them out with the trash, [...]

Shhhhhhhhhhh… Read more after the jump. From morning to night, we are constantly hustling and bustling, our senses bombarded by noise and images. Every minute filled and counted for, down to the tenth of the second. It is amazing that we can still find pockets of quiet in an over-stimulated world. The Quiet Book, written by [...]

The moral of the story: modesty and perseverance will always be rewarded. Read more after the jump. Author and illustrator Brian Wildsmith gives us his personal take on an old classic, The Hare and the Tortoise. Inspired by the La Fontaine version, Wildsmith simply retells the fable about a race between a boastful hare who thinks [...]

With the recession hitting hard, I am finding myself housebound this summer. With no big plans to take off to places unknown, I am exploring my own backyard instead. One great thing about living in Toronto is the mix of cultures and ethnicities and you don’t have to go far to experience different parts of [...]

I am finding it hard to keep motivated these days, to keep plugging away at my goals when it feels like I am hitting a brick wall at every turn. When things get tough, it can easily send your mind into a tailspin, so much so that you forget what your goals even are. It’s [...]

This week, we continue to think outside the box. Read more after the jump. Antoinette Portis’s sequel to Not a Box is just as imaginative and engaging. Not a Stick introduces readers to a little pig and his stick. Insisting it is not just a stick, the little pig demonstrates its many uses: a [...]

Last week, our super duper cat-scratching post was delivered, with the manufacturer’s guarantee that this will become our cat’s new best friend and will make him the envy of all cats. Well, Binky wasn’t impressed. However, he was wild about the box it was delivered in; he spent hours playing with the packaging. I remember [...]

Last summer while my mother was away on vacation, my dad went out and got a dog. In case you were wondering, nope – there was no prior family meeting or discussion (a.k.a. asking my mom for permission). You should have seen the look on my mother’s face when we picked her up from the [...]

Parlez-vous français? Read more after the jump. I knew I should have paid more attention in French class. Last year, I ordered a bunch of beautifully illustrated children’s books from a publisher in Paris called HongFei Cultures. Pi Po Pierrot is a Chinese folktale translated into French by Chun-Liang Yeh and illustrated by Samuel Ribeyron. According to [...]

Chicken wings, sausages, salami and RIBS are a few of my favorite things, which is a major offense for a vegetarian. Three years ago, I had it in my head that it would be a brilliant idea for a vegetarian to attend rib feast, which is exactly like it sounds like – all-you-can-eat ribs from [...]

When I was in junior high, I had a mean old bat for an art teacher. Let us call her Old Bat for short, in order to protect the not-so-innocent. Whenever she got angry, her voice would screech like nails on a chalkboard, and no matter what the weather was like outside, she would inevitably [...]

It’s currently Chanukah, known as the "festival of lights". The word Chanukah doesn’t mean "festival," though. It means dedication. The holiday refers back to the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after a band of Jewish rebels known as the Maccabees led by a man named Mattathias managed to throw a bunch of Greek pagans out. There was only enough sacramental oil to last for one night, but miraculously it burnt for eight nights until more could be gained. Or so the story goes.

The timing of Chanukah, like the timing of all Jewish holidays, is based on the lunar calendar. While it seems odd to many Christians that the Jewish holidays move about, it seems equally odd to Jewish children that Christmas remains fixed on December 25th. To celebrate Chanukah, I thought I’d share a poem by Emma Lazarus, a nice Jewish girl from New York who was concerned with the plight of Jewish immigrants, as you may recall from my Independence Day post, in which I featured her more famous poem, "The New Colossus". What? You think don’t know it? Sure you do, or at least these lines: "Give me your tired, your poor,/
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . ."

The Feast of Lights
by Emma Lazarus

Kindle the taper like the steadfast star
  Ablaze on evening's forehead o'er the earth,
And add each night a lustre till afar
  An eightfold splendor shine above thy hearth.
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
  Blow the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn;
Chant psalms of victory till the heart takes fire,
  The Maccabean spirit leap new-born.

Remember how from wintry dawn till night,
  Such songs were sung in Zion, when again
On the high altar flamed the sacred light,
  And, purified from every Syrian stain,
The foam-white walls with golden shields were hung,
  With crowns and silken spoils, and at the shrine,
Stood, midst their conqueror-tribe, five chieftains sprung
  From one heroic stock, one seed divine.

Five branches grown from Mattathias' stem,
  The Blessed John, the Keen-Eyed Jonathan,
Simon the fair, the Burst-of Spring, the Gem,
  Eleazar, Help of-God; o'er all his clan
Judas the Lion-Prince, the Avenging Rod,
  Towered in warrior-beauty, uncrowned king,
Armed with the breastplate and the sword of God,
  Whose praise is: "He received the perishing."

They who had camped within the mountain-pass,
  Couched on the rock, and tented neath the sky,
Who saw from Mizpah's heights the tangled grass
  Choke the wide Temple-courts, the altar lie
Disfigured and polluted--who had flung
  Their faces on the stones, and mourned aloud
And rent their garments, wailing with one tongue,
  Crushed as a wind-swept bed of reeds is bowed,

Even they by one voice fired, one heart of flame,
  Though broken reeds, had risen, and were men,
They rushed upon the spoiler and o'ercame,
  Each arm for freedom had the strength of ten.
Now is their mourning into dancing turned,
  Their sackcloth doffed for garments of delight,
Week-long the festive torches shall be burned,
  Music and revelry wed day with night.

Still ours the dance, the feast, the glorious Psalm,
  The mystic lights of emblem, and the Word.
Where is our Judas? Where our five-branched palm?
  Where are the lion-warriors of the Lord?
Clash, Israel, the cymbals, touch the lyre,
  Sound the brass trumpet and the harsh-tongued horn,
Chant hymns of victory till the heart take fire,
  The Maccabean spirit leap new-born!

As a Jewish American, Emma Lazarus was particularly concerned with the plight of Jewish refugees who were entering the U.S. at the time in order to escape pogroms in Russia and eastern Europe; beginning in 1882, she began providing technical education to allow immigrants in New York City to become self-sufficient.

In 1883, Emma Lazarus wrote a sonnet that is literally etched into American history -- it's on a brass plaque affixed to the base of the Statue of Liberty.

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"