It is their largest fundraiser and raises millions of dollars.  Between 70,000 and 80,000 people attend the festival each year and there are hundred of trees.  Many of the trees are donated in somebody’s name or by friends and family of children who have either passed or have received compassionate care at the hospital.  Many of the stories and photos of the children will make you cry.

To say that I adore this fundraiser is an understatement. It is simply amazing!!  Each year, I have taken special notice of the literary themed Christmas trees so I can share them with you here.

Anne of Green Gables themed Christmas tree:

There is always a Harry Potter inspired tree:

And while there is a Twilight inspired Christmas tree every year, this year there was not one, not two, not three, not four but five Twilight Christmas trees.  Obviously, a lot of fans around here.

Three Wizard of Oz trees:

Peanuts tree:

Dr. Suess is always a popular tree:

This Dr. Suess tree is titled, “Oh, The Places You’ll Go:”

This tree was gorgeous! Complete with bookish quotes, a fireplace underneath, and all kinds of wrapped books:

Goodnight, Moon:

The Jungle Book:

Lot’s of snowmen books under this snowman tree:

The name of this tree was A Critter’s Christmas and it had a lot of bug type books included:

Winnie the Pooh is another tree that we see every year:

The Secret Garden inspired Christmas tree:

A picture book Christmas tree complete with a paper mache Where the Wild Things Are. I didn’t get it in the photo but there was also a good sized bookcase full of books included.

These little elves were just too cute.  And fun books too!

Christmas picture books included with this tree:

While this tree was not inspired by one particular book, it was just too adorable to pass up.  Lots of princess books were under the tree.

I loved Raggedy Ann and Andy when I was little:

The books that were with this little tiny tree were almost as big as the tree which was titled, A Christmas Story:

Only one Nightmare Before Christmas tree this year.  My little boy said this theme was what he would be watching for.

A Jane Austen Christmas:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid:

This little tree was set up on a gorgeous Lord of the Rings chess set:

And while these last few may not particularly be literary inspired, they get honorable mentions here because they were so creative. Although, Cookie Monster shows up in a lot of books though right?

And this surfing Santa was made with four leaning Christmas trees:

And yes, these are tires:

And two of my boys favorite trees that they couldn’t get enough of:

Did you have a favorite?! Tell me which one you loved the most. And if you didn’t get your fill, check out year’s past for more.

Today’s post is day 6 of the 2010 Virtual Advent  Tour – where every day bloggers are sharing their thoughts about Christmas. Do follow everybody’s posts!

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

But here’s four things I’ve learned as a parent navigating the world of non-fiction for very young children.

Take a cue from their current interests!

My kids get really excited when we get a book that they currently have an obsession over.  And what kid doesn’t have an obsession?  Cars? Trucks?  Tractors?  My boys love to point out every single piece of construction and farming equipment that they see.  We called every single one a tractor.  But obviously, they aren’t all called tractors.  Solution?  Hello library!  And hello books about frontloaders, bulldozers, excavators, backhoe loaders, skid steers, power tiller, and cultivators!

My boys are also obsesses over potato bugs.  Or rolly-pollies – whatever you want to call them.  During the summer, they are always pulling up my plants and rocks to see if they can find a collection of bugs.  When we get a picture book with bugs in it, they think that’s the coolest thing ever.  Same goes for spider books.  Oh yes, and let’s not forget the worms.

My kids seem to jump from one interest to another pretty frequently (although trains seems to be the mainstay) and so we read books about their current interests while the iron is hot.

What are your kids currently learning about?

My boys love snakes.  Every time we go to the zoo, my oldest is anxious to get to the snake house as soon as possible.  So I knew the library program with snakes that they could pet would be a huge hit. And it was! To the point that I have to remind the kids that they just can’t pet ALL snakes.  After the program, we picked up a couple of the snake books that they had on display (thank you librarians for making my job easier and having them all pulled already!) and for two weeks those were the only books that they looked at while we were in the car.  As soon as they were strapped in their belts, it was always “Where’s the snake book?”

I’ve also taken hints from their preschool lessons and library storytimes.  This month in preschool their theme is going on a safari, so it’s a perfect time to check out all the animal books.  I’ve found that they get really excited when they learn something in more than one place.  This is especially true for my four-year-old.  Information sinks in so much better when it’s coming at him from multiple directions.

Build on events, family vacations and other milestones.

Last year, when I took my kids on their first camping trip, we read fiction camping books for a month prior to heading out.  The same principle can be applied to non-fiction.  We will soon be taking a family vacation down to Arches and Mesa Verde and now is the perfect time to check out books about rocks, lizards, and the Anasazi people.  We’ve also got a Yellowstone trip planned and I will be reading books about  the earth, nature and wild animals to my boys.  (My librarian was a bit horrified to learn I took their library books to Yellowstone last year!)

Think about what you have coming up in your life and simply pick non-fiction books around that theme.  Not only will your kids learn something but the experience will be that much more valuable to them.

Let the kids pick!

I never know what will catch the attention of my kids so I let them browse the shelves of the library freely.  Even if the text of a book will be over their head or it’s a subject that I can’t even begin to know how to teach, they like to look at the pictures.  Letting the kids know that no subject is off limits will foster a love of learning and curiosity.

As a parent, these are techniques that I’ve found helpful in reading non-fiction to my young boys.  What ideas do you have?  We would love to hear them!

Share a Story, Shape a Future Literacy Blog Tour is being hosted at The Reading Zone today. Please be sure to stop by to find some great posts relating to nonfiction and check out the entire tour this week at Share a Story – Shape a Future.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

My family adores this event.  For us, it really kicks off the Christmas season.  We have decorated and donated two trees (I also blogged about them last year - check them out) in the past and this year while I didn’t help decorate I did help provide supplies for the tree below. It was decorated by  group of 8-11 year-old girls and they have so much fun doing it.  It turned out so cute!  I’m trying to convince my family to do a tree next year.  We buy everything on the after Christmas sales and then store it for a year.  I think that tree below cost me $10!

This was the first year we checked out the craft section.  My little guy loved it (I had to squeeze in a photo of one of the boys)!

While checking out all of the awesome displays, I took pictures of all of the literary themed Christmas trees and gingerbread houses.  This is Dr. Seuss The Grinch Stole Christmas:

Cloudy with a Chance for Meatballs:

While I don’t know if the movie UP! was based on a book or not, I had to share this house with you.  My awesome neighbor made it and it auctioned for $800!!  What a great way to give for the holidays.

Humpty Dumpty:

The Grinch (we’ll be seeing a lot of him):

This tree had a large display of books underneath it.  Each tree is auctioned off with everything underneath it and the entire display.  Sometimes this includes huge ticket items like televisions, furniture, fireplaces, electronics, etc.  These will sell for tens of thousands of dollars.

This  one used books on the tree!

A Grinch tree:

The sign on this one says, “It always rains in Forks” and is decorated with forks.  I can only imagine that this is inspired from the Twilight books. Weird!   Last year there was an awesome Twilight tree.

Another Grinch tree:

An upside down Nightmare Before Christmas tree:

Polar Express tree:

A Goodnight Moon tree:

Lots of frog books with this one:

Winnie the Pooh:

The sign says Enlighten the Children and has several picture books on it:

Tree with the book Sadako:

Wizardof Oz tree:

Another Wizard of Oz tree:

An Eric Carle tree.  Check out that quilt!

This tree was titled Fairy Tales:

Fancy Nancy tree:

Lots of books under this tree!

Another Grinch tree:

A Shrek palm tree:

If that wasn’t enough for you check out last years post with more literary themed Christmas trees! Which tree was your favorite?  If you decorated a literary themed Christmas tree, how would you decorate it?

Today’s post is day 10 of the 2009 Virtual Advent  Tour – where every day bloggers are sharing their thoughts about Christmas.  Check out the listing of the entire month as well as those also posting today: Becky at One Literature Nut, Vanessa at Reading in Bed and Lexie at Poisoned Rationality.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Have you ever wished you could remember just how to do a certain finger play…maybe This Old Man?  Or wanted to have an online read-along story for you and your children to enjoy?

Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) has a free educational website, in English and Spanish, to help parents and caregivers develop the language skills of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. RIF’s Leading to Reading (Semillitas de aprendizaje) is a fun and interactive online resource featuring stories, games, music, and other engaging activities for adults to experience together with young children. Both sites are accessible at www.rif.org.

Since language develops far more rapidly during the first five years of life than any other time, it is important that parents read and interact with their young children as often as possible. This site encourages children to discover the joy of reading at an early age.

The RIF Leading to Reading site is organized into three easy-to-navigate sections:  babies and toddlers (ages birth-2), preschoolers (ages 3-5), and grown-ups. Motivational mascots, Riffy and Rita, guide users throughout the site with “click” and “hear” navigation. Other features of the site include:

• A wide selection of animated and audio children’s stories;
• Finger play videos such as Itsy Bitsy Spider and I’m a Little Teapot;
• Interactive videos introducing children to age-appropriate subjects such as animals, art, and geography;
• Nursery rhymes and lullabies such as All Around the Mulberry Bush and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star;
• Online coloring and doodling;
• Sing-along songbook;
• Grown-ups section featuring expert Q&A, a RIF Leading to Reading video with literacy tips and activities, book search, and parent and caregiver journals.

The RIF Leading to Reading website is compliant with all Internet safety guidelines and is advertising free.

What’s happening at RIF?

Check out my blog, Rasco From RIF.

Carol Hampton Rasco is President and CEO of Reading Is Fundamental, Inc. and in addition to her blog may be reached at Toll free: 877.RIF.READ and Twitter as @rascofromrif.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Sometimes our greatest parenting moments are the ones that we take for granted the most. Reading to or with our child is one of these. It is a wonderful opportunity for closeness and teaching. It is often the one time in the whole crazy day of parenting that we can take a breath and enjoy the gift of our child.

A parent’s embrace is like food for a child’s soul. Reading books allows for this in the most natural way and many times parents and children look forward to reading together for this experience alone. I know I do!

Reading a book also presents parents with the most amazing opportunities for parenting – especially where feelings are concerned.

While we are beginning to understand the importance of teaching our children how to manage their feelings, in the midst of feeding, dressing, homework, and activities, we often forget to focus on this.

Increasing our children’s feeling vocabulary, accepting their feelings (positive and negative), exploring these emotions and helping them learn how to manage them are the ingredients for developing their emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence, which is strongly linked to future success and happiness, is something more and more parents are paying attention to.

The book you or your child chooses to read is far less important than where the reading takes you. My experience is that children are drawn to books that explore feelings in some way. Let the book be the platform for discussion. Children don’t need much encouragement. Given half a chance, they will happily discuss how the book makes them feel or how the character in the book feels.

As a parent you can expand on their comments with your own. Here are some ideas:

• Give your children time to explore their feelings at their own pace and come to their own conclusions.
• Restate what they say, but put in some more feeling words.
• Provide some “what if” scenarios such as “What if the mommy had said…?” or “What if that was you, how would you have felt?”
• Share your own stories. Children love to hear real stories, especially things that happened to you or how you felt as a child. It’s sometimes fun to replace reading a book altogether and relate one of your childhood stories instead.
• Share your feelings. Children learn best by example. Parents are their best models and hold the greatest power for teaching.
• Relax and enjoy! Teaching anything in a warm and loving environment always gets the best results.

While any book that speaks to your child is great, I’d like to suggest a few based on what my kids have enjoyed:

• Boom… Boom… Boom…: A Story to Raise Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence by Marsha Jacobson.  This book is a wonderful story about a little girl facing her fears. This fun-to-read story uses the power of storytelling to teach by example. A young girl’s adventure with her mother paints a picture of what emotional intelligence should look like. Children absorb the subtle, yet powerful messages and teachings with ease.
• Thomas’s Snowsuit by Robert N. Munsch (Annick Press, 1985) – My husband and I immigrated to Canada in 1987 with our two toddlers. The whole snowsuit experience was new and not welcome at all! This book got us through. We, along with our kids, felt comforted to know that we weren’t alone in our feelings.
• The Franklin series focuses on many different situations that children can relate to. Parents can really get stuck into the feelings that are evoked by these stories.
• The Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park has been some of my daughter’s favourite books to read. I think it’s because Junie B. is a real little girl who doesn’t always do or say the right thing. It is a great series for teaching the value of learning from our mistakes.

Visit Marsha Jacobson at her website and follow on Twitter.  Are there any other books that you would add to that list?

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

Maw Books:  Can you share with us how you ended up being an American living in Japan, marrying into the culture and raising a family there?

Suzanne Kamata: I originally came to Japan on the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) Program, an initiative by the Japanese Ministry of Education to bring native speakers into the English classroom. I worked as an assistant English teacher at junior and senior high schools in Tokushima Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku. I’d asked to be placed outside Tokyo, or other big cities so as to experience “the real Japan.”  My second year on the program, I met the man who would become my husband. I’ve been here ever since.

Maw Books:  Given this background much of your writing is set against a multicultural backdrop and explores the topic of cultural differences.  Share with us how being transplanted and immersed into a different culture has influenced your writing.

Suzanne Kamata: I’ve now lived in Japan for twenty-one years! Even now, I can’t say that I fit in here, or that I understand everything about Japan. I’m always dealing with cultural differences, and this preoccupation makes it into my writing. It’s harder and harder for me to write fiction set in the United States, though I try, sometimes.

Maw Books:  Of all the stories that you have in you, what led you choose the story that you shared in Losing Kei?

Suzanne Kamata: I wrote Losing Kei just after I became a mother, so I suppose all of my anxiety about becoming an expatriate mother in Japan (and moving in with my mother-in-law) made it into that story.

Maw Books:  Losing Kei is about Jill, who wants to flee her crumbling marriage in Japan, but doing so means giving up her own child because she has no custody rights as a foreigner.  Can you share with us a little bit about the custody laws in Japan?  Is there anything currently being done to try to change any of those laws?

Suzanne Kamata: In Japan, there is no such thing as joint custody. I suppose Japanese officials think it’s too confusing or harmful for children to be shuttled between parents. What frequently happens, however, is that children of divorced parents are often cut off entirely from the non-custodial parent. Since I first conceived of Losing Kei, many similar real-life custody cases have gotten attention from the press.  While most of those stories ended badly, rumor now has it that Japan has reconsidered its stance on the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which, among other things, protects visitation rights of non-custodial parents.  Perhaps happier days are ahead for international families like Kei’s – and for Japanese families everywhere.

Maw Books:  I hope happier days are ahead.  What was the most difficult moment that you had while writing Losing Kei?  And how you were able to push through it?

Suzanne Kamata: Maybe the hotel scene where Jill loses her son. I suppose knowing that she would pick herself up by her bootstraps and try to get him back helped me to continue.

Maw Books:  How is the reaction to Losing Kei different or the same depending upon whether your reader lives in Japan or the United States?

Suzanne Kamata: Readers in Japan are more sympathetic to Jill. One reviewer wrote that after a year, Jill should have known what she was getting into by marrying a Japanese man. That’s so not true. I’ve lived here for over two decades, but I only learned recently that if my husband died, custody of my children would go to his parents.

Maw Books:  The husband in the book is entirely fictional and in now way resembles your husband, but I know your Japanese husband was concerned that people would think that the husband that you created in the novel is based on him. What do you do to ensure others, including your husband, that not all Japanese men are like the one that you described?

Suzanne Kamata: Hmm.  I guess I’m trying to make up for that now by writing a very sympathetic Japanese male character in my novel-in-progress.

Maw Books:  But based on that question, do you see any of your friends or family personalities influencing the characters?  In particular, the overbearing mother-in-law?

Suzanne Kamata: The overbearing mother-in-law is not based on my own mother-in-law, but on other mother-in-law stories that I’ve heard over the years. Several women I’ve talked to said that they came close to divorcing their husbands because of their mother-in-laws.  Another character, Eric, is a composite of happy-go-lucky surfer guy babe-magnets that I’ve worked with over the years.  One in particular went through a kind of spiritual transformation. He started out as a curry-and-rice-eating lad, and became a urine-sipping yoga teacher.

Maw Books:  A urine sipping yoga teacher?  Yikes!  What was the best piece of writing advice that you received while writing Losing Kei?

Suzanne Kamata: My publisher made some very good editing suggestions which I incorporated.  I tend to be subtle to the point of obscurity. At his suggestion, I also cut a scene where Jill goes back to her husband  – and is rebuffed. I decided that that was out of character.

Maw Books:  I don’t know how I’d feel if she went back.  That’s interesting to think about.  What is the greatest comfort or joy in being a writer?  And what’s your biggest insecurity?

Suzanne Kamata: Writing is fun, and there is always joy in finishing a story or an essay or a novel. It’s also very satisfying when readers respond to my work, when they enjoy my stories and love my characters, or when they find something that they can relate to. Of course not everyone likes the same thing, and negative reviews can make me feel bad for days. As for my insecurities, I worry that fans of Losing Kei (including my agent) will be disappointed by my work-in-progress.

Maw Books:  Can you tell us a bit about Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child with Special Needs. What inspired you to put together this volume of writing and why was it so important to you to share these stories?

Suzanne Kamata: My twins were born 14 weeks premature and, as a result, my daughter is deaf and has cerebral palsy. When she was diagnosed, I was eager to read stories concerning families of special needs kids. I found a lot of “don’t worry, be happy” type essays – and I acknowledge that there is a need for uplifting, inspirational material – but what I really wanted to know was how having a child with special needs would impact my marriage, my son, my life. I wanted an idea of what was to come in the years and months to come. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, and I wanted to hear it (or read it, rather) straight. I also wanted confirmation that others had gone through the same emotions – anger, sorrow, grief – that I had, and somehow survived them. In conversation, most people don’t want to hear about the difficulties. People say “You must be a saint,” or “Bless your heart” or “You must be so strong.” Nobody wants to hear about what a drag it is to be caught in the rain with a wheelchair.

I often turn to literature to make sense of things, but I couldn’t find any literary collections on the subject. I decided to put the book that I needed together on my own, and as I got started, I discovered that there were others hungry for just this kind of book. As I wrote in the introduction, Love You to Pieces is intended to be a portable support group for readers  in far-flung places, but I also hope that it will help relatives, teachers, and caregivers to understand the lives of families of special needs kids. I think it also stands alone as a literary collection.

Maw Books:  Your newest anthology, Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural Mothering is a collection of stories as the title suggests about raising children within two cultures.  What has been your experience raising children who are bicultural?  Difficulties, highlights?  And how has those experiences shaped your worldview on parenting?

Suzanne Kamata: I’ve found that raising children bilingually isn’t as easy as most people think.  So much effort is required! Also, I’ve found that my son’s identity is constantly shifting. Sometimes he identifies as Japanese, sometimes as American, sometimes as mixed – which is fine. My identity shifts quite a bit, too.

It’s hard to say what kind of parent I would be if I were raising monocultural kids in suburban America, for instance, but here, I often feel that I am parenting in opposition to Japanese culture. Where we live, at least, in rural Japan where there are few foreigners, ideas about gender roles tend to be very conservative. My son sometimes says things like, “Even though she’s a girl, she’s a doctor.” I can’t imagine a kid raised in the U.S. saying something like that!  I’m always trying to remind my children that there is a world beyond Japan, that there are many ways of thinking, and many different kinds of people.

I find sometimes that it’s hard to maintain my authority because I’m a foreigner. For example, my son’s second grade teacher told the class about the time he saw a ghost. My son was very scared and I tried to reassure him, but of course he didn’t believe me when I said there was no such thing as ghosts.

Maw Books:  That was a fascinating answer!  A three part question about literacy in Japan:  How is literacy different in Japan and the U.S, especially for children?  Are there different teaching methods that work or don’t work? What is expected of a student in Japan that you wouldn’t find in the U.S?

Suzanne Kamata: The Japanese written language is composed of two phonetic alphabets – one for Japanese words and one for words borrowed from foreign languages – and Chinese characters (kanji). Kanji can be read in different ways, and there are really no clues as to how to pronounce a character, so in order to learn the Japanese written language, you have to memorize a lot of things. While I think that rote memorization can be really boring, it seems to work with Japanese kids. Japan enjoys a literacy rate close to 100%.  I can’t tell you exactly, but it’s the nineties – much higher than that in the U.S.

Maw Books:  A question that I ask of every author I interview is to share a recipe with us, especially if it appeared in their book or is a family favorite.  I later make and blog that dish.  Is there a recipe that you would like to share with us?

Suzanne Kamata: In my novel, the main character’s mother-in-law teaches her how to make miso soup.  We eat a lot of miso soup in our house, too. It’s very easy, healthy, and there are endless variations. I usually use boil a sauce pan full of water (or use fish broth), and then chop up whatever vegetables are on hand and then throw them in the water and boil until tender. Some combination that I like are julienned carrots, sliced onions, and dried seaweed; daikon radish and green onions; and tofu and dried seaweed. After the vegetables are as tender as you want them to be, scoop some miso (I use about 1/3 cup) into a strainer and push it through with a spoon or something.  You can also make the miso paste dissolve by stirring with a spoon or with chopsticks. There are many kinds of miso here in Japan. I use a reddish one with dashi (broth) already included.

Maw Books:  We eat a lot of Asian food in our house.  I’ll be sure to pick up miso paste when we are out next.  What are three books that you loved as a child?

Suzanne Kamata: Little Women, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland

Maw Books:  And what are three books that each of your children love?

Suzanne Kamata: I asked my son, and he said the biography of Ichiro that he recently read, the Vampirates series, and WINTER OF THE ICE WIZARD by Mary Pope Osbourne from the Magic Treehouse series.

My daughter loves the Miki Falls series by Mark Crilley, Momotaro, and Cinderella.

Maw Books:  Have you found that growing up in different countries, that your children’s reading selections or habits are different then what yours was as a child?

Suzanne Kamata: I was never all that interested in comic books, but my children love manga, and my son learned to read Japanese via manga. I was worried for awhile that he would never progress beyond comics. (There are a lot of adults in Japan who only read comic books, not novels.) However, he now reads novels. He really loves the Vampirates series. He reads a lot, though, which I think (hope) he got from seeing me read.

Reading is harder for my daughter because of her disabilities, but she definitely has an interest in books. She likes books with lots of pictures, such as manga.

Maw Books:  What the last book you read, what are you reading now and what do you hope to read soon?

Suzanne Kamata: I just finished Sound + Noise, a novel by Curtis Smith, one of the contributors to Love You to Pieces. He’s a wonderful writer, and I appreciate that he writes about unglamorous types, such as families with disabilities and middle-aged people falling in love. I’m currently reading Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch, which I requested from the local library. They also ordered The Help by Kathryn Stockett for me. I will read that next.

Maw Books:  What are you working on now and what can we expect from in the future?

Suzanne Kamata: I’m working on a novel that I’m calling The Baseball Widow, another family drama set in Japan. I’m pretty close to finishing a first draft. I also have the beginnings of a couple of young adult novels which I hope to work on next.

Maw Books:  Anything else you’d like to share?

Suzanne Kamata: I really enjoy your blog! Thank you for having me as a “guest.”

Maw Books:  Thanks Suzanne!

Links of interest:  Suzanne Kamata website.  Maw Books review of Losing Kei.
Losing Kei is available from your local independent bookstore, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

To say that life is difficult for the slaves is a most horrific understatement.  They are treated as property in the truest sense.  You would think that you would take care of your property.  Right?  Not Master Waller.  He’s brutal – a whipping, kicking, beating, spitting kind of man who thinks the only way slaves can be motivated is through fear and intimidation.

I’d like to have somebody show me a meaner antagonist than Master Waller.  He is the worse that I have ever read about.  He is pure evil and if there is a hell for fictional characters I’m sure he’s there.  But what makes this story all the more horrifying is the imprint before the book “Except for variations in time and character identification and placement, the events written in this story are true and actually happened.”

John, known as Nightjohn, arrives at the plantation in shackles, a rope around his neck and stark naked.  From the scars on his back everybody knows that he’s a runner and a difficult one.  Sarny discovers that John knows his letters and numbers and that he’s willing to teach her.  He had once escaped to the North but came back to secretly teach slaves how to read.  To both teach and learn reading is a huge risk and those who are caught risk dismemberment of their toes, feet, fingers or hands.

Mammy talking to John:

“Why does it matter? Mammy leaned against the wall.  She had one hand on the logs, one on her cheek.  Tired.  “Why do that to these young ones?  To Sarny here.  If they learn to read -”

“And write.”

“And write, it’s just grief for them.  Longtime grief.  They find what they don’t have, can’t have.  It aint good to know that.  It eats at you then – to know it and not have it.”

“They have to be able to write,” John said.  Voice pushing.  He stood and reached out one hand with long fingers and touched mammy on the forehead.  It was almost like he be kissing her with his fingers.  Soft.  Touch like black cotton in the dark. “They have to read and write.  We all have to read and write so we can write about this – what they doing to us.  It has to be written.”

Mammy she turned and went back to her mat on the floor.  Moving quiet, not looking back.  She settled next to the young ones and John he turned to me and he say:

“Next is C.”

A very powerful book, gut-wrenching at times.  An awesome testament to the importance of literacy and the great lengths and dangers that many went through to obtain it.  One that I will not soon forget.  Highly recommended.

Nightjohn is part of my themed reading for the month of February which celebrates Black History Month.  Join me this month as I explore books that celebrate the history of African-Americans.  Also reviewed this month: Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges and  Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson.  Other reviews of interest:  A Thousand Never Evers by Shana Burg, Yankee Girl by Mary Ann Rodman, Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson, and Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis.

Links of interest:  An excellent teacher’s guide on using Nightjohn in the classroom and Gary Paulsen’s website.  My friend Cari and her sister Holly also have a great discussion about Nightjohn over at Book Scoops.  More book blogger reviews.
Genre:  Historical Fiction, Young Adult
Publisher:  Delecorte Books for Young Readers.  January 1, 1993.
Hardcover, 96 pages.  ISBN:  0385308388
Nightjohn is available from your favorite independent bookstore, Powell’s, and Amazon.

Copyright 2010. Maw Books Blog

Maw Books has an affiliate relationship with several bookstores, including Indiebound, Powell’s, and Amazon . When you buy a product (not just books – any product), via one of my links, Maw Books earns income from the sale and as always, it’s much appreciated as all affiliate income is used to support the blog. There is no cost to you.

See, the Christmas Mouse knows the frustration of parents with children underfoot on Christmas Eve.  They are really excited at the thought of what Christmas morning will bring, but as far as Christmas Eve goes, children need something to keep them occupied.  The Christmas Mouse also knows how important reading is (and watching movies as a family).  So he’s come up with the perfect solution.  When he knows the children aren’t watching he puts his plan into action.  The children soon notice that he’s going missing and they happily set out to find him.  He can always be found sitting atop a large wrapped package that he’s sneaked into the house.

Inside that package is a wonderful surprise.  Books!  Movies!  Games!  Something to add to the family library and a book that suits each family members interests.  Now the family is happy and content on Christmas Eve as they snuggle into the couch with a good book.

Do you have a mouse in your house?  Hmm . . . maybe you should!

Sigh . . .  what a difference a year makes.  They’ve gotten so much bigger since last Christmas.  Seriously, this is one of my most favorite and memorable Christmas traditions that I grew up with and I have continued in my own home.  My parents instilled a love of reading in me through this tradition.  They knew that books would be tossed aside if given to us on Christmas day, so they decided to gift them on Christmas Eve.  How it became to be that the mouse delivered the package, I’m not sure.  But when I got married, I found the exact same mouse I grew up with on Ebay.  Two years ago, the mouse even delivered the news to my in-laws that I was expecting our second child.  He’s very much loved in our family (the mouse – but we do love the baby too!).  I love, love this literary Christmas tradition.

Would you like the Christmas Mouse to visit your home this year?  If so, just share with me any ideas that you may have for other Christmas traditions involving books.  Not necessarily gifting them, but anything!  The Christmas Mouse will virtually visit your home in the form of a $10 Amazon gift certificate.  I’ll announce the winner this Wednesday the 17th.  Short and sweet!

Today is the 15th day of the Blog Advent tour, also posting today are Somewhere in Between and Wendy from Caribou’s Mom.  And make sure to check out all the other stops on the tour, there are some great posts about Christmas traditions from around the world.

This is the tree we did last year (it’s worth posting again, because when I wrote about it last year I had zero readership on this blog):

It’s a small photo so I don’t know if you can really tell, but it’s a candy tree.  This year they wanted to do a snowman and snowflake tree.  I was so nervous that we would get there and find out it was still for sale but it wasn’t.  Yay!

I had to show you the top because that’s my favorite part.  The girls made the snowmen heads.  Adorable.  Participating in the Festival of Trees is one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.  I hope to continue to do something every year.

So while browsing all the other hundreds of trees, I took photos of all the literary themed Christmas trees to share with you.  This one is set atop of a bookshelf filled with books:

Obviously inspired by How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Suess this was one of my favorite displays.  Among the most creative I’ve seen in years:

This tree had books on it:

I have to admit that this is the first year I’ve seen manequins among the displays. This one is taken from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens:

This tree is perhaps one of the oddest I’ve seen. It’s inspired from a book titled Christmas Shoes(although I’m not 100% sure which book that is):

This is an I Spy Christmas tree. My little boy LOVES the I Spybooks:

Two Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne trees:

I loved this Dr. Suesstree:

A Twilightinspired tree (just wait, there’s a great Twilight tree below!):

This tree was titled “The Love of Reading”

This was a huge Cullen Christmas tree. It was so crowded around it that you could hardly see it. Everything under the tree is a gift for each of the characters in Twilight:

Pretty cool. There was also a Twilightgingerbread house. Notice Edward in the tree outside Bella’s window and Jacob’s truck in the driveway:

These last two are not literary inspired but well worth sharing. Can you believe people make these and donate them to be auctioned for the Children’s hospital? Very awesome.

This one has little balls that go up and down it.

So there you go! Which was your favorite literary themed Christmas tree?

We did however, attend the kick off parties at not one, but two different libraries! I almost missed this great event, but my friend clued me in about ten minutes before start time and I raced on over to find that our library had been invaded by spiders, lizards, turtles, and snakes! Scales and Tails put on a amazing one hour show that was hilarious and kept my kids fascinated! This guy (Shane) brought out a 14 foot boa that just gave me the chills to look at and all the kids got to hold the animals and pet them. I was so disappointed that I didn’t bring my camera. But after getting on the Scales and Tails website, was so happy to see that he is doing the entire library circuit all summer long!

We just went on Friday and the next show was Monday (yesterday), so we went again. This time bringing my camera, my husband, and my seven year old niece, whom I won’t picture here because I’m not sure how her mom feels about her photo on the internet, but held more than one snake around her shoulders, a brave woman that one!

My 13 month old tried to climb on top of the turtle, he loved it so much. I couldn’t decide which photo I liked best, so you’ll get three.

Look at those eyes in the last photo. He was enamored with this turtle. I didn’t get a single decent photo of my two year old. Maybe we’ll try again at another library next month. Isn’t that cool? Can you believe that this was at our library? And the boa even licked the little ones hand. I was way more nervous than they were.

I did sign up for the adult reading program, which has a “Bee” theme. To receive special prizes throughout the summer I need to do nine things:

1. Read a Reader’s Choice title (a lot to choose from)
2. Download an eBook or an eAudiobook
3. Read a kid’s book about bugs to a child
4. Read a fiction book by an author whose last name begins with a B
5. Listen to an audio book (I still have to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows)
6. Read a nonfiction book about insects (Will mostly likely read one of my books about insects in the garden)
7. Search a library database for info about insects
8. Read a book with bees in the title (Any ideas besides The Secret Life of Bees?)
9. Read a book (wait, that’s easy!)

I’ve read a lot of blogs about people joining their summer reading program. If you haven’t signed up yourself or your kids, what are you waiting for? Get to it!