For the Love of Pickles

Connie Van Hoven
Know some pick­le crazy kids? I do! A favorite birth­day din­ner that my grand­kids request is Pick­le Pas­ta (recipe below) — not the cold pas­ta sal­ad vari­ety, mind you, but warm but­tery noo­dles dot­ted with briny pick­les. My daugh­ter cre­at­ed this sim­ple but oh-so-sat­is­fy­ing dish dur­ing her col­lege days when the cup­boards were some­times near­ly bare. I guar­an­tee you will have eaters who pick the pick­les out to savor sep­a­rate­ly; and eaters who will pre­fer bites of pas­ta with their pick­les — either way it’s the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to chant: “Peter Piper picked a plate of pick­led pas­ta.”… more

Quirky Book Lists: Classroom Pets

Think­ing about adding a class­room pet? Read and think again!
  8 Class Pets + 1 Squir­rel [÷] 1 Dog = Chaos
writ­ten by Vivian Vande Velde
illus­trat­ed by Steve Bjork­man
Hol­i­day House, 2012 Squir­rel likes liv­ing near a school play­ground. He’s not so sure about going inside, though, espe­cial­ly when he’s chased there by a dog and all the class­room pets get involved.
more

A Trip to the Art Museum

Museum ABC
by Vic­ki Palmquist
  Arlo’s Artra­geous Adventure! David LaRochelle
Ster­ling Children’s Books, 2013 When Arlo’s grand­moth­er drags him to the art muse­um, he can’t imag­ine how he’ll be inter­est­ed. Some­thing odd catch­es his eye and he soon real­izes the paint­ings have things to say that sur­prise and delight him — and the read­er. Fun and quirky, with illus­tra­tions that will make you smile and flaps to lift that will reveal nuances in much the same way you dis­cov­er some­thing new in a paint­ing each time you look at it … this is a good choice to pre­pare a child for a trip to the museum.
more