Happy Hanukkah! Books for a Celebration of Light…

By Leslie | Published: Dec 14 2011

December 21st is the first day of Hanukkah and on Tuesday evening families around the world will light their first candle, say blessings, and partake in family rituals that will last 8 days while celebrating a miracle 2000 years old.

Hanukkah is a celebration of freedom and hope, a time for family gatherings, dinners, latkes, presents, songs and dreidel games. Chag Urim Sameach!  Our Hanukkah gift to you is a list of Phyllis Simon’s faves for 2011:

Hanukkah: Bright Baby Touch and Feel

Menorah, latkes, blessings…A perfect interactive first book of Hanukkah for babies.

Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah!

Y’mei ha’hanukka was a 19th Century European Yiddish folk tune. (Listen to Theodore Bikel sing the song in Yiddish and English here.) This picture book adaptation has lyrics in English and wonderful expressive illustrations by Olga and Aleksey Ivanov. See the PJ Library link here for more titles of Jewish bedtime stories and songs for families.  Ages 3+

The Hanukkah Hop

Join Rachel as she and her family prepare for their Hanukkah Hop and dance all night to the wonderful sounds of the Klezmer band, “swaying and snapping”, “wiggling, giggling” and “flap-flap flapping!”  Ages 4+

Golem’s Latkes

My source tells me that Omnitsky’s Deli at 41st and  Cambie is the place for take-out kosher latkes and my advice is stock up before reading Golem’s Latkes!  A wonderful appetite inspiring adaptation by Eric Kimmel, Golem’s Latkes is inspired by the golem legend and an old tale you might recognize, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  Ages 4+

Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins

First published in Cricket magazine in 1985, and later published with Caldecott Honor award-winning illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman, Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins is a tried and true Hanukkah story. “Hershel is so smart” declares the 7 year-old intern and thank goodness or who would save Hanukkah? A must-read for book lovers!   Ages 5+

Chanukah Lights

There can be no more beautiful celebration of Hanukkah in book form than Michael Rosen and Robert Sabuda’s 2011 paper engineered pop-up book, Chanukah Lights. 

Chanukah Lights is an eloquent, magical exploration of history, light and faith as symbolized by the lighting of the menorah and quite simply a beautiful book to be enjoyed by the whole family, year after year. (See the publisher’s virtual tour here.)

 

 

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Books to let It SNOW! Let it SNOW! Let it SNOW!!

By Leslie | Published: Dec 08 2011

 

Brrrrr! May the weather outside be frightful… Let it snow, we say! Turn your scrap paper into marvelous paper snowflakes…Go here for instructions and patterns to make your own delicate impressions of snow like these ones below.

 

We’re ready to ski and make snowmen but we’re going to need snow and plenty of it to play!  See this chart from snow. com to marvel at water’s shape-shifting magic and chart your flakes when the temperature outside drops…Gail Gibbons in her recent book It’s Snowing recommends taking a black piece of paper and your magnifying glass outside to catch your falling flakes and investigate the shapes!

While we’re waiting for a blizzard out here on the green-grassed, gray-sky-ed vista of lovely Vancouver,  spend your time wisely with our SNOWED IN list of books that will wet your appetite for a winter-y landscape:

 

It’s Snowing

A must have Gail Gibbons’ reference book about all things “snow” for the younger set.  Find out the difference between flurries and a blizzard and marvel at the magic of the world’s largest recorded snowflake. Ages 4+

Felicity Wishes: Secret Fairy Garden

Hmmm…It might be argued that this magical pop-up play set doesn’t fit the theme exactly but the 7 year-old intern insists no snowy day is complete without this novel carry-along fairy book, complete with small stories and fairy figures destined to traipse around the eternally spring garden.  Amazing, she says: sparkly fairy fun for ages 4+

The Sniffles for Bear

Essential winter sniffles reading material, this is the 4th in the collectible series of curmudgeonly Bear and irrepressible Mouse. Bonny Becker’s hilarious story and Kady MacDonald Denton’s WONDERFUL illustrations are not to be missed. Ages 4+

Over and Under the Snow

Beautiful!  The perfect picture book to encapsulate the quiet wonder of exploring the outdoors on a hushed winter day and a lovely exploration of the subnivean world, “the secret kingdom under the snow”.  A glossary at the back explains the winter habits and habitats of the forest animals mentioned in the story. A truly wonderful book for ages 3+

Hansel and Gretel

Susan Jeffers responded to us directly to talk about the changes made to the re-release of her classic Hansel and Gretel:

“One of the biggest changes to Hansel and Gretel is putting the Gingerbread house on the jacket.   It is very dramatic. [my dream house] All of the art has been restored and enhanced. It was a great treat for me to revisit the work and add  more art to better tell the story.  It is one of my favorite stories as it is  a story about the strength of children. ”

This is a beautiful interpretation of a story, perfect for the season.  Ages 5+

Secret Agent jack Stalwart: The Hunt for the Yeti Skull

Yeti? Abominable Snowman? Climbing Everest?  Yahoo!  It doesn’t get any colder or crazier than snuggled up on the sofa with Jack Stalwart: perfect for reluctant readers and adventure seekers, ages 7+

SOS Adventure: Ice Quake

SOS indeed! Imagine: you’re simply looking for a missing satellite and then – whoa!-  you find yourself in the Canadian Arctic, stranded in a blizzard with hungry wolves and a killer polar bear nipping at your heels… Fire up the hot chocolate… Ages 8+

Sugar and Ice

What snow list is complete without skating? Kate Messner’s tale is a whisper of French Canadiana set in Lake Placid. The classic skating fantasy, Claire Boucher is all about spending her life skating on the frozen cow pond until a Russian coach invites her to train with the elite skaters in Lake Placid. A light romance that negotiates the unkindness of girls in a competitive arena. Ages 8+

 

N.B. Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis of Wildwood Chronicles have just announced their new web shop in time for the holiday season; see that here.

 

 

 

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Beautiful Brilliant BOOKS for the Family at Christmas!

By Leslie | Published: Dec 01 2011

“Ohhhhh! I love it! Look at the fox and the crow!”

(Seven-year old wonder is an amazing thing to behold.)

This is it: the seven year old intern is helping me make a Christmas list of books and believe me, she’s checking it more than twice.

Her pick is the stupendous Pop-up Aesop’s Fables you see a detail of above, but keep reading because we’ve put our focus on a family Christmas book that will amaze and cultivate the spirit of wonder we all seek at this time of year.

With paper engineering by Kees Moerbeek, Europe’s most brilliant paper engineer,  Aesop’s Fables in Pop-up is a treasure to unfold: harkening back to the classic roots of the stories in the colour and gesture of the illustrations, this interpretation of the stories is a beautiful, beautiful gift book for ages 5+

 

 

 

Collections of stories are great keepsakes to be read again and again.  Two new titles, Famous Classics for Girls and Adventure Classics for Boys, are abridged classics with over-sized text and simple old-fashioned duo-tone illustrations: perfect for young readers to read to themselves and also get a sense of these wonderful tales. Ages 6 +

 

 

 

 

The Lego Ideas Book is an inspired take on a classic past-time.  I can hear the soft, shifting sound of the sifting through the LEGO bin as soon as I crack open the cover: vehicles, buildings, mini table-cloths… An endless resource and creative companion for LEGO-lovers of all ages.

 

 

Food is an essential part of a family holiday and this year’s hotly anticipated cookbook is Ferran Adrià‘s The Family Meal, a beautiful book of thirty-one, three-course meals that reveal his secrets for creating delicious, seasonal, and simple home cooked meals.  Every day at 6pm, Ferran’s team at elBulli – a four-time recipient of the World’s Best Restaurant Award – stops what they are doing to sit down to eat a three-course dinner together – this is known as the ‘family meal’.  Join them, we say!

 

 

Occasionally, in this age of quick bites of information, you run across an effort that is so Herculean, so wonderful in its final equivalent to a 12-course meal, that you’re too grateful for words: National Geographic’s History Book: An Interactive Journey is a book that makes an amazing effort at giving the reader a true taste of history and, gasp, it’s thrilling.  Hold in your hands a copy of the original score of Mozart’s Symphony in E, blue-prints of the Titanic, an invitation for a party the Beatles threw in 1967 and a memo from Tim Berners-Lee’s plan for something he called the World Wide Web.  Magnificent!

 

Call Sarah Bagshaw at Kidsbooks for the 411 on the new fascinating book, The Great Global Puzzle Challenge With Google Earth! Enter latitude longitude co-ordinates, travel the world and get side-tracked visiting and learning about fascinating places. A great way to get started with Google Earth and endless educational fun for the entire family.

 

In the spirit of our theme of wonder, Socrates said, “philosophy begins in wonder.” Share over 100 big ideas in the popular, tried and true reference book on philosophy, The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained. From Thales of Miletus to the always fascinating Slavoj Zizek: Voltaire, Wittgenstein, Walter Benjamin, Helene Cixcous… Exercise your gray matter and keep your mind warm this winter!  Ages 14+

 

Finally and miraculously we bring you the The Louvre: All the Paintings. All the paintings… Need we say more?  Spend a life-time flipping through pages of visual history and when you visit Paris and find yourself in the glorious hallways of the Louvre, it will very likely feel as though you’ve come home.  An art and history lovers’ dream…Magnanimous!

 

 

 

 

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