Halloween Recipes from Barefoot Books

Barefoot Books has a free download of some free recipes that I thought you might enjoy. The recipes are adaptations come from their cookbook Kids Kitchen: 40 fun and healthy recipes to make and share. The recipes include the following:

Slimey Green Gloop: A Halloweenish version of guacamole

Dracula's Gelatin: Jello with a few surprises in it.

Eyeballs: I am not going to give anything away here. Suffice it to say that this is a truly gruesome looking treat.

Ghoul's Smoothie: A delicious drink.

Icy hand snatchers: Popsicles that will give you the shivers!

Meringue Ghosts: Simple little desserts that will melt on your tongue. Ghosty!

Download the recipes here. Enjoy!

A Countdown to Halloween - Six days of holiday books: Day Two

For today's Halloween title I have a picture book that leaves the reader wondering if all is what it seems! It has a fabulous ending too.

On a windy Night

Nancy Raines Day

Illustrated by George Bates

Picture Book

For ages 4 to 7

Abrams, 2010, 978-0810939004

It is a windy Halloween night, and a little boy who is dressed up as a skeleton has a big haul of candy in his bag. Now it is time for him to go home, so he off he goes on a winding road under the light of the full moon. After a time, clouds hide the moon, and the dark woods around the little boy start to look more and more creepy. As he moves quickly through the trees, the boy hears a voice that says “Cracklety-clack, bones in a sack. They could be yours – if you look back.” The terrified boy rans on, through a field of dancing skeletons. Will this terrible ordeal ever end?

   With a bone chilling text and thoroughly spooky illustrations that contain all kinds of hidden creepy images, this is the perfect book to read out loud on the days leading up to Halloween.

A Countdown to Halloween - Six days of holiday books: Day One

There are only six more days before it is Halloween, and since I have some Halloweenish books on hand that I think you will enjoy, I have decided to have a six-day count down bookish event.
   I will begin with a book that is not strictly a Halloween title, but it is pertinent nevertheless. It is a book about pumpkins, and since pumpkins are often associated with Halloween, I thought it would be a great way to start my countdown.

The Pumpkin Book

Gail Gibbons

Nonfiction picture book

Ages 4 to 6

Holiday House, 1999, 0-8234-1636-4

   For many of us pumpkins are large orange squashes that we carve into jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. They are turned into pumpkin pies, and we use them to decorate our homes during the harvest season. Most of us don’t realize that these fruit (yes they are a fruit) come in all shapes and sizes. Some varieties are huge, while others are very small indeed.

   You can grow your own pumpkin by planting a pumpkin seed in a prepared patch of ground in the spring. By summer, you should have a large pumpkin vine growing in your garden, and in the fall, it will be time to harvest the pumpkins you have grown. Depending on what kind of pumpkin you have grown, you can cook them, turn them into jack-o-lanterns, or - if you grow a really big pumpkin - you can enter it into a big pumpkin contest.

   This informative nonfiction picture book will be an instant hit with children who look forward to harvesting or buying pumpkins in the fall. It is not only packed with information about pumpkins, but it also gives young readers detailed instructions on how to plant a pumpkin, how to carve one, and how to dry pumpkin seeds. 

Poetry Friday - A review of Poetry Skywriting

For this Poetry Friday, I have a book that presents readers with the story of man and his efforts to fly. On these pages you will see hot air balloons, the first flying machines (some of which were very odd indeed), and powerful planes that look like something one might see in a superhero comic book.

Poetry Skywriting: Poems to Fly

J. Patrick Lewis

Illustrated by Laszlo Kubinyi

Poetry

Ages 6 to 10

The Creative Company, 2010, 978-1-56846-203-5

   For centuries, man has dreamed of flying. There is the story of Icarus who “rose on wings of wax” only to plunge to earth again when the heat of the sun melted his wings. For a while, man had a grand time floating across the sky in hot air balloons. The Montgolfier brothers made a famous twenty-five minute flight above Paris that was witnessed by none other than Benjamin Franklin himself, who was “without his kite!”

  Though the hot air balloons were quite successful, there were still those who wanted to create a flying machine that had wings. Some men created machines with wings that flapped, and they barely left the ground. Then two brothers developed a flying machine that did fly, and on a cold December day, “aviation’s door” was opened.

   For this very special collection of poems, J. Patrick Lewis has written thirteen very different poems about man’s passion for and fascination with flight. With humor and beautiful word imagery, the poet takes us on a journey from Icarus’ unfortunate flight, to the creation of the Nighthawk and the space shuttle. To accompany the poems, Laszlo Kubinyi has created beautiful illustrations that are rich with detail and that have a vintage postcard feel.

   Endnotes at the back of the book provide readers with further information about the thirteen topics covered in the poems. 

Author Eva Ibbotson has died - An obituary

Eva Ibbotson was born Maria Charlotte Michelle Wiesner in Vienna, Austria, in 1925. Her father, Berthold Wiesner, was a physiologist and her mother, Anna Gmeyner, a writer. Her parents separated in 1928 and after remaining in Vienna in a church orphanage she joined her father, a Jew who had left Austria to work in Scotland just before Hitler and the Nazi party came into power.

She was educated at Dartington Hall School; attended Bedford College, London, graduating in 1945; Cambridge University from 1946–47; and the University of Durham, from which she graduated with a diploma in education in 1965.

Ibbotson had intended to be a physiologist, but was put off by the amount of animal testing that she would have to do. Instead, she married and raised a family, returning to school to become a teacher in the 1960s.

            Ibbotson began writing with the television drama Linda Came Today, in 1965. Ten years later, in 1975, she published her first novel, The Great Ghost Rescue.

Ibbotson has written numerous books including The Secret of Platform 13, The Star of Kazan, Journey to the River Sea, Which Witch?, Island of the Aunts, and Dial-a-Ghost. She won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize for Journey to the River Sea, and has been a runner up for many of major awards for British children's literature. The books are imaginative and humorous, and most of them feature magical creatures and places, despite the fact that she disliked thinking about the supernatural, and created the characters because she wanted to decrease her readers' fear of such things. Some of the books, particularly Journey to the River Sea, also reflect Ibbotson's love of nature. Ibbotson wrote this book in honor of her husband (who had died just before she wrote it), a former naturalist. The book had been in her head for years before she actually wrote it. Ibbotson said she dislikes "financial greed and a lust for power" and often creates antagonists in her books who have these characteristics.

Her love of Austria is evident in works such as The Star of Kazan, A Song For Summer and Magic Flutes / The Reluctant Heiress. These books, set primarily in the Austrian countryside, display the author's love for nature and all things natural.

             Ibbotson's non-children's books have been classified both as Young Adult titles and as romances. In an interview, she referred to them as books for adults. Several of these books have been published in other languages with different titles.

            Eva Ibbotson died in her home in Newcastle, England on October 20^th, 2010. Her last book, The Ogre Of Oglefort, was shortlisted for the 2010 Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.