Donut Feed the Squirrels (Norma and Belly) by Mika Song

In serious contention for Best Children’s Book Title of the Year is Donut Feed the Squirrels. The title's clever play on words and adorable characters featured on the cover are instant attention-getters. Song eschews drawing anatomically accurate squirrels. Instead her art perfectly captures the essence of Norma with her tiny heart-shaped nose and Belly's rosy cheeks and gumdrop-shaped body. ​These little charmers are in search of breakfast. When their pancakes are burned, the pair are intrigued by the tantalizing aroma from a nearby food truck. They discover a fantastic treat: donuts! The squirrels are determined to get donuts for everyone. Fortunately the proprietor of the mobile donutmobile briefly steps away from his truck. The enterprising duo have eight minutes to get in, get a sackful of donuts, and get out. There is a major complication. With a plot element that is an homage to the classic Homer Price doughnut machine fiasco, there is an equipment failure. Production is out of control. The shop rapidly becomes a doughy disaster.

What's Your Favorite Food? by Eric Carle and Friends

The picture book What's Your Favorite Food? features Eric Carle and selected children's book illustrators responding to a simple query. Each artist describes a favorite food with a brief paragraph accompanied by a two-page spread of eye-popping art. The book is a cornucopia of flavors from around the world. Strawberry daifuku, paella, and pitaya fruit are interspersed with universal favorites such as cheese, berries, and salad. Find kid-friendly fare: French Fries, ice cream, and pizza. It is fun to explore this potpourri of scrumptious food choices. The colorful mix of art styles are visually arresting with an appealing melánge of realistic images and bold graphic design. Food is celebrated with illustrations employing collage, printmaking, painting, and line drawing. A delicious introduction to a variety of artists.

Let Them Eat Cake

Cake. We wanted cake. Today a chocolate cake would be especially nice. However, due to the current world situation, ingredients are in very limited supply. What to do? Then I remembered collage days and my roommate Delena. She had a good recipe for chocolate cake made without eggs, butter, or milk.  Cake is on the menu, thanks to Delena.

Let's Get Baking

When butter and eggs are plentiful, this scrumptious cake is my go-to chocolate sheet cake. Gooey, chocolaty goodness. The batter fills an oversize sheet pan. At my house we consume a lot of this cake, so the size is just right. The chopped pecans on top are the crowning touch. ​Find the recipe here.

What's Your Favorite?

Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story
​by Kevin Noble Maillard ill by Juana Martinez-Neal

This is a story of bread. But it's more than bread. Much more. This is a story of family. Of tradition. Of Native American pride. Kevin Noble Maillard, member of Seminole Nation, Mekusukey Band shares a long-standing Indigenous special food: fry bread. Recipes for fry bread are as diverse as the numerous Native nations. The sentence stem "Fry bread is..." introduces this delightful cultural staple. By turns it is food, shape, sound, color. flavor, time, history, place, nation, everything. Written in free verse, each concept fills the entire two-page spread. Replete with information and symbolism, each fry bread attribute is also a metaphor for Native Americans.

Making Fry Bread

Fry Bread brings back warm memories. When I was a college freshman, one of my roommates, Norma, was a Navajo from Arizona. She was very proud of her nationality and delighted in sharing Navajo culture with her roommates. She loved to sing, but not the hit songs playing on the radio. She sang traditional Navajo songs, with distinctive tonal patterns, and language. In my mind, I can still hear her singing. She was gentle and patient with us, helping us appreciate the Navajo Way.

Pie in the Sky by Remy Lai

Jingwen, his younger brother Yanghao, and mother venture into the unknown, immigrating to Australia,  Mom works the night shift at a local bakery and Jingwen cares for his outgoing, impulsive younger sibling while she is away. ​It's hard. School is strange. He doesn’t understand what people are saying. Kids at school ignore him.  It’s like moving to Mars. Relocation is exponentially difficult because his father is not with the family. Dad was killed in a car accident fourteen days before Jingwen’s birthday. This ten-year-old carries a heavy pocketful of resentment, guilt, and loneliness.

Strange Territory

Sweet Revenge: Passive-Aggressive Desserts for Your Exes & Enemies
by Heather Kim

The holidays are upon us.  This may mean strained relationships. Stress with a capital S. Maybe it's time to throw  out the calorie count and indulge in decadent desserts. Sweet Revenge: Passive-Aggressive Desserts for Your Exes & Enemies has you covered. This tantalizing cookbook is fun to read. Text is replete with clever turn-of-phrase and precisely the right amount of snark.  It's a visual treat as well.  Book design has a slightly edgy feel with bold fonts, quirky graphic elements and eye-popping photographs.

Heather Kim states in her introduction that this volume is first and foremost a cookbook. So let’s talk food: not your standard chocolate chip and snickerdoodle fare. The recipes are inventive, and some are downright dangerous. Consider these: Pretzel-Peanut-Butter Cups, Cannoli Waffles with a candied Pistachio topping, Coconut Mochi Cake with Coconut Sesame-Pecan Icing, Carrot Cake Truffles with Cool Ranch Doritos Sugar.  Some venture into truly innovative: Elvis cupcakes (banana cake, peanut buttercream frosting and butterscotch candied bacon) or Flamin' Hot Cheetos Ice Cream Sandwiches. I tried the S'more Brownies.  It's basically a brownie topped with squares of homemade marshmallow and  graham cracker streusel.  There's a nice hint of cinnamon in the cracker/butter mixture.  Now the fun: toast the  fudgy little squares with a torch or under the broiler. Watch them lightly brown. Then devour.  Taste-tested by a panel of teens and adults, we all agreed that these are yummy!

The Joy of Cookies: Cookie Monster's Guide to Life by Cookie Monster

​"Me the only Cookie Thief in this here town. So no steal cookies! And no steal book about cookies! Or terrible cookie curse fall upon you: Cookie forever taste like dust in mouth. Fate worse than diet."

ABC Pasta: An Entertaining Alphabet by Juana Medina

Medina has done it again! ABC Pasta: An Entertaining Alphabet follows up on 1 Big Salad: A Delicious Counting Book with artfully designed pages that combine stunning photos with clever illustrations to create another picture book filled with WOW! ​ ​This alphabet book is a primer for budding pasta enthusiasts.  A shopping trip to the market's pasta aisle will open minds to exciting design, alphabet, and gastronomic possibilities. As a bonus Medina includes a recipe for Cacio e Pepe ​So long same-old alphabet soup. Goodbye boring blue box Mac & Cheese. This is the way pasta was meant to be enjoyed!

Companion Books

1 Big Salad: A Delicious Counting Book by Juana Medina

Strega Nona by Tomie dePaola

More Spaghetti, I Say by Rita Golden Gelman

Nanette's Baguette by Mo Willems

It's frogs. It's France. It's the irresistible aroma of freshly baked bread. It's an understanding mother. It's eye-popping illustrations. It's wordplay and rhyming. ​ It's Nanette's Baguette.   ​It's Mo Willems at his best.

​ ​How many words rhyme with baguette? Ready. Set. Go. ​Start with... Nanette  Juliette regret  beset  yet  forget  pet  wet  get  jet, quartet Georgette  Suzette  Bret  clarinet  Antoinette...

Ten Treats Inspired by Childrens Books

Cinnamon Apple Pie Inspired by The Good-Pie Party by Liz Garton Scanlon illustrated by Kady Macdonald Denton. I discovered this recipe years ago in the local newspaper. Instead of ground cinnamon, it is flavored with cinnamon oil. Tastes like a cinnamon candy apple.

Cherries in the Snow recipe is found in The Truth About Twinkie Pie by Kat Yeh. Kat's book is chock full of fun recipes. Here is the dessert named after a lipstick color. I opted for individual serving goblets instead of the suggested large bowl. This made a visually stunning and refreshing ending to a meal.

Watermelon Limeade Float recipe is located in A Clatter of Jars by Lisa Graff Similar to the original cake recipes she included in A Tangle of Knots, Graff offers a variety of beverages in her latest magical middle grade book which features frogs, friendship bracelets, and of course, jars. Next I want to try making the Camp Atropos Sunset Punch.

Warm Gingerbread There is nothing quite like squares of warm gingerbread, fresh from the oven. I like to top mine with fruit and whipped cream. (I like peaches, my husband prefers pears. Both are good.) ​It's the perfect accompaniment to Gingerbread for Liberty written by Mara Rockliff and illustrated by Vincent X. Kirsch. ​

Freezer Strawberry Jam This is a family tradition. Every year I mix up quantities of strawberries and sugar and then store jars of this fresh summer-tasting jam iin our freezer. Just like Russell Hoban and Lillian Hoban's Bread and Jam for Frances, you'll want more of this. The easy recipe can be found on a box of Sure Jell Fruit Pectin.

Apple Tart I had never made an apple tart in my life. But after reading Sarah Moore Fitzgerald's The Apple Tart of Hope I had to try. I used Ina Garten's recipe for French Apple Tart. It was so easy - even the pastry was a breeze. Although there is no cinnamon in this recipe and Fitzgerald's book is replete with references to cinnamon, it is an excellent dessert. ​

Caramel Corn My friend from New Jersey shared with me this recipe from her mother in Michigan. Now my family in Texas makes it every year and sends to relatives out of state. Caramel Corn reminds me of Frank Asch's Popcorn, an all-time favorite read aloud. Children never tire of reading this classic. Like the caramel corn, it is always a hit.

Homemade Ice Cream Drumsticks I finally figured out how to make my own ice cream drumsticks and they are so so good. I use a variety of chocolate: milk, dark, or bittersweet to match the flavor of ice cream that I use: from homemade vanilla to pistachio. I love to compliment the flavors with a variety of nuts and crushed candy toppings. The Ice Cream Summer described by Peter Sis never has to end. ​

Party Cupcakes Sara Varon includes lots of yummy recipes in her graphic novel Bake Sale. Be sure to check them out. I use easy white and chocolate cake cupcake recipes from Southern Living when I make cupcakes for a crowd, Its fun to mix/match frosting and toppings for variety.

Molasses Sugar Cookies This is my mother's recipe. Soft and chewy, they are perfect with a glass of milk. It's difficult for anyone to eat just one. I'm certain that the Mouse featured in  If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond would definitely be going back for a seconds.

A Clatter of Jars and A Tangle of Knots share a familiar vibe. Lisa Graff has crafted another middle grade tale with multiple story threads which intially seem unconnected, family secrets, a generous sprinkling of magic, and bonus recipes. Readers will appreciate the fact that instead of heating up the oven by baking cakes, they are treated to directions for concocting smoothies, punches, ice cream floats, and more. Her original recipes add to the refreshing story line and are a delicious accompaniment to summer reading. I lined up some jars in the kitchen and gave a few of these beverages a try. The family opinion: Very tasty! Sip summer as you try to unravel the secrets hidden in A Clatter of Jars.

Lily's Watermelon Limeade Float

"reminiscent of all the best birthday parties

"Memory is a curious thing. Some details stick in our minds like peanut butter on crackers, and refuse to budge, as much as we might wish they would. Other memories - heavy ones sometimes, ones that seem unbudgeable - can be plucked right out when we least expect it. Lost memories leave remnants, of course, flavors that linger in the mind, but it's difficult to taste things when you don't know they're there." ​ All memories have a flavor, although not everyone can taste them."

Chuck's Frozen Mint Hot Chocolate

"reminiscent of a cool swim on a hot day"

"Some memories hit like a wallop, all of sudden, and hard. Other times, for no reason that anyone can explain, memories take much longer to sink in. They seem to meander a bit before choosing which mind to settle into." ​"There was a hint of something lingering in her mind. A memory, perhaps, although Jo could only catch the flavor of a few remaining tendrils."

Renny's Orange Cream Smoothie

"reminescent of quiet nights on empty piers"

"Chuck clenched and unclenched her hand, trying to push away the memory of that look on Ellie's face, sad and small and stricken. But it was stuck in Chuck's mind like peanut butter on crackers."

Companion Book

A Tangle of Knots is the obvious choice here. It is included on the 2013 National Honor Book Award longlist and an absolute charmer! Another Lisa Graff book to love.