Disclosure:Parragon Books sent me a copy of this book free of charge. All opinions in my review are
my own and I did not receive any other compensation. As always I am
providing links to the book for your
convenience.
We are sharing a book Hazel is really enjoying this month as part of the Parragon Book Buddies Program,The Find It Book by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Lisa Sheehan. This beautiful book is the latest by Margaret Wise Brown who also wrote Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, and All the Little Fathers. In this book the reader is asked to find various things from famous nursery rhymes in the beautiful illustrations. Lisa Sheehan is up for the AOI World Illustrations Award for her illustrations in this book. (Source)
Disclosure:Tuttle Publishing
gave me a copy of these cookbooks free of charge for this review. All opinions in my review
are
my own and I did not receive any other compensation. They also sent me a copy to giveaway! As in all my
reviews I am providing links for your ease, but receive no compensation. Last month we explored Lebanon and shared one of the great cookbooks that Tuttle Publishing sent us. This month as part of our exploration of Iran we tried a couple of the Iranian recipes in The Complete Middle East Cookbook by Tess Mallos (this is one of the prizes in the Middle Eastern and North African Heritage Month Giveaway). We also made Havij Polou or Rice with Carrots. Hazel loved the carrots and Steve and I liked the chicken.
For our last exploration this year of the Middle East, we decided to look at some of the stories of The Arabian Nights. While reading about Middle Eastern mathematicians and scientists I found a comment about how the Iraqi scholar Abu 'Abd Allah ibn 'Abdus al-Jashyari translated Persian, Indian, Iranian, Turkish and Chinese stories into Arabic. He changed the names to the exotic Arabic names we know today like Aladdin, Ali Baba, Scheherazade and Sinbad. He also changed the locations of some of the adventures. After al-Jashyari's death other Muslim scholars added to his collection until it contained the full 1001 stories that the title suggests. (Source: Steffens, Bradley, Ibn al-Haytham, Morgan Reynolds Publishing, Greensboro, NC 2007, page 17) This fascinated me.
There has been a lot of talk about gender labeling lately. The big move by Target to get rid of their signs labeling toys as boys or girls seems to really have upset some people. I do not understand why. I grew up a girly girl who also loved to play with her construction trucks. My father was a construction worker so I always wanted to play construction and pretend to be at work with him. But I also had many dolls and loved to play with them. As I became an adult I noticed there was definitely a shift in our society as to what is for boys and what is for girls. My sister did not want to find out the gender of her baby, but they did have the tech write it down and seal in an envelope. My mother drove her crazy until she looked. Why? Well she wanted to knit either blue or pink things for her first grandchild and because it is really hard to find gender neutral clothes and baby items these days. Our cousin did not find out and it was hard to buy gifts for the baby shower. Everything seems to be made pink or blue with a very few things in the neutral range. When did it matter what color a baby wears? Well with a little research I discovered that it was after World War II that pink became a girl color and blue a boy color. In the early 1900s it was actually the opposite. (Source) As a society we have bought into what retailers want us to believe. They are the ones who decided it was necessary for there to be boy colors and girl colors.
This summer we have gone to visit my parents several times for various reasons. In June we met Jill of Just Jill Today there. She is a photographer and sells some of her amazing photographs in various products. She also has a campaign with Leonard the Lobster, one of her photographed models.
