This is just a super short shout out to the brilliant folks at Apartment Therapy (how did we survive before this website?) who just posted a list of 50 individual brilliant summer projects to keep our kids (and us) busy and fulfilled as we slide into the real meat of this glorious season.

Because if you guys are anything like me, it’s just now hitting you that we have TWO MORE MONTHS of being completely in charge of our kids’ activities. Which is, of course, a wonderful opportunity and what we live for as parents. Right?

But as I am far from a professional, I, for one, will take all the help I can get.

Enjoy!

As the mother of a bi-racial, interfaith child, I have my work cut out for me in the teach-your-kid-their-family-heritage department. And while its tempting to gloss over it altogether (Slavery! The holocaust!), ignorance is the one sure fire way to guarantee that the unsavory aspects of history keep repeating themselves.

So we’ve chosen to keep our eyes open and, as a family, try to understand what has gone on before us as a way to feel empowered about our ability to improve our future. And when I encounter a great book on one of these topics, I grab it, because there is no better way to illustrate a point than through the power of a good story.

Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up By Sitting Down by Andrea Davis Pinkney tells the story of the 1960 sit-ins protesting segregation at the Woolworth lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina. The story is powerful, without feeling oppressive. It’s told simply, but without being dumbed down (which is what drives me crazy about so many children’s books out there. The illustrations (by husband Brian Pinkney) are bold, exuberant and colorful, perfectly representing the spirit of these brave civil rights protestors.

There is also, if you really want to get into it, a timeline chronicling the major events of the entire Civil Rights Movement (see below) which helps put this particular event into context.

In the end, Pinkney distills the whole struggle for integration into a simple recipe:

1. Start with love.
2. Add conviction.
3. Season with hope.
4. Extra faith to flavor.
5. Mix black people with white people.
6. Let unity stand.
7. Sprinkle in dignity.
8. Fold in change.
8. Bake until golden.
10. Serve immediately.

It’s a recipe we should all learn by heart and pass along to everyone we know.

My daughter has been obsessed with The Girls’ Book of Flower Fairies for years now, and is always scanning the pages for fun activities and ways to bring the magic world of fairies into our humdrum daily lives.

Her latest obsession is the flower fairy garden, and she insisted that we make one IMMEDIATELY. Which was a bit of a challenge, because it is the dead of winter. But I hit Jamali, my favorite prop house in the flower district in Manhattan, and then bought a couple of lovely easy-to-care-for indoor leafy plants at Sprout Home ( a polka dot plant and some kind of fern) and we were in business. You can see the results above. — Read more

We have been reading more long form books lately, especially now that we have finished our Lord of the Rings marathon. (sob!) Talking animals have replaced elves and hobbits in our two recent favorites: The Wind in the Willows and The Jungle Book. Both classics, available in a multitude of formats, abridged and uncut, Disney and otherwise.

I always go for the original version myself, as the language of the authors is so much richer (and so much more interesting for the grown ups to read!) And Penguin and Puffin, two aptly named and beloved publishers of literary classics, have given us two lovely versions of these volumes to enjoy and maybe even keep around the house for awhile. Actual books. Made from paper. That you hold in your hands. With pages that turn. Crazy.

This edition of The Wind in the Willows is part of the Penguin Threads series and features a front and back cover that is an embossed representation of a crazy embroidered Mr Toad driving madly away in a car. The inside cover is, appropriately, the back side of the embroidery. The physical object of book itself is a pleasure to hold in your hand… thank you Penguin. I never read this book as a child, so I was just as enthralled with the mysterious world of these animals as my daughter, and also just as sad when it was done.

But we drowned our sorrows in The Puffin Classics edition of Rudyard Kiplong’s The Jungle Book. Which I also never read as a kid (What was I doing?) Who knew that after the seminal story of Mowgli and the Tiger there were a whole mess of other, equally captivating stories of animals in the Indian jungle?

Another lovely thing about the Puffin Classics is that they include an afterward, with facts about the author, more in depth information about the various animals (who knew that wolves have three eyelids?), and activities and questions to further spur imagination. And they are interesting, intelligent questions. Not the dumbed down squeaky annoying stuff you hear for kids on TV these days.

So go out there and get these books. Or get other ones. (and then let me know which ones you love) And read some of these longer classics to your kids. You’d be suprised how willing they are to sit and listen when it’s a captivating story. And how nice it is to carve out a little analogue time in this digital world we live in.