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Symphony City

kids

Symphony City, written and illustrated by Amy Martin.

Now that my daughter is a bit older (if 6 can be thought of as “older” in anyone’s world) I like to try and find her books that she can read herself. But I don’t like to sacrifice beautiful design or sophisticated content. Or, most of all, the otherworldly magic that a picture book can deliver.

Enter Symphony City, by graphic designer and music lover Amy Martin. With the line and blocks-of-color style of silkscreen prints and minimal text that feels more like poetry than prose, Martin brings us along on an urban adventure of sound, where there is music and magic around every corner.

“I try to hold on tight… but I let go”

What begins as the potentially threatening situation of a girl losing her father in a crowded train station,

“…and under the stars and streetlamps there is color everywhere”

Becomes a colorful lyrical mystical sojourn through the sonic universe that is a big city…

“the best songs love you back”

Finally ending in the warm embrace of her mother’s arms.

Which is where we all long to be at times…

Even us grownups.

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Going native

kids - style

The ultimate summer playground-to-beach shoe. (They come in adult sizes too!)

And then, suddenly, spring was upon us and we looked through our children’s pile of shoes and realized that last year’s water shoes are no longer serviceable. And flip flops, whist cute, are a recipe for disaster when it comes to climbing rocks and jungle gyms and fences.

These are the things one learns as one stumbles through the epic adventure called parenting.

“Fear not!” we say to ourselves reassuringly. “For this is the year that we finally upgrade to Native for this purpose. Sure they are made of plastic,” we muse. “But lo, these kicks actually have some support, are flexible, and should last all summer long. As opposed to some other brands-who-shall-remain-nameless that had to be replaced mid-summer.”

Here’s to many sprints through the sprinklers and hours on the shore.

What spring?

kids

The Boy Who Didn’t Believe in Spring, by Lucille Clifton with lyrical drawings by Brinton Turkle is perfect for both the season and the kid who is an emergent reader.

Today it’s in the 40′s and raining. I have my winter coat and scarf on. I really really was hoping never to have to see them again. But it is clearly not yet time to pack up the cold weather gear.

So I’m suddenly feeling a bit more sympathetic towards King Shabazz, the main character in Lucille Clifton’s book The Boy Who Didn’t Believe in Spring. Because right about now, I’m having a bit of trouble believing in it myself.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/945690.The_Boy_Who_Didn_t_Believe_in_Spring

It’s a beautiful world where flowers come floating out of the abandoned cars that rest precariously atop junk piles…

But maybe if I moved into that perfectly drawn 1970′s universe and had white glasses and a best friend named Tony Espolito, and maybe if I scrambled around in an empty lot and came upon some yellow flowers busting through the rubble… Then maybe, just maybe, I might begin to believe that warmer days were on the horizon.

I’d better go out and look right now!

These people (on the back cover) look like they need to see some little yellow flowers, too…

Risotto for the springtime

food - kids

A dish in regular rotaion around my house, this avocado risotto really does feels like springtime.

I know it might seem odd to put avocado into risotto, but once you try this, I swear you’ll be a convert. This is currently one of two ways that I can get avocado into my daughter without us playing the I-never-liked-avocado-why-are-we-eating-this record that is (in various incarnations) so frequently on the playlist in our house.

And as we eat our meals together as a family, whatever I am cooking for the kid has to pass muster with the grown ups as well, which this does with flying colors.

I thought I’d originally found the recipe in Fred Plotkin’s The Authentic Pasta Book, but when I looked this morning, I realized I was mistaken. And I should have known… Risotto is RICE, not pasta. Shame on me. Regardless, the book is worth a look if you ever come across it. As far as the exact methodology goes, you will unfortunately just have to deal with my very unprofessional instructions.

First off, toss out any ideas about how difficult it is to cook risotto. If you can stir rice in a pot, you can do this. It just requires that you pay a bit of attention to what you’re doing. Click on for the recipe… — Read more

Yesterday, at some point…

art - kids - photography

Ok so this photograph is not exactly from yesterday… it’s from last week, when we were pretending we lived in LA and had a house with a pool (thanks to a cousin who let us borrow his pad) and no real commitments. It was what spring vacations are meant to be like. And you’ll hear all about it by the end of this week, I promise. Just got to wade through the photos, organize my notes, etc etc etc…

Anyway, this is a picture of some of the tempura paintings we made in the Boone Children’s Gallery at the LA County Museum of Art (LACMA.) Their kids programs are amazing– and if you come with your little ones on a family day, each child gets a membership card to the museum that’s good TILL THEY’RE EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD. How cool is that? Plus they can bring a grownup with them for free.

Now that’s a great use of philanthropy, if you ask me.

Happy Earth Day!

kids - music

My favorite fellow travelers, exploring the desert at Joshua Tree National Park. There’s no other place like this on Earth.

If I had remembered last week that today was going to be Earth Day, I would have posted a whole bunch of eco-style links in here yesterday. But the post spring break fog is only just beginning to clear now, and what’s done is done. I am living in the present, which is what we’re supposed to be doing, right?

First thing I did when I got back from school drop-off was turn on Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On to hear Mercy Mercy, which is Mr Gaye’s seminal piece on the physical state of our planet. (ok full disclosure, they were playing it on NPR, so I got out my record so I could hear the song in it’s entirety.)

Here it is for your listening pleasure:

I am also listening (right now, so I’m actually having a hard time writing this at the same time) to Brian Lehrer on NPR speaking with climatologist Dr. Katherine Mach about climate change. People are calling in and actually asking intelligent questions, as opposed to the kind where people just want to hear themselves talk. Well worth a listen.

Now of course, for the kids, every day should be Earth Day. But here’s a great list of ecologically interesting kids books I found online that can help get us started in the right direction.

And lastly, here’s a super home-made-almost-punk style video of author Frank Asch reading his beautiful book, The Earth and I:

Now, shut down that screen and go outside. Even if it’s just for a minute.

Limeade to the rescue!

health/beauty - kids

The apple cider vinegar people of choice have now gotten into the beverage business.

It’s spring break this week, so for us that means all bets are off, routine-wise. Movies every day, extended playdates with friends, a general optimistic feeling that warmer weather is here to stay…

Then comes the dreaded email from school about a student having strep throat, and the whole world of swimsuits and butterfly chasing comes crashing down around us.

Especially as our little one has a bit of a cough.

So I turn to all of my usual remedies with a vengeance, and while I was stocking up at the local health food store, I discovered another addition to the arsenal. Because while Mommy’s apple cider vinegar and honey tea is dutifully consumed, a prepackaged limeade from Braggs (that just happens to have that same magic vinegar in it) goes down like a treat.

And who doesn’t like a treat every now and again?

Bunny Books

kids

Every Easter, for as long as our daughter has been able to move around on her own, there has been a basket left at the doorstep by the Easter Bunny on a certain significant Sunday in April. And while he does put a few eggs and something sweet in there, the main attraction is a book or two that has something to do with either the holiday or the season in one way or another.

Here are three of my current favorites:

The Easter Rabbit’s Parade by Lois Lenski.

In The Easter Rabbit’s Parade, a bunch of farm animals plan an Easter surprise for the little girl who cares for them. Originally published in 1936, it is gentle story from a gentler time. In the best of all possible ways.

Here Comes The Easter Cat, by Deborah Underwood. Pictures by Claudia Rueda.

Here Comes The Easter Cat is the story of a cat who, sick and tired of everyone fawning over a certain well known bunny, plots to take over Easter. Hot off the press, this one makes a great gift as you can be pretty sure no one has it yet.

A Seed Is Sleepy by Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long.

And last but most certainly not least we have A Seed Is Sleepy: a book about rebirth in the form of seeds. Stunningly and meticulously illustrated, the pages work both as works of art and scientific record. The text is seemingly hand written, though it’s hard to tell these days, what with modern technology being so tricky, but lets just believe in the vision of a pen and ink doing the work here.

Oh and check out a few of my other favorites here… These books never go out of style!

Real live magic fairy dust!

health/beauty - kids

Just a spritz of this and your child will transform from a whirling dervish into a cherubic angel. Or something like that…

The minute I saw this little bottle of Calm Kid Mist on the shelf at Kiosk, one of my favorite local spots that I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing about by now) I knew I had to have it. Visions of spraying a bit of this over my daughter’s WHY-CAN’T-I-HAVE-ANOTHER-BOWL-OF-ICE-CREAM storms and having it instantly dissipate are very very appealing.

Well it might not be quite that dramatic, but a nice gentle whiff of lavender and lemongrass will tone down even the most potent tempests. I’ve been spraying a bit on my daughter’s pillow before she goes to bed and I swear she’s falling asleep more quickly than ever. Plus her room smells lovely, which is never a bad thing.

As Fancy Nancy would say, a hydrosol is just a fancy way of saying mist.

And then for the Mamas, there is this Clary Sage Hydrosol from my absolute favorite (and brand new!) aromatherapy company EVER Brooklyn. Billed as a woman’s emotional rescue (sign me up!) the scent of clary sage is wonderful for relaxing without sedating. Because we grown ups need some fairy dust too!

The Ballad of Blexbolex

art - kids

The latest and from what I can tell the most complex narrative from the french artist Blexbolex.

A couple of months ago, I went in search of a birthday gift for the daughter of a friend. And as it is with most younger kids gifts (this young lady was turning six) one tends to think at least as much about the parents and what they might appreciate as one does the child. At least, if one is me.

An early spread in the story depicting the boy’s walk to school.

So I knew I’d hit the jackpot when I found this book, Ballad by Blexbolex, in the kids section at Spoonbill and Sugartown, one of my favorite local bookshops. It has everything I could want in a children’s book. Vintage inspired silkscreened art, a typeface that feels handwritten, a story that starts off with mundane scenes of a regular school day but erupts into full fledged fairytale territory with a witch, a princess, a drummer, panic, an armada, birds, secret messages… In short, it’s a story about a small world exploding into enormity. But the best part is that the author leaves many of the pages devoid of text which encourages the readers to invent their own interpretations of the illustrations. The tale has a happy ending, but the way we get there is entirely up to the individual telling of the story.

Which means we can read this book over and over whilst never hearing the exact same plot twice.

Reason enough to make sure that our kids to learn how to read and write in cursive, if you ask me.

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127 articles