Kids' Book Review: It's So Amazing!

This book, It's So Amazing, is so amazing!

It says the book is for ages seven and older, and has sister books for younger and older kids.  I read it to my older son when I was pregnant beginning when he was just under two and a half years old.  My younger son is now three years and three months old, and he is interested and engaged in the book (which is not the case for every book, as it was for my older son at this age).  I chose this book instead of the book for younger kids because I wanted more detail to answer their questions.  I also use the drawings as a jumping point for me to explain things, rather than reading all of the words.

This is a great book because it talks about how boys and girls are different, and what our body parts are called, and how they change throughout our lives.  I think it is important to give kids the words for the things they notice and are curious about and to normalize them.

It also discusses love and sex, and what eggs and sperm are, and what happens as and after they meet.  The kids love the real-size images of a fetus and fetus to-be.  The page with the actual birth description has nice images for explaining how a baby comes out of a mommy.  It even touches on the different gestation periods of different mammals, multiple births, adoptions, preemies, and "not-nice" touches.

Both boys, 3 and 6, are interested in this book.  The younger one thinks it is interesting that boys won't have babies inside them, and that they will always have a penis, and never a vagina.  The placenta, umbilical cord, and birth process are also interesting.  He wanted to see his baby pictures after reading it, then his brother's, then mine and his daddy's.

My older son likes the differences between the gestation periods of different animals, and loves the page with the fetus (and fetus to-be) at different stages and sizes.  Both enjoy learning that they will hit puberty someday, and seeing how their bodies will change.

This is an excellent staple for a young child's library.  It has given us a great framework for many discussions and helps the boys understand human bodies a little better.

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Preschooler Book Recommendations

The fishermen and the turtle - lovely story set in Aztec time with beautiful illustrations

The ox cart man - another timeless tale, nice word repetition

Dick and jane: we play outside - many stories inside a larger book. This one has grown with us- we started by not saying the works- just telling the story, and my older son is now learning to read and I say the words now but the preschooler still likes the story

My first Spanish number book - another one where you can read the words or not- and they can "read" it to themselves as well.  Good introduction to number concepts.

The lion and the mouse by jerry pinkney - no words- only beautiful illustrations for a fable worth telling

Diggers and Dump Trucks

Ships and boats

The king the mice and the cheese - one of my favorites from childhood my children also love. 

Click clack moo - nice word rhythm and a funny story. imaginative and cute.

Caps for Sale - another I loved as a child my children also like.  can stand for an enthusiastic reader.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - imaginative within a familiar context.

Blueberries for Sal 

The Little Lamb - real photos instead of drawings.

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Chapter Book Recommendations as Child Gets Older (non-reader in Kindergarten)

1. Anything by Shel Silvestein or Dr. Seuss merely for the language and rhythms
2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series
3. Snow Leopard (Jackie Morris) 
4. Treasure Island (RL Stevenson)
5. The Ramona series (Beverly Cleary) 
6. The Little Prince (St. Exupery) 
7. James and the Giant Peach + others by Roald Dahl
8. Mr. Popper's Penguins - A real classic for a child!
9. How the Elephant Got its Trunk.   
10. Diary of a Worm
11. OOPS!  (Alan Katz)  
12. ANYTHING by Judy Blume;  The Fudge series 
13. Stuart Little
14. Indian in the Cupboard books
15. Winnie the Pooh
16. The House at Pooh Corner
17. Charlotte's Web
18. Magic School Bus Series
19. Magic Tree House Series
20. The Lemonade War
21. My Father's Dragon Series
22. The Borrowers
23. Nate the Great
24. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
25. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
26. The Mouse and the Motorcycle (Beverly Cleary)
27. Pippi Longstocking
28. Mary Poppins
29. Swamp Scouts - good but LONG

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Magic School Bus Books Pin It

Book Review: Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care

This is an amazing book.  I have loved the original Nourishing Traditions for a long time and this book on baby and child care has been much needed.  Sally Fallon Morell, of the Weston Price Foundation (and more), has really gone to lengths to give great detail on prenatal, baby, and child care.  It took me a lot of research and books to get a lot of the information she covered, and she went into more detail on holistic illness care and the teachings of Steiner/ Waldorf than I had learned elsewhere.  A lot of the book was review for me, learned from the original Nourishing Traditions and elsewhere.  The only factual error I found was in discussing EC/ Diaper-Free Baby, where she said to start at 18 months instead of at birth.  Perhaps there are factual errors elsewhere I didn't find? But I loved her detail and information on nutrition and when and what to eat and how to grow a healthy child. MUST READ for new moms.


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Book Review: Tartine Bread

I recently got a sourdough starter from someone in town, who got it from Victoria Bakery in San Francisco and it is a 2000.  She told me the story of how the bakery makes a new starter every year, and they name them by the year.  She also told me about the book Tartine Bread, and about how amazing their country loaf tastes.

So I started reading the book, which is so much more than a sourdough recipe.  It is a delightful story of the author's journey to find the country loaf recipe as an apprentice baker, and a detailed explanation of sourdough making and the various steps and stages involved in making his loaf.  It expands into variations of his loaf, then into variations of types of loaves you can make using sourdough to ferment your dough, not all of which are actually sour.  The photos are beautiful and helpful, although on the Kindle, their placement isn't right where I want them to be all of the time (this is a frequent Kindle complaint of mine for photos and charts, though).  The author owns a restaurant in San Francisco, so that also makes it that much more interesting.

So I made a loaf the other day.  It took a LOT longer than expected (nearly two days), but he mentions to watch your dough and pay attention to it more than the specified times.  It is fairly cool in our house (low 60s), so I think that was the issue.  I also tried to proof the dough in the oven with a pot of boiling water, and it didn't really warm it until we used the oven, then put it back into the now-warm oven.  Next time, I will do it this way.


The holes in it weren't as large as I expected, but I think it's a learning curve.  It was tasty, and the troops all ate it-- slathered in butter.

I used the other half of the dough for pizza and it was a failure.  It was too thick and didn't cook through.  I think I can fix that by bringing it to room temperature before baking it (like he says), and stretching it thinner.

All in all, I am excited to see where this sourdough home bread making goes.  There is such satisfaction in baking your own bread, and the health benefits of properly fermenting the dough make it easier on the digestive system.  Tartine Bread is a lovely book to use as a guide.

   

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Book Review: Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll

We had a bunch of raw milk that was a couple of days away from expiring, so we had to do something with it.  I had recently made raw yogurt, so wanted to try something different.

I have Ricki Carroll's tantalizing cookbook Home Cheese Making.  The book itself is good.  It's a nice read, tells a good story, and made me want to make cheese at home.  This was AGES ago, when I first got it, then I never was inspired to actually get the extra ingredients for home cheese making.

But now I had some milk and didn't want to make yogurt.  I searched the cookbook for recipes that didn't require any extra and unusual ingredients.  I settled on Paneer, which is Indian Farmer Cheese, and the Mexican Farmer Cheese.  The Indian recipe used lemon juice after heating the milk, and the Mexican recipe used apple cider vinegar.  They both ended up with a similar consistency and non-meltable characteristic, as well as tons of whey left over.  I liked the flavor of the Indian cheese slightly better, though the Mexican one was good in soup.

With the leftover whey, I tried making ricotta and it failed.  I also made her Italian whey bread and it was tasty.  I used a gluten-free flour mix from Trader Joe's, so that probably explains why it was so crumbly.  The kids loved making it, though.



This was entertaining, but I don't think I will be making cheese again anytime soon.  I stand by yogurt as the easiest use of about-to-expire milk.  It was far too much effort for the small amount of cheese made, and it wasn't awesome in flavor.

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Kids' Book Review: The Velvet Kitten

  When my friend told me she was writing a kids' book, I was excited for her.  I am even more excited now that it is out and I have a copy.

The Velvet Kitten by Shar D'Mello Bhatia is a sweet story of a little dog who wanders off at the beach, only to be found standing guard over a tiny abandoned baby kitten.  The story goes on to them bringing the kitten to the vet and a foster mother, then having the cat as part of the family-- with the cat and the dog as best buddies, of course.

There are a lot of words in this book.  I sat down to read it to my 4.5 and 2-year old and started paraphrasing because it is so wordy.  My little son loved the photos, and the starfish drawings on the pages.  My older son begged me to read it again, this time with all the words.  I obliged, and he sat and listened to every word, even the ones describing the day at the beach and the personality of the kitten in great detail- dare I even say hyperbole.  After reading it, I asked what he thought, and he said he liked it, and would I read it again.

The author, local mom Shar D'Mello Bhatia, lives in Walnut Creek.  She is from Bombay, India, and teaches early parenting workshops.  She is donating the proceeds from the book to an animal shelter in Clayton. Pin It

Book Review: The Little Train

The Little Train by Lois Lenski is a classic from around the mid 1900s.  It is just as interesting to kids now as it was then, I am sure.  Both of my kids (almost 2 and 4.5 years old) love this book, and have for quite a while.

It is well illustrated, uses informative language, and also uses words as sound effects.  The story is quick and interesting, and they really like it.

In fact, the younger one likes it so much he has taken it to bed with him a number of times. Pin It

Book Review: Caps for Sale

I remember reading Caps for Sale in my childhood and was browsing children's books and ran across it.  It is a story about a peddler who sells some caps, then the monkeys take the caps and imitate him. I like it as much now as I did when I was young!

I enjoy the repetitive language and the rhythm of the writing.  The story is also compelling for the kids and me, and there is a bit of shouting and stamping that is always fun for the kids.  It is a classic well worth keeping in the rotation.

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Kids Book Review: ABC Dentist

We have come a long way in the tooth brushing area in the last couple of months, thanks in large part to the book ABC Dentist and the advice of a few friends (namely, get a book and insist on tooth brushing).  We were intermittent brushers, and now we are religious with both kids, twice (or even three times) daily.  If I forget, they remind me.

In this book, the authors run through the alphabet and use each letter for a dental office item.  The items they choose are relevant and informative, and interesting to my preschooler.  The drawings are realistic and the whole book is just enough to keep us interested but not too scary (we actually reword "Q" for "Questions"-- it gets a bit scary-- and I gloss over "O" for "orthodontist").  This book has helped my older child understand the need for tooth brushing, and he is a great influence in this way for his younger brother.

We use Weleda Children's Tooth Gel for them and they like the mint flavor and I like that it is non-toxic!


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Book Review: The Breath of God

 This was such a great book.  I was captured and enthralled from the first page, and could think of very little else for the days it took me me to read it.  Finally, I gave up sleeping one night to stay up until well past midnight to finish it.

I suppose this isn't much of a book review except to tell you to read the book.  It is knowledgeable about religions, and India and Bhutan, and links together differing plot lines in a nice way.  I really enjoyed it-- especially since it didn't give me any parenting advice. Ha. Pin It

Slow Cooker Banana Bread and Book Review: Paleo Slow Cooking

  This recipe is from Paleo Slow Cooking and I made it because I was curious how breads work in the slow cooker.

I was pleasantly surprised.  It wasn't pretty, but was delicious. And she quite cleverly used parchment paper to protect the crock and get it out easily.

The little guy liked it, too.

The rest of the book I am not too sure about. Many of the recipes make use of premade spice mixes or other premixed ingredients, which isn't all that helpful to me.  She also spends a lot of time on her story, and her family, which is fine but I would rather have more in the way of how to cook, not why to eat Paleo or why she eats Paleo.  It is pretty, though, and the glossy pages and photos make for a nice counter top book (though I would prefer one I want to keep using!).

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Book Review: Breasts a Natural and Unnatural History by Florence Williams

  Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History opened my eyes to many aspects of that which have always been in front of me.  Florence Williams does a great job of describing her subject matter in scientific detail but layman's terms.

She starts out with a history of mammals and the importance of breasts to infants and the species.  She describes the breast itself-- from its makeup to its development over the course of one lifetime, as well as its social history and the history of implants.  She went an interviewed the first woman who had an implant, and even went to see a doctor about an implant for her-- to get some experience with the process.  All of this she describes with the detachment and professionalism of a journalist.

She talks about breastfeeding, and about the impact of industrialization and chemicals on breast milk and breast tissue.  This was, for me, who is nursing my second baby, the most fascinating part of the book.  She did an experiment by getting her own exposure to toxins measured before and after a mini plastic avoidance period, and the results were amazingly significant.  This section was so stunning to me that I went out and bought glass jars to cart around my kids' snacks in instead of little plastic snack traps.  I have also been trying to pay attention to where we use plastic and am thinking of trying to remove more plastics from our lives and our home.  The impact of them on us, and our developing children (especially girls) is really stunning, and she lays it all out and cites numerous studies beyond her own experiences.

Along the same vein, Williams discusses medications such as the pill and their impact on the breast.  She discusses breast and ovarian cancer, and a block of men with breast cancer who all lived on the same contaminated land in their youth.  The discussion is all at once riveting and enlightening.  She ends with more discussion about the future of breasts and our lives.

I really enjoyed reading this, and highly recommend it.  I think men and women both would learn from this book, and its style is so approachable that you are getting hard facts without having to wade through too much extra information. Pin It

Book Review: A World of Dumplings

 My older son and I were staring at each other last week, on a long afternoon, and I decided we should cook something.  Cooking helps us both stay focused, since it is project based and we each like to have "jobs."  We made Tibetan Momos from my Tibetan cookbook, and steamed them up.  He was excited that the contractor we had at the house ate four of them and liked them, and he promptly ate a few, then his little brother ate a few.  Buoyed by the experience, I bought a book on little stuffed dumplings from around the worrld.  It is called A World of Dumplings.

A World of Dumplings is a gem of a book.  It is all at once a nice read and full of recipes that I want to make.

The author does such a nice job of organizing this book.  He goes around the world, region by region, and describes the dumplings.  He intersperses anecdotes about his experience with the dumplings that are funny and easy to relate to.  They are such nice stories that I didn't mind that he didn't actually travel the world in search of dumplings-- he merely searched his hometown and New York City.

The recipes themselves are easy to follow and those I've tried have been tasty.  The ingredients are also simple: the only spice I didn't have was sumac and a quick internet search found me that once so now we can try the Greek dumplings.

If you are looking for a nice read, and some new recipes, look no further than A World of Dumplings by Brian Yarvin. Pin It

Kids' Book: Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type

 

This book is one of our favorites.  It has all the elements of a good kids book: a story, some good noises the grown-up must make while reading, some big words to learn and concepts to discuss, a twist at the end, and some nostalgia to learn about. Who could ask for more?

After spending much time with Click Clack Moo, we happened upon an old typewriter in a garbage pile in the neighbor's yard, and quickly spirited it home.  Alas, the ink was out but we got to spend a morning putting paper in and out, and listening to the "clickety clack" noise.

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Book Review: Blood Sugar Solution by Mark Hyman

This is how amazon.com describes the book: In THE BLOOD SUGAR SOLUTION, Dr. Mark Hyman reveals that the secret solution to losing weight and preventing not just diabetes but also heart disease, stroke, dementia, and cancer is balanced insulin levels. Dr. Hyman describes the seven keys to achieving wellness-nutrition, hormones, inflammation, digestion, detoxification, energy metabolism, and a calm mind-and explains his revolutionary six-week healthy-living program. With advice on diet, green living, supplements and medication, exercise, and personalizing the plan for optimal results, the book also teaches readers how to maintain lifelong health. Groundbreaking and timely, THE BLOOD SUGAR SOLUTION is the fastest way to lose weight, prevent disease, and feel better than ever.

I was planning on writing something about this book, then saw that, and thought I couldn't say it any better!  Here is Dr. Hyman's website, which he describes as having an abundance of information but I actually found a bit unwieldy. 

I think it is so important for us all to know that we can change our health based on how we eat.  But it is also so hard, especially when we are "addicted" to sugar and white flour.  Dr. Hyman also understands this, and his program is designed to help us overcome this and actually get healthy.  

What I find most interesting about Dr. Hyman is the amount of books he has that generally espouse the same thing.  But he markets them to different people.  He angles to those for an UltraMind, or UltraMetabolism, or UltraThyroid, or, now, for Diabesity.  He keeps saying his same message but marketing it to a different segment of the population.  I also find it interesting that he calls this nutrigenomics, or the science of customizing nutrition for each person, but then the recommendations for each customization are so similar.

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Forks Over Knives, the documentary

This documentary is billed as a film that can save your life.  I agree.  Especially if you have had little to no exposure to some of the new nutritionism books and studies, or the work of the Weston Price Foundation.

I also agree with his message.  With one caveat. You need to eat meat!  The film repeats that those who eat "a whole foods plant based diet" live better and longer and that could be misconstrued as an argument to be vegan. I wish that they would have had a bit more about the need to keep a little bit of meat and fish in the diet.


How the message is presented is also really well done.  They use graphs and interviews, and the filmmaker even uses himself as going and trying this and having his own cancer risk go down as an illustration of how a "whole foods plant based diet" can be beneficial.

This is worth seeing, and worth showing to those you love!

Check out more about it on the documentary's website.



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Book Review: Real Foods for Mother and Baby

I often read a book and find the information useful but contradictory to other things I have read or other of my established viewpoints.  This was not the case with Real Foods for Mother and Baby.  Nina Planck has written a book which covers the essentials of foods for pregnancy, nursing, and introducing foods.  She has also expanded on food a bit, and touches on exercise and parenting.  

She starts by describing what real food is.  Then she discusses traditional and modern fertility foods, then goes on to pregnancy foods, then nursing foods, then foods for baby.  She tries to simplify, and her main message is to eat real food, and make sure and eat meat as well.  She touches on some "hot" topics like drinking while pregnant, and raw milk, and exercise.  She has done her research, and cites her arguments thoroughly.  

Interestingly enough, her research base is very similar research to mine and she has come to similar conclusions. She cites Clapp (the researcher who says to exercise throughout pregnancy, and hard), Dunstan (the researcher who says your preverbal baby has something specific to say and shows you how to hear it), Price (the dentist who researched traditional foods and concludes to avoid white sugar and white flour, and to add cod liver oil and raw butter from cows fed on spring growing grass), Pollan (the writer who coined the term "nutritionism") and others.  

She also says that a pregnant woman is told so many things, and gets worried, which I agree with.  There is too much information out there, and too many choices.  She says that if it is real, eat it.  If not, skip it.  She goes into a bit more detail in the pregnancy section, attempting to steer pregnant ladies towards nutrient-rich foods in the first trimester, calcium-rich foods in the second trimester, and omega-3 (fish) rich foods in the third trimester to parallel the baby's development.  

I agree with most of her points on foods and the like, but disagree that you can't keep your children from eating sugar beyond a year.  I think kids will eat when they are hungry and will eat what they are used to seeing, be it sugar or chopped liver.

Overall, I found this book easy to read but also well researched and cited.  She cites her own experience a bit more than needed in the book, though.  If her sample size was larger than one small child, it would have been more useful to hear about her experiences.  The book was informative but modest. It would be a good addition to any prenatal library.  I will gladly recommend this to pregnant friends.

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Book Review: The Fourfold Path to Healing

The Fourfold Path to Healing by Dr. Thomas Cowan had kept coming up on my amazon page every time I got the link for Nourishing Traditions (life-changing and fabulous cookbook) to recommend to someone (which happens all the time, actually- it is an amazing book).  Finally, I gave in and read it.  I am so happy I did this.

The book is in two parts.  In the first part, he describes each of the four parts of this fourfold path to healing: nutrition, therapeutics, movement, and meditation.  

He describes nutrition as healing the physical body.  He uses the principles in  Nourishing Traditions  but expands more on them, and makes it a bit more unified.  He uses Weston Price's research as well.  The information in this section alone is worth reading the whole book. 

He describes therapeutics as healing the life-force body.  He draws on the work of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy and Edgar Cayce's writings describes a few companies he sees as worthy of buying their supplements, like Dr. Royal Lee's Standard Process.  Most notably, he describes the hierarchy of healing interventions, describing how they work and which to try when.  He gives a detailed description of homeopathy and protomorphogens as well, which I found well-researched and informative.

Cowan describes movement as healing the emotional body.  This section has drawings and exercises to move the spirit through the body.  He later recommends specific exercises for specific conditions.

Lastly, Cowan says meditation is healing the mental body.  He argues that a patient's attitude helps determine the illness outcome, so spending time improving one's outlook pays dividends.  Thinking is also the highest function of the human being, and through it, we can reclaim perfect health.

In the second part, The Art of Medicine, Cowan goes through a number of diseases and gives specific recommendations using the four parts he described in the first part of the book.  Each chapter ends with an easy-reference chart to help the patient implement his suggestions.   These are interesting sections, and he spends time comparing diseases to the natural world and using these to come to remedies.  For example, in the women's health section, he discusses how women relate to the moon, and how silver is like the moon and is a useful homeopathic medicine for certain conditions of women.

The book ends with appendices with recipes and detailed therapy instructions.  His castor oil pack how-to is especially interesting, because he recommends it often and I have never seen one done.  He also has appendices for movement instructions which is largely repetitive of the first part, and then sources for products he recommends.

The about-the-author is at the end and, of course, he lives and works in the Bay Area and has a clinic in San Francisco.  Turns out he is also a founder of the Weston Price Foundation.

Overall, it is a good read.  It is a nice complement to   Nourishing Traditions (thanks, amazon!) because it gives specific suggestions of how and when to eat various items in the cookbook.  

My favorite part of the book was his idea of how to have children involved in their healing.  He suggests teaching children that their bodies will heal themselves, and sometimes we need doctors or medicines to help the body on its way.  I love that this language helps teach kids that their bodies are capable healers, but sometimes need a nudge.

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Book of the Week: The King, The Mice, and The Cheese

We get on book kicks, and our current one is The King, the Mice, and the Cheese.  It is a book from my childhood collection.

It is a sweet story about a king whose cheese is so delicious that the local mice come and take up residence.  Then his wise men call in a series of animals to get rid of the previous animal until they are back at the mice.  In the end, the king comes to his own solution (without consulting the wise men): to call a meeting with the mice and agree to live together, but not antagonize each other.

It is very sweet, and interesting, and has a bit of a moral at the end.  It also teaches a little about other cultures and places, and the drawings give us a lot to discuss, since they are full of facial expressions and numbers of animals to count, and cause and effect, among other ideas.  It is one I really enjoy reading over and over and over and over.

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