Nick's Picks

Selected Resources from TeachingBooks.net

Nick Glass, TeachingBooks.net for Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 8/14/2008

I love summer. Maybe that’s because I live in Wisconsin and get to experience all the seasons—including last winter's 100-plus inches of snow. But summer is energizing: family vacations, kayaking, outdoor cooking with friends, and, of course, all that delicious, locally grown, fresh food.

In this month's column I've highlighted summer's bounty with a smorgasbord of multimedia materials about books and authors that celebrate food. In her 2004 Charlotte Zolotow Lecture, Newbery Medalist Linda Sue Park commented that she didn't trust a character until she knew what they ate. I wondered, "Would she trust a character that was made of food?" (See the author program below featuring Saxton Freymann and such books as How Are You Peeling? Foods with Moods [Scholastic, 1999].)

I hope you and your students enjoy these appetizing multimedia book experiences. If you have a favorite tidbit I should know about, please email me at Nick@TeachingBooks.net.

Cheers!

Watch Saxton Freymann create book characters from fruits and vegetables

You’ll never look at a pepper or a potato in the same way after viewing Saxton Freymann carve faces and stories from fresh produce in this original author program.

Eric Schlosser talks about some alarming ingredients in your fast food milk shake

Eric Schlosser and Charles Wilson provide food for thought in this original TeachingBooks.net book trailer on Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know about Fast Food (2006)—an adaptation for young adults of their bestselling exposé, Fast Food Nation (2001, both Houghton Mifflin).

Listen to a friendship blossom over a cabbage from the opening of Linda Sue Park’s Project Mulberry (Clarion, 2005), read by Mina Kim.

Haiku and food go hand and hand in Pat Mora’s reading of her Yum! MmMm! Que Rico!: America's Sproutings (Lee & Low, 2007).

Three authors share crunchy food mnemonics to help readers pronounce their names.

Peg Kehret