"Peter's Chair" Author: Ezra Jack Keats

Peter is well aware that there is a new baby in the house. His mother shushes him when he makes his tower of blocks fall. And he's also well aware that the new baby's a girl. For everything that used to be Peter's has been painted pink! His old cradle is pink, his old crib is pink, and he discovers his father is in the middle of covering his old blue high chair in pink paint.

Finally, he discovers his old chair that has not yet been touched: "They didn't paint that yet," Peter shouts. Swiftly, he carries it to his room and makes plans with his dog, Willie, to run away with the chair. Once outside, he tries his old chair for the first time in a long time. He's too big! With a new attitude, Peter returns to his house for lunch and sits with his family in a grown-up chair. But will Peter's old chair be painted pink?

Like Keats' Caldecott Award-winning The Snowy Day, Peter's Chair features a young African-American boy who suddenly finds his world transformed. Keats gives us another understated story of how a child quietly comes to accept change. And in his signature, modernist style, Keats also provides the bright cut-paper collage illustrations.

I love the backgrounds in these pages.

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/book.jsp?id=342
All rights reserved by the individual artists.

A Head for Happy by Helen Sewell, 1931

http://curiouspages.blogspot.com/2009_10_01_archive.html

Helen Sewell, original illustrator of Little House on the Prairie, did not win the Caldecott Award for A Head for Happy. The best book of any given year usually doesn't. Also the Caldecott wasn't created until 1937. Still it wouldn't have won anyway.

A Head for Happy tells the tale of a girl named Letty and her quest to find a head for her doll, Happy. She travels the world on a surreal, picaresque journey from New York to, with a few detours, the island of Guam, where a cocoanut makes for the perfect head. This book was published in 1931. Presumably cocoanuts in New York were scarce due to the Great Depression. Here are some sample pages. . .

from a post by Lane Smith and Bob Shea

The images on this site are copyrighted.

All rights reserved by the individual artists.

Dr. Seuss Was Born an Artist by Helen P. Geisel, 1948

Kashtanka By Writer Anton Chekhov and Illistrator Gennady Spirin, 1994

All rights reserved by the individual artists.

Russian folk tail - Taberna Mylaensis: Barbablu

Taberna Mylaensis: Chianciunu l’occhi mei. From the album Allah Muntagna (1996).

All rights reserved by the individual artists.

Horseradish

Bitter truths you can't Avoid by Lenony Snicket

"No matter who you are, no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read."

"Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator."

"A good thing to do when one is sitting, eating, and resting is to have a conversation."

"One of the worlds most popular entertainments is a deck of cards, which contains thirteen each of four suits, highlighted by kings, queens, and jacks, who are possibly the queen's younger, more attractive boyfriends."

"Most schools have a system of loud bells, which startle the students and teachers at regular intervals and remind them the time is passing even more slowly than it seems."

"A long time ago, there was no such thing as school, and children spent their days learning a trade, a phrase which here means "standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction of a bossy adult." In time, however, people realized that the children could be allowed to sit, and the first school was invented."

"Anyone who asks you to describe your summer vacation is writing probably has a secret, infernal plan, and under no circumstances should you include in your report even a hint of the truth."

"It is not very polite to interrupt a person, of course, but sometimes if the person is very unpleasant you can hardly stop yourself."

"Siblings who claim to get along all the time are most definitely hiding something."

"It is always sad when someone leaves home, unless they are simply going around the corner and will return in a few minutes with ice-cream sandwiches."

"One of the remarkable things about love is that, despite very irritating people writing poems and songs about how pleasant it is, it really is quite pleasant."

"It is so rare in this world to meet a trustworthy person who truly wants to help you, and finding such a person can make you feel warm and safe, even if you are in the middle of a windy valley high up in the mountains."

"shyness is a curious thing, because, like quicksand, it can strike at any time, and also like quicksand, it usually makes its victims look down."

"A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between countries, so the officials can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly."

"There are many difficult things in this world to hide, but a secret is not one of them."

"Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like."

"One cannot spend forever sitting and solving the mysteries of one's history."

"Sometimes, when someone tells a ridiculous lie, it is best to ignore it entirely."

Machuncka is delicious

Machuncka

Lets say this will serve three to five people.

What you’ll need…
Garlic, onions, one big can of sauerkraut, cayenne red pepper, (mushrooms – optional) and a big can of crushed stewed tomatoes – or several fresh ones will be fine as well.

This is a spicy hot dipping dish to be served with crusty hot bread or over gnocchi. At least that is what I’ve always done with it. This is a poormans’ Western Pennsylvania dish so it just takes a few things to make and it warms up a kitchen and people so I like to have this dish in cooler weather months around a small table so dipping, sharing and passing the food around is easy and comfortable.

Step one:
This sauce can be white or red.
So the base of the sauce is made by chopping 3 to 5 cloves of garlic and one large or three small onions and sautéing them together in olive oil until the garlic browns a little and the onions becomes translucent. Then you want to drain all of the liquid from the can of sauerkraut into the frying pan and cook the liquid, garlic and onions together until it becomes thinker. While this is cooking – quick - fill the sauerkraut can with kraut still in it, up with water again and let it sit – this is so you have more sauerkraut juice. As this is cooking you can add about a half a teaspoon of cayenne red pepper – more or less if you like on this. I like more. The cooking down will be the first phase of warming your kitchen up.

Now you have the basic sauce and if you like you can serve this with bread to dip on plates with polish or Italian sausage and the plain sauerkraut.

Step two:
(The next thing is to add a couple of cups of mushrooms – any kind that in available is nice but if you don’t have mushrooms don’t worry you can skip them – so it’s a cook em if you got em thing) If you got em then let them cook down in the sauce until they are quit soft and have absorbed the flavor of the garlic, onions and sauerkraut juice.

Step next:
After the favor of the sauce has become set you can add a can of crushed stewed tomatoes or a couple of cups of fresh chopped tomatoes to the mixture with the new sauerkraut juice you have in you can. You want this to stew together for a while until the sauce turns more orange then plan tomato sauce red due to the sauerkraut juice.

Finishing up:
So now you have a couple of things you can do. The kitchen is nice and warm because you have heated or baked bread or boiled and buttered gnocchi or both to serve with the Machuncka. Also you and guests should be having a nice glass of beer or seltzer water and be waiting around the kitchen being in each others way.

But what do you do with the sauerkraut in the can? I sometimes have added the water again to stretch the recipe and then I put the juice and about a third of the can into the sauce and let it all cook together until it is thick again. The rest of the sauerkraut I cook separately in a pan with a little oil or butter and some garlic and serve on the side. You can also put the sauerkraut in a pan with sausages and serve on the side as well. During the end of this part of the cooking it is a good idea to begin setting the table with bowls and little plates and lots of paper napkins and of course telling humorous stories. Serve the Machunka in a big bowl in the middle of the table, pipping hot with a big spoon so people can dip as much as they can eat into their own bowls.

click images to enlarge