Worlds Collide: DC and Healthy Choices

This week worlds are colliding and not surprisingly, there is a perfect book (or four) to recommend as a result!*

On Saturday morning, our middle child (or center son as we affectionately call him) headed for Washington D.C. to attend the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.  An exceptionally exciting adventure for him and his dad ... to say the least.  According to Logan, the trip has been a success. He had a big comfy bed, heard Obama speak, met Stevie Wonder and Rabbi Israel Dresner, and learned that a bidet is not a drinking fountain.  The value of such trips can never be underestimated!

                          

On the home front, he has missed a few things involving various sports balls as well as the kick off of Healthy Choices Week at school.  As the "Choose My Plate" information came home tonight, I grimaced thinking that had he been home we would have had at least one child in our house to eat something green tonight.  One opportunity lost, but one blog theme gained: Washington DC and healthy food.  What a perfect opportunity to recommend the 2009 book The First Garden: The White House Garden and How It Grew by Robbin Gourley.

The book is intended for children ages 4 - 8 and it is a nice retrospective about Michelle Obama's effort to bring attention to healthy eating habits as well as the life of the garden from its inception in 1800.  If Healthy Choices is a theme your children are interested in, you can head on over to LP Reads on Goodreads and check out the bookshelf we have there called "Books about Healthy Choices."  

Finally, if the Martin Luther King Jr. dedication caught your attention or interest, Logan's favorite book in preschool was 10 Amazing People and How They Changed the World by Maura D. Shaw and before he left on this trip, we read As Good As Anybody: Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel's Amazing March Toward Freedom by Richard Michelson and March On: The Day My Brother Martin Changed the World by Christine King Farris.

To bring things full circle, did I mention that Stevie Wonder has a song called The First Garden? Strange how the world works, isn't it?  Some days, I'm glad there is a book for that ... and not just an app.

Mock Caldecott: See What's Hot for 2012

Over on Goodreads Listopia, I stumbled across a great list today: 2012 Mock Caldecott.  It is a fun little list where all of the children's literature aficionados cast their votes for the books that they think will run away with the Caldecott Award this coming year.  While it is ambitious to think that I could read all of the books listed and cast my vote, I think it could be a good place to start looking for the books that are causing a buzz this year.  You can check it out too!

The top vote getter so far is "Me ... Jane" by Patrick McDonnell.
 Second place is "Perfect Square" by Michael Hall.

Sign up to be friends with LP Reads on Goodreads by opening your own account and you will have access to Listopia (a huge collection of lists for book lovers) as well as the LP Reads bookshelves (which have more than 2,500 books sorted into easy to use categories).