top ten favorite picture books

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we all get to exercise our OCD tendencies and come up with bookish lists.  If you’d like to play along, check out this post.

I remember many children’s books fondly, but the ones that my mother read aloud to me (or with me, sounding out the words as we went) have a special place in my heart.  These are the books I buy for friends’ baby showers to make sure they start off their libraries on the right foot.  They contain the art I have decorated my home with.  And the one story that has a more recent publication date touched my heart, even as an adult.  I believe that picture books have the power to inspire imagination, and I hope I never stop reading them.

Top Ten Favorite Picture Books

1. Corduroy by Don Freeman – The story of a teddy bear lost in a department store overnight probably speaks to all anxious children who worry that their parents will forget them.  It certainly did to me, as did the reunion and love between Lisa, her mother and Corduroy.

2. Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman – According to my mother, I spent my very early childhood asking question after question after question.  It makes sense that I loved this story.

3. The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats – This book is full of beautiful art, and the wonder of a snowy day in an urban landscape.  An absolute classic.

4. Rumpelstiltskin by Paul O. Zelinsky – I don’t know how many times I checked this book out of the library (it was a lot).  I do remember reverently opening the cover, and being impressed every time by the beauty and detail on each page.

5. Black Dog by Levi Pinfold – I found this recent picture book while browsing for a gift for my young cousins.  Pinfold’s story of courageous Small made me laugh, and I think the use of perspective and size was fantastic.

6. The Jolly Postman, or Other People’s Letters by Janet & Allen Ahlberg – Possibly the book that launched my letter-writing career!  And a charming story besides, with extra goodies inside the cover (flaps, envelopes, removable pieces) for the inquisitive child in all of us.

7. A Christmas Card for Mr. McFizz by Obren Bokich, illustrated by Dan Lane – Hands-down my favorite picture book of all time!  It features small woodland creatures, neighborly shenanigans, and more letter-writing.

8. Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans – What can I say?  Madeline’s adventures in an orphanage in Paris have appealed to generations of children (and they did to me, too!).

9. Angelina Ballerina by Katharine Holabird, illustrated by Helen Craig – When I was very young I went to ballet classes, and I LOVED them.  I wasn’t very good, but I loved dancing.  As you can imagine, this story about a dancing mouse was a huge hit!

10. Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parrish, illustrated by Fritz Siebel – Amelia Bedelia is special character (you may have noticed my blog title riffs on her name?), and has a special place in my heart because it was one book that BOTH of my parents helped me learn to read with.

What are some of your favorite picture book titles?

when audrey met alice blog tour - author guest post

Author Rebecca Behrens is here today at Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia with a guest post about famous women in history for Women's History Month.  First Daughter Alice Roosevelt is a character in her debut middle grade novel When Audrey Met Alice.  When Audrey Met Alice was released on February 4, 2014 by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky.  Check out the end of the post for the chance to win a copy!

Welcome Rebecca!

Rebecca Behrens grew up in Wisconsin, studied in Chicago, and now lives with her husband in New York City, where she works as a production editor for children’s books. Rebecca loves writing and reading about girls full of moxie and places full of history. When she’s not writing, you can find her running in the park, reading on a beach, or eating a doughnut. Visit her online at www.rebeccabehrens.com.

In writing When Audrey Met Alice, I loved getting to explore the eventful life of the real Alice Roosevelt. My favorite thing about writing historical fiction is delving into the lives of real, and sometimes famous, women like Alice. Here are a few more historical women whom I find particularly fascinating:

• Sacagawea: We know a lot about Lewis's and Clark's lives, but frustratingly little about the teenager who helped make it possible for them to reach the Pacific Ocean. Sacagawea was the daughter of a Shoshone chief, but she was kidnapped at age ten and later married to a French trader, Charbonneau. She was pregnant with their child during the Lewis and Clark expedition, giving birth at the winter camp with a rattlesnake-tail concoction to ease the pain. An interpreter and the only woman in the permanent party, Sacagawea helped negotiate peacefully with the tribes they met on their journey—including one led by her long-lost brother.

• Nellie Bly: Nellie was the 19^th-century journalist who famously traveled around the entire world in 72 days—at a time when most women wouldn’t do solo travel anywhere. She’s less famous for some of her investigative journalism, but it’s just as impressive. In 1887 she took on an undercover assignment for Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, in which she faked a mental breakdown to get admitted to the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in New York. She spent ten days in the hospital, successfully convincing all the clinicians that she was mad—and once she got out, she wrote a scathing expose of the abusive and negligent care women were receiving there. Her reporting was turned into the sensational book Ten Days in a Mad-House.

• Jackie Mitchell: Do you know who struck out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig during one exhibition game in 1931? A seventeen-year-old girl named Jackie Mitchell. She was playing for the Chattanooga Lookouts, a minor-league team that offered her a contract after seeing her pitch for a local women’s team. There is plenty of controversy about her striking out two of the greatest players in history—some think it may have been a publicity stunt. Regardless, it’s amazing to think of a teen girl pitcher leading to Babe Ruth being pulled off the field in a hissy fit. The baseball commissioner canceled her contract shortly after, saying that the sport was “too strenuous” for women, but Jackie continued playing ball until 1937. Women were officially banned from signing baseball contracts in 1952.

• Julia Child: Julia brought the art of French cooking into countless American homes. But before she made her career in a (custom-designed, thanks to her height) kitchen, she was a spy! Too tall to enlist in the army, she joined the OSS (an intelligence agency that preceded the CIA). While later in her life she’d downplay her role as being that of a administrative clerk, her husband and others have confirmed that she oversaw information, much of it classified—and that her work was sometimes risky.

• Jane Goodall: As a child, Jane’s father gave her a toy chimpanzee, Jubilee. It sparked her interest in and love of animals. Jane went on to become an expert primatologist, and now knows more than probably anyone on earth about chimpanzees. She completed a famous 45-year study on chimpanzee social and family life at Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, sharing with the world that other primates can show the personality, emotions, and rational thought that humans do. Today she advocates for animal rights and the environment through the Jane Gooddall Institute. And she still keeps her toy chimpanzee, Jubilee, on her dresser.

Thanks so much for sharing the stories of those women (and girls!) with us, Rebecca!  I'll look forward to seeing if any of them make an appearance in your next book.  And now... a giveaway!

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Would you like to win a copy of When Audrey Met Alice?  I'm offering one finished copy to a lucky winner.   To enter, simply fill out the FORM. Giveaway open internationally, will close on Monday, March 31st at 11:59pm EST.  Winner will be notified via email.  Good luck!

First daughter Audrey Rhodes can't wait for the party she has planned for Friday night. The decorations are all set and the pizza is on its way. But the Secret Service must be out to ruin her life, because they cancel at the last minute-citing security breach and squashing Audrey's chances for making any new friends. What good is being "safe and secure" if you can't have any fun?

Audrey is ready to give up and become a White House hermit, until she discovers Alice Roosevelt's hidden diary. The former first daughter gives Audrey a ton of ideas for having fun...and more problems than she can handle.

top ten popular young adult authors i’ve never read

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we all get to exercise our OCD tendencies and come up with bookish lists.  If you’d like to play along, check out this post.

Here is the sad truth, folks: I don’t read fast enough to keep up with current releases, much less backlist titles or classics (in any genre).  This means I miss great stories and fantastic authors all the time.  The good news is that I will never run out of books to read, even if I narrow down the field to just young adult fiction.  My second confession?  Sometimes I choose not to read famous authors ON PURPOSE.  There’s a contrary corner of my soul that rails against hype and buzz, and you see the result in the list below.  I’m working on it, I promise.

Top Ten Popular Young Adult Authors I’ve Never Read

1. John Green – I don’t even know how I hold my head up and say I read young adult fiction.  I really don’t.

2. Cassandra Clare – Erm.  I tried the first chapter of one of her books once, and it wasn’t meant to be.  I’ve always meant to go back and try again and see if I like it any better.

3. Jay Asher – I know his Thirteen Reasons Why is very important, and that there’s a girl on a swing on the cover.  I don’t know anything else.

4. Ann Brashares – I never read The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, so I wasn’t really aware of Brashares.  BUT.  She has a new sci-fi/dystopian book out, and that is my thing, so maybe it’s time…

5. Veronica Roth – This is a pure case of my allergy to hype.  When Insurgent came out there was a huge push on social media, and for two weeks I couldn’t look at my twitter feed without seeing something related to the series.  It turned me off completely.  I’m contemplating reading the book now that the film is almost here.

6. Ally Condie – I thought I wanted to read the Matched series at one point.  But I have a deep aversion to love triangles at the moment, and I don’t know that I could handle it.

7. Rainbow Rowell – EVERYONE says that Rowell’s books are great.  I have no excuse, except that I am very picky about contemporaries?

8. Richelle Mead – I keep saying I’m over vampires… but if I’m being honest, I didn’t give YA vampire books (aside from Twilight) a fair chance.  Also, I swear that's Angelina Jolie on the cover!

9. James Dashner – Another case of hype striking, and my reading self recoiling from perceived popularity.  This is getting ridiculous.

10. Ransom Riggs – The cover of the first (and second) book totally creeped me out!

Which of these authors should I read ASAP? 

sausage and cheese bites

My good friend Leigh hosted a Texas Independence Day party yesterday.  She’s a displaced (misplaced?) Texan living here in the DC area, and she’s very proud of her home state.  I don’t like to show up at a party without a contribution, so I asked her what I could bring/make that would fit in with the theme.  She told me that she hadn’t had sausage balls for years.  I said something along the lines of, ‘What are sausage balls?!’  And then I giggled, because apparently I’m 12 years old on the inside. 

These appetizers were all the rage in Tahoka, Texas when Leigh was growing up.  And now I know why – they’re simple to make, use few (and easily accessible) ingredients, and they’re delicious.  I’ll keep them in my party food rotation from here on out, for sure.  But I had to rename them!

Sausage and Cheese Bites (modified from this recipe) 

INGREDIENTS

1 lb package of ground sausage, such as Jimmy Dean

3 cups Bisquick mix

4 ounces regular cream cheese

3 cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated

ground pepper to taste (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Prepare two baking sheets by lining with foil, set aside.

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mash together with hands until well combined.  Create one-inch balls by squeezing the mixture in one hand until it holds together, then roll between both palms to smooth into a sphere.

Place the dough bites on the baking sheet, about 1/2 inch to an inch apart, and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown, as shown in photos.  Cool on baking sheets for 2 to 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.  Yields two and a half dozen sausage and cheese bites.

I was worried the mixture would either turn out too creamy or too crumbly, but the recipe was really just about perfect.  They smelled and tasted great hot out of the oven, but were quite delicious when cool, too.  My roommate asked if they were cookies – and I think that describes them to a T: sausage and cheese cookies, and it’s impossible to eat just one.  I can also see that there’s a lot of room for variation with this recipe: different types of sausages, pepper flakes, seasoning, and another kind of shredded cheese would change the whole ballgame.

Recommended for: when you need a hearty party snack on the menu, and as a time-tested appetizer that’s sure to please (as long as no one is counting calories).

Interested in other food-related posts?  Check out Beth Fish Reads’ Weekend Cooking!