Category Archives: Holidays and Celebrations

Recommended books and activities for holidays and celebrations throughout the year.

Holidays and Celebrations

Poetry Friday: Tony Medina on Pablo Neruda’s “To Wash a Child”

Tony MedinaApril is National Poetry Month, and we’re celebrating by asking some of our own Lee & Low poets to share their favorite poems with us. Today, poet and Guest BloggerHoward University Professor Tony Medina (I and I Bob Marley, Love to Langston, DeShawn Days) shares:

A poem I keep going back to—and one I frequently share with my students—is Pablo Neruda’s “To Wash a Child.” It is the ultimate ode to what Neruda refers to as “the oldest love on the earth.” The poem is rich in nuance and specificity, bringing the seemingly mundane, daily task of bathing a child to such a heightened act of beauty, frustration and mischief.

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Guest Blogger Post, Holidays and Celebrations

Poetry Friday: Marilyn Singer’s Favorite Poems

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April is National Poetry Month, and we’re celebrating by asking some of our own Lee & Low poets to share their favorite poems with us. Today, poet Marilyn Guest Blogger Singer (A Full Moon is Rising) shares:

Marilyn SingerOne of my favorite poems is by the late Karla Kuskin:  “Write About a Radish…,” which begins:

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Book Lists by Topic, Educator Resources, Guest Blogger Post, Holidays and Celebrations

Holocaust Picture Books: An Annotated List

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day and, as Marcia Vaughan noted in her guest post last week, books guest bloggercan be a good way to introduce young students to a very difficult topic. Today, with permission, we’re cross-posting educator Keith Schoch’s excellent annotated list of recommended picture books about the Holocaust, originally posted on March 3, 2013 at Teach With Picture Books:

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Picture books included in the above annotated book list:

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Educator Resources, Holidays and Celebrations

Poetry Friday: What is a haiku?

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Happy National Poetry Month! Today we’re celebrating by looking at one of my favorite forms: haiku. Just a few lines, less than 20 syllables, haiku often appear easy because they’re so short. But, as anyone who has tried to write a picture book can tell you, often the shortest forms are the most difficult!

Haiku (the plural of which is also haiku) originated in Japan. They are short poems that are traditionally 17 syllables, often in three lines. In his afterward to Cool Melons- Turn to Frogs!, Lee & Low’s picture book biography of Japanese haiku master Issa, author Matthew Gollub explains more about what makes a haiku a haiku:

Japanese poets [wrote] haiku for centuries. Traditional haiku describe a single moment in nature, something that the poet observes or discovers. As such, a haiku can refresh or enlighten us by calling to mind life’s passing details.

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Guest Blogger Post, Holidays and Celebrations

Introducing the Holocaust to Children Through Books

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guest bloggerHolocaust Remembrance Day is next Monday, so we’ve asked Marcia Vaughan, author of Irena’s Jars of Secrets, to share her thoughts on talking to children about the Holocaust:

I first learned of Irena Sendler while watching the Today Show one morning several years ago. I was amazed by how many children she and her network of co-conspirators rescued  from the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII. I knew young readers would be also be amazed at the ingenious ways the children were smuggled to safety.

As a child I only knew one person, my father’s good friend, Earl Mamlock,  who spent time in a

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Holidays and Celebrations

What does Passover celebrate?

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Tonight marks the first night of Passover, so I thought I’d share a bit about what the holiday celebrates and what it means to me. Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays of the year, and is probably the most observed Jewish holiday after Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur (despite what people think about Hanukah!). Etched in Clay

Passover commemorates the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, as told in the old testament (or, if you’re the kind of person who waits for the movie to come out, as told in The Ten Commandments). According to the story, the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, until God, with the help of Moses, led them out of Egypt and into freedom.

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Guest Blogger Post, Holidays and Celebrations

Women in Professional Baseball: “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend”

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guest bloggerSince it’s Women’s History Month and baseball season is right around the corner (!), we asked our favorite sports expert, author Crystal Hubbard, whether she thought women should be allowed to play professional baseball. Here’s what she had to say:

Toni StonePitcher Jackie Mitchell signed a contract to play for the Chattanooga Lookouts, a Southern Association minor league team, in 1931. This deal differed from most because Mitchell wasn’t like the other boys. She wasn’t a boy at all. She was a woman, one of the very few to play professional baseball on all-male teams. Although Mitchell struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an April 2, 1931 exhibition game against the New York Yankees soon after signing with the Lookouts, baseball commissioner Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis canceled Mitchell’s contract, claiming that baseball was too strenuous for women. Commissioner Ford Frick, on June 21, 1952, officially banned women from professional baseball.

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Holidays and Celebrations

Spring into Multicultural Children’s Books!

While it may not feel like it, today is the first day of spring! We’re very excited for our forthcoming spring titles, which you can check out here. To kick off the spring season, here’s an image and poem from Laughing Tomatoes and Other Spring Poems/Jitomates Risueños y otros poemas de primavera, written by Francisco X. Alarcón, and illustrated by Maya Christina Gonzalez, published by Children’s Book Press, an imprint of LEE & LOW.

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Holidays and Celebrations

“Board” of Women? Our roundup of Women’s History Month books

In honor of Women’s History Month (and International Women’s Day, which is today!), we’ve pinned a roundup of our titles that feature some pretty amazing women on Pinterest. Check out our board and be inspired to make your mark in history!

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Guest Blogger Post, Holidays and Celebrations

Black History Month: Why Remember Florence “Baby Flo” Mills?

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guest bloggerEveryone knows Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., but there are many other African Americans who have contributed to the rich fabric of our country but whose names have fallen through the cracks of history.

We’ve asked some of our authors who chose to write biographies of these talented leaders why we should remember them. We’ll feature their answers throughout Black History Month.

Today, Alan Schroeder shares why he wrote about Florence Mills in Baby Flo: Florence Mills Lights Up the Stage:

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