Apples and Grapes

We have wild grapes that grow on the hill between us and our neighbors.  Along with the Buckthorn berries, the grapes get very ripe and fall onto our driveway, staining the concrete.  This year, maybe because of all the rain we got, the grapes were abundant.  So, in the one week I had between our summer road trip and the start of school, I picked as many grapes as I could reach.  I even talked to the neighbor to see if they were going to use their grapes this year.  The grapes on their side get the western sun and were even more abundant than on our side.  They said to go ahead and pick as many as I could.  Although I've never done it before, I decided to make grape jelly.  I didn't know that you really don't have to pick all the berries off the stems so I sat and picked enough grapes off stems to fill 3 full ice cream gallon buckets!  And then I put them in the fridge cause we had a few other things going on.  This past weekend, I finally made the jelly - 26 little jars of yummy goodness!

After all these jars, I still had a gallon of juice left and no desire to make more jelly.  My mom was at my house for the day, using my stove to can applesauce, so we had an afternoon snack of grape juice/7-Up, crackers and cheese.  It was good but we both agreed that something a little stronger than 7-Up might taste even better.  But we had work to do.  Our family farm has an old apple tree.  Last year, my parents paid John $.01 for every apple he picked off the ground before it snowed.  He made $8.00 - that's how many apples that tree produces!  This year, my mom picked the apples before they fell to the ground - saved herself $8.00 but bought herself a lot of work!  We ended up with 18 quarts of applesauce and 29 pints.  It is pink because she left the skins on - a little more nutritious.

At the Flea Market THIS Saturday (7/19)

We've sold our books at two garage sales and made a little over $200; tremendous support, but still falling short of our $1,000 goal.  So, we'll be at the Excelsior Flea Market this coming Saturday, July 19, selling all the books you want to buy for yourself, for your family, as gifts...all for only $1.00!  Again, all profit will be donated to Room to Read.
If any of you visited us at a garage sale, you will now notice that we've added hundreds of children's books for all grade levels, as we had many interested teachers looking to build their classroom libraries.  Of course, we still have, and have added to, our collection of fiction and nonfiction for ALL ages.  Kate wants to assure you of our booth staff's expertise in recommending titles for anyone.
Please come and support children's literacy and right to education, and pick up some great reads while you're at it! You can visit the Excelsior Flea Market's Facebook page here, and get directions to Excelsior here.

Books for Charity

During this past horribly cold Minnesota winter, Kate and I have been book shopping.  Most Saturday mornings found us with a cup of hot coffee, in a preheated car, stopping at used book shops and thrift stores to find the best deals on good books.  We bought over 600 books! Not books for us though.  Here's the scoop:

Last winter we saw the film Girl Rising - a film about 12 different girls, in 12 different countries, who were struggling for the right to an education and a better life.  It was very powerful and it left us wanting to be able to help somehow.  We researched the various organizations featured on the Girl Rising website and decided to create a fundraising campaign for the organization Room to Read.

This is what Room to Read is about: We envision a world in which all children can pursue a quality education, reach their full potential and contribute to their community and the world.

To achieve this goal, we focus on two areas where we believe we can have the greatest impact: literacy and gender equality in education.  We work in collaboration with communities and local governments across Asia and Africa to develop literacy skills and a habit of reading among primary school children, and support girls to complete secondary school with the life skills they’ll need to succeed in school and beyond.

Our fundraising campaign consists of us buying good used books, in good quality for a good price and then reselling them at a slightly higher price ($1 each) and donating all profit to Room to Read.  It won't be enough to build a school but it may be enough to have a few books published in a native language (Room to Read helps set up publishers in the native countries with the additional benefit of added jobs and a boost in local economy.)

We will have a booth at the Excelsior Flea Market a few Saturdays this summer and will be sharing a garage and driveway next week (April 30-May 4) at the Maple Grove city-wide garage sales.

You can click on the following links to learn more:
Girl Rising Film Trailer
Girl Rising website
Room to Read
Our Room to Read campaign site, Wards for Words, can be found here. If you can't make it to our sales, please consider donating here.

2014 Kerlan Award for Children's Literature

The University of Minnesota Library system has an incredible special collection of children's literature called the Kerlan Collection.  When I was at school there, the collection was housed on the East Bank at Walter Library in a room which required special permission to enter.  I had a few classes taught by Karen Nelson Hoyle, who was the curator of the Kerlan collection and so we were able to meet in that collection room of the library.  It was, hands down, my favorite place on campus.  I've searched the internet for photos of the room to share with you but...weirdly...can't find any.  Walter Library is beautiful itself, with gorgeous sculpted ceiling panels, massive arching windows and deep wood paneled walls and reading tables.  But the room of the Kerlan Collection (was it called the Upson Room?  That is ringing a bell...hmmm) was like being inside of a fairytale with warm colors of soft yellows, berry reds, and mossy greens.

Every year, since 1975, a Kerlan Award is given in honor of a singular contribution to the world of Children's Literature.  In 2012, shortly after her retirement, the award was granted to Karen Nelson Hoyle, my former children's lit teacher and long time curator of the special collection.  I wanted to attend the award ceremony but, for whatever reason, was unable to do so.

Then in 2013, I read that the Kerlan was to be awarded to Kate DiCamillo.  We LOVE Kate DiCamillo and, again, I really wanted to attend the ceremony - actually see her in person!!  But, again, the timing just didn't work out and I missed it.

This year, I saw that the award was going to two authors, Russell Freedman and Linda Sue Park.  We have read several of Linda Sue Park's books and our mother/son book club even read The Kite Fighters, discussed it and had a blast making our own kites.  Kate's love of Abraham Lincoln means that we, of course, have a copy of Russell Freedman's biography of the 16th president!  And the timing worked out so...Kate and attended the Kerlan Awards on March 29th.

The collection has moved from the east bank to the west bank, into the Anderson Library which didn't even exist when I was there.  This new library has two monstrous caverns beneath it (each larger than 2 football fields, we were told).  Here's a link to pictures of the building of this library and the caverns - incredible!

There was a delicious lunch followed by various speakers and then the acceptance speeches.  As Kate and I looked at the program, we noticed that Russell Freedman was not going to be able to be there to accept his award.  It would, instead, be accepted for him by the new National Ambassador for Young People's Literature - Kate DiCamillo!  Yay!  I mean, I'd love to have seen/met/heard from Russell Freedman also but it was pretty darn cool to be having lunch with the author of Mercy Watson (John's favorite) and Edward Tulane (Kate's favorite)!  She read Russell Freedman's acceptance speech and then spoke as herself also.

Linda Sue Park spoke and was so delightful.  She shared with us the various drafts of her latest book, Zander's Panda Party.  The first draft was terrible - which is why she shared it with us.  Then she donated it to the collection's archives.  She ended by reading us the final story while flipping through the pages on a large smartboard, saying how surprised she was when a STEM school teacher contacted her with praise and gratitude for having provided a STEM book.  The teacher had been searching for a book that could help in an animal classification science unit that she was starting.  This book is perfect.  The funny thing?  Linda Sue Park didn't even know what STEM was (or maybe she kinda did but wasn't being intentional in any way) so it was totally by accident. I find that influence between writer and reader so very cool.  We had John's copy of The Kite Fighter's with us and asked her to sign it for him.  We also bought a copy of Zander for a birthday party gift the following day.

The Real Thing

This has long been my favorite Maxfield Parrish painting.  It is titled "The Cardinal Archbishop" and was originally an illustration for a short story in the first few years of the twentieth century.  I now have a copy of the painting, bought on ebay.  It's the illustrated page from the book - just the page.  What a shame that someone tore the page from the book to sell separately.  I'm afraid the book, the story itself, probably ended up in the garbage.  A few weeks ago, I started searching online for the story.  Our library system has one copy  (not illustrated by Parrish but...just the story) and I reserved it.  This one copy is housed in the big main library in Minneapolis so I knew it would take about a week to arrive at our local branch.  In all these years, I've never even thought to look up the story and now that I had, I felt very impatient to read it.
And then, searching a bit more, I found a digital copy - a free digital copy - that I could download and read on my phone.  Talk about instant gratification.  So I did it.  And I read it.  Then I was done. And that was that.
About a week later, I received an email telling me that the book I'd reserved was in at our local branch.  I felt guilty knowing that someone had searched the stacks in the downtown library to find this book for me, someone else had put it on the transport vehicle, someone had driven the book out to our local branch, and then yet another someone had matched it up with my library number and shelved it for me to pick up.  I had already read the story.  So, I could just let it sit there on the shelf and then when the reservation expires, the whole chain of someones would have to get the book back downtown and back into the stacks.  But no, I couldn't do that.  So I went to pick it up.  And, oh what a surprise.

This beautiful little red book was waiting for me on my shelf.  No tacky spine stickers, no ugly plastic protective book jackets.  Just this worn little book.  And then I opened the front cover:

And I checked that precious book right out of the library.  And I've renewed it twice.  Which means I can only renew it one more time.  It will be hard to return it.  I wonder how long it has sat on a shelf downtown, unread.  Or maybe it's been read a ton.  But I'm guessing probably not.  I'm rereading it - the real way this time - not on my phone (for goodness sake, what was I thinking?!)

Tending to the Mending

Well, it's Friday night and I'm...tending to my pile of mending.  Exciting, huh?  It does feel very good to be getting it done.  In the pile were multiple pairs of play/work jeans with holey knees, a hunting sweatshirt with ripped pockets, a pair of snowpants with a very large hole in the pocket (thought we lost the truck keys last weekend but they were at the bottom of the pant leg next to Mark's boot), and my nephew's unhemmed karate pants.  So, tonight holes were patched, pockets were sewn, and pants were hemmed.  All for the boys who, apparently, are hard on their clothes!
Over the last two weeks, I've finished two new hats - one for me and one for Mark.  Katie agreed to model them for me for photos:

Mark's was especially fun to make because I was able to use up lots of scraps.