Sunday we went to Lehigh’s SPOOKTACULAR!
This is an annual event put on for the community by Lehigh’s Community Service Office. Families (this year over 600 people attended!) are warmly welcomed onto campus for an afternoon jam-packed with tons of activities and food — all 100% free — and all run by student volunteers.
We had never been before, and — like so many things we’ve done at Lehigh in the past year — we probably never would have gone if we weren’t living on campus. But we are living on campus, and we did go. And, honestly, I was impressed beyond impressed with the spectacular-ness that was Spooktacular. I cannot rave enough about how absolutely amazing this event was.
Carolina Hernandez (above with Kyle!) is Director of Lehigh’s Community Service Office. She’s become a good friend of our family. And I cannot overstate what a gift she is to Lehigh and the local community. This woman knows what she’s doing in running a campus community service office. Let me tell you! She is a rare gem and we are beyond fortunate to have her here at Lehigh. Spooktacular is just one of many (many!) things that Carolina’s office does throughout the year to provide tremendous service opportunities and experiences for the campus community. But it isn’t just the events and programs — it is her style of doing them — that really impresses me. It is amazing stuff that Carolina is doing and her impact on the community, and on Lehigh students, is huge.
Before I go on though… spoiler alert!
Kids wear their Halloween costumes to Spooktacular. So, I must reveal… The Bambinos Halloween Costumes 2013: a Knight, a Civil War Union Soldier, and Spidergirl!
Oh yes! It is a sight to see and experience! The bambinos in costume!
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We checked into Spooktacular, not really knowing what to expect. We ended up spending the whole afternoon having so much fun!
There were games on the lawn of the UC (“University Center”)…
…and then we made our way inside the UC…
…to discover pizza and meatball subs…
…and tons and tons and tons of activities of every variety imaginable. Crafts, snacks, games, tattoos, and every sort of fun-Halloween-themed-activity you could possibly imagine. All being run by enthusiastic, energetic, college students eager to make every kid they encountered smile. I saw hundreds (hundreds!) of kids smiling the entire time– Kyle, Owen, and Meera most definitely included.
And then there were haunted houses! Two of them! One for older kids, and one for younger kids. This was the bambinos’ first experience with haunted houses. It was a riot– The bambinos had a BLAST!!!!
(And, of course, we ran into the fabulous Christa Neu, an awesome Lehigh photographer who has now become a family friend.)
And, as if all that wasn’t enough…
We were then invited outside for trick-or-treating in Trembley (a student residential area near the center of campus).
Students gave out candy from their doorways.
It was such fun trick-or-treating!
And then we were whisked off for jack-o-lantern carving and hot-chocolate at a nearby fraternity house.
(Seriously! This event was unbelievable!!!)
Spooktacular was awesome. We had so much fun and were so glad we went.
It made me proud to be a part of this place.
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A huge thank you to Carolina, the CSO, and to all of the very many students who volunteer to make this event such a huge success. Really, you’ve impressed me beyond belief. It was an honor for our family to be able to take part in Spooktacular this year, and we are already looking forward to Spooktacular 2014!
Meera took us out for lunch with the Friendly’s gift card she got from Jewel for her birthday
a girl and her dog
the boys at their favorite lunch place– hibachi at Kome
grading with Rainbow Loom
Dash
playing with the bambinos’ current favorite person on the planet: our Head Gryphon Jon
legos in the sunshine with Sayre friends/neighbors/students
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, in 3D
we are currently in the midst of Red Sox vs. Detroit in the ALCS
evening walk
toy train in Sayre B Lounge
K & O got to sit in the dugout for a bit of LU Baseball’s last game of Fall Ball
puppy class with Dash every Sunday
Kyle with his current favorite book
toy phone in the back pocket (just like the big girls on campus)
tonight, dinner conversation, in Rathbone Dining Hall
This is the introduction to a series of posts on our favorite chapter books for young (age 10 and under) black boys. Please share, link, and re-post anywhere and everywhere! Every school and town library in our country needs to have these books on their shelves!
Over the years I’ve posted about some of our favorite books for black kids (click on links to go to those posts):
Kyle and Owen are now at an age where they are loving chapter books. As with the other phases of their book-reading-development, I have been seriously challenged to find great books for them with strong black characters. I am a real stickler about this: I am an adamant and firm believer that it is imperative for black kids to have lots of books with black characters. It is my own opinion that it is absolutely critical to provide black kids with a plethora of such books so that they are immersed in a world of reading that does not marginalize them, especially at younger ages. Our book shelves are filled with all sorts of books (and yes, we have Harry Potter and Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Magic Treehouse, etc. etc. etc.), but I am vigilant about making sure there is a solid core base of books with black representation.*
So, over the past nine years I’ve spent an enormous amount of time and energy researching and seeking out books which reflect black culture, possess rich black imagery, and highlight strong black characters, while at the same time being good, plain-and-straight-up, awesome books. Luckily, we are living at a time in history when such books do, in fact exist. Unfortunately, these books are not always so easy to find.
In the past couple of years, Kyle and Owen have been gradually making the shift from picture books to chapter books. Now, at age 9, they have sincere appreciation for a good chapter book with black main characters. It has been very clear to me that they prefer (greatly prefer) chapter books with black male characters. This is no surprise, of course. But an interesting twist is this: there are many, many more chapter books targeted for black girls than for black boys. I’ve had to do some pretty deep digging to come up with really good chapter books with black main characters.
In this series of posts I’m going to list our Top Five Favorite Chapter Books for Black Boys. I’m focusing specifically on chapter book series here. These will be posted in order, from Kyle and Owen’s favorite (#1), to their 5th favorite (#5). Bear in mind, all five of these sets of books are superb! I am simply listing them in rank order of my own boys’ favorites. Also, note: I have personally read every single one of these books right along with Kyle and Owen (we are big believers in reading aloud as long as our kids will let us). I can personally vouch that they are excellent chapter books!
I hope these posts will be useful for black boys, their parents, their extended family and friends, their teachers, their librarians, and their communities. If you’re looking for great chapter books for the black boys in your life, I’ve got you covered! Enjoy!
*This is a subject that I have thought about a lot, and on which I have done a lot of research, so please (please!) don’t leave mean and nasty comments about how uptight I am about this. As far as I am concerned, this is a topic that is not up for discussion. If you don’t want to know about great books for black boys, then simply skip these posts. Please (please!) don’t waste your time or mine by telling me that I’m wrong for being so adamant on this subject, or by telling me what a hypersensitive person I am for taking the stance that I do on this. I am a sociologist and a mom, and I’ll tell you this: it is what it is folks, and whether you want to believe it or not, things like this (providing books with black characters for your black children/students) do, indeed, make a difference… a big, big difference.
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Links to the Great Chapter Books for Black Boys posts:
#1 The STAT: Standing Tall and Talented series by Amar’e Stoudemire
Amar’e Stoudemire is a six-time NBA All-Star and captain of the New York Knicks. He’s an amazing guy (check out his website by clicking here). He’s written a series of books based on his own life growing up as a very talented athlete and gifted basketball player. This series is targeted at middle-school readers, but Kyle and Owen have absolutely adored these books since we first discovered them about a year ago. We’ve read them all (and pre-order the ones forthcoming!), and without a doubt this is far and away Kyle and Owen’s favorite series.
When reading these books, I often have the strange feeling that they were written specifically with Kyle and Owen in mind, and I know that K & O feel that way too (I wonder if every kid who reads them feels that way about them?). They focus on the joys and challenges of working hard to overcome obstacles. What is particularly helpful for us is that these books have really helped Kyle and Owen to process their own athletic giftedness, and think about how to handle it. Through the story lines of these books the young Amar’e is faced with how to navigate his own course while staying true to his friends and family. What I love about these books is that although they highlight the athleticism of a very talented young black boy, they present him as multi-dimensional, nuanced, and complex; he isn’t simply a stereotype of the “athletic black male,” but rather a multi-faceted person in a realistically portrayed world.
You don’t have to be a mega-athlete to enjoy these books (take me for example! I am by no stretch of the imagination a mega-athlete, and yet I have very much enjoyed reading these books with my boys). But I do think that black boys, especially those interested in sports, will relate to, and love, this series. These books will give their readers a lot to think about (well beyond the basketball court.) And if you have boys like Kyle and Owen in your life (basketball obsessed, and — as referred to in Stoudemire’s books — boys who are “tall and talented”), I can pretty much guarantee that they will just eat these books right up!!
There are currently four books in this series, one forthcoming, and hopefully more in the works! The series includes:
- Home Court
- Double Team
- Slam Dunk
- Schooled
- Most Valuable (expected January 2014)
So, there you have it! Kyle and Owen’s #1 favorite series of chapter books — Amar’e Stoudemire’s STAT: Standing Tall and Talented!
#2 The Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs / Clubhouse Mysteries books by Sharon Draper
Kyle and Owen love, love, love these books. Of all the chapter book series I’ve read to/with them, this series is my personal favorite. If I were making my own Top Five list, these would definitely be #1 on the list.
I’ll go ahead and make a bold statement here, and I will stand behind it 100%: I think that the children’s section of every library in the country — and definitely every school library — should have this collection. They are amazing books. I just can’t say enough about them. I have come to admire the author, Sharon Draper, in a big, big way (her numerous well-deserved awards and accolades are amazing!), and I can’t wait until Kyle and Owen are old enough to start reading all of her books for teens (check out her website at http://sharondraper.com/books.asp).
When I first discovered the Ziggy/Clubhouse Mysteries books it was very confusing, so I just want to note about that here: These books were originally published with the titles of “Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs.” The covers were illustrated with images of four clearly black boys. But then, at a certain point, the series title was changed to “Clubhouse Mysteries,” and the cover art was all re-done. See the cover images below and note the change. On the left are two examples of the original book covers, which are now out of print; on the right are the re-done book covers which are now for sale. It is a pretty drastic change — look, just for example, at the long locs on Ziggy in the bottom left cover, now missing in the new cover art for the same book:
The “new” books were still published by the same publishing house (Alladin), and had the exact same text, but they were under different titles with different covers. Of course, I don’t know the inside story, but it is a pretty easy guess as to what happened — the publisher and/or the author (my guess is this was probably entirely orchestrated by the publisher) determined that the books would be more marketable to a broader audience if the look/feel/titles were “softened” and made “less black.” Having a little bit of experience with the publishing world myself, it is easy to become very cynical about this stuff. For Kyle and Owen and me, it was hard to see the rebranding of these books, the shift in the appearance of the covers, and the change in the series title. Disappointing, and disturbing. We thought about boycotting them (to protest the re-branding). However, these books are so good (I mean, they are just so, so, so good!), that we stayed loyal, read, and loved them all. Someday I’d love to hear the inside scoop as to what, exactly, happened that resulted in the rebranding. In the meantime, the bottom line is that these books were real page turners for Kyle and Owen. I appreciate how well written, and yet very educational, they all are. In our house, we call these the “Ziggy books” (sticking to the original series title), but in looking for them in your library or online, you might find it easier to search with the current series title “Clubhouse Mysteries.” Either way, and despite this backstory, these are a must-read series of six books:
- The Buried Bones Mystery
- Lost in the Tunnel of Time
- Shadows of Caesar’s Creek
- The Space Mission Adventure
- The Backyard Animal Show
- Stars and Sparks on Stage
This is a stellar series! If you read them, you’ll see exactly what I mean!
#3 The Julian (and Huey, and Gloria) books by Ann Cameron
I have a slight fascination with Ann Cameron. My fascination is mostly prompted by the fact that she’s a white female author who has written a series of books with a black boy as the main character, and which have the lives of black middle class families as the central storyline. Her biography is fascinating in and of itself (read it here), as she has done so many varied things — including, notably, being a Freedom Rider while in college at Harvard during the Civil Rights Movement. Cameron is most well known for her Julian series of children’s books, but she has other books for kids too (check out The Most Beautiful Place in the World, and The Kidnapped Prince, which we can vouch for as being very good; she has a couple of other books for older kids too).
I posted about the Julian books when we first read them, during the summer of 2011, when Kyle and Owen were 7 years old (click here). The books have three main characters — Julian, his little brother Huey, and their neighborhood friend Gloria. I clump all of the books together in one lump sum here. This series includes:
- The Stories Julian Tells
- More Stories Julian Tells
- Julian’s Glorious Summer
- Julian, Secret Agent
- Julian Dream Doctor
- The Stories Huey Tells
- More Stories Huey Tells
- Spunky Tells All
- Gloria’s Way
- Gloria Rising
We’ve read every one of them, and they are just plain wonderful!
#4 The Miami Jackson Series by Patricia & Fredrick McKissack
Patricia McKissack is an incredible author of stellar children’s books. She’s been really prolific in this realm, often collaborating with amazing co-authors and illustrators. Just Google her, or Wikipedia her, or do an Amazon.com search for her name, and you’ll see a huge list of incredible books and resources for children. She and her husband, Fredrick McKissack, have written numerous Coretta Scott King Award-winning books (which says all you need to know). Kyle and Owen loved all three of the books in their Miami Jackson series. The kids in this series really come alive on the page, and the story lines are laugh-out-loud humorous. This series includes:
- Miami Jackson Gets it Straight
- Miami Jackson Makes the Play
- Miami Jackson Sees it Through
A great trio of books!
#5 The Tiki and Ronde Barber Books
Ok, now, I know, I know, I know — black, twin, sports-obsessed boys is a pretty niche market. But these books would be great for any sports fanatic (you don’t have to be a twin to be fascinated by the life of twins, and you don’t have to be black, or a boy, to love these books). We started out with the Barber brothers’ picture books (all illustrated by Barry Root — By My Brother’s Side; Game Day; and Teammates), which are awesome. And now we’re growin’ on up with the Barber books, as we’ve migrated onward to the chapter books. Kyle and Owen love these books for all the obvious reasons. I love these books because of the way they explore the twin relationship, focus on moral dilemmas, and highlight the power and influence of a very strong mother. This series of chapter books include:
- Kickoff!
- Go Long!
- Wild Card
- Red Zone
- Goal Line
- End Zone
We are really looking forward to the Barber brothers’ new books. They are not yet released, but we’ve already pre-ordered them. Jump Shot (a basketball book), is due out in November, and Extra Innings (a baseball book), is expected in February.
Honorable Mention I have listed our Top Five favorite chapter book series, but these additional three are definitely worth mentioning too. While they didn’t make it on our “Top Five” list, no good list of “Great Chapter Books for Black Boys” would be complete without including these three amazing series—
The Elijah Breeze, aka Jumper, books by Sharon Robinson
This series includes:
The Junebug books by Alice Mead
This series includes:
- Junebug
- Junebug in Trouble
- Junebug and the Reverend
The Akimbo books by Alexander McCall Smith
This series includes:
- Akimbo and the Lions
- Akimbo and the Baboons
- Akimbo and the Snakes
- Akimbo and the Crocodile Man
- Akimbo and the Elephants
This week fall has suddenly really hit. In a matter of just a couple of days it went from feeling like the end of summer, to feeling like the crisp cool raw-edge of fall. Also this week, the grind of the school year has really hit. In a matter of just a couple of days it went from feeling like we were gently easing into our school year rhythm, to feeling like the cold harsh reality of the mammoth weight of our everyday routine has slammed us.
{Sidenote: extra points for me! I managed to fit in one of Kyle and Owen’s spelling words for this week– ‘mammoth’– their spelling tests are every Friday and I swear, those weekly spelling words are gonna be the death of me. This week’s include [in addition to mammoth]: befuddled, ludicrous, stoic, infamous… among others. I’m wishing them luck on their tests as I write this; they are probably taking those tests right now as I type.}
It is counter-intuitive, during weeks like this, to stop everything and devote the time to putting together an out-of-routine family meal. I have my go-to dinners for weeks like this– simple things that I can make easily without recipes and with ingredients I tend to already have. Those meals are the mainstay of our family suppers — especially during the more hectic, frenzied, stressed-out weeks of our lives. But I’ve found that it during weeks like this that it is most important, and most gratifying, to take command of this rat-race-of-a-ship and pull out all the stops to make an out-of-the-ordinary meal happen.
This week we needed a comfy cozy supper to usher in our fall, and to ease our frayed nerves. We don’t eat much beef, or potatoes, and we rarely eat one-pot meals, and I almost never bake. But Meera and Owen love meat, there’s nothing Braydon loves much more than a hearty stew, and my Ky Ky is a huge fan of any autumn-esque baked good (anything zucchini or pumpkin in the form of a bread-like item warms his heart and soul).
So, this week, on Wednesday, right smack in the middle, we had this dinner. I’m not saying that it helped us immensely in any way, shape, or form. Trust me, as this week wraps up, we are still a bunch of basket-cases. But I will say this: this meal definitely didn’t hurt. And my family saw me cook them up some love at a time when they really needed some TLC.
This one is super easy folks! Braydon and the bambinos left the house at 7:30 to head for school Wednesday morning, and by 9am our supper was already waiting for us, I was showered, and ready for a long day at work (which was good, because I had meetings that ran late into that afternoon, so there would have been no way in heck I could have pulled off a family dinner that night otherwise).
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Zucchini Bread
I’ve posted about this zucchini bread on the blog before. Click here for the zucchini bread recipe. We always eat zucchini bread with cream cheese on it (instead of butter). We’ve recently discovered Wegman’s pumpkin cream cheese — and we found out this week that some of us (mostly, OWEN) loves that pumpkin cream cheese spread on the zucchini bread.
Beef Stew
My mom has always raved to me about the Superior Touch brand of seasonings and sauce-starters. One of the Superior Touch products she’s introduced me to are the crockpot seasoning mix packets. They are really very good, and much better than the other seasoning packets on the market (both in terms of what is in the list of ingredients, and what the final product tastes like). Of course, beef stew from scratch is much better than with the packet… but… a mama’s gotta do what a mama’s gotta do, and this here little packet makes a world of difference in the de-frazzling a frantic day.
- In the bottom of crockpot, mix the Crockery Gourmet Seasoning Mix for Beef with the amount of water as directed on the back of the packet
- Add 1.5 pounds of cubed beef
- Add veggies — This time I used a bag of small golden potatoes and a whole bunch of chopped carrots, celery, onion. Sometimes I add leek, parsnips, green beans, or whatever else I have around.
- Set crock pot on low and let cook for at least 8 hours (I often let it go for 9-10, or even longer). Do not stir, just let sit.
- Right before serving, stir the stew and add in a bag of frozen baby sweet peas. It only takes only a couple of minutes for the peas to thaw in the stew. My mom always says you need a bit of bright green in a stew, and I have come to be a 100% follower of that rule. đŸ˜‰
- Serve straight from the crockpot. Yummo.
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