Nonfiction

The Pioneer Woman Cooks

/ Linda / Leave a comment
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Ree Drummond

Ree Drummond is an award-winning blogger, New York Times bestselling author, food writer, photographer, and television personality.  She started out her life in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, later attended college in Los Angeles, CA., and now lives outside of Pawhuska, Oklahoma.  She thought after having tasted the big city life in Los Angeles, she’d spend the rest of her life in a big city.  She planned on attending law school in Chicago and was just about to move there when she fell in love with a cattle rancher and ended up right back in Oklahoma.  She lives on a ranch with her husband and four children.  You can read all about her life in her book, BlackHeels to Tractor Wheels – which, by the way, is expected to become a movie starring Reese Witherspoon.

As a way to keep in touch with family and friends, she started a blog called ‘The PioneerWoman’.  Little by little she added different topics, but when she added a section on cooking with photographs detailing how to make a dish, the blog took off and her cookbooks became wildly popular.

Her newest cookbook, The Pioneer Woman: A Year of Holidays, was released on October 29, 2013.  It’s a collection of recipes, photos, and homespun humor to help you celebrate all through the year.  There are menus for breakfasts, brunches, lunches, dinners, parties, deliveries, and feasts.  All are accompanied by fun instructions and step-by-step photographs.  It’s a creative and entertaining book to help you plan each holiday.

Her other cookbooks are: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl, and The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier.  She has also written several children’s books based on her bassett hound, Charlie.  Charlie the Ranch Dog, Charlie the Ranch Dog: Charlie’s Snow Day, Charlie the Ranch Dog: Where’s the Bacon, Charlie Goes to School, and Charlie and the Christmas Kitty.  

Her blog, ‘The Pioneer Woman’, is a lively, entertaining and informative account of her daily life as a ranch wife and mother.  She also has a television show on the ‘Food Network’ called – The Pioneer Woman.

Come to the library to check out all her books!

On Our Shelves: New Children’s DVD’s

/ Sharon Tyler / Leave a comment

The library’s DVD collection (including regular and blue ray discs) grows rapidly and is often hard to keep up with. This holds true with the children’s collection just as much as it does with the family film and adult collections.  There are feature films, favorite television shows (old and new), as well as educational programs. Here is just a small sample of some new DVD’s in the children’s room, though it barely scratches the surface!

Regular Show Fright Pack
The adventures of Mordecai and Rigby, two park groundskeepers who seek out various ways to escape the everyday boredom of their job.

Ivan the Incredible
After constantly being bullied by kids at school and ridiculed by his father, Ivan Olsen is given the chance to be the best at everything after a witch mixes him a magic potion.

Robot Zot
This is a tale of a robot determined to conquer the earth. But once discovers the princess – a toy cell phone – he must learn how to be a hero.

The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That. Hurray! It’s Valentine’s Day!
It’s Valentine’s Day with The Cat in the Hat, a great time to make friends with the Cat. Spend the whole day with wonderful friends in a place where adventure and fun never ends. Yes, friendship’s the key on this special day, and the Cat is the one who will lead the way.

Minnie’s The Wizard of Dizz
Minnie and Pluto end up in the silly but spectacular land of Dizz. It’s an amazing place, with rainbow trees, butterfly bows, and friendly ‘Chipmunchkins,’ but what Minnie wants most is to get home. Together, Minnie and her new friends Scarecrow Goofy, Mickey the Tin Mouse, and Donald the Lion, set off to ask the wonderful Wizard of Dizz to make their dreams come true. But look out! Bad Witch Pete wants Minnie’s magical, sparkly green shoes, and he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve. Includes bonus features.

Fish ‘n Chips
Hilarious adventures of a young fish, Fish, and his nemesis Chips, a cat, as they tear across land and sea, facing off for the love of the same catfish and bones of Fish’s ancestor.

Phineas and Ferb, the Perry Files. Animal Agents
So you thought Perry the Platypus, a.k.a. Agent P, was the only crime-fighting animal in the Tri-State area? Meet Perry’s animal agent comrades who are all members of the O.W.C.A., ”Organization Without a Cool Acronym.” This hilarious collection of animal agent-themed adventures will leave viewers wanting to join forces with the O.W.C.A. to help shell out trouble for evil-doers.

Other new DVD’s that might catch you eye include: Ruby Gloom. Happiest Girl in the World, Wild Kratts. Rainforest Rescue,  Farm Animals: Nature & Animals,  Dino King 3D, VeggieTales. MacLarry & the Stinky Cheese Battle, American Girl. McKenna Shoots for the Stars,  Bill Nye the Science Guy.  Germs, Room on the Broom, The Saddle Club. Season 1 , and Chloe’s Closet. Outdoor Explorer. 

Food for Thought: For Book Clubs

/ Linda / Leave a comment

foodIs your book club looking for a new theme to read?  Everyone loves food!  Below is a list of titles that will stimulate your brain and your appetite!

1.  Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver

2.  My Life in France  by Julia Child

3.  Heat: An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany by Bill Buford

4.  The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace

5.  I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence by Amy Sedaris

6.  Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck

7.  The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food by Judith Jones

8.  The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World’s Most Famous Cooking Schoolby Kathleen Flinn

Counting, Measuring, and More: Children’s Books About Math

/ Sharon Tyler / 1 Comment

Are you or your child a math whiz, or are you like me and dread the very idea of sitting down and tacking the related homework? Well, here are some books for children that get your youngest children on the right track, and help school age children stave off the fear of math or feed their math love. I have broken down my recommended books into three sections; Preschool and Kindergarten, First through Third Graders, and Above and Beyond.

For Preschool and Kindergarten Aged Children:
1. Help Me Learn Subtraction written by Jean Marzollo, Illustrated by Chad Phillips.

2. Janice VanCleave’s Play and Find Out About Math: Easy Activities for Young Children by Janice Pratt VanCleave.

3. Millions, Billions, and Trillions: Understanding Big Numbers written by David Adler, Illustrated by Edward Miller.

4. Musk Ox Counts written by Erin Cabatingan, Illustrated by Matthew Myers.

5. Tyrannosaurus Math written by Michelle Markel; illustrated by Doug Cushman.

 For First through Third Graders:
1. A Dollar, a Penny, How Much and How Many? written by Brian P. Cleary , illustrated by Brian Gable.

2. The Wing Wing Brothers: Math Spectacular! by Ethan Long.

3. Fractals, Googols, and Other Mathematical Tales by Theoni Pappas.

4. Dazzling Division : Games and Activities that Make Math Easy and Fun by Lynette Long.

5. Sir Cumference and All the King’s Tens : A Math Adventure written by Cindy Neuschwander ; illustrated by Wayne Geehan.
But do not stop there, because this is a series, simply look here for more.

Too simple for your math whiz? Then try these math related books that go Above and Beyond.
1. One Minute Mysteries : 65 Short Stories You Solve With Math! by Eric Yoder and Natalie Yoder.

2. Math created by Basher; written by Dan Green.

3. Math Games for Middle School: Challenges and Skill-Builders for Students at Every Level by Mario Salvadori and Joseph P. Wright.

4. Timekeeping: Explore the History and Science of Telling Time with 15 Projects by Linda Formichelli & W. Eric Martin; illustrated by Sam Carbaugh.

5. How Math Works by Carol Vorderman.

Still want more? Then you can also check out: Mummy Math: an Adventure in Geometry by Cindy Neuschwander; illustrated by Bryan Langdo,  Measurement Mania: Games and Activities that Make Math Easy and Fun by Lynette Long, Mystery Math: A First Book of Algebra written by David A. Adler ; illustrated by Edward Miller,  Math on Call: a Mathematics Handbook by Andrew Kaplan; edited by Carol DeBold, Susan Rogalski, and Pat Boudreau,  or Number Sense and Nonsense : Building Math Creativity and Confidence Through Number Play by Claudia Zaslavsky.

Susan reads: The Queen of Katwe

/ Susan O. / Leave a comment

Wow – two books on chess in the same year?  Odd, yes, but this book fed my brain AND my sense of social welfare at the same time. In The Queen of Katwe, Phiona Mutesi is the poorest of the poor – poorer than the Indian children of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, poor as only the poor of war-torn Uganda can be, yet through her own uneducated analytical mind, she rises above everything as a sort of chess savant, traveling to Siberia to compete on a world level – at the age of 15, a girl who has never even seen a flush toilet, who does not even know when her birthday is.

Much of the book is taken up not with Phiona – how I wish more of the book focused on her, her thoughts, etc. – but with everyone around her, and just how the circumstances formed for her to shoot her star so incredibly high. Throughout, Phiona is a shadowy figure, almost a mentally disabled girl who for a few brief moments is able to see and understand clearly, and then is sent back down to the depths of her dull & hopeless life. Is it crueler to leave her mindless in the mud of the streets or to show her the glory of the rest of the world, and then send her back to nothing? I’m not sure. It’s a real “Flowers for Algernon” conundrum.

And I can’t help but wonder what the author could/did do for some of these people – you see them trying to teach chess with boards missing pieces, so crudely carved you can’t always tell a knight from a rook – did you buy them a few chess sets, when what to us is $10 and to them is a year’s salary? Did you donate so the club could continue to feed the starving children who come there to learn? I myself could not look upon such conditions without trying to help, but the author is silent as to how he himself was moved by the situation. A good book, an incredible story, but I wanted so much more, both for me and for Phiona.