Tomato Harvest 2016

Tomato harvest is about over here. I still have a few turning red, with one or two straggling in every day. This year’s harvest was less than exceptional, but we appreciated what we got. Nothing’s better than a tomato right off your own vine!

One year I goofed. I wanted eight plants, but bought eight four-packs! That year, we had too many tomatoes! (But really, is there such a thing?)

In full harvest mode, Eric Ode’s book Too Many Tomatoes shows a boy's excitement in watching his grandparents' garden grow and the number of tomatoes it yields: “A plateful, a crateful, a grateful hooray! This town has too many tomatoes today!” Almost tongue-twisting with steady rhythm and rhyme, this book is a joy to read. Kids will love to say the verses, such as “A biscuit to butter, a basket to borrow. Sing me a song of tomatoes tomorrow!”

Illustrator Kent Culotta adds rollicking fun details in his illustrations of people, vehicles, and a farmer’s market. 

Read this book with your favorite child over some tomato soup or spaghetti with tomato sauce!

No matter how you say "tomato," don't call the whole thing off:

Keep Fear Away on a Stormy Night

We've been fortunate this season so far--storms have gone around us. Tonight is another stormy one with heavy wind, rain, possible hail, even possible tornadoes in areas around us. Farther away, tropical storms' flooding have caused death and damage.

What do you do to keep youngsters' fear at bay when storms rage? It seems that author Salina Yoon's Bear family has the right answer--comforting others. In Stormy Night, a picture book for ages 3-6, Bear can't sleep because of a storm. He comforts his bunny with a loving verse and feels better. The storm keeps rumbling, and Bear keeps repeating the words to bunny until Mama comes to check on him, saying that she wants to stay with him because she is afraid. Soon Papa joins them. Kisses, tickles, and books, family love and affection make everything all right. This sweet, tender book is comforting to kids and a model for parents on how to handle non-threatening storms with little ones. Reading this book is like getting a hug.
(I bought this book and its accompanying plush toy when Kohl's featured it as a Kohl's Cares title.)

A more recent huggable book by Yoon is Be a Friend, about Dennis, the mime boy. As a mime, of course, Dennis doesn't speak. He acts in scenes. It's fair to say that Dennis is different from the other kids, and he is happy being himself--though a tad lonely. This story has a happy ending because Dennis finds a friend who understands him as he is, and vice versa. The artwork is a real treat, with Yoon's drawings of Dennis miming an egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly. She has drawn red dashed lines to show Dennis' actions both in the book and on the end papers.

My three-year-old granddaughter has never seen a mime, so I explained that he was pretending to do these things. She liked saying what Dennis was "'tending" to do (on a teeter-totter, being a tree, going downstairs), but I wasn't sure she grasped the friendship theme until she told her mom about the book. "He makes a friend and they do 'tend thing together." She got it!

(Disclosure: I won this book as part of a giveaway on Miranda Paul's Facebook page.)

Emily Arrow liked this book so much she wrote a song about it. Get your jazz hands ready!