Inspire Your Children With Art!

7 May

I’ve been reading a book by Unitarian Universalist minister Jeanne Harrison Nieuwejaar called The Gift of Faith: Tending to the Spiritual Lives of Children. In it she talks about the importance of emphasizing and holding up the sacred in your children’s lives. She also talks about the importance and value in inspiring wonder in our children. And one way we can do this (and there are many) is through the artwork that we have around our house. This made me instantly think of the illustrations of Paul Goble, chronicler and illustrator of the sacred stories of the Plains American Indians. My children and I have enjoyed his books The Great Race, Adopted by Eagles, Dream Wolf and The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses. His illustrations, colorful and full of the beauty of the natural world and American Indian life, do exactly that. They inspire wonder and spark the imagination.

Thanks to the power of the internet, with one search I found Prairie Edge, a website that sells many of his book’s most beautiful illustrations as posters and American Indian artwork and books as well. I ordered a couple of his posters and they arrived quickly. Instead of framing them, which would be quite pricey (sometimes posters are strange sizes, so even buying ready-to-use frames can be difficult) a more affordable option is to have them mounted on foam core. For a 12 x 18 inch poster, this costs around $15. You can ask them to apply some sort of mounting hardware on the back for easy hanging. Most craft stores or framers will do this. I had these posters done at the chain store Aaron Brothers.

Think about the artwork and beauty you have in your own home and if it inspires you and your children!

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CMIK Must Read! Dream Wolf by Paul Goble

29 Apr

Dream Wolf by the wonderful Paul Goble is one of my son K’s favorite new books. It tells the story of a young boy, Tiblow, and his sister, Tanksi who seek adventure from the berry-picking chores in the hills away from their camp and family. The two adventurers find themselves lost in the dark and the cold. They seek refuge in a wolf’s den. During the night they dream about a wolf keeping them warm. In the morning they do encounter a wolf who leads them back to their camp. They ask the wolf to stay with them but he can not. He tells them when he howls  he remembers them.

My son K was captivated by this story and the theme of dreaming something mystical. He too has recently been having more vivid dreams. He tells me about them and I can tell sometimes he is really gripped by them. His dreams too often involve animals. K was also fascinated by the somber note at the end of Dream Wolf. Goble  mentions how wolves have been largely feared and chased out by people.

The wolves are no longer heard calling in the evenings at berry-picking times. Hunters have killed and driven them away with guns and traps and poisons. People say that the wolves will return when we, like Tiblo and Tanksi, have the wolves in our hearts and dreams again.

Paul Goble writes at the beginning something both wise but difficult to explain to a child. Actually it’s difficult to explain to a fellow adult!

We, too, love our dogs, and yet we seem unable to see the same expressions in the faces of wolves. We have driven them from nearly every party of North America, and where they still live they are fearful of us. Where the wolf no longer roams he is missed by everything in nature. We feel his loss; Creation is incomplete.

On one hand, the wolf in the story is revered as a wonderful and mysterious creature in nature, but on the other hand wolves barely exist in our environs anymore. Because of our fear and loathing, we have erased them. It’s a difficult paradox to explain to someone who sees the natural world as wonderful and perfect. Why would we destroy something so beautiful and holy?

Recommended for ages 4-8.

 

 

 

 

 

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CMIK Must Read! On Your Toes: A Ballet ABC by Rachel Isadora

29 Apr

 

Calling all tiny ballet lovers! Rachel Isadora’s beautifully illustrated On Your Toes: A Ballet ABC is a slam dunk. Children of all races are represented here and boys and girl dancers show up on the pages. It’s really a pleasure to look at and explore. Each page is a different letter in the alphabet and presents either a technique in ballet like pas de chat (cat’s step) or développé (where you raise a bent leg and slowly straighten it in the air) or aspects of ballet like variation and costume. It also includes famous ballets like The Nutcracker, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Odette. My daughter loved the illustrations so much, especially because all of the dancers depicted are children, she imitates her favorite poses at bedtime!  Her birthday is coming up and this will definitely be on her wish list. It is a quick and simple read but it will inspire your little dance enthusiast!

I have learned that anything by Rachel Isadora is going to have children of color beautifully represented front and center. She is an author to always be on the look out for!

Recommended for ages 2-6.

 

 

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Blog to check out: My Brown Baby

2 Apr

Okay, so this is what I aspire for my blog. Check out Denene Miller’s My Brown Baby. She and the staff there cover everything from pregnancy, parenting, food to essays on issues related to raising African American children. They have done a great job covering all the media coverage and debate over the murder of teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida.

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‘Bully’: A new powerful documentary

1 Apr

Thanks to A.O. Scott at the New York Times for his review of the documentary ‘Bully’. I have not yet seen this documentary myself, but am looking forward to watching it. Although I must admit, based on the short clip I watched, it looks quite painful and brutal at times. And if you’ve ever experienced bullying first-hand, as I did, watching it again happen to another child can really cut to the bone. But it’s an important subject that needs to be addressed because up until now the conversation surrounding systematic school bullying has been paltry and weak to the say the least. What’s hopeful about the film is it shows there is a growing movement to speak up against bullying. That it’s not just ‘boys being boys’ or how school has to just be this way for an unfortunate few.

There are critics of the film, however, like Emily Bazelon of Slate who complains that the film inaccurately tells the stories of two children who committed suicide. She complains that the film omits important information such as, in the case of one of the boys, he had Asperger’s, ADHD and had been diagnosed as bi-polar. She fears that prominently talking about two cases of suicide and linking them with bullying could create a contagion effect where kids who are bullied think suicide is a normal response.

This is good information to know before watching such a film, but I still do not think it negates the overall call-to-action of the film and the problem. This is an pervasive problem that is hurting millions of children and adults are doing a terrible job dealing with it. We have to change our thinking and stop passing bullying off as a fact of life that certain kids have to survive. The documentary has a website that shares more information on joining the movement to stop accepting bullying as a inevitable part of life at school.

I just checked and Bully is coming to my local art house movie theater in mid-April. It probably won’t be showing in a regular cineplex, but if you’re lucky enough to have an art house movie theater near you check to see if it’s coming soon.

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We Love You, Manny

30 Mar

I just wanted to share my friend, artist Bart Tiongson’s, awesome illustrated tribute to World Boxing Organization welterweight champion and Filipino sensation Manny Pacquiao. I had to look up some information on the amazing Pacquiao because, to be quite honest, I know as much about boxing as I do about the show Game of Thrones.

But Bart has got me interested in this guy. Pacquiao is quite the phenomenon. According to Wiki-pedia he is the first eight-division world champion, he’s won the lineal championship in four different weight classes, he’s been called “Fighter of the Year” and “Pound for Pound Best Boxer” by numerous sources, and to top it all off, he was elected to the House of Representatives in the Philippines.

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CMIK Book Recommendation: Peter’s Chair by Ezra Jack Keats

30 Mar

My children and I checked out this beautiful children’s book from the library the other day. Ezra Jack Keats is probably best known for 1962′s The Snowy Day, the first modern children’s book to feature an African American main character.  But he has illustrated and authored many children’s books.

Peter’s Chair stood out to me because it tells the story of a little boy trying to process having a new baby sister in the house. Everything that was once his is now being repainted pink for his little sister. This theme pertains to my own children because we are expecting another baby in the summer. Like so many of Keats’ children’s books, the family is African American. The illustrations are colorful and have an almost graphic design-like quality. I’m thinking of stealing the giant daisy motif on Peter’s sister’s nursery walls. The illustrations are really arresting and beautiful.

My children enjoyed it tonight at bedtime! I am grateful to my local library for prominently displaying these types of books.

Recommended for both boys and girls, ages 2-6.

 

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CMIK Book Recommendation: The Firekeeper’s Son by Linda Sue Park

28 Mar

Set in Korea in the 1800s, The Firekeeper’s Son describes how villages used to send news to the king by lighting fires on mountaintops. A village would light a fire signaling everything was safe. Their fire would be then tell the next village to light a fire and the message would be passed along until it reached the king. If enemy ships were spotted, the firekeeper would not light a fire, signally danger. Each village would have a designated firekeeper. This role would be passed on through the generations.

The main character of Linda Sue Park’s gripping children’s story, Sang-hee, longs to see the king’s soldiers. He romanticizes what it would be like one day if the fire were not lit and the soldiers had to come to the village. One day his father is injured and he is unable to light the fire. He entrusts his young son to light the fire so the palace knows all is well. For a moment, the son contemplates not lighting the fire because the temptation of seeing the soldiers is so strong. But he hears his father’s voice in his head and he knows that that would be wrong and irresponsible.

My son K loves this story. He absolutely identifies with this young boy’s vivid imagination, his desire to see the soldiers, but also his strong bond with his father. I love how the story is set in a place and time that American children aren’t exposed to very often. K and I can talk about what Korea must have been like then. How it was rural and what the technology was like at the time. We also can talk about the geography of Korea and how being a peninsula makes a country vulnerable to invasion. But because Korea is mountainous these ‘fires’ were an effective way of communicating.

I knew the story had made an impression on him because when we were at the park the other day, K started collected sticks telling me he was building a fire. He was going to send the palace a message that all was well in the land!

Linda Sue Park is the author of another book we love, Bi Bim Bop.
Recommended for children ages 3-7.

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Check out this hunky doll!

26 Mar

I used to play with Barbies when I was girl and to the best of my recollection no one cared about “Ken”. I had an ancient Ken doll, but he sort of sat in the toy bin, dusty and unloved. It’s kind of like how on Project Runway, once every four years they have a “menswear” challenge. In the world of make-believe, no one really wants to be the “guy”. But my interest was piqued the other day when L dragged me in to the Disney store. There, amid, all of the puffed up princesses was a very handsome man, Li Shang from the animated movie Mulan.

That’s a nice looking doll, not to get all creepy on you. Check him out because right now he’s only $8 on the Disney Store website. I showed my son and surprisingly he said he wanted to play with Shang. Kudos to Disney for putting out such a nice looking doll.

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Check out Japanese ballerina Marina Kanno

25 Mar

Thanks to my husband for finding this beautiful video of dancers Marina Kanno and Giacomo Bevilaqua performing amazing jumps to Radiohead’s Everything In Its Right Place. The video was shot at a 1,000 frames per second. Grace and beauty in action! We showed it to our ballet-obsessed daughter L and she thoroughly enjoyed it, of course! Kanno is a Japanese ballerina who is now a soloist with Staatsballett Berlin.

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