Mirelle Ortega, one of our featured authors at Kidquake this year, is also an illustrator whose debut picture book mirrors its title. It's magic! Let me tell you about the place I'm from, a faraway land brimming with magia. Powerful magic that twists and turns and touches everything around you. Text/Illustration ©Mirelle Ortega With those … Continue reading Magic: Once Upon a Faraway Land – Perfect Picture Book Friday
As cold winds start to blow across what once was prairie, this farmer's daughter thinks of that long, bitter winter so long ago. The winter when farmers sent a message to Washington....by driving their tractors there. FARMERS IN 1977had a problem: they weregoing broke. Crop prices tanked.Expenses soared for tractors,fuel, and land. “When a bushel … Continue reading Farmers Unite! – Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF
As we consider current election results and the aftermath, I'd like everyone to take a peek at the following: If anyone in Hillary Clinton's campaign had read this book, if any Democrat had read this book 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, we might be in a different place right now. The author, Osha … Continue reading Broken Heartland – An Omen from 1990
Where does our food come from? Here's an answer that looks more like traditional farming as opposed to the huge farms that harvest soy beans and corn (especially the corn products that end up in so many of our processed foods. If you want more info on that topic, check out the film King Corn, … Continue reading The Farm That Feeds Us – Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF
I was leafing through a pile of picture books (imagine that!), and found this gem. Daniel Minter's acrylic wash illustrations are vibrant and luminous in this 2019 Caldecott Honor book. They make me feel like I am peering through the translucent glass of time at a memory. Pure magic. On reunion morning, we rise before … Continue reading Going Down Home With Daddy – Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF
Once a farm girl, always a farm girl. So it's especially lovely to go back to my roots via the prose of the fabulous Patricia MacLachlan. The hundred-year barn was built one summer in our meadow with a small stream running through. It was built by townspeople: fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, grandmothers and … Continue reading The Hundred-Year Barn – Perfect Picture Book Friday #PPBF
Some kids are drawn to build, some to dance, some to sing or write or draw or do math or reach for the stars....so many paths and possibilities. And then we come to a child in Cameroon. Tantoh, a young boy in Cameroon, is drawn to the earth. He is fascinated by how plants … Continue reading I Am Farmer – Perfect Picture Book Friday
OK, folks. Thousands of you have requested photos of the BUTTER COW from the Illinois State Fair. As a follow-up to Clint Eastwood's performance at the Republican National Convention, we really can't get any more exciting. So you'll have to wait a little longer for the stories about Costa Rica. Here's the cow we saw … Continue reading Visiting the Heartland
Jilanne Hoffmann 