Beautiful

I found a copy of Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe in the last Fully Booked sale at 80 off. Of course, I bought it; it was one of my favorite story books back when I was that little squirt who thought Nancy Drew was a ghost hunter.

I liked this book a lot because the pictures looked so different from what I was used to; this is a fairy tale--not a Grimm Brothers', but it had the same elements: a good sister, a wicked sister, magic, adventure...handsome prince--the works! What made it so interesting was the fact that it was different.

Growing up reading western books, I was used to seeing beautiful princesses who had long blonde hair and fair skin, blue eyes and red lips. You can just imagine how a book with the word 'beautiful' in the title and a brown face on the cover would have stuck out like a sore thumb among the many typical illustrated fairy tale books on the shelf to a western-beauty-brainwashed kid like me.

I picked up the story and enjoyed it very much--it was mesmerizing to look at the African images; I especially remember how the beggar boy's ear curled at the tip. The story was about two daughters, both beautiful. One wanted to be queen and the other just wanted to serve her father. One day, the king gave a summons to all the unmarried ladies in the land to come and meet him--he was looking for a wife. On the way to the palace (the sisters did not travel together), there were "tests" and the wicked sister failed them while the good sister passed. It's a story about beauty within: kindness, sincerity, charity.

It's interesting also to note that, having a "realistic" art style, the book is not really the type I would have instantly picked off the shelf--I would prefer to get the ones with the cute cartoon-y illustrations because, by experience, they tend to be funnier. But this book I got intrigued with because, besides it being African, I wanted to see if there was an image in it where the daughters really did look beautiful. (You have to excuse this kid.) They weren't conventionally (biased word) pretty but by the time I finished reading, I agreed that they were beautiful. Perhaps that was why the illustrations were more on the realistic side?


In any case, this is a book about real beauty, overlooking skin color, eye color, nose shape, lip thickness, hair texture and lash length. Nowadays, pop culture insists that beauty has only one face--preferably one that went "under the knife." But even kids would know that isn't true, if you gave them the opportunity to think it over. Because no matter how hard a brainwashing the media gives a person, every one, deep down, knows that what makes a person truly beautiful is the virtues that dwell in the heart.

July!!!

I haven't gotten my hands on a real copy of July 2009 issue of Baby Magazine but I have an idea what's in it! And it's all awesome stuff, including the winners for the PBBY children's book competition (Salangga and Alcala prize), lots of articles on brain development, and seeing beauty in your pregnant (and post-pregnancy) body.

And isn't that baby on the cover really cute? Her name is Therese dela Cruz Murrf Trinidad, and someday she'll solve that rubiks cube if she wants to. Photo by Ralph Alejandrino.

Baby magazine is published by Marathon Publishing Co. and is sold at all National Bookstores, Babyland (Robinsons Galleria, Shaw Blvd. near Cherry Foodarama), Baby & Co. (The Podium and Power Plant Mall), Bufini, Procreation Shangri-la mall, Big & Small Co. Shangri-la Mall.

Cora Cooks Pancit

Oh, I am drooling! My lola just made some pancit for us yesterday when we visited her in Cavite. You could smell it from the living room, a warm savory aroma, and when you put it on the plate, the whole bottom heats up so fast you might burn yourself if you're not careful. Nothing beats lola's cooking!

I discovered this book on the Internet--it's published by Shen's Books, and it has a Pinoy theme. How very interesting! Must keep eyes peeled for a copy somewhere. Here's the synopsis from the website:

Cora loves being in the kitchen, but she always gets stuck doing the kid jobs like licking the spoon. One day, however, when her older sisters and brother head out, Cora finally gets the chance to be Mama's assistant chef. And of all the delicious Filipino dishes that dance through Cora's head, she and Mama decide to make pancit, her favorite noodle dish.

With Mama's help, Cora does the grown-up jobs like shredding the chicken and soaking the noodles (perhaps Mama won't notice if she takes a nibble of chicken or sloshes a little water on the floor). Cora even gets to stir the noodles in the pot—carefully-- while Mama supervises. When dinner is finally served, her siblings find out that Cora did all their grown-up tasks, and Cora waits anxiously to see what everyone thinks of her cooking.

Dorina Lazo Gilmore's text delightfully captures the warmth between mother and daughter as they share a piece of their Filipino heritage. With bright and charming illustrations by Kristi Valiant, Cora's family comes alive as Cora herself becomes the family's newest little chef.

Tamales!

The last time I tried my hand at making Filipino delicacies from scratch was back in grade school (one was a rainbow pichi pichi and the other a blob of ube that we had to add blue-violet coloring to because it wasn't purple enough). So this is hardly a book I'd pick up, but pick it up I did, and I'm glad to have done so.

Published by Tahanan Books, Tamales Day! by Didith Tan Rodrigo with pictures by Arnel Mirasol is a simply worded story about a family who make preparations for a certain "tamales day" on the first Saturday of December. It starts with the family going to the market for some ingredients, continues on to the cooking process and ends in their celebrating with friends an relatives in a salu-salo.

The illustrations are intresting because of the detail and texture the artist adds to his watercolor (or watercolor pencils?). It's easy to assume the story to be old-fashioned, but if you look beyond the house dress (duster), the banana leaves, the rice pounder (lusong) and the wooden shoes (bakya), you'll see something that makes this book worth putting in a child's hands: in the story, the kids are given tasks to do; but with the help of the pictures, you see how happy they are to do them!


Today, service is easily looked upon as something "not for me to do." But doing chores--doing your part as a member of the household--is a very dignified job, and a good way to affirm that you are part of the home and you want to make it clean, hospitable and beautiful for those other people you share it with. Love is best expressed through action; and one action that is obviously the work of love is service.

The awesome power of Elizabeth and Jessica

I used to be a library rat, one of those kids who would eat their lunch in 15 minutes so that the rest of the lunch hour could be spent in the company of books in the school library. I remember choosing books by the cuteness of the illustrations alone (the more cartoon-y and silly the better). As I read more, I found I gravitated towards the thicker books, and before I realized I was doing it, I was plucking out familiar serial books from the shelves, thinking that this book must be good because I liked another one by the same author.

Most serial books (read: Sweet Valley) are pooh-poohed by the highbrow lit crowd because they're populated by flat and typical characters, don't offer much of a conflict and demand so little thinking from the reader. But what these highbrow dudes are missing is the (awesome) ability of these books to initiate kids into reading.

Kids have favorite authors because they like picking favorites. I picked up a Sweet Valley because there was a cat on the cover. From then on, any spine with a Francine Pascal written on it jumped out at me from the shelf. Kids also know a good book when they finally get their hands on one, and this is when the wonderful world of reading starts to inspire them.


The first Beverly Cleary book I read was Dear Mr. Henshaw, and I read only a chapter of it, because it was in my school textbook. I liked it a lot that I looked for it in the library and read the whole thing. I wasn't disappointed; in fact, this was the first time I got the itch to write.

Recently, I've been reading and re-reading this book by Catherine Woolley called, plainly enough, Writing for Children. I bought it because a teacher once said that to write, any writing how-to book helps, so get one. And true enough, it has helped me, at least, by forcing me to decide, once and for all, what kind of children's story I want to write.

In a section entitled "Favorite Authors" Woolley writes: A child's favorite author is the one whose books he or she has come to love and eagerly look forward to, and if that author switches to an entirely different sort of story the child reader may put the library book back on the shelf in disappointment, turn away, and look for another favorite author.

I don't think I've grown out of the favorite author phase. In fact, I think I'm collecting favorite authors! I keep dropping by bargain bookstores and bookfairs for the reason that there's a series I've been dying to complete. It only means I'll be hunting for a long time, because I also keep finding new series to begin collecting wherever I go...

...and that sums up the whole awesome power of bookshelf dust bunnies like Sweet Valley.

Nutrition and Children's book month

Hello, Aeleina Resse Ocenar is this month's cover baby!

Because it's Nutrition month, we at Baby Magazine put in a lot of good stuff about the food we eat. Carbo-protein-fatty-discombobulations from chem class have never been clearer, thanks to Dr. Gidget Ortiz! Along with the lesson on what exactly "junk" food is, there are items on reading food labels (time to practice your math skills, math-phobes), smart-eating for two, food allergies, and a look at two random refrigerators to show just what foodstuff (and nutrition) you make so easily available to your kids.

Might seem so...disconnected, but July as Nutrition month does tie up nicely with the month's other face: children's book month. Nutrition is nourishment of the body, while books are nourishment of the mind. For book month, Baby Magazine features books on dyslexia and an article on understanding the difficulty in reading and writing, as well as two very interesting story book authors: May Tobias-Papa, an illustrator who can also write (she won a Palanca for Estrellita), and Russell Molina, a writer who can also illustrate (he won an Alcala Prize for Uuwi ang Nanay kong si Darna).

If you've been reading my older entries, you'll see I'm the privileged one to interview May Papa. I'm happy to receive a letter from her today, and am just so pleased that she liked my article! Here's a little something she sent me, a drawing of Nora Aunor she made when she was 3 or 4 years old. To May, thank you too!

Kids and the theme of death

Writing children's stories is harder than any other fiction writing because you have to be more sensitive with word choice, and ultimately how to express the theme of your story. You must also do all this without "talking down" to your audience. Kids are, after all, smarter than anyone gives them credit for.

I've had the privilege of interviewing May Tobias-Papa for one of my articles, and I think she's cool! Not only is she an illustrator for children's books, but also a Palanca-winning writer (Children's Story Category). The story she wrote was no easy theme either: it was about death. Estrellita: The Little Wishing Star made it to the press, rewritten only so that it fits the picture book format.

The story is about death without being too blunt about it: no bawl-inducing bed-ridden scenes, just a mere disappearance--the stars die, but May chooses not to dwell on it. She instead puts meaning to why the stars die, and the good their death brings. In the story, wishing stars die when a wish is granted.... Estrellita, who wants to be the boy Noel's wishing star, strives to reach him so he could make a wish on her. It's touching how the star desires to help when all she knew about Noel were his sad eyes.

I think death in a children's book is not uncommon--it's the presentation that counts, along with the role of the parent in telling the story. "Little kids have cried while reading it," shares May, explaining why books with death themes must be read to kids with a proper explanation. As Manolo Silayan of Alitaptap Storytellers says, "Books for kids can have a PG rating...you must read and discuss with your child."

Not only is reading with guidance helpful in learning to read, but also helpful in digesting and reflecting on the "whys" of a story. It's a critically important question to ponder on and, though the parent might not have a straight answer to their child's "whys," there's nothing wrong with throwing the questions back to the child--you might be surprised at what your little one has to say.