Archive for March, 2010
50% Off Easter Cookbook with Family Activities
Weekly Book Special: March 29th-April 4th
Sunday is Easter, an important religious holiday and a fun family time to hunt for painted eggs. This week’s special is:
Easter Treats: Recipes and Crafts for the Whole Family
Written by Jill O’Connor, Illustrated by Mikyla Bruder, Photographs by Jonelle Weaver
(Paperback, 96 pages, 2000, $15.00)
Catch a healthy case of Spring Fever with nearly 50 festive recipes and craft ideas in this book!
These tantalizing confections and easy craft projects revel in the Easter spirit — from Chicken Little Cookie Pops to fuzzy Peter Cottontail Finger Puppets.
Simple, whimsical craft ideas will keep kids busy dyeing and decorating eggs, adorning baskets, and creating springtime decorations. Full-color photos.
Our favorite recipe is for the Easter Bunny Cake (click to enlarge):
“Anyone who enjoys the Easter holiday will love this,” writes Calissa Leigh at the Curled Up with a Good Kid’s Book Web site. “[T]he lovely decorations you could use for a number of different occasions; the recipes themselves could be used at any time of the year. Easter Treats is a nice addition to your recipe collection and would make a nice gift around holiday time.”
“Author Jill O’Connor emphasizes fun over artistic perfection,” writes reviewer Jill Lightner. “She makes it easy to enjoy yourself, with thorough instructions, fresh ideas, and an easygoing presentation.”
All orders include a special spring-themed gift!
Weekly Book Special: Passover Seder: Touch, Turn, Open and Learn!
Weekly Book Special: March 22nd-28th
Next Monday is the Jewish High Holiday and festival of Passover, commemorating the Hebrews’ escape from enslavement in Egypt. Our book special this week is:
Passover Seder: Touch, Turn, Open and Learn!
by Emily Sper (Hardcover no dustjacket, 20 pages, 2003, $10.00)
“Clever paper engineering turns ‘The Passover Seder’ by Emily Sper into interactive educational fun,” writes Publisher’s Weekly.
“Kids can rotate a seder plate laden with bitter herb, charoset, etc., to match each item with its English and Hebrew names (transliteration provided); pull a tab to ‘spill’ a drop of wine for each of the 10 plagues and look behind flaps to find the afikoman. “The text outlines the steps of a seder and adds bonus facts. Bold yet polished graphics ensure a strong visual appeal.”
“[This is] a great book for beginners,” writes Kyra Anderson of This Mom blog on family and wellness. “We had our very first home Passover seder last night…it was a tremendous success!”
The North American Montessori Center also lists this book under “suggested reading” about Passover.
Weekly Book Special: Forget not Mee and My Garden . . . : Selected Letters, 1725-1768, of Peter Collinson, F.R.S. (American Philosophical Society)
March 15th-21st Weekly Half-Price Book Special
Warm weather and buds on the trees means only one thing: spring is right around the corner! Coinciding with the season, this week’s special is:
Forget Not Mee and My Garden:
Selected Letters, 1725-1768, of Peter Collinson, F.R.S.
by Alan W. Armstrong (Hardcover, 300 pages, 2002, $60.00)
English-style gardens around the world, from suburban yards to large parks, owe their foundations to businessman Peter Collinson.
Flowers and plants in these gardens are descended from the hundreds of seeds that Collinson imported from celebrated American botanist John Bartram in the 1700s.
This limited-edition book published by the American Philosophical Society, in shrinkwrap, features Collinson’s nearly 200 letters to the colonial world’s top scientists, including Batram, Carl Linnaeus and Benjamin Franklin, and features more than 100 full-color illustrations.
My favorite spread is of the Chestnut, Dogwood and Fringe Trees (click to enlarge):
“All letters in this volume are Collinson’s; they’re fully footnoted, and all correspondents are well-introduced,” writes Book News. “The color plates of correspondents, flora, and fauna make this a beautiful, as well as informative, read.”
“[The] deft match of text and image and [the] superb but unobtrusive editing,” writes historian Eugenia Herbert, “leave no doubt the Quaker merchant’s seminal role in the grand Enlightenment project of mapping the natural world.”
St. Patrick’s Day and Irish/Ireland Books
St. Patrick’s Day is next week on Wednesday, March 17th. Browse our more than 50 titles on Ireland and on the Irish to find that perfect St. Patrick’s Day gift for friends and family.
Our special this week is “Savour of Ireland”, a hard-to-find travel cookbook of turn-of-the-century Ireland, imported from the U.K. The book, written by award-winning Irish historian George Morrison, features more than 50 historical photos and more than a dozen recipes.
(Paperback, 127 pages, 1996, $17.00)
Here are three additional titles we recommend:
Feasting Galore Irish Style: Recipes & Food Lore from the Emerald Isle
by Maura Laverty
(Paperback, 144 pages, 1961, $15.00)
Beckons readers through the door of the traditional Irish kitchen. Each of the 11 chapters begins with an engaging anecdote that puts the food into its context — whether it is prepared to celebrate an occasion, to welcome guests, or even to seduce!
With simple ingredients and easy-to-follow instructions, these recipes will help the home chef create a rich, plentiful Irish feast. Among the 200 recipes are classics like Irish Stew and Mince Pie, which Oliver Cromwell unsuccessfully attempted to ban because of its then-religious shape.
Also, Christmas Pudding, and traditional Halloween delicacies, Boxty, Barmbrack, and Colcannon, which contain paper-wrapped charms. Beverages include homemade wines, liqueurs, and the perfect recipe for famed Gaelic Coffee.
Cooking blogger Culture_Vulture at the Theories of Bacon blog whipped up Haggerty, based on the recipe in the book. “Maura Laverty’s marvelous cookbook,” she writes, “comes across very much as a cookbook full of recipes that someone mostly wrote down from memory, perhaps in a bit of a hurry, while also reminiscing lovingly about various occasions in which these dishes were cooked.”
Definitive St. Patrick’s Day Festivity Book
by Michael James Fallon
(Hardcover, 237 pages, 1997, $22.00)
This book presents Irish culture related to St. Patrick & his Day. It is a cookbook of comestibles, a how-to book of activities, a guidebook for hosting parties, a bag of tricks for enlivening a social affair, a workbook for teachers to use in classrooms, and a good humor book for food and drink establishments.
Beyond its shenanigans, its anecdotes delight in reading and provide general knowledge in Celtic legend. This trove presents “a wee bit of everything Irish” from ambiance to activities, songs to skits, parties to Patrick, blessings to toasts and proverbs to boast. “For fun at home, school, office or pub.” Illustrations.
Librarian Mary Ellen of the Dayton, Ohio Metro Library raves of the book: “Here’s the book you need if you are planning on having a St. Patrick’s Day party the way the Irish would!”
Danny Boy: The Legend of the Beloved Irish Ballad
by Malachy McCourt
(Hardcover, 141 pages, 2002, $19.00)
Everyone can hum “Danny Boy,” the haunting Irish ballad that inevitably brings a tear to the eye. Yet for all its popularity, the most requested “Irish” song and its origins still remain an enigma.
Is it even Irish? Did the song initially grace the Irish countryside as the winsome ballad of an itinerant piper, or did it first take form as a blind musician’s bow danced across the strings of a fiddle?
Travel with best-selling author Malachy McCourt on his journey for the truth as he interviews musicologists, historians, academics, celebrities and Irish icons. Join the expedition and trace the complex evolution and enduring mystique of “Danny Boy” in an unforgettable tribute that brilliantly weaves history with folklore.
Louisiana Purchase and Lewis and Clark Publications
Today is the 106th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.
On March 10, 1804 there was a formal ceremony in St. Louis to transfer ownership of the territory from Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France to the United States. This territory included most of the Westward Expansion of the U.S., with the present-day Midwest, Great Plains and Western states, plus New Mexico and Louisiana.
We offer you a wide selection of publications on the Lewis and Clark Expedition from 1804-1806. Below are two of our highlights:
The principal objective of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery 1804-06 was the mapping of the West to the Pacific Ocean. Clark’s final cartographic achievement was his 1814 engraved map. One of the great maps of all times, it is perhaps the single most influential one of the American West, for it was upon this map that our modern understanding of the topography of that vast areas would evolve.
The first publication of the Lewis and Clark journals was Nicholas Biddle’s 1814 two-volume chronological narrative containing the map. In 1998 there was another “run” of the map produced by means of offset lithography, printed by our affiliate the American Philosophical Society. Size: 2-1/2′ long x 14″. Tan. One thousand regular copies were printed, with Black plus 1 PMS ink for duotone. Also includes a 10-page booklet on the history of the expedition and the map.
Jefferson’s Botanists: Lewis and Clark Discover the Plants of the West
by Richard McCourt and Earle Spamer
(Academy of Natural Sciences, Paperback, 25 pages, $20)
This beautiful concise book discusses how Meriwether Lewis collected plant specimens on the journey of exploration that he and William Clark led across the American West to the Pacific Ocean & back, sent by President Thomas Jefferson. It includes facsimile excerpts from their original journals.
The task of plant collecting was Lewis’s military duty, but he seems to have had a real flair for collecting and describing the specimens. It is clear that he spent long hours observing the specimens, perhaps with a magnifying glass, cross-checking the anatomy of the plant before him with an illustrated edition of Linnaeus’s botany book.
The hundreds of Lewis and Clark specimens that survive today, known as the Lewis and Clark Herbarium, are stored in protective folders in special storage cabinets, in a climate controlled room at our affiliate, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Visiting scholars can readily retrieve and study the plants. Illus. (Paperback, 25 pages.)
Weekly Book Special: Savour of Ireland: A Photographic and Gastronomic Tour of Ireland a Century Ago
March 7th-14th Weekly Half-Off Book Special
To commemorate the upcoming holiday of St. Patrick’s Day, this week’s special is:
Savour of Ireland:
A Photographic and Gastronomic Tour of Ireland a Century Ago
by George Morrison (Paperback, 127 pages, 1996, $17.00)
Imagine a tourist embarking on a journey through 19th-century Ireland, beginning in 1860. This hard-to-find book imported from the U.K. describes such an experience.
This book includes romantic narrative, more than 50 never-before-seen historical photos and more than a dozen period recipes combine to give a flavor of the country.
My favorite spread is of Clifden Castle, built in 1865 (click to enlarge):
Author George Morrison is also an Irish documentary filmmaker, best known for the groundbreaking films Mise Éire (I Am Ireland) in 1959 (Alan at the GaelMovies blog calls it “Ireland’s most important film”) and Saorise? (Freedom?) in 1961, both about the fight for Irish independence. Morrison received the Lifetime Contribution Award at the 2009 Irish Film and Television Awards.
“The process of identification, salvage and restoration of these fragile artifacts,” says Awards President Mary McAleese, “ensured the survival of a…record of a period of Irish history which would otherwise have disappeared.”
Weekly Book Special: Alice in Pop-Up Wonderland by J. Otto Seibold
March 1st-7th Weekly Half-Off Book Special
In movie theaters this week is the film Alice in Wonderland. Our book special this week is an amazing visual retelling of the classic Lewis Carroll tale:
Alice in (Pop-Up) Wonderland
Based on the novel by Lewis Carroll, Illustrated by J. Otto Seibold, Paper engineering by James R. Diaz
(Hardcover no dustjacket, 12 pages, 2003, $20.00)
“J. Otto Seibold‘s ‘super dimensional’ Alice, which he both designed and illustrated, plunges children into a psychedelic universe,” writes Booklist‘s Jennifer Mattson.
“The pops conceived by Seibold and paper engineer James R. Diaz are a lot of fun. Each spread contains a dizzying array of devices and effects, including a particularly clever rendering of the vanishing Cheshire cat.” (Hardcover, 12 pages, with full-color pop-up illustrations, in shrink-wrap.)
Watch the trailer for Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter below:
“If you are looking to have a crazy Alice experience and be surprised and excited with every turn of the page,” writes Julia Rothman on the Book By Its Cover blog, “then pick up a copy.”
“This just might be the coolest pop-up book ever!” writes children’s fashion blogger Sweet Pepita. “This book is technically astounding and, of course, the illustrations are awesome.” View great photos of the book on a Japanese blog that covers children’s pop-ups. Scholastic has also made a cool flash animation based on the book.
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