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Top 12 Summer Reads for Kids Under 6

books, GEAR By May 25, 2012 Tags: , , No Comments

Top 12 Summer Reads for Kids Under 6

On those lazy days at the beach, what better way do you have to connect with your children than through learning fun.  When you’re not writing letters in the sand and counting incoming waves, lay down under an umbrella and jump into one of these stories.  Here are our picks for the under-six set.  (Just don’t get so involved you forget to reapply the sunscreen).

1.  Here Comes Hortense, by Heather Hartt-Sussman

2.  Boo: The Life of the World’s Cutest Dog, by J.H. Lee

3.  E- Mergency! by Tom Lichtenheld and Ezra Fields-Meyer

4.  Rokko by Paola Opal

5. Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, by Mo Willems

6.  The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

7.  Mother Goose, ed. Iona Opie

8.  Alice in Wonderland, (Disney Edition)

9.  Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak

10.  Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault

11.  We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury

12. Corduroy, by Don Freeman

Available at Chapters/Indigo.

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Cook, by Deborah Anzinger

books, GEAR By October 19, 2011 Tags: , , No Comments

I used to make muffins every couple of days.  Somehow, I just stopped.  When I was sent this new cookbook, I was inspired – was is the great 1950’s graphics on the cover or the yummy recipes?  Not sure.  2 pans of muffins and 3 dozen ‘Wartime’ cookies later, I was hooked.  There are awesome food recipes too – not just baking.  Anzinger has also provided tips and tricks for keeping a busy family organized and stuffing as much health into quick meals as possible.  She even teaches how to enlist other family members to help with the prep.  I’ve always wanted a sous chef.  And a pool boy.  But I digress.
www.chapters.indigo.ca

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The Best Kids Cookbooks

books, eat, GEAR, LIVE By July 17, 2011 Tags: , , , , No Comments

Kids love to create, and so by extension they love to cook. Cooking is both science and magic, producing edible wonders. Cooking for kids should be age-appropriate and easy to do. Here are some of the best kid’s cookbooks for sharing fun time in the kitchen with your brood.

Best All-Purpose Cookbooks

The Everything Kid’s Cookbook: From Mac’n Cheese to Double Chocolate Chip Cookies-All You Need to Have Some Finger Lickin’ Fun, by Sandra K. Nissenberg. This cookbook is packed with easy recipes of every kind, from snack and appetizers to main courses and desserts, as well as fun activities like puzzles, cooking tips, and even trivia. The language is very simple and direct, and is ideal for younger children. The recipes are generally healthy and low-fat, with nutrition facts and calorie counts for each one.

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Top Children’s Summer Book Picks

books, GEAR By May 10, 2011 Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

What better time than summer to clean out the bookshelves and get ready to work on some education through the dry spell.  Here are our top picks for little ones:

Press Here, by Herve Tullet

We read this with the kids and were commanded to not turn another page while they ran to the potty.  Interactive, exciting, and educational, ‘Press Here’ helps kids review colours, counting and actions in a super-fun way.  The kids are asked to press, rub, and shake the book to ‘move’ the dots.  What a way to develop a love of reading!

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Louis Vuitton City Guides

books, Canada, GEAR, International, ROAM, USA By January 24, 2011 Tags: , , , , No Comments

Every fall, luxury brand Louis Vuitton publishes gorgeous and super-helpful guides for some of the greatest cities in the world.  We tried the European editions (surprise surprise), and were able to discover off-the-beaten track lounges in Paris and family-friendly, hip gems in Rome.  Note to self: they also look great on your bookshelf, and they’re nice and light to pack.

Image Courtesy: www.luxuo.com

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100 Classics You Need To Read In Your Lifetime

100 Classics You Need To Read In Your Lifetime

books, GEAR By December 9, 2009 Tags: , , 3 Comments

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 classics you need to read in your lifetime. How do your reading habits stack up?  Note… when you’re travelling is a great time to crack open one of these tomes and start ticking off these 100 classics.  Feel free to comment on this article and add some of your own selections.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Graham
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

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Personalized Storybooks

books, GEAR By October 16, 2009 Tags: , , 2 Comments

Sometimes you just need the perfect gift.  A first birthday, a baby gift for a respected business colleague, or maybe for the homecoming of the baby who has just been released from the NICU.  It happens – and these occasions should not be allowed to slip by.  You might not be able to grab it from Winners a hour before the event, but it will most certainly be perfect.  Custom Made for Kids prints individual, bound storybooks about the life of a child.

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stone soup recipe

Stone Soup Recipe

books, EAT, GEAR, holidays By October 8, 2009 Tags: , , No Comments

Once upon a time, somewhere in post-war Eastern Europe, there was a great famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. One day a wandering soldier came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.  “There’s not a bite to eat in the whole province,” he was told. “Better keep moving on.”

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Books For Babies

books, GEAR By November 9, 2007 2 Comments

Reading aloud to your baby teaches them about communication, stimulates brain and language development, introduces concepts such as numbers, letters, colours and shapes, builds listening, memory and vocabulary skills and gives babies information about the world around them. When reading, your child hears you using different emotions and sounds, which fosters emotional and social development.

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