Monthly Archives: May 2006

Little House

Bannocks!

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A young Highlands reader requested a recipe for bannocks. I just happen to have a good one…there are many variations, of course, but the basic recipe is very simple and has endured for centuries: mix uncooked oatmeal with a little melted fat, a dash of salt, and just enough water to make a thick dough, and form into flattened balls. Fry ’em on a hot griddle like pancakes. Yum.

That’s the bare-bones version. (I’m doing a lot of bare-bones versions of things this week, aren’t I?) Here’s the good recipe I mentioned, a teensy bit more sophisticated, but still the simple, traditional, basic bannock. It comes from Rampant Scotland, which has an extensive collection of authentic Scottish recipes, including cock-a-leekie soup, shortbread, and (shudder) haggis.

Scottish Bannocks (Oatcakes)

Ingredients
4 oz (125g) medium oatmeal
2 teaspoons melted fat (bacon fat, if available)
2 pinches of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
Pinch of salt
3/4 tablespoons hot water
Additional oatmeal for kneading

Method
Mix the oatmeal, salt and bicarbonate and pour in the melted fat into the centre of the mixture. Stir well, using a porridge stick if you have one and add enough water to make into a stiff paste. Cover a surface in oatmeal and turn the mixture onto this. Work quickly as the paste is difficult to work if it cools. Divide into two and roll one half into a ball and knead with hands covered in oatmeal to stop it sticking. Roll out to around quarter inch thick. Put a plate which is slightly smaller than the size of your pan over the flattened mixture and cut round to leave a circular oatcake. Cut into quarters (also called farls) and place in a heated pan which has been lightly greased. Cook for about 3 minutes until the edges curl slightly, turn, and cook the other side. Get ready with another oatcake while the first is being cooked.

An alternative method of cooking is to bake them in an oven at Gas5/375F/190C for about 30 minutes or until brown at the edges. The quantities above will be enough for two bannocks about the size of a dessert plate. If you want more, do them in batches rather than making larger quantities of mixture. Store in a tin and reheat in a moderate oven when required.

Catholic Culture records one old Scottish tradition involving bannocks:

Bannocks were baked before daybreak on Christmas morning. One was given to each member of the family. They were often flavored with caraway. The cake was marked in quarters by the cross, but, thin as it was, each person had to keep his cake whole through all of Christmas day. If, when the evening feast came, the cake were broken, bad fortune would fall on the careless one’s head. If the cake were still Christ’s bread, whole and entire, then joy and prosperity would be forthcoming.

Then of course there is the May Day custom I wrote about in Highlands: marking bannocks with a cross before they are baked and rolling them down a hill on the first of May, hoping one’s own oatcake made it to the bottom in one piece. A bannock that broke on the way down boded no good for its owner…

I will add this recipe to the Martha page.

Books, Carnivals

Carnival of Children’s Literature: Broken Toe Edition

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All joking aside, my poor husband really did a number on his toe the other day. (You know it’s bad when the doctor gasps in horror upon first sight of the injury.) Consequently, our household is upside-down at the moment. Mountains of laundry. Miles of gauze. Children, children everywhere. (Oh, wait, that’s the norm.) Our usual routine is torn to ribbons, and the time I’d slotted for Carnival prep has gone to other things like carrying Scott up and down the stairs. Which means you won’t be getting the oh-so-clever “literary gardens” theme I was planning. I know, I know, the crushing disappointment…

Ha. We all know you’ve come for the posts, not the panache. So here it is, the bare bones version (so to speak) of the 4th Carnival of Children’s Literature.

In the There’s No Such Thing as Too Many Books Dept., our contributors offer a wide range of book reviews:

Susan of Chicken Spaghetti (and March’s Carnival of Children’s Literature host) offers her review of Fly, Bessie, Fly, a picture-book biography of the pioneering aviator Bessie Coleman.

Dawn of By Sun and Candlelight shares her thoughts on Chessie the Long Island Squirrel, a wonderful nature story.

Over at A Chair, a Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy, Liz is raving about The King Of Attolia, the third of Megan Whalen Turner’s books about Eugenides, The Thief of Eddis, and the warring nations of Sounis, Eddis and Attolia. Says Liz: “My favorite book of the year so far!”

Meanwhile, Karen Edmisten and her daughters are finding much to connect with in Caddie Woodlawn and Only Opal.

At Sweetness and Light, Meredith and her children are enchanted by A Fairy Went A-Marketing.

GrrlScientist asks: “Hermione vs Barbie: Who Would You Rather Be?“, while Kelly of Big A little a explains why she thinks Lyra is the best female hero in children’s literature.

Dana presents Pearl Plants a Tree, saying, “This is a review of a simple book I stumbled across at the library. Not expecting much, it turned into a wonderful source of discussion with my seven-year-old and inspired us both in different ways.”

Next up: a couple of Bonny Glen favorites: Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays, reviewed by Jen Robinson, and those delightful Penderwicks, reviewed by Gail Gauthier.

At A Scholar’s Blog, Michele piques our curiosity about Charles Butler’s Death of a Ghost.

Hungry for more? Semicolon (host of last month’s carnival) gives us a nice long list of books for Summer Reading. And Mary Ellen explains why she thinks summer reading lists are a very good thing.

Lists! Lists! Lists! I love ’em. You know you do too. And we’ve got ever so many to enjoy this month:

A Fuse #8 Production presents The Top 21 Children’s Books Turned into Films, saying, “This is my list of the best of the best of the best children’s books turned into films. I could only find 21, all told. Such a shame, but a perfectly nice list.”

Breaking up is easy to do. Reconstruction is hard. Chris Barton says, “With the Civil War and the decades-long run-up to it behind us, I had hoped to find some books for this month’s U.S. history reading that overtly addressed Reconstruction. In May we’re covering 1850-1900, and how this country went about (imperfectly) putting itself back together is a pretty key theme for that time period.”

Editor’s choice: I couldn’t pass up this nice listy post from Jen Robinson’s Book Page: What books would you like to live in, and what schools from books would you like to have attended?” (For the record: in high school I used to write stories about how I got zapped back in time—and reality, apparently—and found myself living at Mrs. Jo’s Plumfield school. I suppose even now I’m doing my best to recreate Plumfield right here in the Bonny Glen…although so far we’ve got far more Little Women than Little Men.)

Next to Plumfield, my favorite place to be is in the garden. Elizabeth Foss can relate: here’s her family’s book-inspired adventures Down the Garden Trail.

For Alice, being inspired by books is a way of life. You’ll love her list of picture books that have inspired years of games, crafts, and make-believe for her little ones (and mine).

Then it’s out of the garden and around the world, as Becky carries us away with There Is No Frigate Like a Book. Oh how I love The Scenic Route!

Back home, Kim Winters of Kat’s Eye continues her musings about how yoga informs her writing. Anna G. Joujan presents a School Librarian’s Mission Statement. And in Authenticity in Storytelling, Mitali Perkins ruminates on whether white authors have the right to create non-white protagonists and vice versa.

Maureen O’Brien shares her family’s encounter with Roland Smith, author of The Captain’s Dog and other books.

In the Always Leave ’em Laughing Dept.:

In a parody as far-fetched as the work of fiction it makes fun of, Jay presents The dePaola Code: “Tomie dePaola is one of the most respected author/illustrators in children’s literature, and many of his books have religious overtones. Over the next few weeks, we will decipher many religious secrets hidden within Tomie’s words and illustrations.”

Greg Pincus gives us his on-the-mark Oddaptation of The Rainbow Fish. (Brilliant!)

And in another Editor’s Choice (oh, the power…), I cannot resist directing you to 12-year-old Agnes’s Lewis Carroll-like sendup of a Keats poem. Priceless.

That’s it for this month! Many thanks to all our contributors. If you find a broken link or a typo, please give me a holler. We know about broken links around here. And for more great reading about children’s books, do pay a visit to the latest edition of The Edge of the Forest, the simply smashing online children’s literature magazine.

Next month’s Carnival will be hosted by Big A little a. Submit your posts using our handy-dandy carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Oh, and about Scott’s toe. The doctor said the healing process would be greatly accelerated by chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate. Preferably dark. You can mark it “In Care of Lissa.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.

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Clippings

What Kind of Mother Are You?

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According to this quiz, I’m a “Love of Learning” mother:

• Intellectually curious and patient, the INTP mother relishes those times with a child when they are learning something interesting together. Whether they’re at the zoo or computer terminal, she sparks to answering his or her “whys” with in-depth responses or new knowledge.

• The INTP mother is also objective and introspective. She listens to and discusses children’s ideas and questions as she would those of a peer, fostering self-esteem and confidence. Open and non-directive, she allows children the freedom to do for themselves and quietly encourages them to believe they can do it.

• Independence, autonomy, intellectual development, and self-reliance are probably the INTP’s highest priorities for her children. An avid reader, she naturally imparts an appreciation and love of reading as well.

• Drawn to all types of learning, the INTP may also value her mothering experience for all the new insights about life it provides her.

HT: Elizabeth

Poetry

Poetry Friday

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Children Selecting Books in a Library
by Randall Jarrell

With beasts and gods, above, the wall is bright.
The child’s head, bent to the book-colored shelves,
Is slow and sidelong and food-gathering,
Moving in blind grace…yet from the mural, Care
The grey-eyed one, fishing the morning mist,
Seizes the baby hero by the hair
And whispers, in the tongue of gods and children,
Words of a doom as ecumenical as dawn
But blanched like dawn, with dew.
The children’s cries
Are to men the cries of crickets, dense with warmth
—But dip a finger into Fafnir, taste it,
And all their words are plain as chance and pain.
Their tales are full of sorcerers and ogres
Because their lives are: the capricious infinite
That, like parents, no one has yet escaped
Except by luck or magic; and since strength
And wit are useless, be kind or stupid, wait
Some power’s gratitude, the tide of things.
Read meanwhile…hunt among the shelves, as dogs do, grasses,
And find one cure for Everychild’s diseases
Beginning: Once upon a time there was
A wolf that fed, a mouse that warned, a bear that rode
A boy. Us men, alas! wolves, mice, bears bore.
And yet wolves, mice, bears, children, gods and men
In slow preambulation up and down the shelves
Of the universe are seeking…who knows except themselves?
What some escape to, some escape: if we find Swann’s
Way better than our own, and trudge on at the back
Of the north wind to—to—somewhere east
Of the sun, west of the moon, it is because we live
By trading another’s sorrow for our own; another’s
Impossibilities, still unbelieved in, for our own…
“I am myself still?” For a little while, forget:
The world’s selves cure that short disease, myself,
And we see bending to us, dewy-eyed, the great
CHANGE, dear to all things not to themselves endeared.

Other Poetry Friday contributors: founder Big A little a, Farm School, Chicken Spaghetti, Jen Robinson’s Book Page, The Simple and the Ordinary, A Fuse #8 Production, Mungo’s Mathoms, bookshelves of doom, Blog from the Windowsill, Book Buds

Clippings

Stay Tuned to ClubMom

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So I dropped a hint the other day about my upcoming new gig. ClubMom.com has decided to launch a group of blogs blogged by mommyblogging bloggers who are also mothers. They’ve assembled a diverse bunch of moms who will blog on such topics as: weight loss, pregnancy, cooking, religion, staying home with baby, parenting tweens, parenting teens, parenting special-needs children, and (drumroll) homeschooling. (Bet you didn’t see that coming.) (Okay, so you saw it coming a mile away.) Starting in the next few weeks, I will actually be getting paid to blog, which is both very nice and hard to believe.

Last week ClubMom began to roll out the first of the MomBlogs, and it’s been fun to watch each new one appear. (While waiting in excruciating suspense to find out what mine will look like and what it’s going to be called, because they asked for suggestions but haven’t said yet whether they actually, you know, LIKED any of my suggestions, and the suspense is so great I am completely unable to concentrate on the laundry. Oh that’s right, I don’t DO laundry. Whew.) Having recently developed an appetite for food blogs (ba dum bum), I am particularly intrigued by Big Slice of Life, Small Slice of Cheesecake‘s new “Small Slice” sidebar feature, where blogger Jenny Lauck (aka BigSlice) promises to post daily photos of her dinners, complete with instructions. I love it when food bloggers allow me to vicariously savor their meals while I eat my frozen pizza.

As for me, I have been asked to focus primarily (but not solely) on the topics of homeschooling and special-needs children. (Including, sometimes, homeschooling special-needs children.) I will still be blogging here at Bonny Glen, especially on all things related to children’s literature and the living-books lifestyle. And if there are any topics or questions you would like to see addressed either here or there, please do drop me a note!

Current Affairs

What Is Network Neutrality and Why Should I Care?

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We like our internet. We like being able to get online and clickety click click wherever we like. We pay our monthly ISP fee and then click, the World Wide Web is world-wide open to us.

Some folks want to change that.

AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and other telephone and cable companies would like to be able to control the flow of information on the internet. Here’s how my hubby explains it:

The government is thinking about allowing Internet Service Providers to decide what websites you can or cannot go to, and who can or cannot send you emails. In other words, if this goes through, you may not be able to link to Left of the Dial* unless I’ve paid your specific ISP a fee. Otherwise I’ll get blackballed. Kinda like legalized payola.

* (Or, say, Spunky. Or FUN Books. Or even Google, if they haven’t paid up.)

Net Neutrality is the opposite of that scenario. Net Neutrality is what we’ve got now.

Here’s what’s happening:

The telephone and cable companies are filling up congressional campaign coffers and hiring high-priced lobbyists. They’ve set up “Astroturf” groups like “Hands Off the Internet” to confuse the issue** and give the appearance of grassroots support.

Congress is now considering a major overhaul of the Telecommunications Act. The primary bill in the House is called the “Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006” and is sponsored by Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-Texas), Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), Rep. Charles Pickering (R-Miss.) and Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.).

The current version of the COPE Act (HR 5252) includes watered-down Net Neutrality provisions that are essentially meaningless. An amendment offered by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), which would have instituted real Net Neutrality requirements, was defeated in committee after intense industry lobbying against it.

**Case in point: the ad in my sidebar. What it calls the truth isn’t really.

We mustn’t ignore this issue. You can read more about it here and here.

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Books

Speaking of Reading…

I just read a press release from the Institute of Museum and Library Services about their partnership with the NEA (Endowment for the Arts, not Education Association) to launch of a “new national reading program designed to revitalize the role of reading in America.”

“Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America” a 2004 National Arts Endowment report, documented a dramatic decline in literary reading—among all age groups, ethnic groups, and education levels – and galvanized a national discussion. The Big Read was developed to help reverse this trend by giving citizens in more than 100 communities in all 50 states an inviting opportunity to read and discuss great books. Each city or town that participates will host a community-wide read that involves collaborations with libraries, schools, local government, and the private sector.

The Institute will contribute $1 million in the first year of the national program and cast America’s libraries and librarians in a central role to encourage community participation.

Hmm. I am curious about how exactly the IMLS and NEA plan to go about “revitalizing the role of reading in America.” The release states that they will give grants of $10-20,000 to “more than 100 communities to conduct programs that encourage reading for pleasure and enlightenment.” I am all for helping jazz people up about reading, and I’m also all for giving money to libraries. But. Um. Programs that encourage people to read for pleasure and enlightenment? That sounds an awful lot like the very nice book club my (teeny tiny underfunded) local branch library offers already. I doubt it costs $10,000 to run it, even counting the fliers.

If you have a better (and more expensive) idea than a book club, the IMLS encourages you to submit a proposal.

HT: Anastasia Suen.