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Each summer when school gets out, the Humboldt County Library organizes the Summer Reading Club. This year the theme is “Reading is So Delicious!” and features books about gardening, cooking, nutrition and fun stories about food.

The Summer Reading Club game is called “Catch Me If You Can” and is loosely based on “The Gingerbread Baby” by Jan Brett. This is a retelling of the traditional “Gingerbread Man” but it has a happier ending, unless you are rooting for the hungry fox. The Gingerbread Baby escapes from all the hungry villagers and animals and finds safety in a little Gingerbread House deep in the woods. In the Summer Reading Club game, a Gingerbread Man is on the loose in Humboldt County and it is the participants’ job to help him get past the hungry creatures, by offering them other treats. The horse is distracted by apples, the raccoon gets ripe corn, etc. Even Bigfoot is joining in the race, unless he happens upon a thicket of huckleberries.

Younger children can participate in the Summer Reading Club by listening to stories read aloud.

Older children can read any library books of their choice, but we will have displays of tasty tales and a series of Story and Craft Programs based on the SRC theme. These are held at the Main Library in Eureka, every Wednesday afternoon from 1:30 to 3 p.m.

This month I’m highlighting picture books and next month I’ll review books for older readers.

”The Wonderful Feast” was written and illustrated by Esphyr Slobodkina in 1953. The bold colorful pictures have a retro feel and the story is a simple and lovely tale of sharing. On a beautiful morning, a farmer gives a generous helping of feed to his horse. After the horse has eaten his fill, enough remains for a wonderful feast for a goat, who wanders into the barn. And so it goes, until a little ant carries off a single grain, which is more than enough for him.

Nancy Elizabeth Wallace has a number of wonderful picture books which she illustrates with clever paper cut-outs. Many of her books follow the adventures of a bear family. “A Taste of Honey” begins with Lily Bear asking her Poppy where the honey she’s eating came from. Poppy traces it all the way back to the bees who collected the pollen. This book is full of interesting facts about honey production. In the back is even a little honey game you can play. This same author also has a book called “Apples, Apples, Apples” that takes the bear family to an orchard to learn about how apples are produced. That book includes a great cooked apple recipe.

There’s another book about an orchard called “Little Apple Goat” written and illustrated by Caroline Jayne Church. Once there was a little goat, who loved apples, pears and cherries. She would eat the good fruit and then spit out the pits and seeds over the hedge. When a terrible storm knocks all the trees down, the goat is very sad. Imagine her surprise when a new orchard begins growing on the other side of the hedge! Can you figure out the mystery of how the new trees got there?

”The Gumdrop Tree” by Elizabeth Spurr is about another gardening venture. When a little girl gets a bag of gumdrops, she thinks they are too wonderful to just eat. She finally decides that the best thing would be to plant them and then she would have a whole tree full! Against all odds, a little tree does sprout, but there doesn’t seem to be any fruit, until … When you reach the very last page in the book, see if you can figure out what really happened.

Sometimes fruit does grow wild and it can be a real adventure going out to gather it. Robert McCloskey wrote and illustrated “Blueberries for Sal” for his own little girl, who loved to gather blueberries near their home in Maine. This is a beautifully designed book that juxtaposes the adventures of a little girl and a little bear cub, who are both on an outing on Blueberry Hill. This is a perfect book to read aloud.

Some people seem to enjoy all kinds of foods and some people like most things, but there are some people that are very fussy about what they eat. Lola belongs in the latter group and “I Will Never Ever Eat a Tomato” by Lauren Child is the story of how Lola’s big brother, Charlie, tricked her into trying some new vegetables. Fans of Lola will guess that she gets the last laugh though. This book might inspire you to make your own meal of orange twiglets, green drops, cloud fluff, ocean nibbles and moonsquirters.

Jim Arnosky has written a fun song about eating called “Gobble It Up!” A CD with the music is included with the book. The lyrics invite you to imagine yourself as various animals and to see what they find to eat. The song ends with the lines “That’s the way we all survive. We gobble food to stay alive. We eat the food we have, and then — we have to hunt for food again.”

The Summer Reading Club is available on a drop in basis at the main library in Eureka, the ten branch libraries and the bookmobile. We hope you will make the library part of your summer vacation plans.

——

JoAnn Bauer is a children’s librarian for the Humboldt County Library.

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