Summer Reading and Super Heroes

This year the summer reading program has the hero theme which can encompass anything from comic book super heroes to every day people in our lives. This past week, Emily, her friend Savannah, and I attended one of the special events, hosted by our public library. The guest speaker was cartoonist Jeff Nicholas, a talented local Ohio cartoonist.

He showed the children how to draw a cartoon Dalmatian and asked them what kind of hero dogs they could name. The answers were varied and included seeing-eye dogs, rescue dogs, guard dogs, and police dogs. It was an interesting presentation reminding us that heroes do indeed come in every shape and size including animals.

Emily loves to draw and always practices whatever character Jeff has shown. She even included her version of the Dalmatian putting out a fire in the Father's Day card she made for her dad.

I was therefore compelled to include a book about a super hero of a different kind in this week's book review. What did I select? Why Noodle Man of course. Noodle Man is an extremely funny fictional story of Al Dente and the Dente family. The Dente family business is going down the tubes because everyone in town is ordering pizza to be delivered. Al creates a fresh pasta machine in hopes that it will save his family business, but instead, he ends up foiling a robbery attempt, rescuing two children from a burning building, and saving a damsel in distress. This book is a deliciously humorous tale that also introduces children to many different types and shapes of pasta.

The second book I read wasn't a traditionally heroic type of tale, but it did have a friend who went out of h is way to give his bestie a most extraordinary birthday. It was Toot and Puddle - A Present for Toot by the authoress and illustrator Holly Hobbie. And yes, she is the very same person who is the creator of the famous character bearing her name.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, the sequel, Return To Fern Valley, the soon to be released Cooking In Fern Valley (fall 2015) and my very first picture book, Quack and Daisy! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.