Companion Resources

Nana is coming to visit! She's going to teach Little Pickle to make her famous "Nana rolls"—a special bread recipe that Nana's nana taught her. Together, they gather ingredients: eggs and milk, flour and oil, sugar and salt, yeast and water. As they mix them together to form the dough, Nana shares stories about how making this treasured family recipe has changed over the years—and how it's sustained their family through good times and hard ones. And through the times when they could be together—and the times when they couldn't. Because sometimes a simple loaf of bread can mean so much more.

Learn to identify threatening species through tracks, scat, and the damage they leave behind. Fascinating profiles of more than 50 predatory mammals, birds, and reptiles teach farmers, ranchers, homesteaders, and backyard-animal raisers how to prevent their livestock, poultry, and pets from becoming prey. By understanding how predators think and behave, where and how they live, and how they attack and kill prey, you'll be able to interpret the potential threats surrounding your home.

Savor a rhyming celebration of one of the world's most universal foods! Readers follow ten diverse families as they cook dumplings inside their homes in preparation for a neighborhood potluck. Dumplings are added to plates one by one, encouraging children to count with each new addition. Authentic recipes for all the dumplings and a map showing their regions of origin are included in the endnotes. Dumpling Day features dumplings from the following regions: India, USA (Pennsylvania Dutch); China (Cantonese); Nigeria; Japan; Israel; Mexico; Syria; Russia; Italy.

Each year on Christmas Eve, Rosie's abuela, mamá, tía, sister, and cousins all gather together in abuela's kitchen to make tamales—cleaning corn husks, chopping onions and garlic, roasting chilis, kneading cornmeal dough, seasoning the filling, and folding it all—and tell stories. Rosie learns from her abuela not only how to make a delicious tamale, but how to make a delicious life, one filled with love, plenty of spice, and family.

To understand how a seed becomes a sunflower, you have to peek beneath the soil and wait patiently as winding roots grow, a stalk inches out of the earth, and new seeds emerge among blooming petals. From a tiny seed to a huge, fold-out bloom, the transformative life cycle of a sunflower plays out in this bold read-aloud.

Do YOU like pizza? Because right now, somewhere in the world, someone is eating it. Did you know that in the United States we eat 350 slices of pizza every second? Or that in Sweden they serve pizza with bananas and peanuts? All over the world, people love pizza—but where did it come from? And who made the first pizza?

Linh is having a picnic in her rooftop garden for all of her friends, and she needs help searching for blueberries to finish preparing her dishes. What do we know about blueberries? They're small, blue, and grow on bushes—and, just a second, is that a blueberry? No, that's. gooseberry. Where, oh, where could those blueberries be? Can you help Linh find them in time for her picnic?

Sometimes the world feels broken. And problems seem too big to fix. But somehow, we all have the power to make a difference. With a little faith, and maybe the help of a friend, together we can find beauty and create change. Follow the story of a young child who builds a community effort to transform an empty lot filled with trash into a beautiful urban garden. View a video of presidential inaugural poet and author of Something, Someday read the book aloud.

Hiro loves ramen. Every Sunday, Hiro's dad makes delicious, perfect ramen for dinner, using a recipe passed down from his dad. There's nori seaweed, briny like the ocean; nitamago egg, the yolk golden like the sun; and chashu pork so tender, it melts in your mouth. Yum! Hiro's dream is to make his own perfect bowl, and he's sure he can do it after watching his dad and taking notes. But when he gets started, things don't go according to plan. The seaweed crumbles! The egg slips through his fingers! The pork falls apart! Hiro is worried he'll never be a real ramen chef... but thanks to his father's wise advice and his own creativity, Hiro discovers that every person's perfect bowl of ramen is unique.

Rosa and her family live in a house in the country where an apple tree grows. With short stanzas, interspersed with occasional vocabulary in Spanish, we journey through the year and witness the tree as it changes and develops fruit. We discover what makes the tree grow strong and how the flowers are pollinated. Eventually the apples are fully grown and ready to be picked. On a warm late summer afternoon we join Rosa and her family for a celebratory picnic where a specially-made apple pie takes center stage.

In 1882, Black botanist and mycologist Charles S. Parker sprouted up in the lush, green Pacific Northwest. From the beginning, Charles's passion was plants, and he trudged through forests, climbed mountains, and waded into lakes to find them. As a botanist and teacher, Charles traveled the United States, searching for new species of plants and fungi. After discovering the source of the disease killing peach and apricot trees, Charles was offered a job at Howard University, the famed historically black college where he taught the next generation of Black scientists to love plants and fungi as much as he did.

Nell Plants a Tree shows how one little girl's careful tending of a pecan tree creates the living center of a loving, intergenerational Black family. Before her grandchildren climbed the towering tree, explored its secret nests, raced to its sturdy trunk, read in its cool shade, or made pies with its pecans...Nell buried a seed. And just as Nell's tree grows and thrives with her love and care, so do generations of her close-knit family.