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Books for newly fluent independent readers often have great pace (to entice just one more page turn) and lovely characterization (encouraging growing kids to explore their own unfurling wings), but books for this age group with turns of phrases and fine, fine threads of words which make your heart sing are quite unusual.

And yet, Mango & Bambang: Tapir All at Sea written by Polly Faber (@Pollylwh) and illustrated by Clara Vulliamy (@ClaraVulliamy) has all of this, plus buckets more. Illustrated on every spread with immense charm, humour and warmth, and with an overall design to make small hands hug it close to their heart, this little hardback is everything you’d dream of, if trying to come up with something to foster an association of sheer joy and enchantment with books.

Mango Allsorts and her best friend Bambang (a friend who just happens to be a tapir) are looking for a new hobby, and would you believe it, but it turns out that after failures with ballet and baking, flamenco dancing hits the spot. 

Bambang, however, doesn’t get the chance to attend many lessons before an escapade involving climbing trees (there’s nothing a tapir can’t do when it comes to snaffling cake), a diamond engagement ring and a devious neighbour result in Bambang being put behind bars, not just once, but twice! Will the friends be able to use Bambang’s new dancing prowess and Mango’s clever problem-solving skills to save the day? Or could it be that their very partnership is put in peril as a result of Bambang’s newly discovered skill?

Joyous, open-hearted and very funny, these tales of Mango and Bambang are simply brilliant. A charismatic exploration of friendship, with a dash of quirkiness and oodles of wit, along with endearing illustrations (reminding me of Joyce Lankester Brisley and her Milly Molly Mandy books) that really draw out the beauty of the stories, Mango & Bambang: Tapir All at Sea is utterly delightful. My girls and I are really hoping that this second set of tales featuring Mango and Bambang won’t be the last.

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If you spend any time at all hanging out with Clara Vulliamy you’ll very quickly learn that she is the Queen of Secret Haberdashery Supplies. I know of no other author or illustrator who has such an eye for beautiful ribbons, notions and buttons. With this in mind the girls and I wanted to create something Mango and Bambang-y which Clara herself (and, of course, Polly too) might enjoy making and thus we came up with the idea of designing flamenco costumes. This quickly developed into puppets of Mango, Bambang and friends all dress up in flamenco finery.

Generous as ever, Clara allowed the girls and me to adapt some of the images from Mango & Bambang: Tapir All at Sea to create paper dolls which we cut out and stuck on cardboard (you can download them here as a single pdf file).

Then we designed our flamenco costumes, colouring in the dolls and adding ribbons and trims, flowers and fans.

Finally our friends were ready to dance!

And dance we all did:

Whilst making our puppets and dancing with them we listened to:

• Tamacun by Rodrigo y Gabriela (this is what you can hear in the background to the video above)
  
• Leyenda by Albeniz played by Andres Segovia
  
• Paco Peña and his show Flamenco sin Fronteras
  
• A just for fun… a bit of fancy footwork from Joaquín Cortés

Other activities which might work well alongside reading Mango & Bambang: Tapir All at Sea include:

• Making a sailor’s cap like Bambang wears. Here’s a video tutorial (just swap the blue paint for red!)
• Baking sticky ginger cake. My very favourite sticky ginger cake comes from Argos Bakery in Stromness, but as that’s a bit far for many of us to travel, here’s a recipe from Delia, and another from Nigella
• Creating your own Museum of the Unusual. Of course, I wouldn’t encourage you to be as mean as Dr Cynthia Prickly-Posset, but starting a collection of things you find weird and wonderful (without resorting to stealing them from your neighbours!) is a fun idea. Maybe your museum will be full of strange shaped stones, or bizarre things you’ve found down the back of the sofa… If you’re looking for some display ideas for your museum, you might find inspiration in past museums we’ve created here, here and here

 

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Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher.

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The extraordinary memoir of Michaela DePrince, a young dancer who escaped war-torn Sierra Leone for the rarefied heights of American ballet.

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LAST DAY! $50 Gift Certificate Holiday Giveaway Enter here:   Mudpuppy Holiday Giveaway  . Orangutanka: A Story in Poems Written by Margarita Engle Illustrations by Renée Kurilla Henry Holt & Company     3/24/2015 978-0-8050-9839-6 32 pages     Ages 4—8 “All the orangutans are ready for a nap in the sleepy depths of the afternoon . …

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Yesterday I hosted a Bibliobop Dance Party at my library. I started Bibliobop (our baby/toddler/preschooler dance party) about four years ago. The program includes lots of music and movement, reading books about dancing and music and lots of fun. We use shaker eggs, instruments, parachutes, and scarves. Biblibop is hosted on Saturday mornings once every few months. This Fall, I also started a program called Preschool Wiggleworms, which is another music and movement program. The weekly programs are a bit more themed (we talk about certain types of dance or themes each week) but the general idea is similar to Biblibop. We dance, move, and have fun.

My mom is a music teacher, so I grew up surrounded by the arts. Singing and dancing were regular parts of my life. But the more I do these creative movement programs, the more I realize this is an aspect of early literacy that we really need to promote.

The more I host these creative movement programs, the more I am surprised by how many people don’t include music and movement in their daily lives. I think because I grew up with it’s second nature to me, but for so many people it’s not. At each of these programs, I have parents tell me “this is so great-we don’t do this at home!” When my son was born and I was singing to him as I changed his diaper, my mother-in-law said “that’s so neat how you sing to him all the time.” It wasn’t something she had thought about doing with a newborn. And I always have parents (and staff) who  say they don’t know how to sing, they aren’t good singers, they can’t dance. But we all know the kids don’t care!

We have so many great resources from books to CDs that can help parents host their own dance parties at home. When I host these programs, I try and focus on the Singing skill of Every Child Ready to Read and letting parents know why singing and dancing is so important. Singing helps us slow down, hear words in a new way, it grows vocabulary. Dancing helps kids move. As I write this, my 1-year-old son is dancing and singing around my living room with his dad to “Tooty-Ta”. His vocabulary has grown from listening to the song and he can recite the order of all the movements.

Even if you think you can’t sing or can’t dance, you can host a creative movement program. It’s lots of fun to put together and the kids and adults have a blast. Here are a few of my favorite songs and activities:

I Can Shake My Shaker Egg by The Learning Groove (shaker eggs)

The Apple Tree by Bari Koral Family Rock Band (scarves)

Happy by Jennifer Gasoi (scarves or parachute)

Country Classics Start and Stop by Hap Palmer (shakers or parachute)

The Freeze by Greg and Steve (it’s a classic must have!)

Bop Til You Drop by Greg and Steve

The Train Beat Song by The Sugar Free Allstars

Airband by The Pop Ups

Do you host creative movement programs at your library? How do you share the importance of singing and dancing with your patrons? Any favorite songs or activities?

The post Dance Parties are Fun-and Important! appeared first on ALSC Blog.

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Sermon doodles on Keeping our Focus on Jesus.....

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I Can Dance & I Can Play Written and Illustrated by Betsy Snyder Chronicle Books       9/01/2015 978-1-4521-2929-7 and 978-1-4521-2905-1 14 pages     7” X 7”     Age infant—2 “Readers make dancers disco, tap, or pirouette and athletes splash, sprint, or score just by wiggling their fingers. But wait! There’s even more …

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At first glance, life on the icy floes may seem appealing. (Unless you reside in SE Queensland as I do with no real concept of what cold is until you have to live through ‘an unseasonably cold winter’ with little more than a cotton tee-shirt and a pair of bed socks). In Lulu’s world, there […]

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Get your glad rags on, pull out your dancing shoes and join me At the Animal Ball by Ella Bailey! A delightful, playful action-packed flap book mixing costume design and dance moves in such a fun way, this is a board book with a difference.

Bailey’s illustrations are fantastic, using great colour combinations and lovely details. Her use of texture adds a vintage touch, reminding me of the collection of dolls’ in national costumes I had as a child. Fans of of Marc Boutavant‘s work will not be disappointed; Bailey’s cute (but not cutesy) funky animals seem to me to be Mouk‘s friendly cousins, dressed in a wide range of get-ups inspired by national costumes around the world, from kilts to grass skirts, sarongs and even leather jackets.

Each page is split into three so readers can mix and match heads, tops and bottoms, creating their own bespoke tailoring. Each flap also comes with its own dance moves, from fluttering a fan to shaking a rattle, stamping your feet and wiggling your hips: By combining any three flaps, you could choreograph your own dance!

The charming animals and the beautiful clothes combined with the great excuse to boogie make this a winner of a book – and not just for kids who can’t sit still whilst they’re being read to. It’s fun, pretty and robust – this larger-than-average board book utilises a little bit of simple engineering to make sure the satisfyingly chunky pages of At the Animal Ball can put up with lots of to-ing and fro-ing.

Lovely, lively and full of flaps – an glorious read for anyone with young kids!

Inspired by the fabulous illustrations and this video…

…we made some masks (there’s nothing like a masked ball, is there?)….

…and had lots of fun dressing up in all sorts of finery and breaking out some moves… This video of our antics makes us laugh a lot!

Whilst dressing up we danced to these toe-tapping tunes (but unfortunately couldn’t include them in our video because of copyright issues):

Animal Ball by Lizzie Miles, and the same song but in a different arrangement – At The Animals’ Ball by Bobby Short

The Ugly Bug Ball sung by Burl Ives

Animal Dance by Phil Rosenthal & Randy Gates. I’m a sucker for a bit of bluegrass. You can hear a better quality extract here.

Other activities which would go well with reading At the Animal Ball include:

Playing Head, Bodies, Tails – you just need some paper and pencils and away you go!

Reading two other mix-and-match books I love – Mixed Up Fairy Tales and Mixed Up Nursery Rhymes by Hilary Robinson and Nick Sharratt

Making fans – to decorate or to dance with! I like this tutorial, this one and also this one.

When did you last get down and boogie?

Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book by the publisher.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy this post where we made a glitter disco ball or this very pink post featuring a perfect flamingo.

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Elderflush and Stan Motion

They dance like tomorrow’s birdsong
– times one hundred.

Hands meet briefly
making wings.

~~~~~

From the series:
PORTRAITS and SCENES from the ANCIENT REGION of HAIRINESS. Here there is much JOY, MIRTH…and HAPPINESS SOARS HIGHER than PieQuills, because LOVE is given to ALL, from tiny, tiny onwards…

Filed under: dances, finding norway, flying, love, pigeons, Uncategorized

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Inktober 4 – Mr. Bones Dancing

Anyone  who knows me well, knows that I LOVE bones! This one was fun to draw. Since it is that time of year, maybe I will find more inspiration to draw Mr. Bones!

Pigma Micron Pen Black Ink 05 and graphite pencil

 

 

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Day 1: Meet Zelda P. Bird modeling her best cape and hat.

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Based upon the picture book, Giraffes Can’t Dance, this sturdy and colorful board book is a fun way for little ones to learn how to count to ten.

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Enter to win a copy of Twelve Dancing Unicorns, written by Alissa Heyman and illustrated by Justin Gerard. Giveaway begins September 21, 2014, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends October 20, 2014, at 11:59 P.M. PST.

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My girls were away for a couple of days last week staying on their own at their grandparents and whilst I LOVED having a bit more time to myself, I couldn’t resist a special welcome home picture book party; a day spent reading, playing, eating and dancing.

On the evening they arrived home I gave them invites inspired by the artwork in The Zebra who Ran Too Fast by Jenni Desmond. Set on the African plains, this book explores rings of friendship, how they can break and make up again – a simple, kind and non-threatening exploration of a situation many children find themselves in at one time or another. Desmond’s use of muted stone and moss colours is stylish, and the illustrations feel loose and free with lots of “scribbles” and splashes.

I used Desmond’s sun motif to form the basis of the party invites; a round piece of watercolour paper with flamecolour centre, surrounded by drops of ink, blown outwards using a straw.

Whilst I made these invites, the process is definitely easy enough for kids to enjoy too (if you’re worried about kids drinking up the paint/ink accidentally you could use food colouring instead).

The following morning we started as we meant to go on. We made vanilla ice cream (without a freezer) and tested different vanilla flavoured icecreams to discover our favourite. This was inspired by Vanilla Ice Cream by Bob Graham. Graham is THE master of global perspective. He knows how to zoom in and out of scenes and stories like no other teller of tales I know, and once again he works wonders with this understated story, following a sparrow who hitches a lift on a cargo ship. Masterful picture books often include a clever “reveal” in their final pages, so I should have known something was coming. Still, I was taken by great (and joyous) surprise with the twist Graham pulls off in this colourful, delightful story endorsed by Amnesty International.

To make icecream without a freezer you need cream, sugar, icecubes and salt. The cream and sugar go in one bag – here’s the cream, sugar (and vanilla in our case):

And below you can see it having frozen; the cream-containing bag is put inside a larger bag full of ice and salt. Because salt lowers the freezing temperature of water, the icecubes melt, extracting heat from the cream as they do so. After about 5 minutes shaking the icecubes were mostly melted and the cream mixture was like soft icecream.

And here’s the final result – definitely the most luxurious vanilla icecream I’ve ever eaten!

For full details on how to make your own icecream without a freezer and in under 10 minutes, do take a look at these instructions from the National STEM centre.

I love a good book about books and storytelling and Herve Tullet has created a mischievous and inventive interactive piece of theatre exploring story characters, plot and the need for a title in his Help! We Need a Title!. A motley collection of characters are in need of a good storyline and a punchy title. They appeal directly to you the reader/listener for help. With plenty of surprises this book is lively and highly amusing.

If you like the sound of Tullet’s book do look for Do not open this book by Michaela Muntean, illustrated by Pascal Lemaitre, one of the funniest books in our home – an absolute must-have for families who like a bit of interaction with their books and harbour dreams of writing stories.

Taking our lead from characters who walked in and out of the pages of Help! We Need a Title! I set up a book “stage” with the help of the patio doors, a basket of dressing up costumes and a selection of liquid chalk markers (you could also use whiteboard markers).

My girls love drawing on photos in newspapers and magazines so it was a natural extension that we then drew “on” the characters who walked into our patio-door picture-book.

And finally the contents of our picture book were included too.

After lunch, for some chill-out time, we got out good old staples: lego and the wooden railway, this time brought to life by Bruno and Titch: A Tale of a boy and His Guinea Pig by Sheena Dempsey. Bruno has always wanted a guinea pig. Titch, a guinea pig, has always wanted to be taken home from the pet shop by a Big Person. One day their paths cross – but does it work out how they’ve each always imagined it would? Deadpan guinea pig humour (yes, really!) and fabulous illustrations full of new details upon each reading add something special to this tale about friendship, imagination and looking after pets. We especially loved Bruno’s passion for invention, right down to the poster of Einstein by his bed.

Our interpretation of Bruno and Titch’s lego/railway play:

No party is complete without dancing, so following a reading of Frances Dean who Loved to Dance and Dance by Birgitta Sif we cleared the kitchen to create space for a good old boogie, aided by a prop or two.

Put your cynical adult brain to one side and remember a time when the phrase “dance like no-one’s watching” felt like something utterly joyous and liberating. Sif’s book is all about holding on to that freedom and not being afraid of a little bit of exuberance mixed in with a good shot of rhythm. It’s an encouraging story about holding on to what you care about, even when others seem to doubt you, a message I think every child deserves to hear time and time again.

For a book bursting with so much heart and happiness, the colour scheme is particularly interesting; there are lots of natural greens and browns rather than the bright sparkly jewel tones often used by illustrators to convey intense happiness. For me this speaks of the impact being connected to the outdoors can have on feeling content and happy; indeed all of the scenes showing Frances Dean dancing take place in parks and forests surrounded by space, trees and wildlife.

We reused embroidery hoops and ribbons to create waves of colour we could dance with.

Jumping for joy? Yes, that pretty much sums up our 2014 Picture Book Party An all day festival of playing and reading – just what summer holidays are made for.

Disclosure: All the books featured in this picture book party were sent to me a free review copies by the Walker Books, as part of the Picture Book Party blog tour. See how how more families have been partying at the following stops on the tour: 26 August: www.mummymishaps.co.uk, 27 August: www.culture-baby.net, 28 August: www.theboyandme.co.uk and 29 August: www.beingamummy.co.uk

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Wild Things! is a new book coming out about the ‘behind-the-scenes’ stories of writing and illustrating picture books.

I contributed a story about Prancing, Dancing Lily—the cow who loved to dance—that didn’t make the cut for the book. However, you can read it on the book’s website here.

 

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SCENE:      Barn on a farm
AT RISE:   A meeting of the fowl-est kind. A group of turkeys are meeting to discuss a course of action to deal with National Turkey Lovers Month that began in June. The sound of loud gobbling is drowning out the speaker
TIME:        Early morning



HEAD TURKEY
Can we have a little decorum here? Hello?

(he picks up a large meat cleaver and forcefully inserts it into a block of wood. There is an audible gasp)

FEMALE TURKEY
Is that really necessary? Are you trying to give us a heart attack?

HEAD TURKEY
That's the least of our worries

MALE TURKEY
A little over-the-top, aren't we? We were merely discussing the quality of the feed the farmer is feeding us

HEAD TURKEY
How about this, then. Given that June has already arrived and if the farmer gets his way, corn will be the last thing you'll have to worry about!

FEMALE TURKEY
You're always so melodramatic, Sydney.

ANOTHER FEMALE TURKEY
I got a suggestion! Why don't we all do the turkey strut! Strutting always helps deal with stressful situations

MALE TURKEY
Sounds like an idea. I'll put on the music

(they all line up and strut to the music, "Turkey in the Strraw")

HEAD TURKEY
Unbelievable! I can't believe what I'm seeing

FEMALE TURKEY
I know. We're all such good strutters. Who would believe we've been doing it for only a year. It's like we were born to do this. Come join us!

HEAD TURKEY
I was referring to the reality of the situation, which is June being National Turkey Month.

FEMALE TURKEY
(still strutting)
You mean, they actually put a month aside for us turkeys? What an honor!

HEAD TURKEY
Some honor! Let me put it to you this way. If they have their way, you'll be the main attraction on a platter at Sunday dinner

FEMALE TURKEY
At last! Artistic recognition. I mean, doing the strut on a platter at Sunday dinner is the ultimate form of acknowledgement and recognition of our talent

HEAD TURKEY
Let me make it simple that even your limited intellect can grasp. Sweetheart - you'll be the Sunday dinner

FEMALE TURKEY
Stop joking around, Sidney. 'Okay everyone - follow me! Kick up some dust!'

HEAD TURKEY
How about this. We wait until night and run for our lives! That is - if we're still around

FEMALE TURKEY
Of course we'll all be here. Why wouldn't we be?

HEAD TURKEY
Because... I give up. Uh-oh. Heads up. Here comes the farmer and his wife. Don't say I didn't warn youze all

FEMALE TURKEY
Oh goodie. We can give him a preview of our dance style before Sunday

HEAD TURKEY
(sighing)
I don't think he has strutting on his mind. See 'ya around! I'm out'ta here!

FEMALE TURKEY
Okay - all together turkeys! Puff out your chest and feathers and let's give the farmer and his wife a taste of what we're all about!

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.

Toucan Can!

by Juliette MacIver & Sarah Davis, illustrator

Gecko Press USA        2014

978-1-877467-53-0

Age 3 to 7      32 pages

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“Toucan Can Do Lots of Things! Toucan Dances! Toucan Sings! Toucan Bangs a Frying Pan! Can You Do What Toucan Can?  A tongue-twisting, ludicrous rhyme full of escalating hilarity and off-the-wall characters. It will have you tripping and flipping and dancing and singing.”

If Toucan can, YOU can!

Opening

“Toucan can do lots of things!”

Review

What can you do? Toucan can do many things and might have toddlers showing off what they can do, too. Toucan and his group of goofy animal friends will have you and your child laughing. The rhyming text works in all but three couplets, where the beat goes bonk. Otherwise, the lines will roll off your tongue until your tongue is twisted. All this tongue-tying will add to the fun. With a couple run-throughs, you can have those lines sounding like Toucan can read, because Toucan Can!

The illustrations have a high-end coloring book look, but with child-like coloring; meaning, as example, the purple of Toucan’s not very big bottom blotches beyond the border. Characters and background images consistently bleed. The illustrator’s technique or a printing problem? Curious and not wanting to criticize something I didn’t understand, I asked the illustrator. Here is what she wrote,

“The bleed is deliberate – for this book I wanted to find a style of working that was really loose and energetic, and the opposite of neat and precise. I hand painted tissue and then laid torn chunks of it down, then did the linework and detail on top. The idea with letting the colour bleed out around the edges is that there’s so much life and movement in the text that it can’t be contained. Toucan is such an irrepressible character that I didn’t want to colour him inside the lines – he needed some chaos.”

Every character, on every spread, is moving. “Happy Chaos” is a good description of the spreads, as the animals swing from trees, twirl, and dance. An exception to the merriment is a joey in mama’s pouch. I fear Toucan might have awakened the joey from its snug pouch. It takes only a minute—one spread—to soften the joey’s slanted eyebrows and rolled up fists. Mama’s energy is still passing to her baby.

The text is fun to read a-loud and young children will enjoy hearing all Toucan can do. When asked if “you” can do what Toucan can, young children will be out of their seat bopping about, jumping, skipping, and singing, but mainly dancing. All the animals love to dance and they all dance with exuberance. Very contagious.

Originally published by Gecko Press in New Zealand, Lerner Publishing Group brings Toucan Can to the US and Canada. Toucan Can has hilarious images, interactive suggestions to keep young kids moving and laughing. The rhyming text and tongue twisters will keep the reader—mom or dad—determined to get it right, making Toucan Can a book young kids will have no trouble getting their parents to read over and over.

TOUCAN CAN! Text copyright © 2013 by Juliette MacIver. Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Sarah Davis. Reproduce by permission of the publisher, Gecko Press USA, Wellington, NZ.

Buy Toucan Can! at Amazon—B&N—Lerner Pub. Gr.—your local bookstore.

.

Learn more about Toucan Can! HERE.

Meet the author, Juliette MacIver, at her facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/pages/Juliette-MacIver-Author/509684365718086

Meet the illustrator, Sarah Davis, at her website:   http://sarah-davis.org/

“For more curiously good books visit” Gecko Press:   http://www.geckopress.co.nz/

an imprint of Gecko Press Ltd.

distributed by Lerner Publishing Group:  https://www.lernerbooks.com/

Also by Juliette MacIver

 

 

 

 

 

Also by Sarah Davis

.

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Filed under: 4stars, Children's Books, Library Donated Books, Picture Book Tagged: children's book reviews, dancing, Gecko Press USA, Juliette MacIver, Lerner Publishing Group, movement, New Zealand, Sarah Davis, toucans, unusual animals

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One of the irrefutable facts of life is that cats have secret lives.

There’s Slob Cat who actually spends his day being brave, energetic, and sometimes saving lives. There’s Lionel who paints portraits and drives sportscars when his owners aren’t looking. There’s Sid, who keeps his folk in the dark about just how many dinners he manages to get each night. Fang is a secret super hero cat, and Malcolm parties with the Queen of Cats. Joining this clowder are Fred (a popstar), Mr Tiddles (a genuine cat burglar), and most recently Oscar.

When Oscar’s owners go to work, he loves to dance, and what’s more, he’s really rather good at it. Name any style, and he can swing his hips, tap his toes and boogie the night away.

The Tip-Tap Dancing Cat by Joanna Boyle (@J0anna12) is a lovely, free flowing celebration of the joy of dance, but instead of sparkled-up celebrities, it’s a cat that steals the show.

Twelve different dance styles are highlighted, with Oscar striking a quintessential pose to represent each. More of a beautifully illustrated non-fiction picture book (including a glossary in the final pages), than one with a traditional storyline, this is a sweet and simple introduction to everything from Swing to Samba, and Tango to Two-Step. Boyle’s illustrations are delightful; loose and lively, graceful and fluid, in fact everything you might hope for in a dancer!

I’d love to see this book being used in classrooms and homes to get kids up and moving, trying out the moves Oscar demonstrates. And if you want to get people on the dance floor, strutting their stuff, how about making a disco ball to set the scene?

This is exactly what we were inspired to try after reading The Tip-Tap Dancing Cat.

First we gathered together old, scratched CDs, and I softened them by holding them in boiling water for about 45 seconds.

Next I cut the CDs into small squares with sides of about 1.5cm. I used my strongest pair of scissors for this, and did the cutting whilst the CDs were still warm from their dipping.

I found that some CDs cut much more easily (ie without shattering) than others – I guess this might depend on the sort of backing they have. To allow for the fact that some CDs might shatter, even though you’ve softened them, make sure you’ve got a few more CDs than you think you’ll need to complete the disco ball.

Every day over the course of a week M, J and I stuck a few CD squares onto an old rubber ball. We used regular tacky glue, and just took our time building up the mosaic of squares so that each few had time to dry before we rotated our sphere to add more squares. Finally we hung the ball up, shone a light on it and started it spinning!

(Yes, not very dancey music in the video, but it does reflect the magic of having these little squares of reflected light fill our kitchen!)

Finally it was time to put on some real dancing music and have a ball:

We danced to:

Dancing with My Daddy by Kira Willey (a samba)

Please don’t Polka the Baby by The Mudcakes (a polka, surprise surprise)

Tweet Me Right (The Cairo Tango) by Raffi (you can guess what style of music this is….)

Other activities to go with reading The Tip-Tap Dancing Cat include:

Losing hours to watching clips of Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers Gene Kelly and other greats on YouTube. There’s a 2.5 hour long playlist here, or for just 3 minutes of dancing deliciousness try this:

Making rosettes! Oscar the cat wins rosettes for his fabulous dancing and you could make some to award to each other. Dad Can Do has a great tutorial with free printables.

Creating your own top hat to dance with. In one scene Oscar looks extremely dapper, dancing with a top hat and walking stick. Instructables has a top hat tutorial and if ever there’s been a good excuse to visit this favourite (non-book) shop of mine in London, perhaps this book is it!

I haven’t yet read The Dancing Cats of Applesap by Janet Taylor Lisle but it sounds like the perfect follow on read to The Tip-Tap Dancing Cat. Have you any other books about dancing cats or cats’ secret lives to recommend?

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of The Tip-Tap Dancing Cat from the publishers.

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On Saturday night I went to sketch a Vaudeville extravaganza in the gorgeous Art Deco Library Theatre in Sheffield, called 'The Velvet Burlesque presents Cupid Stunts'. The show was all down to the sheer hard work and creativity of my Dr Sketchy partner, Burlesque teacher and performer, Lara Gothique.

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WOW. And make sure you stick around for her interview after the performance. What a woman.

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Fa la la la la!

Such a beautiful spring day like today makes me want to dance like a… um… a ballerina… ahhhh, pig.

That’s a thing, right?

Why not.

I want to dance like a ballerina pig!

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This is a charming book in so many ways, and definitely fun for a family to enjoy together. It will appeal to readers ages 5 to 8, who like stories about Spanish culture, stories about sisters, and surprising revelations about parents.

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Patricia Hruby Powell danced throughout the Americas and Europe with her dance company, One Plus One, before becoming a writer of children's books. She is the author of Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker, an extraordinary portrait of the passionate performer and civil rights advocate Josephine Baker written in exuberant verse. She lives in Champaign, Illinois. You can visit her online at talesforallages.com.

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