Tofu Ling and the Carp Banner by Rosanna I. Porter is a story about the meaning of the Japanese Festival of Tango No Sekku (Boys’ Day)… The day celebrates not only strength but also character. In the story, Tofu Ling practices for a Tae Kwon Do tournament that is to be held the day before Tango...

The Idiom: The Frog in the Well – 井底之蛙 (jǐng dǐ zhī wā) – is a Chinese idiom that refers to a narrow-minded person who doesn’t see the larger world around them.  The Story: The story is about a frog who lives happily in a well.  He has no idea what’s outside of that well. ...

Last week we went Geocaching with my daughter and two of her friends.  Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunt.   You look for hidden containers, called geocaches with the help of a GPS device.  In our case, we used an iPhone to find the treasure. On our search, we passed the knotted tree in the...

You can now listen to and read My Very First Little German Book online or download them onto your computer.  The book and recording are both in German and English.  The book has nice little illustrations. View the 1st two pages of the book by clicking on the image above. The book includes a little...

Librivox just released another bunch of recordings of fairy tales in various languages, including Hungarian, Russian, German, English, Italian and Portuguese (with links to the text of each tale). This is the 3rd collection they’ve posted. Fairy Tale Collection #1 also includes recordings in Latvian, Danish, Romanian, Yiddish and French. You can also...

Alice in Wonderland is coming out in theaters next month in the US… starring one of my favorite actors, Johnny Depp!   Adding to the excitement is that it’s directed by Tim Burton.  He directed Edward Scissorhands (starring Depp), The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...

Young nursery rhyme lovers will enjoy this little story featuring Mother Goose characters.  Kids who aren’t familiar with a lot of nursery rhymes can learn new ones.  I made each character linkable to a page where you can read that character’s rhyme.  At the end of the story is an illustration that includes many of...

Project Gutenberg just released an online version of Anatole France’s book "Les enfants" in English.  It’s called "Our Children", which is a collection of little stories for kids.  It has some lovely illustrations. I read a couple of stories from it to my daughter yesterday and she enjoyed them.  The book is from around 1886.  So...