...like the moon and the stars and the sun...

"Look--the moon can still shine even when the night is darkest." - When the Moon Forgot, Jimmy Liao

This week I am trying something a bit different on this blog. Instead of the typical book + recipe post, I am going to expand my theme throughout the week to include other books and projects we do that relate to our featured books (yes, two today) and recipe. With school being out we have a lot more time to spend with our books, and more hours of the day to fill with activities.

One of my boys' favorite topics--a subject we return to time and again--is outer space. They are fascinated by our solar system and space exploration. Over the years we've built up quite the collection of space books, from non-fiction to easy readers to fictional picture books. Kids are just fascinated with the moon and stars, even from a very early age.

To begin our week I chose two books that complement each other in tone and theme: Oliver Jeffers' How to Catch a Star and Jimmy Liao's When the Moon Forgot. I simply could not choose one over the other because they read so well together.

How to Catch a Star and When the Moon Forgot are both tender, somewhat melancholy (yet ultimately hopeful) books that have several common elements. In How to Catch a Star the young male protagonist (the same boy from Lost and Found), who is a bit lonely, wishes for a star of his very own. He devises various (humorous and improbable) ways to catch his star and bring it home but none are successful until, by accident, he finds a star (or is it a starfish?) washed up on the beach. The last image in the book is of the boy reading a story to his star.

When the Moon Forgot takes an almost opposite approach: when the moon falls from the sky he is found by a young (also a bit lonely) boy. While the rest of the world is thrown into disarray with the disappearance of the moon, the boy nurtures it and nurses it back to health. They become fast friends but the boy knows he can't keep the moon forever. Their separation is devastating but ends on a happy note, with the boy's dreams "always filled with moonlight." Liao's artwork is quite distinctive and one of the things that led me to seek out his other books. While Jeffers' world is sparse and airy (the boy, with his large head and wispy legs, looks like he could simply float into the sky to catch his star) Liaos' world is dense, lush and grounded. His pages are filled with color. Just look (and marvel) at his cityscapes and open fields. This book was originally published in Liao's native Taiwan--where he is one of their most popular author/illustrators--and intended for an adult audience, though his American publisher (Little, Brown) catalogues it in their children's category.

Neither of these books are what I would call shiny, happy stories. Despite their ultimately satisfying endings they both have a melancholic undercurrent that may be off-putting to some. My children, however, are very drawn to them. I think something about the idea of being able to capture a piece of the sky, or have the moon or a star as a friend, really appeals to them. My four year old has asked to read When the Moon Forgot every day for the past week. Because it is a new-to-us book we have enjoyed talking about it and discussing our own theories about why the moon fell to the ground ("It was sick. It shrank. Its gravity couldn't hold it up anymore so it fell." -- Six Year Old  "It was sad and scared." -- Four Year Old) and how the boy felt at different times in the story.

We were familiar with both Jeffers' and Liao's works prior to reading these two books. Jeffers' The Incredible Book-Eating Boy is one of my older son's favorite books. I bought How to Catch a Star for my younger son for Easter because I thought he would enjoy it--something about its tone reminded me of one of his other favorites, The Monster Who Ate Darkness (reviewed by me here)--which, coincidentally, was illustrated by Liao. Last month we quite randomly found Liao's Sound of Colors at our library and after enjoying that as well I began researching his other books. At this point I learned of When the Moon Forgot, and thought it would be a good companion read for How to Catch a Star. I absolutely recommend seeking out both of these authors' other works.

Because we have been reading about the moon and stars, of course we had to think of some way to incorporate both into this week's recipe...

Moon and Star Cookies

First, I owe you a bit of an explanation. My kids have random made-up names for certain things. They refer to giraffes as goofs. And cashews have always been moon nuts, due to their crescent moon-like appearance. I challenged myself to come up with a recipe using "moon nuts" that also incorporated stars. I hit upon the idea of making star-shaped cashew cookies. I based my recipe on the roll-out cookie recipe on the Pamela's Products website.

Ingredients:

• 3.5 cups Pamela's gluten-free bread mix
• 1 3/4 sticks unsalted butter (I used a combination of butter and Smart Balance spread)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 3/4 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• handful of cashews

Additional equipment: star shaped cookie cutter(s)

1. Soften butter in mixer. Add sugar and cream together. Add eggs and cream well. Add extracts.

2. Add salt. While blending add bread mix, 1 cup at a time. Blend together.

4. Chill dough for one hour.

5. Preheat oven to 350*. Dust dough and rolling surface with flour because the dough will be sticky. (I used brown rice flour.) Roll dough out on parchment paper and use cookie cutters to cut out star shapes.

6. Carefully remove star shapes and place on baking sheet.

7. Bake for 10 -12 minutes, or until edges begin to brown.

We are only just beginning our week of learning about the night sky. Please join us here on Wednesday when I will post some of my boys' favorite non-fiction books about the moon, stars and outer space. And on Thursday I will be sharing some of the star-related art and science activities we have been doing this week.

*Disclosure: I received a review copy of When the Moon Forgot from the publisher, Little, Brown.

**I am an Amazon.com Affiliate. As an Affiliate I earn a small commission when books are purchased via the links on this site. Thank you for helping support Eat Their Words.

A Penguin Story - Black and White Cookies

"'There is white ice for sliding,' says Edna. 'There is black night for seeing stars. There is blue sea for hunting fish. But there must be something else.'" - A Penguin Story, Antionette Portis 

We've been thinking and reading about penguins these past few weeks. As part of his animal unit at school, my six year old had to create an animal diorama and give a short oral presentation. He chose the penguin--which happens to be one of my both of my sons' favorite animals. So we have been enjoying a lot of books--fiction and non-fiction--about penguins.                                  

One of the best of the bunch is A Penguin Story by Antoinette Portis. In this book a penguin named Edna, tired of the white, black and blue sameness of her life in Antarctica, sets off on a journey to see if there is "something else." What she finds is a simple yet empowering discovery--one that inspires her to keep exploring, to see what else might be out there. I love the simple black, white and blue (and later another color but I won't give it away) illustrations in this book as they can serve as an introduction to talking about colors--specifically, the colors found in a place like Antarctica. 

Oliver Jeffers' Lost and Found is another of our favorites. It's the story of a boy who finds a lost penguin and the journey they take to return him to his home. But...is the penguin really lost or is it the boy who needed finding? There is a tender and melancholy quality to this story and its illustrations but it is, ultimately, a happy story of friendship found and lost and found again. Oliver Jeffers is an author to watch; my boys adore his The Incredible Book-Eating Boy.

Of course, during our study of penguins we read plenty of factual information about penguins as well. My kids actually love the non-fiction section of our library, which stocks a dozen or so penguin books. One of our favorites from our personal collection is Penguins (Scholastic First Discovery). It's part of a series notable for its use of acetate overlays that add more depth to selected illustrations. It introduces a variety of penguin species and discusses specific eating, mating and lifestyle characteristics of a few specific species. In Seven Weeks on an Iceberg by Keith R. Potter (which seems to be out of print, but we found it in our local library) we learned why the black and white feathers of the penguin are specific adaptations that help it survive in its environment.

We made these cookies in honor of our black and white friends: 

Black and White Cookies

Black and white cookies (sometimes called half moons) are most commonly found in New York. They are a cakey cookie frosted with white and black (chocolate) icing. They received their pop culture moment of fame in an episode of Seinfeld. I occasionally see them in places like Starbucks or the Nordstrom eBar but since going gluten-free I have been deprived of this occasional treat and my four year old has never had one. Until now! I modified some recipes to create a gluten-free version, though you can certainly use regular flours to make your cookies.

Ingredients:

The Cookie:

• 3/4 cup gluten-free all purpose baking flour
• 3/4 cup sweet rice flour
• 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
• pinch of salt
• pinch of baking soda
• 1/2 cup raw turbinado sugar
• 1.5 sticks of softened, unsalted butter
• 1 egg
• 1.5 tablespoons buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

(A note on the flours: I used Bob's Red Mill gluten-free all purpose baking flour and Mochiko sweet rice flour but there are many kinds of gluten-free flours you may wish to experiment with. If you don't want to make these using gluten-free flours--because let's be real, unless you or someone you'll be serving these to has a gluten sensitivity you probably aren't going out of your way to look for gluten-free flours and xanthan gum--simply use 1.5 cups of regular all purpose flour instead. If you do use regular flour you can omit the xanthan gum from the recipe. Xanthan gum is used as a binding agent in gluten-free baking since gluten-free flours lack the binding properties of gluten. It can be found in Whole Foods and many health food stores.)

1. Preheat the oven to 325* and line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk together your dry ingredients--the flour(s), baking soda, salt and xanthan gum. Set aside. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the egg, buttermilk, vanilla and lemon juice and mix. With mixer on a slow speed, slowly add the dry ingredients until blended.

2. Scoop the dough onto baking sheets (I used an ice cream scoop). I was able to get a total of 12 cookies out of the recipe. Use the back of a spatula to flatten the dough. I didn't worry too much about making them perfectly round, although afterward my husband said we should have rolled them out and used a round cookie cutter. WARNING: If you are working with gluten-free flours, resist the temptation to taste the raw dough. Trust me. It will be vile and you will wonder why you are making these cookies in the first place and think that perhaps "gluten-free" is actually a synonym for "poison." Once it is cooked through it will taste fine--it's just another one of those mysteries associated with gluten-free baking (or the flours I chose to use).

3. Bake for 15 minutes.

The Icing:

• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon light corn syrup
• 5 tablespoons hot water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 2 ounces melted bittersweet chocolate
• 1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa
• a few drops of black food coloring (optional)

1. Wait until the cookies have cooled before you attempt to ice them. Sift the powdered sugar into a bowl. Add the extracts and corn syrup. Add the hot water, one tablespoon at a time, while stirring the icing with a spatula. When it is slightly runny it's ready to be used.

2. Melt the chocolate (I used the microwave). Divide half of the icing into a separate bowl. Mix in the melted chocolate and cocoa. Add a few drops of black food coloring if you want the chocolate icing to be a true black. Blend together. At this point the black icing may be too stiff to work with; I added a little more water and sugar and reheated it in the microwave until it reached the desired consistency.

3. Using a separate spatula for each icing, ice half of one side of the cookie with the white glaze. Do the same to the other side with the black icing. I iced my cookies over the sink to avoid drips on my counter. Set aside and repeat, until all cookies are iced. Let sit for a couple of hours until the icing has hardened.

The finished product:

You now have gorgeous (and tasty!) black and white cookies to enjoy while cuddled up with a good book about penguins!