Posted on by TracyC

The Sleepover Cookbook

The Sleepover Cookbook by Hallie Warshaw, 2000.

This cookbook has easy recipes that kids can make with their friends at sleepovers, parties, or anytime they want to eat together and include cooking as an activity. Some of the recipes are made from scratch, and some include shortcuts, like using pre-packaged pie dough and crescent roll dough.

The recipes are divided into sections with two sections devoted to snacks, Starter Snacks and Sacktime Snacks (bedtime snacks). There are other sections for meals – dinners, breakfasts, and brunch or lunch. There is also one extra section for birthday treats. The introduction to the book says that it isn’t really important when readers use the recipes – if you want to use a starter snack as a bedtime snack or eat a dinner recipe for breakfast, it’s all up to you. The sections are just to make it easier to find certain types of recipes.

As expected in a book of sleepover recipes, there are plenty of sugary treats, but there is one specifically “healthy” recipe for each section in the book, marked by a heart in the table of contents. The snacks include traditional kid favorites like cookies, popcorn balls, and s’mores. However, even some of the recipes that aren’t specifically labeled “healthy” are still non-sugary, like guacamole and hot taco dip.

The meal recipes also include many popular favorites. Dinner recipes include chicken pot pie, taco salad, spaghetti and meatballs, and homemade pizza. Breakfast recipes include cream cheese and ham omelettes, chocolate chip muffins, and banana nut French toast. Lunch recipes include tuna melts (called Tuna Meltdowns), bow-tie pasta salad, chicken veggie sticks (kebabs), and turkey burgers.

The section of birthday treats has recipes for different types of cakes and a few non-cake treats like brownie sundaes and Fundue (chocolate dessert fondue).

Each of the recipes in the book comes with ratings, indicating the difficulty of the recipes, although none of them were are really very difficult in general, and the amount of time it takes to make them. One of the things that I liked about this book, besides the ease of the recipes is that the book, is that the pictures show boys cooking as well as girls. I think it’s good that the book portrays cooking as something that both boys and girls can do because it’s a useful life skill for everyone and something that anybody can do for fun.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

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Ira Sleeps Over

IraSleepsOver

Ira Sleeps Over by Bernard Waber, 1972.

Ira, a young boy, is happy when his friend, Reggie, who lives next door, invites him to sleep over at his house. Then, his sister asks him if he’s going to take his teddy bear with him. At first, Ira says no, but his sister points out that he’s never slept without it.

Ira starts to worry about whether he should take the teddy bear with him or not. He worries that Reggie might laugh at him for having a teddy bear. His parents say that he won’t and that Ira should go ahead and take the bear with him. However, his sister says that Reggie probably will laugh.

IraSleepsOverWorry

Ira tries to talk to Reggie and sound him out on the idea of teddy bears to see if Reggie will laugh, but Reggie ignores Ira’s questions. Reggie is excited about all the things that he and Ira can do at the sleepover and eagerly explains his plans. It all sounds like fun, but Ira gets nervous when Reggie mentions ghost stories.

IraSleepsOverReggie

Ira continues to debate about whether or not he should take his bear with him. Before going over to Reggie’s house, he decides to leave his teddy bear at home.

The two boys have a lot of fun playing together at the sleepover. At bedtime, Reggie starts to tell a ghost story, and both of the boys are a little spooked. That’s when Ira discovers that Reggie has a teddy bear of his own.

IraSleepsOverTeddy

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.

My Reaction

This is a nice story about how the things that we worry other people will find ridiculous or embarrassing are often more common and less embarrassing than we think. At first, Ira worries (because of what his sister said) that Reggie will think that his teddy bear, named Tah Tah, is silly and childish, but after discovering that Reggie has a teddy bear named Foo Foo, Ira realizes that Reggie will understand how he feels about his bear and decides to run home and get it.  Reggie probably dodged Ira’s earlier questions about teddy bears because he was similarly worried about what Ira would think of his bear.  Sometimes, when people really open up to each other and talk honestly about the way they feel, they learn that other people have shared their feelings and experiences more than they might have thought.

Posted on by TracyC

Lauren’s New Address

Sleepover Friends

SFLaurenNewAddress#28 Lauren’s New Address by Susan Saunders, 1990.

Lauren is not happy when her father announces that their family is moving to a new house a couple of miles from their old neighborhood. Her father works in real estate and wants to have his own office in their home. Their old house wasn’t big enough, so he found a new house for them.

Lauren hates the new house because it’s old and looks like a haunted house on tv. Plus, she’s afraid that she won’t see her friends as much because she’ll be living farther away from them. Her friends try to cheer her up by pointing out that she’ll have a swimming pool in her backyard and will be living down the street from one of the cutest boys in school, but nothing seems to help.

Then, Lauren learns that one of her new neighbors may be a princess from another country.  The girls hear that a young princess, Marina, from the European country of Osterburg has lost her parents in a car accident and is coming to live in their town with her American aunt and uncle. The only picture they’ve seen of the princess is blurry, but it looks a little like the young girl, Maya, living next door to Lauren in her new neighborhood. Stephanie suggests to Lauren that she try to find out more about the girl because if she is really a princess it would make a great story for their school newspaper.  At first, Lauren is doubtful, but then she overhears something that makes her think otherwise.

Things in Lauren’s neighborhood might not be quite what they seem at first, but her friends find some creative ways to help her adjust to her new house and learn ways of dealing with change, like keeping busy.  In the end, although Lauren is still getting used to her new house, she is happy because there are some good points about it, and she knows that her friends will still be there for her.

Posted on by TracyC

Patti’s Luck

Sleepover Friends

SFPattisLuck#1 Patti’s Luck by Susan Saunders, 1987.

Patti Jenkins has just moved from the big city to the smaller town of Riverhurst.  Recognizing her as a former classmate, Stephanie invites her to join the group of friends she has sleepovers with, Kate and Lauren.  The other girls like her, but almost immediately, bad things start happening.

At their first sleepover with Patti, the girls start watching a creepy old movie that spooks both Patti and Lauren. Patti accidentally knocks over a tray of snacks, and Kate jokes that it’s part of the curse, like in the movie.  Then, the water main breaks at Stephanie’s house, so the girls are unable to wash out the purple styling gel they just put in their hair.

From there, it just seems to get worse and worse.  Patti accidentally sets Lauren’s backpack on the back of a car that drives away, and the girls have to chase after it on their bikes.  Lauren eventually catches up with the car and gets her schoolwork back, but Patti gets lost and caught in a rain storm before she can find her way back to school.  Then, on a school field trip, she helps her classmates to find an elevator at the museum.  After Patti presses the button, the elevator doors close before their teacher gets on, and the elevator gets stuck for awhile with the lights off.

Is Patti bad luck?  She seems to think so, and Lauren, being the superstitious type, is pretty creeped out, thinking that Patti might really be under a curse.  Kate, of course, says that’s all nonsense.  When Stephanie is hurt after Patti accidentally lets Lauren’s brother’s huge dog out of the room whee he was supposed to stay, Patti starts avoiding the other girls because she’s worried about her bad luck curse. The others decide that they need to do something to help Patti out of her bad luck streak.

The book acknowledges that most of Patti’s “bad luck” is just a series of unfortunate accidents and coincidences and that it’s only Patti’s nervousness and superstitious attitude toward them that makes it seem like something more.  Kate devises a way to remove Patti’s bad luck that works partly because Patti feels the need for some kind of ceremony to help her get back to normal.  In the end, all of the girls realize that there’s nothing really supernatural or superstitious going on.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.