Theme Birthday Parties for Children or If I Can Cook You Know God Can

Theme Birthday Parties for Children: A Complete Planning Guide

Author: Anita M Smith

Every parent wants to make a child's birthday party a special and fun experience. This resource for party-planners contains complete instructions for 18 parties with themes ranging from the barnyard to the jungle, and from pirates to princesses. Each themed party includes detailed instructions and ideas for invitations, decorations, games, crafts, refreshments, music, and everything else needed to create a delightful and memorable occasion. The easy-to-follow ideas are simple and economical enough for any party-planner—but definitely fun for kids. Also included are helpful general tips for making any child's birthday party a delight rather than an ordeal, including schedule suggestions, planning tips, appropriate party sizes and lengths for various age groups, advice on how to entertain early arrivals, suggestions for dealing with a difficult child, and much more. Tons of illustrations and diagrams are included.

New interesting textbook: Quality Tourism Experiences or Introduction to Health Care Delivery

If I Can Cook/You Know God Can

Author: Ntozake Shang

Ntozake Shange offers this personal culinary memoir, with dashes of literature and pinches of music, in her rousing tribute to black cuisine as a food of life that reflects the spirit and history of a people. With recipes such as "Collard Greens to Bring You Money," Shange introduces us to 'Afro-Atlantic foodways:' a cuisine born on the slave ships of the Middle Passage, and shared by all members of the African Diaspora. If I Can Cook/You Know God Can is a vivid story of the migration of a people that opens our hearts and minds to what it means for "black folks in the Western Hemisphere to be full."

Miami Herald - Kathy Martin

A captivating collection of African-American food memories, meditations and recipes.

Library Journal

With lyrical originality and musical patois, playwright, novelist, and poet Shange intertwines the history and food of the "African Diaspora" into a beautiful little book in the tradition of M.F.K. Fisher. This collection of essays -- conversations might be more accurate -- takes the reader to the tables of African-Americans; the kitchens of Nicaragua, London, Barbados, and Brazil; and the feasts of Africa. Proud tradition plays an important role here, but don't overlook the book's value for the chef. Easy-to-follow recipes for "collards to bring you money," rack of lamb, hominy, feijoada, barbecue, gumbo, okra, and couscous are among the 34 exotic dishes, and most of the ingredientsexcept maybe turtle eggsare readily available. Herein is also contained the coveted secret of determining a watermelon's ripeness! An inexpensive cookbook with a lot of class. -- Wendy Miller, Lexington Public Library, Kentucky

Library Journal

With lyrical originality and musical patois, playwright, novelist, and poet Shange intertwines the history and food of the "African Diaspora" into a beautiful little book in the tradition of M.F.K. Fisher. This collection of essays -- conversations might be more accurate -- takes the reader to the tables of African-Americans; the kitchens of Nicaragua, London, Barbados, and Brazil; and the feasts of Africa. Proud tradition plays an important role here, but don't overlook the book's value for the chef. Easy-to-follow recipes for "collards to bring you money," rack of lamb, hominy, feijoada, barbecue, gumbo, okra, and couscous are among the 34 exotic dishes, and most of the ingredientsexcept maybe turtle eggsare readily available. Herein is also contained the coveted secret of determining a watermelon's ripeness! An inexpensive cookbook with a lot of class. -- Wendy Miller, Lexington Public Library, Kentucky

Kathy Martin

A captivating collection of African-American food memories, meditations and recipes. -- Miami Herald

What People Are Saying

Edwidge Danticat
...as in all her brilliant works, Ntozake Shange stirs and simmers the soul and moves the reader/eater/cook to rethink every morsel of Pan-African history, personal celebration, and global pain which enter our lives when we gather around her magical hearth to laugh, to cry—but most indispensably—to eat. (Edwidge Danticat, author of Krik? Krak!)

Edwidge Danticat
...[A]s in all her brilliant works, Ntozake Shange stirs and simmers the soul and moves the reader/eater/cook to rethink every morsel of Pan-African history, personal celebration, and global pain which enter our lives when we gather around her magical hearth to laugh, to cry--but most indispensably--to eat.