Category: books

Sometimes you need tips on how to slash your grocery bill but you still want to eat healthy and that seems like a daunting task to figure out on your own.

Well that may have been the case before, but now you have no reason not to.  You  can discover just how delicious and satisfying clean eating can be with this clean new book:   The Best of Clean Eating – Improving your life one meal at a time.

Here are three reasons to get this book:

The elves at Chicken Soup for the Soul have done it again, with a fabulous collection of Christmas stories filled with all the joy, wonder, and inspiration of my favorite holiday!

Christmas Magic: 101 Holiday Tales that will make your holidays even more magical.

Share the magic and joy of Christmas with the whole family.  You’ll love these 101 heartwarming, inspirational, and fun stories of Christmas miracles, family reunions, charity, the

Arcadia Publishing, the leading local history publisher in the United States, has launched a fun new series about U.S. cities, Cool Stuff Every Kid Should Know.  Children learn best when learning is fun, and the colorful photographs, dynamic graphics, and kid-friendly facts in these easy-to-read books add up to an irresistible package.

Celebrate the joy of reading this holiday season, with wonderfully charming picture books by Abrams for young readers — and those young at heart.

La Noche Buena, A Christmas Story
Written by Antonio Sacre
Illustrated by Angela Dominguez

Who doesn’t love the winter holidays?  They are a time for special get-togethers with family and friends — and great food.  But when a person comes from a multicultural family, the holidays become even more important because it’s a melting pot of experiences, languages, new family traditions, and faith-based rituals passed on to new generations from the previous.  And in the new pictur

My faithful readers know I love Disney, and their FamilyFun division has provided me with hours of craft ideas, recipes and parenting tips over the years.  When I was approached to share these books FamilyFun has out for the Holidays, I was excited to be able to offer a giveaway, for you my readers!

FamilyFun Christmas, a collector’s edition, contains over 100 ideas for festive recipes, crafts, gifts, and decorations, alongside step-by-step instructions and full-color photos.  ‘Cookies for Christmas’ and ‘Homemade Holidays’ are packed with delicious recipes, cookie decorating ideas, and inspirations for making the season merry and bright.

Gift Guide Pick

Brown Bag it in Style

 Lunch Bags! features today’s hottest designers sharing their sewing savvy with 25 projects, from a simple sandwich wrap to a sophisticated shoulder bag. Why shouldn’t your lunch bag match your personal wardrobe and eco-conscious lifestyle?

Regular Three Different Directions readers, know that I love books.  I read all kinds of genres, and enjoy them all for different reasons.  Last week a most charming book arrived on my doorstep, one that would make a fabulous gift, National Geographic’s ‘The Classic Treasury of Childhood Wonders: Favorite adventures, stories, poems, and songs for making lasting memories’ by Susan H. Magsamen.

Gift Guide Pick

U Star Novels has a range of really unusual, yet educational gifts for the whole family.

They are the leading publisher of personalized novels.

Their personalized classics are great for children.  They are a fun, yet educational way to get them into reading by making them the lead role of a classic novel, such as Peter Pan or Alice from Alice in Wonderland starring together with 6 of their friends, or even the family pet (in Wizard of Oz).

Words. Words. Words. We spend the day with words flying at, around and past us.  Today, if you don’t have lots of words, you simply cannot navigate the world. Or at least some of cyberspace.

I love word games, and I was recently sent copies of some Bananagrams products, including 10-Minute Bananagrams (Workman publishing, December 2010), Bananagrams! for Kids, More Bananagrams! and the first in the series, Bananagrams! The Official Book, all based on the best selling game Bananagrams.  These books will entertain you

Gift Guide Pick

I love the material MoMA puts out for kids.  Among their books is one in particular I’d like to share with you, Make Art Make Mistakes: A Creativity Sketchbook ($16.99, Chronicle Books).

Each page has an activity of a simple, but fundamental art theme.  Lines, colors, patterns, etc.  There are also pages with visual inspirational quotes from artists like Georgia O’Keefe and Pablo Picasso.