Read it LOUD Foundation

The founder of the Read it Loud Foundation, Wally Amos, had dedicated the last fifty years of his life to promoting family’s to read together. With grateful hearts from all of the countless volunteers that have help in sharing Wally Amos’ vision and all the countless families that have benefitted by reading together we applaud Wally’s commitment to literacy and are proud to have had an opportunity to known such an incredible and inspiring person. It is will a heavy heart that we write this post about Wally’s passing.

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/14/g-s1-17050/wally-amos-famous-amos-cookies-dead

https://youtu.be/6v5R0WrysA8

Read2gether Literacy Campaign The Read2gether Foundation is a non-profit organization providing no-cost eBook access to every student in the United States. This no-cost eBook campaign is ...

Congratulations to World Library Foundation’s self-publishing Authors’ Community for reaching 15,000 publications.

All 15,000 publications are available as open access, through any of our Library Community portals, and for open public access at the Gutenberg Authors’ Community portal, self.gutenberg.org.

The Authors’ Community has a wide range of of genres available, fiction, science, religion, philosophy, and self-help.

Sweets for the Sweet

“[A]nd as for the sweets, I won’t tell you how cheap and good they were, because it would only make your mouth water in vain.”
From The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis

Those sweets familiar to us today bear little resemblance to the candies of yesteryear. Candy may not hold a prominent place in literary themes, but it does figure in children’s literature, such as the Turkish delights that lure Edmund Pevensie to his downfall at the hands of the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and to the gingerbread house decorated with frosting and candies that trap unwary children in the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel.” Reserved for holidays and special occasions, children and adults looked forward to these sweet treats that you can make at home.

Candies originated as medicine used to calm digestive upset or soothe sore throats. Because of the rarity of its main ingredient—sugar and spices—such sweets were reserved for the wealthy who could afford their high cost. Before sugar became widely available in the 1830s, people coated edible flowers and fruits with honey to preserve them. Advances in sugar production led to wider availability and accessibility, such that even the working classes could afford themselves upon occasion. In less civilized areas, candy making such as taffy pulling became featured activities at family and community gatherings.

Candies can be divided into two general groups: sugar candies and chocolate candies. Sugar candies include hard and soft candies, caramels, marshmallows, and taffy. Sugar is the principle ingredient. Chocolate is the main ingredient in chocolate-based candies, which exclude hot cocoa, cocoa-based drinks, and white chocolate which actually has no cocoa solids. Chocolate does not commonly feature in confectionery until the late 19th century due to its relative rarity and high price.

May Belle Van Arsdale, Day Monroe, and Mary I. Barber collaborated on an extensive cookbook of candy recipes, aptly titled Our Candy Recipes (1922) in response to “the constant requests of housewives and students for good recipes for homemade candies.” Their book presents recipes that “have been tested in the classroom many times, and much effort has been spent in making them simple and accurate, yet sufficiently details to prevent failures.”

In 1915, the Home Candy Makers of Canton, Ohio produced The Art of Home Candy Making, with Illustrations. In the introduction, Mrs. R. W. Hadley writes:

[A]nyone, from the youngest member in the family who can read, to the oldest, experienced or inexperienced, can make the most delicious candy with the art of a professional. … This book is the life secret of one of the best candy makers in this country and as we have the exclusive right to his recipes they cannot be found or secured from any other source. (p. 3)

Not to be outdone in the task of satisfying humanity’s collective sweet tooth, other authors added their tried and true recipes for confectionery: Candy-Making at Home by Mary M. Wright (1870), Candy Making in the Home by Christine Terhune Herrick, Home Candy Making by Sarah Tyson Heston Rorer, Candy Making at Home by Isabel W. Blake, and, for a healthful twist, Candy-Making Revolutionized; Confectionery from Vegetables by Mary Elizabeth Hall.

A. A. Milne and the birth of Edward the Swan-Bear

English author , born January 18, 1882, led a highly productive literary life. He jump started his career with famed British humor rag Punch in 1906, and in the next 20 years produced over 20 works of fiction, poetry, plays, and nonfiction. In the midst of this storm of writing, Milne served in both World Wars.

Milne once said, "I suppose that every one of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next." He certainly succeeded in this. He created a fairly large body of work by the time of his death, but most have immortalized him as the creator of .

Winnie-the-Pooh is the fantastical children's story based on Milne’s son's stuffed animals. Of course the most popular of these stuffed animals was the bear, who was initially called Edward. Edward was later named Winnie-the-Pooh after the Canadian black bear adopted as a military mascot during World War I. “Winnie” came from the shortened Winnipeg, and “Pooh" came from, of course, a swan by the same name. Who said naming a silly, honey-loving bear was supposed to be simple?

Milne only created two books featuring the Pooh bear, yet they were so beloved they overshadowed his entire career. The titular Winnie the Pooh introduced all the classic Pooh-world characters, except for Tigger who was introduced in the sequel The House at Pooh Corner. The story is exactly as we've come to know it today, following Christopher Robin and his adventures with the bumbling Pooh bear.

Among some of Milne's first publications is the murder mystery, The Red House Mystery, about a house party and a black sheep brother who is mysteriously murdered within. It was good enough to gain the criticism of legendary detective fiction author Raymond Chandler, who said of it, "It is an agreeable book, light, amusing … Yet, however light in texture the story may be, it is offered as a problem of logic and deduction. If it is not that, it is nothing at all. There is nothing else for it to be."

His first novel, Once on a Time, is a fantasy about two kingdoms, Euralia and Barodia, and the political scuffles between them. Although writing for children under the guise of typical fairy tale tropes, Milne specifically attempted to round out each character rather than present static characters of good and evil. The princess, for example, is not a helpless damsel in distress; the prince is prideful; the villain is not completely evil.

He worked on many play adaptations of famous children's stories, like Toad of Toad Hall based on , and the based on the fairytale by the same name. One of his longest running plays was Mr. Pim Passes By.