Our Family Dinner Book Club selection for the month of February is Last Stop on Market Street by Matt De La Pena. Here you’ll find a menu that can be prepared with the help of your children, and will hopefully be a fun and interactive activity for the whole family. Head over to Growing Book by Book for some talking points to get the conversation started as well as an idea for a family service project. Then visit Sunny Day Family for a fun craft. We invite you to share a picture from your dinner with us anytime during the month on our Family Dinner Book Club Facebook page.
Last Stop on Market Street is a wonderful children’s book about a boy and his grandmother who do the same thing every Sunday and end up at the same place, a soup kitchen. It is this year’s Newberry Award winner as well as a Caldecott Honor book.
This book sends a great message about not only helping and serving those in our communities, but also spending quality time with our family members of all ages. The nana is this book interacts with many different types of people on their journey and that is something David and I have been wanting to instill in the girls. People come in all shapes, sizes, colors, forms, and personalities, and all people deserve to be treated with kindness.
Since it has been cold in many places throughout the US this winter, I made a warm and comforting meal to go along with this book. I will also be sharing a recipe next week for Green Chicken Chili that can easily be doubled or tripled to feed a crowd.
Last Stop on Market Street
Family Dinner Book Club
Menu
El Potato Stew
with tortillas, lime wedges, shredded cheese
Skillet Cornbread
Roasted Vegetables
Horchata
If you are unable to volunteer at a soup kitchen like CJ and his Nana do, you can still go out into your community and feed people. Spend a Saturday or Sunday morning with the kids, decorating brown paper lunch sacks, then fill them with shelf-stable foods and water bottles. Now take those sack lunches and hand them out to homeless people in your neighborhood. If you live near a big city, you can probably find a location where homeless people gather and hand out tons of sack lunches.
Sack Lunches Menu
1-2 water bottles per bag
granola bars
apples or oranges
crackers
peanut butter pouches
tuna pouches
fruit snacks
napkins
plastic forks, spoons, knives
I love the sack lunch idea. Great ideas!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE the family book club idea. Not only does it promote literacy, it also fosters positive family conversations around the dinner table. What a WIN-WIN! We would love for you to link up this post with us at the Literacy Musing Mondays Linkup #LMMLinkup http://www.foreverjoyful.net/?p=830
I love that you have a literacy link up!
Thanks so much for sharing this at #LMMLinkup. We hope you’ll share all your Family Book Club recipes!