New Releases by Heidi E.Y. Stemple

A Kite for Moon Educator's Guide is a companion to A Kite for Moon by Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Stemple. This guide can be utilized in the classroom, in a home school setting, or by parents seeking additional resources. Ideal for grades K-3.

Everyday kids learn how they can help protect bird species, near and far, with the award-winning book Counting Birds—the real-life story behind the first annual bird count. What can you do to help endangered animals and make a positive change in our environment? Get counting! Counting Birds is a beautifully illustrated book that introduces kids to the idea of bird counts and bird watches. Along the way, they will learn about Frank Chapman, an ornithologist who wanted to see the end of the traditional Christmas bird hunt, an event in which people would shoot as many birds as possible on Christmas. Chapman, using his magazine Bird-Lore to promote the idea of counting birds, founded the first annual bird count. More than a century after the first bird count, bird counting helps professional researchers collect data, share expertise, and spread valuable information to help all kinds of birds around the world, from condors to hawks to kestrels and more. Counting Birds introduces kids to a whole feathered world that will fascinate and inspire them to get involved in conservation and become citizen scientists. 2019 Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students: K–12 (National Science Teachers Association and Children's Book Council) 2019 Best STEM Book for K–12 Students (National Science Teachers Association and the Children's Book Council) Winner of the 2019 Riverby Award (The John Burroughs Association) Recipient of the 2019 Green Earth Book Award Honor (The Nature Generation)

Cauldrons, broomsticks, spells, and black cats are some of the things that witches bring to mind. Yet, tales about witches are more than just spooky legends. Throughout history, people who looked or acted strangely have been accused of being witches and conjuring evil. The consequence of being found guilty of practicing witchcraft was often a terrible death! Among the 11 creepy witches’ haunts in this book, children will discover a castle haunted by a woman suspected of being a witch, a cave lived in by a odd-looking woman who could predict the future, and a tower where people gather on Halloween to summon the devil. The spooky photographs and chilling nonfiction text will keep children turning the pages to discover even more spellbinding stories.

When winter's snow creates a soft blanket of silence, nothing is more comforting than curling up under a cozy quilt. Whether slumber awaits in a warm bed, a rocking hammock, or a nest of leaves, the feeling of comfort and the infinite world of dreams are universal. This reassuring lullaby will calm any child to sleep, while Brooke Dyer's gentle illustrations show that the little details in everyone's niche truly make a place into a home.

Fairy Tale Feasts is more than collection of stories and recipes. In it, Caldecott-winning author Jane Yolen and her daughter, Heidi Stemple, imagine their readers as co-conspirators. About the creation of the stories and the history of the foods they share fun facts and anecdotes designed to encourage future cooks and storytellers to make up their own versions of the classics. From the earliest days of stories, when hunters told of their exploits around the campfire while gnawing on a leg of beast, to the era of kings in castles listening to the storyteller at the royal dinner feast, to the time of TV dinners when whole families sit for dinner in front of a screen to watch a movie, stories and eating have been close companions. So it is not unusual that folk stories are often about food. Jack's milk cow traded for beans, Snow White given a poisoned apple, a pancake running away from those who would eat it, Hansel and Gretel lured by the gingerbread house and its candy windows and doors. But there is something more- stories and recipes are both changeable. A storyteller never tells the same story twice, because every audience needs a slightly different story, depending upon the season or the time of day, the restlessness of the youngest listener, or how appropriate a tale is to what has just happened in the storyteller's world. And every cook knows that a recipe changes according to the time of day, the weather, the altitude, the number of grains in the level teaspoonful, the ingredients found (or not found) in the cupboard or refrigerator, even the cook's own feelings about the look of the batter.