Birth Culture

Maia wakes up on her birthday to a delicious smell brewing in the kitchen. Her family is making Miyeok guk, one of her favorite foods! Miyeok guk is seaweed soup that new moms eat after giving birth to help replenish nutrients, and many Koreans eat this same soup on their birthdays to honor their mothers, who gave life to them. This year, Maia gets to help prepare Birthday Soup by chopping ingredients, drying the seaweed, and then adding everything to the sizzling pot.

Join us on a journey with different family traditions. There is magic in family traditions! In this delightful collection of short stories for children, we explore the unique and heartwarming ways that families come together to celebrate their heritage.

If your child has a birthday coming up, it can be interesting for children to learn about how different birthday traditions are celebrated around the world. These stories are told through the eyes of children from India to Ireland and lots of places in between. We learn what's similar and what's different about birthday traditions across the world. This is an ideal book if your child is excited for their own birthday. They are narrated in a calming way by a teacher, and the stories are set to calming music.

Lujien, my six-year-old daughter, came home one day with the idea of a story of a fish struggling in her school because she is weak. As a physician, I have seen firsthand how physical therapists work to help patients succeed. The idea of our book is to help children understand disabilities, and the role physical therapists play in helping them heal. By making the story about a small fish and (not a human), we hope that kids will better absorb and understand the idea of disability.

This selection comes from the 1910 book on the history of the telephone by Herbert N. Casson. The two sections cover the birth of the phone and its future. What makes this fascinating is how 110 years ago writers viewed the future of such a communicative device.