There are a lot of food books out there. Traditional cookbooks, diet missives, food lifestyle guides and more flood the shelves of bookstores and libraries.

So it is rare that I find a food book that piques my interest enough to thoroughly peruse it, and even rarer that I get excited enough about the book that I want to recommend it. And yet, a book my Mother-in-Law shared with me did just that; in fact, it got me so excited I found myself sharing random facts about the antioxidants in horseradish to others. It takes a lot to get me talking about horseradish.

It was only fitting that yesterday we came home from a morning of end-of-summer-like activities (meet-the-teacher event for L., and a work meeting for me) to find a package awaiting us. A dear family friend has a yearly tradition of sending us a "Christmas in July" package. This year we unwrapped the mysterious brown parcel to find this:

The concept of Mother's Day is a hard one to grasp for toddlers, but that doesn't mean they can't celebrate by sharing a good book about moms with someone they love.

The books I am featuring today are all favorites at our house. When we talk about mommies, these are the ones that I grab first. So this weekend I hope you have a chance to cuddle up with a little person and share some books about moms.

Whenever we travel anywhere I always like to seek out relevant books in advance for my kids to read—it’s the teacher in me. Or the book-lover in me, who knows. I do know that when you read about a place in the context of a book or picture book and then visit the place, it becomes all that more real to you. For years and years I've wanted to visit Maine because of my love for the Robert McCloskey books.

L. is all over these books lately. He asked for books one and two for Christmas and I gladly obliged. He rarely expresses any interest in books that are "fiction" and not detailed guides to his latest obsession (in this case aviation). But I had noticed in the weeks leading up to the holiday break that almost all the kids in his class were buying the books at the Scholastic book fair and toting around copies of them, laughing at the jokes, and swapping "how far have you read?" challenges. When L.