Tag: Story Time

Book Recommendations & Story-Time: Happy Lunar New Year!

CW @ The Quiet Pond1 Comment
Book Recommendations & Story-Time: Happy Lunar New Year!

Happy Lunar New Year to you, friends! Whether you are celebrating Chinese New Year, Tết, Shōgatsu, Seollal, or Tsagaan Sar today, we wish you all a wonderful, joyful, and prosperous new year.

Lunar New Year is one of my favourite days of the year. I love the festivities, connecting with my family, taking a moment to pause and reflect on the last year, and also the wonderful food that bring us all together. To celebrate this auspicious day, let’s share what the Pond friends got up to for Lunar New Year in today’s Story-Time, and we’ll close with some awesome books where Lunar New Year happened in the story!

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Story-Time: Our Third Pond-Mas – the Pond Friends Carol and Celebrate a Special Anniversary

CW @ The Quiet Pond1 Comment

You make your way towards The Pond, noticing the cold air nipping at your neck where your hairline meets the wool collar of your peacoat. As you brush aside the drooping branches of the willow tree marking the entrance, the absence of Xiaolong’s warm welcome is alarming. “I wonder where everyone is,” you think, “I can’t have Pondmas without my friends! They’re like my family!”

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Monthly Wrap-Up: November 2020 – Joce Shares Pondsgiving, CW’s Favourite Middle-Grade Reads, and Skye Reads More Fantasies!

CW @ The Quiet Pond2 Comments
Monthly Wrap-Up: November 2020 - Joce Shares Pondsgiving, CW's Favourite Middle-Grade Reads, and Skye Reads More Fantasies!

Joce Opens Pondsgiving & Shares a Story-Time

This year, and every year, we hold Pondsgiving to share a meal and the found family we have built amongst the inhabitants. In our everyday lives, particularly the American voices in the book community, we need to strive to decolonize Thanksgiving. This article by M. Karlos Baca (Tewa/Dinè/Nuuciu), an Indigenous Foods Activist, founder of Taste of Native Cuisine, and a cofounder of the I-Collective, explores ways to decolonize Thanksgiving and revive Indigenous relationships with food. The Pond is full of myth, magic, and lore, and in these traditions, we eradicate the false narrative we have been told about glorifying pilgrimage in American history, and retell history in the ways that stories should have been initially told.

We are taking special care to decolonize our Thanksgiving dinner at the Pond, using methods and ideologies from this interview with Chef Nephi Craig, a Navajo member of the White Mountain Apache tribe of Whiteriver, Arizona, and founder of the Native American Culinary Association.

We welcome you to our Pondsgiving dinner. We hope you’ll stay awhile.

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Monthly Wrap-Up & Story-Time: October 2020 & Story Time – The Pond Friends Celebrate Pond-O-Ween!

CW @ The Quiet Pond12 Comments

It’s the last day of spooky season, friends! And that means… it’s finally Pond-O-Ween! Last year, the Pond friends celebrated Pond-O-Ween and dressed up in costumes handmade by our favourite toad, Varian. This year, the Pond friends are back with new costumes, and we are so excited for you to see them.

Seeing that it’s the last day of the month, we thought we would combine Pond-O-Ween with our Monthly Wrap-Up. We haven’t had a Story-Time post in awhile, and Joce wrote this year’s Pond-O-Ween post – and I know all of you are going to love it as much as I do.

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Pondathon: The End – The Battle is Over

CW @ The Quiet Pond4 Comments

Pondathon: Readathon side-quest available!

New to the Pondathon’s story?
Read this prologue first or read the previous chapter.

You close your eyes, reaching within you for a spell that will save Xiaolong. You remember everyone’s bravery, as they fought and protected and did everything within their power to save the Pond. You think of the warmth of your friends’ love, how their friendship feels like a home that could weather any storm, typhoon, or quake. You think about how you, small as you may be, are here, and that in itself is something incredible.

As all of your memories and your feelings and the immensity of your small power come together, a grand power rises within you. It feels like all the light in the world, the stars and the cosmos bursting behind your eyes. You feel limitless, infinite. You believe.

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