The Ugly Vegetables Turns 10!

Bethann Buddenbaum is a freelance consultant who moved back to her home state in the Midwest after living in Los Angeles for over 20 years. She is the mother of two daughters who were adopted from the Zhuzhou Social Welfare Institute in Hunan, China.

Grace Lin is one of our family's favorite authors. We started out with Round is a Mooncake, graduated to The Seven Chinese Sisters, and for the past year, WeiWei has picked up and re-read The Year of the Dog and The Year of the Rat more times than I can remember. I finally signed WeiWei up for Grace's monthly email newsletter so that she would stop asking ME when Grace was going to release a follow up to her favorite books (like I know).

While reading Grace's March newsletter, I discovered that The Ugly Vegetables turns 10 today. I know that there are many families who have enjoyed this award-winning book together over the past decade. If your copy is as worn as ours, you'll be glad to know that the publisher is releasing a special anniversary edition that includes a new cover design and an updated pinyin glossary to make pronouncing the book's vegetables much easier.

Even better, Grace has created Ugly Vegetable activities that include a coloring page, a scripted play by FCC-Portland Maine, audio pronunciations of the vegetables, and a lesson plan and recipe for Ugly Vegetable soup.

Our Girl Scout troop, which is made up primarily of girls adopted from China, is planning to use Grace's lesson plan as an activity next month. I look forward to sharing how the girls react to bringing this book to life. In the meantime, be sure to check out Grace's website where you can find out more about her first book The Ugly Vegetables, as well as many others that will undoubtedly be enjoyed for generations to come.

The Ugly Vegetables Turns 10!