“Did you know,” Alice asked when I picked her up from kindergarten one afternoon,”there’s never been a girl President?”

I know, of course. But not like she does.

My daughters are fortunate in many, many, many, many ways. And I think maybe one of the biggest and most powerful is that their world is incandescent with possibility.

It would never occur to her that a girl couldn’t be President. So why hadn’t one?

“Lots of reasons. Why do you think?” (It’s kind of a cheat, but I lean on it lots. What do you think?)

Alice thinks it’s because the first President was a boy. “And boys normally pick boys.”

“Something like that.”

 

“And do you know what else?” I asked her, “There was a time when girls weren’t even allowed to vote. They didn’t even get to help pick the President.”

She frowned. Why?

“I know, right? There have been some pretty terrible laws.”

“Were they mostly about things girls weren’t allowed to do?”

We checked a bunch of books out of the library – about girls and women and voting and service and making things possible. (Do you have any recommendations? We always want more).

My favorite, favorite part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the DNC earlier this week, the part that made me a little teary, was this:

“I want a leader … who is worthy of my girls’ promise and all our kids’ promise, a leader who will be guided every day by the love and hope and impossibly big dreams that we all have for our children.”

Oh, me too.

Have you seen it yet?

Take a peek:

Really fun, right? I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to introduce Stef. Here’s a little more about the book:

Seventh grader Estefania “Stef” Soto is itching to shake off the onion-and-cilantro embrace of Tia Perla, her family’s taco truck. She wants nothing more than for her dad to get a normal job and for Tia Perla to be put out to pasture. It’s no fun being known as the “Taco Queen” at school.

But just when it looks like Stef is going to get exactly what she wants, and her family’s livelihood is threatened, she will have to become the truck’s unlikely champion. In this fun and multicultural middle grade novel, Stef will discover what matters the most, and ultimately embrace an identity that even includes old Tia Perla.

STEF SOTO, TACO QUEEN will be released by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in January 2017 (but you can preorder now!)

A few weeks ago, my terrific friends at the Stockton-San Joaquin County Public Library hosted a cover reveal on the library’s website. Check it out for some fun facts about the book.

(And I was super-delighted to read this really nice review from the Pretty Page Turner blog.)

It’s getting exciting, you guys.

Preorder Stef:

  

So many cultures have decorated-egg traditions, from Greek kokkina avga to Ukrainian pysanky. And in many Latinx families, including mine, there are cascarones, confetti-filled eggs. (The Spanish word cáscara means shell).

Cascarones are colorful, surprising a little mischievous—and super easy to make. You should totally try it. Here’s what you need:

• Eggs (but don’t hard boil them!)
• Something to decorate the eggs (We use food-coloring)
• Confetti
• Tissue paper
• Glue

First you need to empty the eggs. The easiest way, for me, is to hold the egg, wider end up, and to gently tap it with the tip of a knife to poke a small hole. Then I use a pin to carefully widen the hole to roughly nickel-size.

Next, shake out the egg and rinse the empty shell.

(If you plan ahead, you can start saving eggshells a couple of weeks in advance. But if you need to use up a whole bunch of egg at once, I recommend custard pie. Or flan.)

After the eggshells are clean and dry, you can decorate. Hooray.

Let the shells dry again. Then fill with confetti. You can buy some or make your own with a hole punch. We just cut up strips of colored paper.

To fill each shell, roll a piece of paper into a funnel, then spoon in the confetti.

Finally, cut circles out of tissue paper, place them over the holes in each eggshell and seal the edges. We use white school glue.

Let the glue dry, and you’re all set.