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The topic for this week’s Denver Post haiku contest is road trips. The deadline is midnight Thursday (Denver time). Send your one stanza (5-7-5) haiku to lifestyle@denverpost.com or go online at www.denverpost.com/haiku to enter it or. The weekly winner will win a $25 gift certificate to the Tattered Cover bookstore.

(Thanks the Seattle Edible Book Festival blog for the photograph of Lauralee Smith’s Peep Haiku - it’s 5-7-5 - get it?)

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Last Fall a reader asked for book suggestions for a young relative who was being raised by an aunt and uncle. While there were a lot of books available about adopted children, there weren’t many books that related to parental loss and foster parenting. I had a few suggestions, but when I read Home Now by Lesley Beake (Charlesbridge children’s book publishers) I immediately thought about this reader and her request.

Devastated by the loss of her parents to AIDS, Sieta comes to accept her new home after meeting an orphaned baby elephant with memories like her own. While Home Now is specifically about the AIDS crisis in Africa (there is an endnote explaining the effects of AIDS on many African families) this book will help any child who’s been taken away from his or her parents due to drugs, neglect or illness, and placed with a relative or foster family.

Today’s writing invitation number one comes from Kane/Miller’s Could You? Would You? A book to tickle your imagination. Author Trudy White presents a book of questions to get kids laughing, thinking, talking, drawing, writing and exploring the world. (The planned book release date is September 30, 2007.)

Trudy’s illustrations are whimsical and her questions are clever. She asks questions like, "Where will people live in the future?" which have the potential to make children write, discuss, and draw for hours.

If you like doing writing prompts or just want to have a fun book for discussion, go over to Amazon.com and reserve your copy today.

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Have you heard about the movie "Ratatouille" where a rat dreams of becoming a French chef? The Pixar movie is coming out June 29, and I know many food bloggers are looking forward to it.

What the heck is ratatouille anyway? (And no it’s not a dish made from rat - pleeeeease!) My French mom calls any kind of stew made from vegetables a ratatouille - especially when she cooks up those weird veggies from the Asian market. In actuality, it’s a traditional French Provençal stewed vegetable dish that can be served as a meal or as a side dish.

It’s featured in Usborne’s 30 Healthy Things to Cook and Eat pack of recipe cards. (If your child loves to cook - or you want to encourage them to cook something but cupcakes - get this! It has large, thick cardboard recipe cards. It’s simple but nutritious recipes make it terrific for kids six and up.)

Combine going to see the movie with cooking up a batch of ratatouille with your family. Maybe you use some of the vegetables or herbs in your garden. Or plan a shopping trip to a local produce stand or farmer’s market for the ingredients. Have the kids write up or draw their own shopping list.

Try some ratatouille on crusty French bread or with grilled meat or fish. Experiment by putting it with plain pasta or spooning it on to a baked potato.

Ratatouille
Serves 4

Ingredients:

1. 1 lb. of ripe tomatoes (about 4 medium ones)
2. 2 onions
3. 3 zucchini
4. 1 eggplant (weighing about 1 lb.)
5. 1 yellow or red pepper
6. 3 Tbsp. olive oil
7. 1 garlic clove, crushed
8. 1/2 tsp. dried oregano (or Italian seasoning)
9. 1/2 can (3 oz. tomato paste)
10. a pinch of salt and pepper
11. 8 large basil leaves ripped into small pieces

Directions:

1. Cut a cross into the bottom of each tomato. Put them into a heatproof bowl, then fill a second bowl with cold water.
2. Cover the tomatoes with boiling water. After 2 minutes, use a spoon to put them into the cold water for 2 minutes.
3. Life the tomatoes out, peel them and cut them into quarters.
4. Peel the onions, cut them in half and then chop them finely.
5. Cut the ends off the zucchini, then cut them in half lengthways. Cut them into strips, then cut them into chunks.
6. Cut up the eggplant the same way.
7. Cut the ends off the pepper and remove the seeds. Then cut it into thin strips.
8. Put the oil and onions into a large saucepan. Cook them over low heat for about 10 minutes, until the onions are soft.
9. Add the vegetables, garlic, seasoning, tomato paste, salt and pepper to the onions in the pan. Stir everything well.
10. Cook the ratatouille (keep stirring) on medium heat for about 3 minutes. Then turn down the heat, so that it is bubbling gently.
11. PUt a lid onto the pan. (Lift the lid and stir it every now and then.) Cook the ratatouille for 20 minutes, then remove the lid and cook it for 10 minutes. Stir in the bail. Serve.

Remember I told you back in April that Modern Mom was partnering with Fruity Cheerios in a contest showing how the cereal contributes to fun in your family? Well ClubMom’s own The Amazing Shrinking Mom Melodee Helms, is one of the finalists!

How cool is that?!?

Go over to Modern Mom’s contest page site and vote for Melodee. So far she’s leading in votes and may just get the grand prize of a case of Fruity Cheerios and $500 in cash!

You can vote once a day for her, too. (Just click on the picture of her and her daughter wearing Cheerios necklaces.) Then go over to Melodee’s blog, and leave a nice comment to cheer her on.

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Reading Is Fundamental is hosting the RIF Nancy Drew Sweepstakes on its website Reading Planet. The contest runs June 1st through the 30th and is open to kids ages 6 to 15.

To promote the new Nancy Drew movie, Warner Brothers is giving away a silver iPod Nano and other Nancy Drew themed prizes. Please visit Reading Planet for more information and official sweepstakes rules.

Prizes inlcude:

• 1 Grand Prize Silver iPod Nano
• Her Interactive Nancy Drew game
• Set of Papercutz Nancy Drew Graphic Novels, Vol 1-9
• Nancy Drew Clue Ball
• “Nancy Drew Guide to Life” Mini Book
• Nancy Drew Detective Notebook

Now I’m not a big Nancy Drew fan, so I haven’t kept up with the scuttlebutt about modernizing Nancy and putting her in L.A. (some people aren’t very pleased). But if you loved Nancy Drew as a child and want to share the books and the movie with your kids, why not enter the contest and check out the websites?