2023 July Featured Book: Ages 3-4

Bee-bim Bop! By Linda Sue Park, illustrated by Ho Baek Lee

Take playful verse with a bouncy beat, add spirited illustrations, spice with humor, mix well —and enjoy! Recipe included to make “mixed-up rice”, a delicious traditional Korean dish.

To purchase this book, click here.

Developmental Markers:

• Becoming grounded in family’s cultural ways: language, rules about behavior, how emotions are expressed, gender norms.
• Over-generalizing and making incorrect associations about differences based on his/her limited experience and limited ways of processing information. May have their own explanations for the differences he/she observes among people.
• Beginning to show evidence of social messages affecting feelings about self and/or group identity—I.e., evidence of beginnings of internalized superiority (IS) or internalized oppression (IO).

Activities:

The universal anticipation of dinnertime is captured in the refrain of this book. No matter what is cooking at your house, when your child asks “When’s dinner?” or “What’s for dinner?” have fun repeating the chant and recalling the story, or making up your own version.

Kids this age like to “help”, and sometimes will actually be better eaters if they are involved in fixing a dish. Your family could try the following

• Try taking a familiar favorite meal with several ingredients (such as pizza with toppings) and enlist your child’s help in putting it together for the family’s dinner, like the girl helped her mother in the book. Make up a silly chant as you work.
• Make the recipe for Bee-bim Bop included in the book.
• Watch this YouTube video of a Korean-American NYT food editor demonstrating how to make an easy, versatile version of Sheet Pan Bibimbap (7-minute video). Adapt it to your family’s taste.
• Eat out at BIBIBOP, a local restaurant with 4 metro locations, (similar to Chipotle and owned by the same company) featuring ingredients to build your own Asian-style bowls.