As a source of food, the lotus offers its entirety, from the root to the flower, for nutritious cooking. With the inauguration of the lotus festival, local restaurants started using the lotus leaf as a delicacy. Since 2003, every July when the lotus flower is most beautiful, the Buyeo Seodong Lotus Festival is held at Gungnamji Pond. Please share.The lotus flower starts blooming early summer, around June, and fully opens in July. Heartening and hopeful, a love letter to black male youth grasping the desires within them, absorbing the worlds around them, striving to be more otherwise than ordinary. “How do you move through the world knowing that you’re special, when no one else can see it?” begs the soul of this novel. As they get deeper and deeper into cahoots with Styx, they begin to notice that Styx harbors some secret ambitions of his own, further twisting this grand summer journey. The three black adolescents are enchanted with the miracle of the Great Escalator Trade, the mythic one-thing-leads-to-another bartering scheme that just might get them farther from Sutton than they’ve ever dreamed. I want to be…the other thing.” With Styx Malone around, Caleb and Bobby Gene will sure figure out what that “other thing” can become. Younger brother Caleb narrates, letting readers know from the outset that he’s tired of his dad’s racially tinged determination that they be safely ordinary: “I don’t want to be ordinary. Creeks, dirt roads, buried treasures, and more make up the landscape in Sutton, Indiana. Readers may think an adventure such as they’ll find here wouldn’t be possible in the present day this story takes place outside, where nature, know-how, creativity, and curiosity rule. The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans-are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too.Ĭooler-than-cool newcomer Styx Malone takes the more-sheltered brothers Caleb and Bobby Gene on a mischievous, path-altering, summer adventure of a lifetime as they embrace the extraordinary possibilities beyond the everyday in rural Indiana. And as the wonderful Charlotte does die, the sadness is tempered by the promise of more spiders next spring. The last word, when Wilbur is about to win a show prize and Charlotte is about to die from building her egg sac, is 'Humble'. At the news of Wilbur's forthcoming slaughter, campaigning Charlotte, to the astonishment of people for miles around, spins words in her web. Daily, Fern visits the Zuckermans to sit and muse with Wilbur and with the clever pen spider Charlotte, who befriends him when he is lonely and downcast. Young Fern Arable pleads for the life of runt piglet Wilbur and gets her father to sell him to a neighbor, Mr. Lotus and Rebel are Black the rest of the cast is broadly diverse.Ī relatable novel that will encourage readers to fight for their rights.Ī successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl. The text brings themes of racism and protest to the forefront, making it a solid conversation starter. Winston employs rich descriptions through Lotus’ first-person narration, conveying her love of music. Ignoring her Granny’s pessimism and her mother’s admonition not to make waves, she speaks up for herself and also joins Rebel’s protest against Miami-Dade County’s inequitable funding of schools in their historically Black neighborhood. But when a school administrator cites her Afro as a dress-code violation, Lotus is done with keeping quiet. Having learned to tamp down her feelings, Lotus ignores him despite her friends’ urging her to take action.

When Lotus is made first-chair violin, she catches the attention of Adolpho Cortez, a ninth grade bully who believes the honor is rightfully his. Atlantis School of the Arts, Lotus’ new magnet school, allows her to focus on her passion, but Rebel is staying behind in a regular public school. Music is her escape, and she needs it more than ever between her parents’ divorce, her father’s relocation to Paris, a mother who doesn’t understand her, and a strained relationship with her best friend, Rebel Mitchell.

Lotus Bloom is not your typical tween: She wears vintage ’70s clothes, proudly rocks an Afro, and is a gifted violinist. A seventh grade girl learns to speak up for equity, community, and freedom of expression.

Lotus bloom