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Since 1997, Herald Press has re-released four books by Marguerite DeAngeli:

• Show children the cover that includes a Caldecott medal (in this case an Honor medal), given each year for the best illustrations in a picture book. 
• Talk about who the Amish are.
• On page 4 (Yonie getting a haircut), pull out a bag of props. Many children are unfamiliar with hooks and eyes. Show them an example. Invite a volunteer to put a bowl on his head to show how a bowl haircut is done.
• On page 16 (next to picture of Yonie with painted chest) talk about how the Amish, Mennonites, and other religious groups came to Canada and the United States with a desire to worship God in their own way. 
• On page 19 (Yonie and family eating), ask the children whether they are familiar with the foods mentioned: apple butter, currant jelly, stewed apples, piccalilli, and shoofly pie. Bring in a few examples to taste. 

• Return to page 19 and review some of the foods that Yonie ate. Ask children what foods are important to their community. What do they eat at potlucks, benefit auctions, or community celebrations? 
• Ginger tea (Dominican Republic), curried mashed potatoes (India), rice and pigeon peas (Puerto Rico), from the cookbook, Extending the Table [Herald Press, 1991], are three examples of recipes that are celebrated in our world community. Sample some dishes from the world community. 
• Read Let’s Make a Garden by Tamara Awad Lobe, [Herald Press, 1995.] In this picture book, children from all over the world bring plants from their homelands, plant them in a garden, and enjoy the harvest together. 
• In Amish communities like Yonie’s, people gather to help one another. Yonie’s community would help his family rebuild their barn. Ask, "What do people in your community do to help one another? What do they do to help people outside the community?"
• Consider the Pennsylvania Dutch accent used throughout the book. What unique words/phrases or languages are used in your community? How are they used to include or exclude people from outside your community?
• For Yonie, planting crops and caring for animals were signs of growing up and gaining responsibility. Discuss, "How does your community recognize children as they grow older and more responsible?" 

Selina and the Bear Paw Quilt by Barbara Smucker [Crown: New York, 1995]
Tells the story of Selina, a girl who is given a special quilt to remember the grandmother she left behind when her Mennonite family moves to Upper Canada to avoid involvement in the Civil War. 

In the book’s introduction, the author writes, "Because the Mennonites would support neither the North nor the South, they were considered disloyal by both. They were persecuted, their lands ruined, and some of their meeting places destroyed. Ironically, most Mennonites had come to America from Europe to escape exactly the kind of hostility and unrest they now saw being played out on their doorsteps. They had hoped to find tolerance and acceptance and freedom. Instead, many decided they had no choice but to flee again, and so they headed north to what was then called Upper Canada and is now Ontario." 

How do our communities promote tolerance, acceptance and freedom today? In what areas do we need to improve? 

Tell children that the pictures of Selina’s grandmother were modeled after the author, Barbara Smucker, a Mennonite, who dressed in various costumes and posed for photos taken by Janet Wilson, the Canadian illustrator.