Hello Everyone,
It has been decided that the Backyard will come to an end. It has been a great experience, but it’s time to move on.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read The Backyard!
The Backyard team, will, of course still be posting on their own personal blogs and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you stopped by to say hello.
It’s been a lot of fun,
Also visit with me @ Out of the Blue
The Tale of Desperaux
Written by: Kate Dicamillo
Despereaux Tilling is a mouse, but he doesn’t act like a mouse at all. He has extremely large ears, loves to read, and likes the outside world–and even likes humans. He dreams of being a knight in shining armor, and saving a princess. When he talks to the Princess Pea, the mouse councils finds out and charges him with a trial, which sends him to the dugeon–where the rats live.
Before this tale of Desperaux even happened, a different one began about a rat named Roscuro. Roscuro is different than other rats, he likes light. Living in a dark world in the dugeon, light is rarely found. This makes Roscuro venture out into the world of light, into the castle above. What he doesn’t know is that he, one rat, will change the kingdom forever.
During this tale of Roscurro, another one is also happening–one of a servant girl named Miggery Sow. Miggery Sow dreams of being a princess, but how could she be one being as poor as she is?
All three of these tales come together into one big one, with the hero being a strange mouse, named Despereaux.
This is such a cute book! The unnamed narrator of the story, adds humor, wit, and intelligence to the story, which makes it so fun to read! It is also a book filled with adventure! I recommend this book to both boys and girls 9 and up. 
Happy Reading!
Visit with me @ Orchard Slope
Combine cake mix, apple sauce, and eggs, and beat according to package instructions. Grease your bundt pan and dust it with sugar and cinnamon mixture. Pour in 1/2 of cake batter. Sprinkle remaining sugar over. Pour in remainder of cake batter. Bake at 350 degrees, 35-45 min. Cool in pan for 10 minutes, and invert onto cooling rack.
Polar bears are so beautiful. Don’t they make you want to go over to one and cuddle with it? Well, maybe not. After all, it would be a long trip to go see one. They live in the Arctic. I might be afraid to hug a bear, anyway. 
The adult males are twice as big as lions or tigers (up to 1,500 pounds). Now that’s pretty big!!
Did you know that a polar bear actually has two types of fur? The one kind, close to the skin, is kind of wool-like, to keep the animal warm, and the other fur, the "white" hair, helps it blend in with the snow. It isn’t actually white, though. The individual hairs are actually transparent! They also have four inches of blubber to keep them warm and to help them float.
The animal also has a extremely good sense of smell. It can smell a seal a mile away under three feet of snow. 
That’s not very good news for the seals, since they are the polar bear’s main source of food.
Mother polar bears give birth to blind cubs, usually two, sometime between November and February. The babies weigh less than two pounds, but they grow quickly. Within just a few months they gain twenty to thirty pounds. After their mother leaves them, sometimes the sibling cubs will stay together and share food and company. Isn’t that nice of them? 
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