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Alinka Rutkowska is a “Reader’s Favorite” Five Star Picture Book Author. She writes the “Maya & Filippo” Book Series for Children – travel books for kids with a positive attitude. She takes inspiration from her own travels while cruising with her husband and daughter around the world. She is positive, appreciative and happy 95% of the time and during the miserable 5% she thinks to herself quickly: “things always work out for me” and they do.
Alinka’s doesn’t really have a “to do” list but she does have a “fun things to do” list. It usually consists of writing, reading, reading her writing, writing in her diary, blogging, reading other blogs, commenting, breathing deeply, meditating, feeling the warmth of the sun on her skin, closing her eyes, breathing some more and thinking what a wonderful world she lives in.
Sometimes she takes a few minutes to pause and instead of doing something from her “fun things to do” list she just daydreams a little. She thinks of all the great things that she wants for her to happen and imagines how wonderful it will feel to be interviewed about them in the future. She’s already preparing the answers to those interview questions in her mind. She especially loves the part, in which she says that she achieved all these things because she spent a considerable amount of time visualizing them first.
Alinka loves to ski while listening to music at the same time, she enjoys an occasional glass (or bottle) of Barolo with dark chocolate.
Reviewed by Patricia Reding for Readers' Favorite
From the front cover to the last page, children will delight in the almost childlike and always colorful and quirky illustrations that accompany Maya & Filippo Play Chef at Sea by Alinka Rutkowska. This tale is another in the series of Maya & Filippo, stories that tell of siblings who live on a beautiful cruise ship with their parents and their cat, Otello. On board, Maya and Filippo travel the world, discovering new places and “how things work.”
In Maya & Filippo Play Chef at Sea, Maya and Filippo, while crossing the Tasman Sea, decide to join the ship’s chef and a group of other children to make cakes. The fun begins as they crack eggs, pour milk, sift flour, and add their own special ingredients. The point of the exercise, Maya points out to another of the traveling children, is to have fun and to try something new. Along the way, Maya and Filippo learn that when they cooperate and communicate with one another, they may both accomplish all they desire, rather than only half.
The story of Maya and Filippo will excite the imagination of children who might wonder what it would be like to live at sea. Alinka Rutkowska takes children on just such a journey, providing them with some basic geographic information (about where lies the Tasman Sea), some good advice about working in a kitchen (wash your hands first!) and a valuable lesson about cooperation and communication.
