Today is the Monkey God Festival and, since I am all about Sun Wukong, The Stone Monkey, The Handsome Monkey King, The Great Sage Equal To Heaven, I am SO into today!

I couldn’t find anything about traditional foods for this festival, so I have to make up some of my own.

Peaches, of course. Monkey ate the Peaches of Immortality — the ones he was supposed to be guarding, so peaches are a must.

Monkey says that there’s no hope of immortality unless you eat a vegetarian diet, so we’ll have our usual vegetarian fare. I made a really good miso soup the other day, so we may have that.

If I still had a copy of Ruth Krauss’ Monkey Day, I’d read it, but it belongs to #4 Daughter and I think she has it. Monkey Day is about a little girl who is given a monkey. She gives the monkey another monkey and the monkeys get married and have millions of little monkeys. It’s the most wonderful, happy, joyous, delirious celebration of celebration–and of monkeys–ever written. I’ll be singing the Monkey Day songs and dancing whenever I think nobody can see or hear me. 🙂

I just bought Anthony Yu’s abridgement of Journey to the West for Kindle. It’s called The Monkey and the Monk, and it has the Best. Cover. Ever. Click the link to The Monkey and the Monk and then click on the cover picture there to get a really good gander at it. AWESOMESAUCE! So I’ll be reading some of that today.

And, because you can’t get too much Monkey, I’ll be attempting to watch an episode. Happy!

[Update: NOT happy! All the Monkey Magic episodes have been pulled from YouTube. :(]

And so I leave you with these words, paraphrased from Monkey Day: Hope you happy peaches! / Hope you happy wishes! / Hope you happy Monkey Magic! / Hope you love and kisses!

WRITING PROMPT: What is your main character’s favorite animal (other than dogs and cats) and why?

MA