A rusk is a hard, dry biscuit or a twice-baked bread.  It is sometimes used as a teether for babies.  In some cultures, rusk is made of cake, rather than bread:  this is sometimes referred to as cake rusk.  In the UK, the name also refers to a wheat-based food additive.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusk    

If you have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient observation than to any other reason. - Isaac Newton, physicist, mathematician, and philosopher (25 Dec 1642-1727)   

Bas-relief is a type of relief (sculpture) that has less depth to the faces and figures than they actually have, when measured proportionately (to scale).  This technique keeps the natural shapes of the figures and allows the work to be seen from many angles without twisting the figures themselves.  There is a continuation of the bas-relief technique into the next category, altorilievo, or high relief.  High relief makes deeper images than bas-relief.  Instead of shallow backgrounds that are a few inches (cm) deep at most, they can be up to several feet (a few meters) deep in altorilievo.  Some of the best examples of bas-relief are the Assyrian Lion Hunt Reliefs, which are housed at the British Museum.  The attention to detail and appearance of the lions moving make them stand out, especially for the time period they were made in.  https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bas-relief    

In 1928, Wanda Gág (I know what you’re thinking, but it rhymes with “jog”) published her first book, Millions of Cats, which was adapted from a story she had made up to entertain her friends’ children.  Written and illustrated by Gág, it also featured hand-lettered text (created by her brother) and something brand new for picture books:  the illustrated double-page spread.  Here’s the story:  a very old man and a very old woman live together in a house surrounded by flowers.  The only thing missing in their lives is “a sweet little fluffy cat” (the cats in question were modeled after Gág’s own, Noopy), and so the very old man goes off to search for one.  But instead of one, he finds “hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats.”  It was an instant hit, and remains the oldest American picture book still in print.  In fact, some would call it the oldest American picture book, period—at that time most illustrated books in circulation in America were British.  Millions of Cats won a Newbery Honor in 1929, making it one of very few picture books to do so (the Caldecott medal had not yet been created), and continues to be ranked among the best American children’s books—by those who remember it, at least.  Emily Temple   Literary Hub  March 11, 2019  See graphics at https://lithub.com/the-oldest-american-picture-book-still-in-print-is-obviously-about-cats/   

Wanda Gág (1893–1946) was posthumously honored with The Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958 and The Kerlan Award in 1977.  The Wanda Gág Read Aloud Book Award is awarded each year by the University of Minnesota, Moorhead.  In 2018, Gág was posthumously honored with The Museum of Illustration at the Society of Illustrators Original Art Lifetime Achievement Award.  Gág's prints, drawings, and watercolors are in the collections of The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Whitney Museum and other museums around the world.  Gág's papers, manuscripts and matrices are held in the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota, The New York Public Library, The Free Library of Philadelphia and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_G%C3%A1g    

Noun  hodgepodge (countable and uncountable, plural hodgepodges)  A collection containing a variety of miscellaneous things.    farrago, melange, mishmash;  A confused mass of ingredients shaken or mixed together in the same pot.

Verb  hodgepodge (third-person singular simple present hodgepodges, present participle hodgepodging, simple past and past participle hodgepodged)  (transitive, intransitive) To move or position in an erratic, disorganised manner.  https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hodgepodge   

Hodge-podge or hotch potch (variously capitalised and hyphenated) is a soup or stew, usually based on diced mutton or other meat, with green and root vegetables.  It is familiar in different versions in Britain and North America and is particularly associated with Scotland.  The Oxford English Dictionary definition is:  "A dish made of a mixture of various kinds of meat, vegetables, etc., stewed together" and "esp in Scottish = Hotchpotch – A dish containing a mixture of many ingredients; spec. a thick soup of barley, peas, and other vegetables, and sometimes meat".  The word derives from the Anglo-Norman and Middle French hochepot, "a dish containing a mixture of many ingredients, especially a kind of stew made with minced beef or goose and various vegetables".  The dish was familiar in medieval times.  In The Forme of Cury (c. 1390) a recipe is given for a hotch-potch of goose  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodge-Podge_(soup)    

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2763  December 31, 2023