A Shelter for Sadness
Sometimes, I am so touched by a book that I cannot figure out how best to share it with kids. Such is the case with A Shelter for Sadness by Anne Booth and David Litchfield.
emotions
Three Hours of Unproductive Time
Eventually I discovered why so much of my writing time is unproductive.
Writer, Know Thyself
Aspiring writers often ask about an author's process ... as if there is some magic clue that will help them write.
The Joy of Bad Reviews
Ah, the joy of bad reviews! Yes, they're fun. But they take a little getting used to.
Disruption. Alarm. Distress.
Riot and destruction at our nation's capitol. Riot and destruction in our nation's cities.
You Should (Not) Read These Books
I remember my neighborhood friends standing on opposite sides of a driveway, angry, yelling loudly at each other. I don’t recall why, but I can still feel those emotions. That’s how strong feelings are. Our children deal with a multitude of emotions every day.
You were probably remembering similar instances from your childhood. And what happened afterward? Most likely you were all friends again, because you needed to be.
Hand in Hand
I live and work in a train community and often use trains as an analogy when I talk about storytime. Like a train, storytime offers an audience a chance to hop on board to experience a new world with characters. The characters of a story can help us understand some of the experiences the children listening to the story might be going through.… more
Beethoven in Paradise
Fresh Lookology features books published several years ago that are too good to languish on the shelf.
Martin Pittman takes a reader’s heart and runs with it. He lives in a trailer park called Paradise, but his home life is anything but. Martin’s father is abusive, his mother completely cowed. He has no siblings. His grandma, Hazeline, who comes on Sundays to take him to the Howard Johnson Prince of Wales buffet, is quite a character — one the reader is unsure of at first.… more
Putting Emotion into Nonfiction Books
Many people think writing nonfiction is just stringing together a bunch of random facts. Nothing could be further from the truth. While writing nonfiction, I use every single fiction technique a novelist uses.
I feel strongly that I need to write my text in a way that will lead my readers to invest emotionally with my nonfiction text. Real. Raw. Emotion. But I don’t tell readers what to feel.… more
You Write Books with … Messages?
Yes. Yes I do.
Sure, I know there’s a whole school of thought that says “sharing a message” in a children’s book is something to avoid. That children will learn more, feel more, by reading books—stories—that evoke an emotional response and increase empathy through strong characterization and vivid language. Yes. Yes that’s true. But.…
Sometimes children, and the adults raising and teaching them, need straightforward tools that address social and emotional challenges and milestones.… more
Knowing My Own Mind
There are times when I don’t know my own mind. Worse, there are times when I think I know my mind perfectly well and then find an entirely different mind on a later visit to my opinions.
Which feels almost as though I have no mind at all.
Some time ago one of my favorite writers came out with a new novel. I had been waiting for her next book for years, so, of course, I signed up to have it pop into my electronic reader at the first opportunity.… more
Traveling Back Through Time
One of my favorite pieces of writing advice comes from author Faith Sullivan. I share it here for you to pass along to your students. When you are writing about a story’s setting, don’t leave the reader feeling like a distant observer.
Drive-by
When I visited Los Angeles not long after the 1992 riots, a home-town writer told me a story that made me feel what it was like to live there in those uncertain times.
His drive home passed a large police station. He was always on alert as he drove by; everyone thought there could be more trouble at any time, and he assumed that a police station might be a key target.… more
The Sandwich Swap
Normally, I spurn picture books written by celebrities, be they actors or royalty or what have you. If it’s a person in the headlines, I quite assume they could not possibly write a worthy picture book. The only exception on my shelves, I believe (and I realize there are other exceptions! Feel free to leave titles in the comments.) is The Sandwich Swap by Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah with Kelly Depucchio, illustrated by Tricia Tusa.… more
Bookstorm™: Little Cat’s Luck
Many people love cats. You might be one of them. Many children consider their cat or their dog to be one of the family. Marion Dane Bauer understands that. She wrote Little Cat’s Luck, the story of Patches, a cat, and Gus, the meanest dog in town, out of her deep affinity for both cats and dogs.… more
Bambi
by Melanie Heuiser Hill
When I was 16, my aunt gave birth to twin boys. We did not see them nearly often enough as they were growing up (we were separated by several states), but the memories I have of those boys when they were little are clear in a way they are not with regard to my other cousins.… more
Lynne Jonell: Accessing Childhood Emotion
They say that, if you’re a doctor, it’s not something you want to admit to at an event where you’re going to have to make small talk with a lot of strangers. Because invariably people will want your opinion on their rash, or the funny flutter in their chest, or the odd bump on their knee. I wouldn’t know, not being a doctor, but I understand feeling cautious about admitting what I do for a living.… more
“I’m not ready for school!”
I minored in theatre in college, where I crossed the street from Augsburg to attend Arthur Ballet’s legendary history of theatre class at the University of Minnesota.
Lessons learned in that class came rushing back as I savored Mike Wohnoutka’s Dad’s First Day because it struck me how well this book would play as theatre of the absurd.… more