Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr

Time to Pray
Ramadan begins this year on March 22nd, and culminates with Eid al-Fitr on either April 20th or 21st. Here are books you can read with your children if you are observing Ramadan or if you are honoring Ramadan with your friends and family.

Together from Afar

Indi­vid­u­al­ly, we are one drop. Togeth­er, we are an ocean.” (Ryuno­suke Satoro)
Tis the sea­son to be… It is hard to some­times under­stand how dif­fi­cult the hol­i­day sea­son will be this year. Although this is dif­fi­cult, tech­nol­o­gy has made it pos­si­ble for us all to con­nect and par­tic­i­pate in hol­i­day fun. For my arti­cle this month, I’ve list­ed activ­i­ties that you can pro­vide for fam­i­lies to do togeth­er dur­ing the hol­i­day breaks.
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Signs, Signs, Everywhere There’s Signs

Lisa Bullard. Photo by Katherine Warde
When I was a young teenag­er my fam­i­ly made a road trip from Min­neso­ta to Texas to vis­it my father’s par­ents. The long trip south most­ly fea­tured one kind of civ­il war: the end­less bick­er­ing of my two broth­ers and the male cousin who’d come along for the ride. For the trip back north, I staked out a hidey-hole in the far back of the sta­tion wag­on and crammed myself in amongst the lug­gage, still-wet-from-the-hotel-pool swim­suits, and snack foods.… more

That’s How I Roll

Lisa Bullard. Photo by Katherine Warde
As a kid I was the one who insti­gat­ed a lot of the fun. It might be play­ing pirates in the tree house, or cops and rob­bers in my mom’s parked sta­tion wag­on, or spies who wrote secret code in lemon juice (lat­er reveal­ing the mes­sage by hold­ing it over the toast­er). Often our make believe reflect­ed what­ev­er sec­tion of the library I hap­pened to be work­ing my way through at the time.… more

Tuned in to Talk Radio

Lisa Bullard. Photo by Katherine Warde
When I was a lit­tle girl and my Min­neso­ta grand­par­ents came to vis­it, we shared them around for sleep­ing pur­pos­es. One night I would share my dou­ble bed with Grand­ma, and the next night my broth­er and I would switch places, and I’d sleep on his top bunk while Grand­pa set­tled into the bot­tom bunk. Grand­ma was a bit of a night owl like I am, so it was nev­er hard to keep her talk­ing.… more

That Time I Drove the Karma Bus

Lisa Bullard. Photo by Katherine Warde
All fresh­men at my col­lege had to wear bean­ies at the start of school. Besides the obvi­ous fash­ion quandary, the prob­lem was that stu­dents from the town’s rival col­lege glo­ried in steal­ing beanies. And I knew if any of my upper class­mates caught me sans beanie, they had the pow­er to make me stand on a table in the cafe­te­ria and sing my high school fight song.… more

Curves Ahead

Lisa Bullard. Photo by Katherine Warde
I was thrilled when Teenage Nephew 1 grew old enough to mow my yard. We nego­ti­at­ed a price and then head­ed out­side. I knew that at his house, his father was King of the Rid­ing Mow­er, so mow­ing was a com­plete­ly new skill to Teenage Nephew. So I care­ful­ly reviewed the basics with him: mow­er oper­a­tion, safe­ty issues, how he shouldn’t plow over my rose bushes.… more

Tripping with Mona Lisa

Not Enough Beds!
After my first book was pub­lished, one of my friends gave me a know­ing look and said, “I’ve figured out exact­ly what your sto­ry means.” I nod­ded wise­ly, two of us in on the same secret togeth­er, but truth­ful­ly? I was eager to hear what she had to say. Because in all the time I’d spent writ­ing, revis­ing, and talk­ing about the book to oth­er peo­ple, it had hon­est­ly nev­er occurred to me to ask myself what the sto­ry meant.… more

Earth Day

Whether you are cel­e­brat­ing Earth Day this week or next week or every week, there are books here that will enchant your stu­dents or your fam­i­ly, open­ing up pos­si­bil­i­ties for good discussions.
  Earth: My First 4.54 Bil­lion Years
Sta­cy McAn­ul­ty, author
James Litch­field, illustrator
Hen­ry Holt, 2017
pri­ma­ry and ele­men­tary grades Told from the view­point of the anthro­po­mor­phic Earth itself, this book tells the life sto­ry of our home plan­et, intro­duc­ing it to “alien vis­i­tors.”
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Georgia, Broadway, and Niagara — Cheese or Font?

Lisa Bullard
So what’s the per­fect game for some­body who lives in a state with lots of dairy farms, spends a huge hunk of her time writ­ing or read­ing, and has been known to insert a but­ter head into a nov­el as a red her­ring? Why, it’s Cheese or Font, of course! If you’ve nev­er played, please remem­ber to come back and finish read­ing after you’ve wan­dered here to check it out.… more

The Limo’s on the Way

Lisa Bullard
I’ve found there’s an alarm­ing­ly close cor­re­la­tion between the top­sy-turvy emo­tions of a high school crush and a writer’s feel­ings dur­ing the process of sub­mit­ting a man­u­script to publishers. As the writer wait­ing for an answer from The Per­fect Pub­lish­er, you go through the same hope­ful highs and “why doesn’t any­one love me?” lows. The man­u­script that just last week looked pret­ty darn good has some­how overnight devel­oped a hideous zit.… more

Backseat Drivers

Lisa Bullard
Some of the best advice you can give stu­dent writ­ers is also some of the eas­i­est for them to car­ry through on: to write bet­ter, they should read better. Read bet­ter, as in: Read more. Read wide­ly. Read out­side their usu­al read­ing “type.” Read care­ful­ly. Read for fun. Read first for sto­ry, and then read as back­seat writers.… more

Skinny Dip with Lisa Bullard

Lisa Bullard. Photo by Katherine Warde
Lisa Bullard is a well-respect­ed writ­ing teacher in Min­neso­ta and beyond, hav­ing shared her wis­dom and her sense of humor about writ­ing with class­rooms full of adults and chil­dren (usu­al­ly not at the same time). She has two books on writ­ing, one for adults (Get Start­ed in Writ­ing for Chil­dren) and one for chil­dren (You Can Write a Sto­ry!more

Signal Your Intentions

Lisa Bullard
It wasn’t so unusu­al that my teenage nephews were send­ing me sig­nals that trans­lat­ed to: “Will you take us to the store right now so we can spend these Christ­mas gift cards from Grandma?” What was new this year was that they also want­ed to do the dri­ving. Brand-new per­mits in their pock­ets, I agreed to let one twin dri­ve us there, and the oth­er dri­ve us home.… more

Forgetting How to Drive

Lisa Bullard
You always hear it around the time of the first fall snow­storm in Min­neso­ta: “It’s like peo­ple have for­got­ten how to dri­ve!” It refers to the fact that even dri­vers who are diehard Min­nesotans — as evi­denced by the Min­neso­ta Vikings flags fly­ing from their pick­up anten­nas — don’t seem to have the tini­est clue how to dri­ve on snow-packed roads.… more

Stopping by the Diner

Lisa Bullard
My dad has a pas­sion­ate hatred of olives on, in, or even in the gen­er­al vicin­i­ty of his food. He’s con­vinced their mere pres­ence con­t­a­m­i­nates any­thing else on his plate. So when he eats at his favorite small-town din­er, he’s always care­ful to tell the serv­er that he wants his din­ner sal­ad with­out the black olives they usu­al­ly include.… more

A Vehicle for Change

Lisa Bullard
I’d heard my mom talk about “duck and cov­er”: hid­ing under her school desk from a poten­tial nuclear attack. And I’d par­tic­i­pat­ed myself in tor­na­do drills dur­ing my own school days, lin­ing up in a base­ment hall­way with our arms cov­er­ing our heads. None of that pre­pared me for a lock­down drill. I was on one of my reg­u­lar gigs as a vis­it­ing author when the teacher pulled me aside and prepped me on what to expect.… more

Shifting Gears

Lisa Bullard
The only argu­ment I’ve ever wit­nessed between Teenage Nephew 1 and Long­time Girl-friend was a doozy. And I couldn’t help chortling with glee because the basis of their dis­agree­ment was so close to my heart: What makes for the best pos­si­ble story? Actu­al­ly, the way they put it was, “What’s bet­ter, ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Har­ry Pot­ter’?” But don’t let the fact that they were com­par­ing two fic­tion­al worlds fool you: this was a white-hot debate, the com­peti­tors more impas­sioned in their argu­ments than politi­cians at a pre-elec­tion picnic.… more

Drive

Lisa Bullard
I was plan­ning a road trip to North­ern Min­neso­ta to teach at a Young Author’s Con­fer­ence and decid­ed to include a small detour to my past: the town of Bemid­ji, where we lived when I was in 2nd through 5th grades. So after the con­fer­ence wrapped, I spent a cou­ple of hap­py days trav­el­ing down mem­o­ry lane. I was warm­ly wel­comed at my old ele­men­tary school and then drove all over town tak­ing pho­tos and vis­it­ing my per­son­al land­marks: our old house and neigh­bor­hood, the amuse­ment park, the lake where we swam and went ice fish­ing, the col­lege cam­pus where we went to hock­ey games.… more

Adjust Your Mirrors

Lisa Bullard
You get a dif­fer­ent view of the road behind you depend­ing on which of your car’s mir­rors you look into. And writ­ers can direct read­ers to a dif­fer­ent out­look on their sto­ry depend­ing on which point of view they use as the “mir­ror” for the events that take place. I’ve found that point of view is a tricky thing for many writ­ers, whether they’ve been at the writ­ing game for five months or twen­ty-five years.… more

Hands on the Wheel

Lisa Bullard
A few years ago, I remem­ber Teenage Nephew 2 point­ed out (from his new­ly gath­ered store­house of driver’s ed wis­dom) that I put my hands in the wrong posi­tions on the steer­ing wheel. The new place­ment, he told me, is either 9 and 3 or 8 and 4 on the clock face, to avoid break­ing your arms if the airbag deploys. It’s been a while since I’ve been in driver’s ed (in fact, to a teenage brain I’m sure it was so long ago that Teenage Nephew imag­ines my train­ing includ­ed dinosaur-avoid­ance tac­tics), so I took it on faith that he was right.… more

Traveling Further In-Word

Lisa Bullard
As a fol­low-up to my last post, I want­ed to offer you a down­load­able ver­sion of one of the activ­i­ties I cre­at­ed for my day in the Alpha­bet For­est: ”Make Your Own ‘Sto­ry Wheel.’” The Sto­ry Wheel I brought for my day fea­tured State Fair ele­ments to fit my usu­al sug­gest­ed sto­ry-starter mix of char­ac­ters, set­tings, and con­flicts. But as the down­load shows, your stu­dents can cre­ate their own sim­ple Sto­ry Wheels to fit any­place they might trav­el (in real­i­ty or in their imag­i­na­tions): the beach, a ball­game, the back­yard, the school build­ing, the bot­tom of the ocean, even a black hole in out­er space… Check it out and see if it might work for your young writ­ers.… more

Green for Go

Lisa Bullard
Traf­fic sig­nals don’t require a sin­gle word to send a clear mes­sage. Even small chil­dren can learn how to “read” them. Red reads “stop.” Green reads “go.” Yel­low reads either “slow down” or “speed up,” depend­ing on the “char­ac­ter” of the driver. Even young stu­dents can also “read” word­less pic­ture books. Because the art­work reveals its own nar­ra­tive, young read­ers can fol­low the action, inter­pret the char­ac­ters’ moti­va­tions, pre­dict out­comes, and intu­it the mood and emo­tions of the story.… more

Next Exit: Adventure

Lisa Bullard
Some­times just a town’s name is enough to entice you. Who could dri­ve past the exit for Last Chance, Ida­ho — or Hell, Michi­gan — or Hap­py­land, Okla­homa — with­out at least con­tem­plat­ing how your life might be changed if you took that unex­pect­ed detour? All on their own, names tell a sto­ry. That’s why I often do an online search to learn as much as I can about a char­ac­ter name that I’m con­sid­er­ing for my writ­ing — look­ing up eth­nic­i­ty, vari­a­tions, mean­ing — because many times, it opens up new insights into that char­ac­ter for me (or proves to be the wrong choice).… more

Swerving Over the Line

Lisa Bullard
Dur­ing one of my vis­its to see my Alaba­ma brother’s fam­i­ly, we took a road trip to the Ave Maria Grot­to. That’s where a Bene­dic­tine Monk named Broth­er Joseph Zoet­tl built over 125 Mini-Me ver­sions of some of the great­est build­ings of the world. Artists are often inspired by some­one else’s mas­ter­pieces.  But in work­ing with young writ­ers, I’ve found that it’s easy to mis­tak­en­ly swerve over the cen­ter line from the safe­ty of inspi­ra­tion into the dan­ger of pla­gia­rism (or trade- mark infringe­ment).… more

Watch Where You’re Going

Lisa Bullard
Rid­ing along with my dad was like going on a Mid­west­ern safari. Even while dri­ving, he had an amaz­ing knack for spot­ting crit­ters as they peeked out from behind trees, perched on phone poles, or slid along the roadside. He didn’t seem to pay any atten­tion to the makes of oth­er cars, or bill­board mes­sages, or what oth­er dri­vers were wear­ing.… more

Driving in the Dark

Lisa Bullard
A while back I was at my par­ents’ lake cab­in with my extend­ed fam­i­ly. My brother’s teenagers had all brought along friends, and on Sat­ur­day we packed every­one who fell into the “thir­teen to fif­teen” age range off to the late movie. As the res­i­dent night owl, I vol­un­teered to pick up the kids when the movie was over so that the oth­er grown-ups could make it an ear­ly night.… more

Tunnel Vision

Lisa Bullard
Dri­ving through a tun­nel effec­tive­ly nar­rows our field of vision. The walls and ceil­ing restrict our view to only that which is inside the tun­nel. It doesn’t mat­ter if there’s a moun­tain parked on top of the roof, or an ocean of water being held back by the walls: when we’re inside the tun­nel, those things are out­side our view.… more

Just Another Roadside Abstraction

Lisa Bullard
For this week’s writ­ing road trip, I offer you texture. I aim for an abstract ele­ment of a real­is­tic sub­ject and use tex­ture to add inter­est and sug­gest depth. —a quote that to the best of my research abil­i­ties I find attrib­ut­able to artist Mar­garet Roseman. I liked the way the above quote spoke to how tex­ture can be used in visu­al art.… more

Anti-Tailgating Measures

Lisa Bullard
A few years ago, a coun­try high­way I reg­u­lar­ly dri­ve in the sum­mer became part of a pilot pro­gram to stop tail­gat­ing. Large white dots were paint­ed on the road, and new signs instruct dri­vers to keep a min­i­mum of two dots between them and the car they’re fol­low­ing. Rear-end col­li­sions are a dan­ger on this road­way, and the pro­gram hopes to encour­age dri­vers to leave enough room between cars so they can take cor­rec­tive action if some­thing goes wrong.… more

(E)motion Sickness

Lisa Bullard
Most of my many school vis­its have been amaz­ing, pos­i­tive adven­tures (see my post titled “Trav­el­ing Like a Rock Star”). A few of my vis­its have fea­tured minor bumps in the road. And one school vis­it — thank good­ness, one only! — might be bet­ter described as a major traf­fic incident. It hap­pened when I was still a “new­bie” to school vis­its.… more

Writing around Roadblocks

Lisa Bullard
I’ve tried to cre­ate a stim­u­lat­ing atmos­phere in my home office. Works of art by the illus­tra­tors of my pic­ture books adorn the walls. I have a Rain­bow Mak­er in the win­dow. There are bloom­ing plants and inspir­ing say­ings and a bas­ket of toys to play with. There are birds chirp­ing out­side the win­dow (even an occa­sion­al owl when I’m work­ing at mid­night).… more

Driving Miss Daisy

Lisa Bullard
When I was a kid, one of my neigh­bor­hood gang’s favorite sum­mer games was to “play chauf­feur.” We’d jump on our bikes and gath­er for shoptalk at chauf­feur head­quar­ters (a.k.a. the mid­dle of our qui­et side street). Then we’d race off in dif­fer­ent direc­tions to pick up mem­bers of the envi­ably wealthy and pam­pered (yet of course imag­i­nary) fam­i­lies that uti­lized our dri­ving services.… more

Driver’s Ed

Lisa Bullard
It’s amaz­ing that I passed my driver’s test on the first try, since I can see now that I was a pret­ty bad dri­ver. But I was an excel­lent test-tak­er, and the State of Min­neso­ta sent me home with a score of 96 out of 100. Mere weeks lat­er I backed the fam­i­ly van into the mailbox. It’s not that my par­ents didn’t try their best to improve my dri­ving skills.… more