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

A Trip to the Art Museum

Museum ABC
by Vic­ki Palmquist
  Arlo’s Artra­geous Adventure! David LaRochelle
Ster­ling Children’s Books, 2013 When Arlo’s grand­moth­er drags him to the art muse­um, he can’t imag­ine how he’ll be inter­est­ed. Some­thing odd catch­es his eye and he soon real­izes the paint­ings have things to say that sur­prise and delight him — and the read­er. Fun and quirky, with illus­tra­tions that will make you smile and flaps to lift that will reveal nuances in much the same way you dis­cov­er some­thing new in a paint­ing each time you look at it … this is a good choice to pre­pare a child for a trip to the museum.
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