Considering the greater good “Are you finished with school? Want to ride with me to the dump?” my husband Donald inquired, poking his head into the schoolroom. Pencils flew everywhere as the boys jumped up, ready to go. We hadn’t...
The Laura Ingalls Wilder Award was recently renamed the Children’s Literature Legacy Award, a remarkably generic name for such a prestigious award. A lot has been said about the change, and most that I have seen has been negative, with reactions...
I recently came across an interesting comparison of two middle school reading lists. The author, Annie Holmquist, compared a list from 1908 with a current list from the same state on the basis of time period, thematic elements, and reading...
Reading, Comprehension, and Knowledge Do you enjoy reading? I do. I grew up reading voraciously — new books, old books, books set in the city, the country, in foreign lands, and many books that featured characters that lived lives very...
Do you read poetry and share it with your children? I’d like to prescribe a dose of poetry every single day, but I know that might seem daunting. How about poetry every week instead? Start with simple poems, laying a solid...
A newsletter and a reading suggestion I’ve had several people ask me if there is a difference between the newsletter I hand out at conferences, and the one that comes via email, so I thought I’d show you a sample....
I enjoy books on time management, life balance, and purpose, but I’ve read so many that it’s rare that one stands out. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport definitely stood out. Moving past elementary...
Choosing books for boys isn’t all that hard. Give them adventure — the kind with blood and courage, dirt and ingenuity — and watch their imaginations soar, assuming they haven’t been “Eustaced”* by the sort of twaddle mentioned in Martin...
Springtime puts me into a poetic frame of mind, so by the time April arrives — it’s Poetry Month, you know — I have a stack of poetry by my chair and favorite lines running through my head. Most of the...
Melville’s Early Life Herman Melville (1819–1891), American author, was born in New York City on the 1st of August 1819, the son of a commission merchant and importer of French dry goods who lived more extravagantly than his pocketbook permitted … Continue reading
Early life Henry James (1843–1916), American author, was born in New York on the 15th of April 1843. His father was Henry James (1811–1882), a theological writer of great originality, from whom both he and his brother, Professor William James, … Continue reading
Daniel Defoe (c. 1659–1731) was an English author and political pamphleteer born in the parish of St Giles, Cripplegate, London, in the latter part of 1659 or early in 1660, of a nonconformist family. Other spellings of his name include D. … Continue reading
What is an argument? An argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something. It is prompted usually by a disagreement, confusion, or ignorance about something which the arguers wish to resolve or illuminate in a convincing way. In the … Continue reading
The daguerreotype, an early photographic process, was invented by French artist and photographer Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. Introduced in 1830, it was the first publicly available photographic process but was superseded by less complicated processes in less than fifty years. To make … Continue reading
