Keeping kids reading during the summer is important. We want to encourage our kids to read and to enjoy it, but we need to strike a fine balance between making it optional and making it mandatory. The following tips come to us via ADDitude Magazine. While these tips are aimed at children with ADD/ADHD, they [...]
Summer is in full swing, so you know what that means…yup, it’s time to stock up on school supplies. I don’t have anything against those big-box office supply stores, except that they can be pretty expensive. If I’m going to spend a lot of money there, it should be for something I can’t get anywhere [...]
If you’ve already read what I’ve written about the first two books in this series (Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key and Joey Pigza Loses Control) you can guess pretty easily that I love this book as well and heartily recommend it to you. And you would be right. There really is no such thing as [...]
At the end of Joey Pigza swallowed the Key, Joey finally had it together. He was living with his working mom in a more stable home, he was on the right meds, and he had gained enough self-control to get a dog, a dachshund/Chihuahua cross he christens Pablo. Alas, nothing good can ever last. Joey’s [...]
One of the reasons that I love WordPress is that there is a large contingent of people who create code and put it out there for free, knowing that probably fewer than one in a hundred users will actually donate anything for their time and effort. It takes hundreds of hours of coding to create [...]
You don’t have to spend much time in a school—say a month or so—before you run into a kid (or kids) who is (or are) at once your biggest delight and your biggest terror. They’re charming, they’re delightful, they’re friendly and helpful, and yet, like that semi-wild housecat who keeps dropping dead mice on your [...]
It took me forever to write about this book, and it’s only now that I realize it’s because I wanted to say a lot more nice things about than I actually can. Which is sad in a way, because looking back, I wish that this book had been around when I was in fifth or [...]
This is what happens when you don’t have Tivo. You see something interesting on the television, grab your camera and snap a pic of it. Then, because you get busy with other things, you find some odd image on your camera two months later, and wonder why you took this picture. Here’s what I found: [...]
Okay, you’re saying, what’s the big deal? Well, the big deal is that I don’t need an app on my iPhone to keep track of this (apparently incorrectly).
In fact, when it comes to keeping track of the Greek and Roman gods, there’s already an app for that.
It’s called a book.
Are you looking for the ultimate “Best of 2009″ booklists for children and young adults? Then visit Best Children’s Books of 2009: The Big List of Lists Susan Thomsen has put together a list of links for over 100 (when I stopped counting, at least) of “Best of…” lists from publishers, journalists, and others. It’s [...]
One of the worst things about being an adult is that when you read a really good kids’ book, you’re still focusing on all those “English teacher” things: theme, symbolism, characterization, etc. It is all too easy to forget that when a young person reads a book, they’re not looking at the trees, but rather [...]
That said, this is not such a bad book…Read this one if you must…
Don’t get me wrong: I love digital storytelling and think it’s a powerful tool to empower developing writers (especially those who are struggling with English). My problem is that when someone puts “English” and “technology” in the same sentence, they inevitably come up with “digital storytelling.”
Donna Jo Napoli (author of Beast, The Magic Circle, and Stones in Water) was the featured speaker at this year’s Michigan Council of Teachers of English Bright Ideas Conference in Lansing, Michigan. She began by reading from her book, Ugly, which is a retelling of the Ugly Duckling fairy tale
This is a problematic book in many ways. It has been (seemingly forever) on lists of banned or challenged books almost as long as it has been on many high school reading lists. It’s almost as if the teachers who long ago laminated their lesson plans and teach this book just because they have always [...]