My Charlesbridge catalog arrived yesterday, and I noticed that Grace Lin is celebrating the tenth anniversary of her first published book, The Ugly Vegetables, by creating new cover art. So do not be alarmed if you see participants holding an unfamiliar book in your next Many Eyes, Many Voices training…it’s the same inside! I’ll post [...]
Until recently, I had never heard of children’s author Deborah Ellis. Then I read an interview with her in the current issue of Book Links magazine, and suddenly I’m seeing her name everywhere! I spotted one of her earlier young adult novels, The Breadwinner, on a colleague’s bookshelf. There was another interview with her on [...]
Born to Read had sufficient funding from Jane’s Trust to offer three children’s literature seminars this fall, in Brunswick, Lewiston, and Bangor. We changed the title of the seminar from Peaceable Stories (too easily confused with the six-hour training) to Children and Conflict in a Changing World. Unfortunately, this is also the title of a [...]
Since the very beginning of the Peaceable Stories initiative, we’ve been conscious of the connections between our curriculum and the themes of peace that are integral to Montessori education. Indeed, Joanne Alex from Stillwater Montessori School was invited to serve on our Peaceable Stories book selection committee for just this reason. Joanne and her husband, [...]
Karen Hall started this training with not one, but two listing activities. The first was the standard word association with “peace,” which yielded tolerance, sharing, teamwork, getting along, no fighting, respect, harmony, unity, calm, quiet, love, chocolate. The second was a slight variation in which Karen asked “what makes you feel peaceful?” Here we got [...]
