Archive for February, 2007
Wanted: Sympathetic Aliens in Children’s Literature
When he created the Star Trek franchise, Gene Roddenberry insisted that futuristic alien-human interspecies relationships were a metaphorical way of looking at present-day interracial relationships in the United States. In the utopian frame of the show–we are to assume Earth (including the U.S.) has already outgrown racial prejudices and that human beings are now at [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 4 so far )Mindfulness Markers
On to some of the most disposable books in the world of kid lit: coloring books. And yet–what an incredible experience to sit quietly with a child and simply color a page. Though, okay, we have days where coloring is an olympic event with elements of both snowboarding and javelin throwing involved, more and more [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Poetry Friday: Pattiann Rogers’s “The Significance of Location”
“The Significance of Location” from Firekeeper
by
Pattiann Rogers
The cat has the chance to make the sunlight
Beautiful, to stop it and turn it immediately
Into black fur and motion, to take it
As shifting branch and brown feather
Into the back of the brain forever.
The cardinal has flown the sun in red
Through the oak forest to the lawn.
The finch has [...]
Firing the Canon
I owe a great deal of my recent thinking about canonical issues to an article that appeared in November/December 2006 issue of Home Education Magazine: “One Mother’s Search for the Meaning of Literacy” by Sheri Kinser. In the article, Kinser discusses the difficulties of determing what it is her son “should” know in order to [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )Poetry Friday: Mary Oliver’s “Spring”
“Spring” from House of Light
by Mary Oliver
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is racing
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her
her four black fists
flicking the gravel
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black [...]
You’re a Prisoner of the Ant People, What Do You Do?
A. Lie still on the floor.
B. Attack them.
C. Concentrate on excreting pheremones that will drive them away or make you their leader.
D. Search the cave for the naturally occuring components of boric acid.
That’s right. CYOA. Time to read like it’s 1983! For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure, the Choose Your Own Adventure [...]
