Children's Literature
On Wallace Stevens’ “The Snow Man”
Okay, the much belated entry on Stevens’ “The Snow Man.” If you haven’t had a look at the poem itself yet, find it here in Poetry Friday stack.
This particular poem has been with me since my freshman year of college. And I still find things in it I hadn’t noticed before. Like just now, I [...]
National Poetry Month at Homeschool Kid Lit
Fitting that our month devoted to poetry begins with a day for fools. I say that in all love–I think it takes being something of a fool to be something as a poet.
Fools take risks. They do tricks. They get away with all manner of outrageous words and deeds. They don’t ask for the attention [...]
Some Thoughts on Poetry and Speed
Okay, time for a confession: I’m a poet. Academically trained, have a book out and everything. But I’ve been working outside the genre the last couple of years–doing some other worthy and exciting projects, including my first science fiction stories.
Now though, poetry’s calling me back and I’m moving that direction, not just as a writer [...]
Crunch! Healthy Food Books for Healthy Kids
So we’re subscribing to a farm this year–it’s a cool idea. We pay a local farmer about $600 for the season and in exchange we get six months of just-picked local organic vegetables–everything from spring radishes to fall squash and lots of yummy stuff in between. Weekly pickups right in town. Since the quantities may [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Forgotten Children’s SF Writers: Alexander Key
Last week’s post left me thinking I needed to get over to the library, check out whatever Alexander Key books they had and be ready to blog summaries and reflections, Key being a children’s science fiction writer who’s known for little other than his sympathetic aliens.
Here’s the hitch, our library–which I adore and find generally [...]
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 )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 )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 [...]
Farsi Books, Junk Collage and More
Two websites to plug this week: International Children’s Digital Library and National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature. I thought I knew my way around the Web, but I’d never heard of either site until I found reference to them in a children’s literature text I’ve been examining. And, while ICDL comes up quite readily in [...]
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