I once had the good fortune to open a letter and discover that award winning author, Jerry Spinelli, was to be my mentor at a writer’s conference. I was thrilled- certain that I had been assigned this amazing author because of my own literary brilliance and couldn’t wait to hear his praise of the first ten [...]

When my kids were small, and each evening required several bedtime stories, a perennial favorite was Steven Kellog’s Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett. She could outrun, out swim, out arm wrestle, out tug-o-war any man in creation. She chopped trees with her teeth, tamed eagles, skinned bears, whipped up tornadoes, and out wrestled the [...]

Any children’s book lovers in or around southern CT and RI, with free time this weekend and next? October is a big month around here, with two amazing Book Festivals coming up. This Saturday in Providence is The Rhode Island Festival of Children’s Books and Authors, with an all-star lineup of authors and illustrators - [...]

A cousin recently shared with me a literary treasure: the complete archives of The Weekly, a newspaper her mother Flora and a friend wrote and distributed from September through November of 1936. Flora and Mary were the sole proprietors, reporters, editors, and publishers.  Their writing is honest, straightforward and completely charming.   Both [...]

Don’t we all love to create?  Writers have to love the process of creating.  They have to sit down all by themselves day after day (or night) and type words to create a novel.  This may take a year.  When you think of it taking a year it can become a bit daunting, especially when [...]

I’m preparing a power point presentation for a series of sessions at NCTM meetings this autumn. My session is: Stories that Count: Literature in the Math Classroom.
In choosing books to include in the session, I have 2 caveats:         

All books aren’t meant for mathematics. Books shouldn’t be “twisted” in order to suit math instruction purposes. [...]