‘Tis the season for lists. So, in this spirit I offer you one of my own: Read-aloud books that fit the season. These are books that our family has read to each other over the years and have been perennial pleasers. This isn’t a comprehensive list of books for the season, not even the best [...]

Today, Boni Ashburn (author of Hush, Little Dragon) blogged about “Great Gifts for Word Lovers”. She lists some terrific books for anyone who loves words, and I imagine most writers out there are word-addicts, as I am! Picture book writers, especially, are always looking for The Perfect Word. I’m joined at the spine to my [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]