Authors are imaginary mentors and real support.

Goodness, we’ve swept past Halloween and are pushing toward Thanksgiving. Time! Where does it go? I’ve been flitting up and down the east coast presenting sessions at various NCTM state and regional conferences, receiving accolades by insisting that, even during math class, “If we’re going to introduce children to a book, we have the responsibility [...]

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 [...]

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 were about [...]

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 [...]

On jumping back into fiction and starting a novel I’m a writer coming home. I started in fiction. I love its power to move children; to touch them deep and deeper still. I love spinning characters out of the air, building them layer by layer until they rise from the page to walk into the [...]