Monthly Archives: February, 2015
Visiting Gone-Away Lake
Elizabeth Enright (1909-1968) was an award-winning American author. She wrote for children and adults, and also worked as an illustrator. I remember three of her books from my childhood. The Saturdays (1941) was the first book in the Melendy Quartet. The four Melendy children (why are there always four siblings?) 🙂 go to live in a …
Mistakes Can Make You Smarter
As I get older, I find that I am finding more courage to try new things. When we are younger, particularly when we are still in school, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to blend in. We want other kids to like us and don’t want to draw attention to our imperfections. What …
Monday Morning Pick-Me-Up
Let’s face it. Mondays are rough. The end of the freedom that came with the weekend, the start of a long week, the return to work. To help ease you into your week, I would like to share a little something that made me smile.
Nancy Drew, More Than Just A Girl
Edward L. Stratemeyer (1862-1930) may not be a household name, but his characters were and still are to this day. He wrote the wildly popular Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys series. Now, I will admit that I never actually read any of The Hardy Boys books, but I did watch the TV show in …
This is Your Brain on Writing
Last June, an article with the same title was written by Carl Zimmer and appeared in the NY Times. It started, “A novelist scrawling away in a notebook in seclusion may not seem to have much in common with an NBA player doing a reverse layup on a basketball court before a screaming crowd. But if you …
Monday Morning Pick-Me-Up
Let’s face it. Mondays are rough. The end of the freedom that came with the weekend, the start of a long week, the return to work. To help ease you into your week, I would like to share a little something that made me smile.
My First Sci Fi Love
Madeliene L’Engle (1918-2007) wrote some of the best YA books I read as a child. At the time, I didn’t know enough about genre to know it leaned toward science fiction. I just knew that A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels whisked me away and made me forget the world for awhile. And isn’t …
I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can
If you look up the word “shuffle,” you find the expected definitions – dragging your feet as you walk, rearranging a deck of cards… But what I didn’t expect to find was a type of dance. I kind of like the sound of that. I have had many projects going over the last few years, …
Catching Fireflies 