NO we did not finish reading it aloud before seeing the play. But I think it’s for the better. They loved this so much it will bring new life and perspective to the end of the book for them. And those hours are so precious to us as a family. At least someone should like…
Category: reading
finishing up “treasure island”, hopefully with a bang
We have tickets to the musical version this Friday! I never thought I’d see either of them read such a book out loud. When we began, they didn’t even try to take turns with it, and left it to Tuck. Now they both read. “Treasure Island” has been going slowly and concurrently with “Robin Hood”,…
the lightning thief
Well, pictures are worth a lot of words with this kind of thing. Suffice it to say I didn’t know there WAS a Percy Jackson musical, or that it was ending its run in Philly soon, and well, thank you Tucker, because his birthday is tomorrow and this was more or less his birthday gift…
internship
We’ve been working for months now to find out ways that the kids can help out — during school hours — at various Mighty Writers locations in Philly, whether in reading to toddler-aged children, helping to design, print and distribute flyers, or — as they did today — transcribe workshop writing assignments to computer from…
reviving the art of the christmas eve ghost story
This was the second year that Claudia participated in “The Dark is Rising” readalong beginning on Midwinter’s Eve. Both kids also caught (out of the corner of one eye) a few episodes from my BBC “Ghost Stories for Christmas Eve” DVD box set. A lot of steps to string together, but each of the kids…
our library has an automatic short story dispenser
It also has a HUGE Wharton Esherick carving, which I have always loved — and it’s a really good library. But today, we noticed the short story dispenser. I was excited enough to post before I got the full story on what’s actually IN there — somebody came home with “Jabberwocky”, and each of them…
enjoying the blue yeti microphone
Why even bother with my commentary? And my apologies for the repeated photo — it’s all I could really think of to give Soundcloud when I uploaded those files. Here are B. and C., making an “audiobook”: And then, the beginning of “podcasting”: The VERY sudden appearance of Mrs. Motherpuffs is one of…
#TheDarkIsReading
Claudia read “The Dark is Rising” sequence earlier this year — sometime since the Summer — and loved it. I had not realized the second book, The Dark Is Rising, takes place at Christmastime (starting on December 20th). Twitter took a hold of it, and a worldwide readalong was planned. It’s a much-loved book. One…
treasure island
When my dad died we inherited a large collection of classic children’s literature illustrated by N.C. Wyeth, and planned to use much of it for out-loud reading — taking turns within a book. The first book chosen by the kids was Treasure Island and Tucker read the first installment — and every installment after. I…
joyful noise
I bought the poetry book Joyful Noise by Paul Fleischman when I was a teenager. I also bought it a few other times, in subsequent years, and gave it as gifts to kids. I don’t know if anybody ever really enjoyed it like I did, but for all this time, I have looked forward to…
field trip! oxford and london, england
Shortly after Christmas I saw a call for abstracts for a conference called Winter Festivals and Traditions, to be held at Oxford University. They were very short abstracts and so — since it’s harder for me NOT to talk about neurodiversity and processional arts than it is for me to talk about it — I…
tip and ozma, and george — trans kids in kids’ literature (and a book report by claudia)
2012 was the last year the kids had a single Halloween costume each. We then had to switch to “the one you want for school, from Target, and the one Mom wants to make you, for which you will pose for a photograph in and then put directly in the dressup bin.” Not perfect, but…
Levin Dorko Collins Learning Ltd 