I'm a fan of prime numbers. They feel edgy and interesting to me, instead of predictable, compliant and orderly like, say, 24, with all its evenness and multiple factors. 2 always feels like an impostor here, but there are so many numbers to love in this list! I'm particularly partial to 7, 11, and 13.
2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41,43,47,53
And "prime"--an interesting choice of word for these numbers of quirk and independence. Now I find that in mathematical terms, these numbers are "first" and most basic, rather than particularly complex and interesting like their surrounding composite numbers. Shows how mathematical my thinking tends to be.
I muse on this because my daughter mentioned, along with her Happy Birthday wish, that 52 is a good number, being divisible by 13. I flipped that and began to think of my years divided into 4 even quarters:
01-13 childhood
13-26 youth
26-39 adulthood
39-52 parenthood
Those don't line up quite evenly with the actual periods or stages of my life, but close enough to want to come back and explore it.
But....on to Poetry Friday!
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Results 13,251 - 13,275 of 664,870Blog: A Year of Reading (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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You know how, after it rains,
my father told me one August afternoon
when I struggled with something
hurtful my best friend had said,
how worms come out and
crawl all over the sidewalk
and it stays a big mess
a long time after it’s over
if you step on them?
Blog: Storywraps-Wrap your mind and heart around a good story (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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In a delightful passage of his book Elbow Room, the philosopher Dan Dennett writes “The first day I was ever in London, I found myself looking for the nearest Underground station. I noticed a stairway in the sidewalk labeled 'SUBWAY', which in Boston is our word for the Underground, so I confidently descended the stairs and marched forth looking for the trains."
The post Brain waves, impulse control, and free will appeared first on OUPblog.
In Rome on 22 June 1633 an elderly man was found guilty by the Catholic Inquisition of rendering himself "vehemently suspected of heresy, namely, of having held and believed a doctrine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture". The doctrine in question was that "the sun is the centre of the world and does not move from east to west, that the earth moves and is not the centre of the world.
The post Galileo’s legacy: Catholicism, Copernicanism, and conflict resolution appeared first on OUPblog.
Blog: Children's Book Reviews and Then Some (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Title: Ira’s Shakespeare Dream Written by: Glenda Armand illustrated by: Floyd Cooper Published by: Lee & Low, May 2015 Themes: African Americans, biography, Ira Aldridge, Shakespeare, acting, diversity, abolition of slavery in the USA Ages: 7-11+ Genre: Picture Book Biography Opening: IRA COULD NOT KEEP STILL as he waited in the balcony of … Continue reading
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From The Guardian (via Vivian French): Mick Inkpen's top tips for making a picture book - GREAT!
From Lifestyle (via PW): Judging Books by Chip Kidd's covers
From The Read Quarterly: Scottish Children's Book Awards 2016!
From The Rumpus: There is no such thing as a true story (tough read, but good)
From The Weather Channel: 100 Places straight out of a fairytale
From The Scottish Book Trust: Why Libraries Deserve to be Loved
From Picture Book Makers (are you subscribed yet?): Emily Hughes on the making of WILD - interesting!
From The New York Times: Pat Conroy, Author of 'The Prince of Tides' and 'The Great Santini,' Dies at 70
From Sunday Mornings with Joe: How to Make a Surge - great advice for paddlers, authors and illustrators too!
From GalleyCat: Netflix to Adapt 'Thirteen Reasons Why'
At AtlasObscura: How Does A Wrinkle in Time Look on a Map?
From The Guardian: What are the best children's fantasy book series? You vote!
Hey lovelies! I never know what to do with these beauties after I've finished reading them. If I like a book, I end up buying a finished copy, so I thought I'd see if you wanted them! Good luck everyone! International 13 years or older a Rafflecopter giveaway
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pen & watercolors on paper - A5 size - 2016
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Blog: Pub(lishing) Crawl (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Hi All! Today I want to talk about the next building block of a novel—paragraphs! (This is part three of a series. Part one was on word choice and part two was on sentences.)
If we continue with the metaphor comparing a novel to a city, we can imagine words as bricks, sentences as walls, and paragraphs as… buildings!
Think of the buildings on a city street. They may be linked together, but each has its own door, its own foundation, its own roof.
Now imagine you’re tasked with planning a walking tour of that street. Your goal is to design a tour that leads from one building into the next. You would want each building to be enjoyed for its own strengths and beauty, but it would be equally important that the tour keep moving! Each building would need to naturally flow into the next and keep the tourists wanting to discover more.
That’s how great paragraphs work. They have their individual strength to stand on their own, but they keep the reader moving forward. No matter how beautiful or strong or resonant a paragraph may be, it fails if it slows the reader’s progress forward. Likewise, a paragraph that’s weighed down by excess might encourage skimming, which has an equally negative effect on the reader’s experience.
You may not even think about paragraphs as you write. (I know I rarely consider them until I’m revising.) Often we group our sentences together instinctively, creating that new indent when focus shifts. This casual approach to paragraphs will often produce very adequate prose. But by giving more care to our paragraphs, we can create a stronger story that won’t let a reader’s attention wander.
Here are three tips for maximizing the strength of your paragraphs:
Make each paragraph contribute more than one aspect of the story. A paragraph of description follows a paragraph of dialogue. A paragraph of action comes next, which is followed by a paragraph of internal monologue. Writing like this will get the story onto the page, but it’s unlikely to make it leap to life. The reader will begin to be lulled by the monotony. Paragraphs that combine story elements will convey the same information, but in a more engaging way.
As an example, here’s a passage of three paragraphs from Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman.
By the time I’s raced back to Silver and grabbed my rifle, Lil’s already disappeared among the dense vegetation. “Thanks for waiting,” I mutter to myself, and take to tracking her between shrubs and cactuses. When I finally catch up, she’s crouched behind a boulder, some sort of net clenched in her grasp.
She puts a finger to her lips and nudges her head toward the other side of the boulder. It’s then I see the quail—maybe a dozen of ‘em, pecking at the dry earth for what I reckon must be insects. I creep forward, but gravelly earth crunches beneath my heel. There’s a flutter of feathers and a chorus of squawks, and the birds go scampering deeper into the thicket of shrubs.
Lil glares. “You walk like your feet are made of stone.”
Those three paragraphs could have been written as a paragraph of description, followed by a paragraph of action, followed by a few paragraphs of dialogue. The same information would have been provided. But by combining these elements within these paragraphs, we experience the characters, the setting, and the action all at once, and the prose comes to life on the page.
Vary the length of your paragraphs. Long paragraphs might be used to reveal something important that needs careful attention. Short paragraphs might be used to keep the story moving quickly through action. Mixing short and long can keep the reader moving while signally where it may be important to linger.
Here’s an example from the opening of Queen and Shadows by Sarah J. Maas:
There was a thing waiting in the darkness.
It was ancient, and cruel, and paced in the shadows leashing his mind. It was not of his world, and had been brought here to fill him with its primordial cold. Some invisible barrier still separated them, but the wall crumbled a little more every time the thing stalked along its length, testing its strength.
He could not remember his name.
In this example, the short first paragraph grabs the reader’s attention, and the longer second paragraph draws the reader in deeper as it gives clarity to the questions raised in the first paragraph. The short third paragraph shifts the focus again.
Consider carefully where you end and begin new paragraphs. This goes hand-in-hand with the tip about paragraph length. In nonfiction, paragraphs are generally organized to support a topic sentence. The organization of paragraphs in fiction can be much looser, however, and paragraph breaks can be more creatively applied. Ending a paragraph immediately after a certain sentence will create a different emphasis than if that sentence occupies the middle of the paragraph or starts the next paragraph. Looking again at the above example from Queen of Shadows, how would the emphasis change if we changed the paragraph breaks? How would the focus change if we did this:
There was a thing waiting in the darkness. It was ancient, and cruel, and paced in the shadows leashing his mind.
It was not of his world, and had been brought here to fill him with its primordial cold.
Some invisible barrier still separated them, but the wall crumbled a little more every time the thing stalked along its length, testing its strength. He could not remember his name.
Changing the paragraph breaks changes the emphasis. As readers, we tend to pay special attention to the content of paragraphs made up of a single sentence. In the actual example from the book, the emphasis is on the effect “the thing in the dark” has on the character. In the revised example, the attention shifts away from the effect to the fact that it was brought here to menace him. We focus on different things depending on the breaks.
How do you feel about paragraphs? Are they a tool you enjoy using? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pages: 496
New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.
An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.
For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.
The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.
In Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly has crafted a remarkable novel of unsung women and their quest for love, freedom, and second chances. It is a story that will keep readers bonded with the characters, searching for the truth, until the final pages.
Blog: Mattias (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Enter to win both yoga books by Mariam Gates, GOOD MORNING YOGA and GOOD NIGHT YOGA, along with a full-color poster! Giveaway begins March 11, 2016, at 12:01 A.M. PST and ends April 10, 2016, at 11:59 P.M. PST.
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Olga Tokarczuk, whose Księgi Jakubowe won the 2015 Nike Award (see my previous mention), was recently at Cambridge, and it's nice to see her get some more prominent attention -- such as The Economist's Prospero-piece, Olga Tokarczuk's Polish narrative.
Regarding Księgi Jakubowe, J.H. writes:
Should it ever make it into English meanwhile, it will be more than worth the wait: Ms Tokarczuk is one among a very few signal European novelists of the past quarter-century.'Should it ...', sigh ......
Meanwhile, consider, for example, her Primeval and Other Times; see the Twisted Spoon publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. Add a Comment
They've announced the six-title strong shortlist for the Stella Prize -- a prize: "celebrating Australian women's writing, and championing diversity and cultural change" (for which only works by Australian women are eligible -- but they can be either fiction or non).
Most of these have not appeared in the US yet; I haven't seen any.
The winning title will be announced 19 April.
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Discover the art of Akira Yonekawa, Cartoon Brew's Artist of the Day.
The post Artist of the Day: Akira Yonekawa appeared first on Cartoon Brew.
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Quick-Witted Girl Uses Inventions to Navigate Life in STUCK IN THE MIDDLE
This new comedy TV series follows 12-year-old Harley Diaz as she maneuvers her way through the bustle of being a middle child in a family with six other siblings: Rachel the self-involved eldest; Georgie, a basketball-playing teen; Ethan, Harley’s closest ally; invincible and indestructible twins Lewie and “Beast”; and the strong-willed youngest sibling, Daphne. The heartfelt and comedic stories of a big family find Harley devising creative ways to cope with – and stand out – in her family’s busy suburban Massachusetts household. Her ingenuity often wins the day for the Diaz family, even with many different personalities living under one roof.
Stuck in the Middle will air in its regular time slot beginning FRIDAY, MARCH 11 (9:00 p.m. EST) on Disney Channel. Will you be watching? Tell us in the Comments.
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Blog: Here in the Bonny Glen (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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My everyday favorites. After a year of experimenting, I’ve got my system figured out. Top to bottom:
• Midori Travelers Notebook for my monthly calendar, weekly journal, and a scribble notebook;
• Moleskine Cahier for daily to-lists (bullet journal);
• Wild Simplicity Daybook for homeschooling notes and records (including our weekly Shakespeare lines—we learn monologues two lines at a time); and
• the Lamy Safari fountain pen my family gave me for my birthday. (LOVE.) (That’s an Amazon affiliate link but if you’re buying pens in the U.S., you should order from the nice people at Goulet Pen Company. Their instructional videos are invaluable, their customer service is top notch, and they offer inexpensive ink samples so you can try out all sorts of gorgeous colors. And that is not an affiliate link. I’m just a happy customer.)
I still keep the family appointments on Google Calendar, but I enjoy writing everything out in the TN monthly calendar (#017) as well. I use the horizontal weekly TN insert (#019) for chronicling the day after it happens—just a few notes about highlights. For the last several months I’ve used a blank TN insert (#003) for my bullet journal but came to realize I need a separate space for scrawling, sketching, doodling, working things out on paper. If I do that in the bullet, things get messy. WAY messy. So I’ve gone back to my old (cheaper) Moleskine grids for task lists.
The Midori travels with me everywhere; the bullet journal lives on my desk where I do most of my work; and the Daybook has a home in a basket by my rocking chair in the living room.
I’m laughing at how complicated this must seem if you aren’t a pen-and-paper fanatic…but I juggle a lot of roles (and kids) and I find having different paper spaces helps me keep things straight.
More nitty gritty:
I also have a kraft folder (#020) in my Midori to tuck ephemera and snail-mail supplies into. Since I started carrying notecards and stamps around, I’ve gotten much more prompt with my thank-you notes.
• I love the feel of Prismacolor colored pencils on the paper Lesley Austin uses in the Wild Simplicity Daybook. I’m sure I’ve raved about this before—the lovely creamy pencil on this recycled paper with just the right amount of tooth.
• Prismacolor pencils also delight me in the bullet journal: I like ’em for filling in my checkboxes.
• This pic, which I’ve shared here before, shows my favorite way to organize a task list: to-do items on the right, and the verso is for related notes and numbers. I also keep a running “Nag List” on a sticky note that travels from spread to spread. It’s for important tasks that I might not get done today but I gotta deal with soon—like finishing my taxes or booking a doctor appointment. I consult it each evening when making out my bullet list for the next day.
• Sometimes I’ll tuck another insert into the Midori to be used for a specific purpose. For example, I keep a log of incoming and outgoing snail mail. I don’t like a superfat Midori, though, so more often that insert lives in my stationery pouch.
• As I mentioned, I do a lot of casual sketching in my blank Midori insert. I find I’m often more comfortable there than in my proper sketchbook, because it feels more casual. But I do have a couple of sketchbooks going and I try to work in at least one of them daily. One is a spiral-bound 7×10 Canson Mixed Media pad, which gets lukewarm reviews from real artists but I quite like its toothy paper—not to mention its price point when Michael’s has a good sale + coupon combo. You have to watch for it, but now and then they’ll give you a 20% off including sale items coupon during a buy-one-get-one-free sketchbook sale. My other sketchbook is a Moleskine Art Plus, and it’s…okay? I love its size and shape (fits nicely in my bag), but the paper is too smooth for my liking. I much prefer the feel of Moleskine’s watercolor sketchbook—a lovely texture to that paper. But so far I’ve mostly just used that for color charts.
• For sketching pens, I like Sakura Pigma Microns or my Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen (check out all the groovy colors at Goulet Pens) with Platinum Carbon ink, which is waterproof so it plays nice under watercolors. However, lately I’ve come to realize that what I enjoy most of all is sketching in pencil. I love the look of black or brown ink drawings, and most of the sketchbook artists I admire work directly in ink, but I really love the way a pencil feels on the paper. I keep hitting that point over and over, don’t I—the tactile experience matters more to me than how it looks.
Ha, this got long! Would you believe it was just going to be a quick copy-paste of something I tossed on Instagram today?
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Happy Friday! If your students are writing for the Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge, this is where you will post the link to their writing!
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In Ancient Greece, the goddess Artemis was venerated as a maiden huntress, swift with her bow and arrows, and eternally chaste. But could there be more to her story? Perhaps Lady Artemis had envisioned quite a different destiny than the one her father, Zeus, had chosen for her. What if she hadn't merely pined after the giant huntsman, Orion, but had secretly partaken of a forbidden romance with him?
From prolific fantasy writer C.K. Brooke comes an original divine novel, in which Artemis's classic myths are retold as never before, in her own voice, as the young goddess sets the record straight and reveals the true account of her immortal life - and love.
*Want your YA, NA, or MG book featured on my blog? Contact me here and we'll set it up.
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