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As for many of us who teach, my last day of school has come and gone and all that's left is the cleaning up. I have more cleaning up than most, since circumstances require me to box up all my classroom possessions--but it's a great relief that I finally know what to write on the labels! I'll be moving schools and teaching kindergarten full-time next year.

So, goodbye to a sweet & sour year, to a warm and wonderful school community that I really didn't want to leave, and hello to a whole new proposition...

On the Menu for School Today

Label planets
in our sky.
Learn how numbers
multiply.
Count coins.
String beads.
Shake bells.
Plant seeds.
Map constellations
dot
to
dot....
Decorate
a flowerpot.
Say a poem.
Spell b-u-t-t-e-r-f-l-y.
Shout hello.
Wave good-bye.

~Rebecca Kai Dotlich
from Falling Down the Page, ed. Georgia Heard, 2009

My summer goals are to work on a refreshed concept for an old group of poems (thanks to the inspirations and suggestions of my fellow conferees at David Harrison's workshop in Boyds Mills) and to post here at least three times a week. And also to really follow the folks I "follow"--I always get so much out of your posts.
"Thak you for bing mi tethr! <3 <3 <3"

Poetry Friday at Check It Out with Jone today, who has her own goodbye to say. Let evening come.

Image by dietadeporte via Flickr

What happened the day your life changed?

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In the mail from Altrincham, England came an unassuming little volume, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile. It's Alice Oswald's first book, published in 1996 and now in reprint from Faber and Faber. I take the liberty of posting a complete poem here as a way of making sure as many of us Americans get to know this work. Really there are half a dozen I'd like to post. She's changing my poetry brain, but I need more time to understand why and how.

Bike Ride on a Roman Road


This Roman road — eye’s axis
over the earth’s rococo curve —
is a road’s road to ride in a dream.

I am bound to a star,
my own feet shoving me swiftly.

Everything turns but the North is the same.

Foot Foot, under the neck-high bracken
a little random man, with his head in a bad
controversy of midges,
flickers away singing Damn Damn

and the line he runs is serpentine,
everything happens at sixes and sevens,
the jump and the ditch and the crooked stile . . .

and my two eyes are floating in the fields,
my mouth is on a branch, my hair
is miles behind me making tributaries
and I have had my heart distracted out of me,
my skin is blowing slowly about without me

and now I have no hands and now I have no feet.

This is the road itself
riding a bone bicycle through my head.

~ Alice Oswald
The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, 1996

Poetry Friday is at The Family Bookshelf today (I can't link because this site keeps shutting IE down). Happy Mother's Day to all, especially to my own mother, and to my English mother-in-love (no laws pertain to mothers except those of the heart, who celebrates on a whole different day and who sent me this book.

Thoughtful commentary will resume after I update my resume and prepare to find a new job. I am now officially an "involuntary transfer." *sigh* In the meantime, slam bam thank you Mr. Mali...



Discuss what YOU make this Poetry Friday at A Year of Reading with Mary Lee. She makes me laugh.

This weekend, Sean played some music for me. As I listened, I cringed at a couple of the notes. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Can’t you hear that?” I shivered. “That needs some work. The notes aren’t right. They aren’t in harmony.” … Continue reading →

In my last blog I wrote that it is common for one person to be the decision maker, leader, boss, or, whatever you want to call it, in a relationship. Sometimes that person is aware of it and takes advantage of his dominance; sometimes it comes about in a very subtle way, as I described in many European marriages I witnessed as a child.

The whole subject got me thinking about the person or persons who are being dominated, be they wives, children, office workers, farm hands, secretaries, etc. I think sometimes people are content to be bossed around because it takes the responsibility of making decisions away from them. It is my feeling about people who follow certain religious leaders who dictate to others how they are to live their lives.

Most usual, in my opinion, people are not happy to be controlled in any way. How do they then deal with their discontent? They may seek to dethrone the dominant person by fighting for his/her position as in a family, business, law office, etc. Perhaps they will do as I did when I felt I could not live being dominated by my father. I left the household and moved to another city. I have known others who have left their religion, their job, and even their family.

For me it is clear that being bossed/dominated does not work in the long run. What I didn’t know was that my family members would eventaully follow me to me new home city, forcing me then to take over the leadership position. I hope I didn’t abuse that power.

How Does Your Character Change?

You know your character must change somehow over the course of your novel. But how? And more than that, how do you sync the changes with the external plot? The middle of a novel can suffer from the dreaded “sagging middle” and it’s mainly because you don’t have a firm handle on the character’s inner arc and how it meshes with external events.

I’ve found three approaches to the inner arc, each trying to laying out how the character changes. While these overlap a lot, there are differences in how the emotional changes are approached.

Hero’s Journey: Quest for Inner Change

In the Hero’s Journey, laid out so well in Christopher Vogler’s book, The Writer’s Journey, a character receives a Call to Adventure that takes him/her out of the normal and ordinary world into a world where they must quest for something. One of the key moments in this paradigm is the Inmost Cave where the character faces his deepest fears.

Melanie as an Example

So, we’ve got Melanie who wants more than anything else to get her mother’s approval, but can’t because her mom’s a chef and Melanie can’t cook worth a flip.

In the Hero’s Journey, Melanie might get a Call to Adventure: a challenge to create the world’s largest hot fudge sundae. Her darkest moment will come when she realizes Mom think’s she’s real goof-up and she’s not up to the task. Of course, she wants to give up, but somehow manages to rally (perhaps, recruiting friends to help, learning to make a sundae, etc.) and create something that makes Mom proud.

Iron Sharpens Iron – Friendships

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17
In this paradigm, two characters cross paths in Act 1 and usually hate each other, but Act 2 throws them into a situation where they must act together. Here, the characters’ strengths and weaknesses work to create change. It’s an up and down battle of learning to trust each other and ultimately find some sort of love, whether it’s platonic, romantic or maternal. Key moments are the midpoint when they totally lose faith in one another and a re-commitment to each other as they move from Act 2 to Act 3. Act 1 and 3 focus on the external story, while Act 2 follows how the friendship affects the characters.
For more on this paradigm, read, Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot by Peter Dunne.

Back to Melanie:

Melanie agrees to participate in the Biggest Sundae Ever contest, but as the contest starts she’s assigned a dunce to work with, Phillip RunnyNose. They clash immediately and have different ideas on how to create the required masterpiece: Melanie wants total creative control, while Phillip wants to just take pictures of the masterpiece. During their practice run–about the middle of act 2–Phillip leaves the ice cream out to soften up, but it melts, ruining the prac

Image by Wolfgang Staudt via Flickr

My dad manufactures toilet seat protectors. He’s obsessed about the thinness of the paper, how to fold it the right way so when people grab one it’s ready to go and cutting the center out just right so it makes sense from a profit standpoint and makes customers happy. There’s a lot of math that goes into those things just so people can well, you-know disease free. I mean it’s an industry that never existed in the 60s, 70s, 80s or even the 90s. It’s a New Millenium Industry. People make fortunes killing germs that have always been around.

Which leads me to the last time math was my friend. I was somewhere between California and New Mexico and I had to make a break from a, let’s say venue, where the po-po were putting two-and-two together and I discovered I was broke. And as I was on the run and the first place I came across was a Shell station, I bolted myself inside the bathroom. I leaned up against the white tile wall trying to catch my breath, trying to figure out what to do. But it turned out I couldn’t think too well with those crazy bright lights blaring and those seat protectors staring. All I could think to do was rifle through my pockets. Which sounds easy but I had tons of them. It’s the first thing you do on the road–acquire pockets. But that’s another story.

Anyway, I’m rifling and in the lowest pocket of my cargo pants, I find it. A five dollar bill. It was like finding a small bottle of Magie Noir. Money and perfume was all I dreamed about once I’d scored my ride which I had to abandon. So I peeked outside the door and when the coast was clear I walked to the Stop & Go and put my $5 down on a $1 half gallon of water, which was so over-the-top expensive but investing twenty percent of my fortune on water was what I had to do as I had the rest of the desert to cross. And just as a police car pulled into the station, that ex-con behind the counter made my change, counting the bills as he placed them in my hand, “That’s five, six, seven, eight, and nine.”

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Wow!  Education CAN be fun!  Rock n Learn's Money & Making Change is a lively, fun and wonderful DVD to get your little ones learning all about money.

Penny and Bill are you hosts as they teach about the different coins and how they relate to each other, strategies for counting and making change, money in written terms and so much more.  Penny and Bill keep it fun and upbeat with rock n roll music, cool games and playful, catchy songs.

Money & Making Change is approximately 57 minutes long and is design for children 6 and up - but even your toddlers will enjoy the fast pace.

Here's what you can expect inside this awesome DVD;

Top 5 Tips for Dynamite Scenes

Guest Post By Roz Morris

Join us on Facebook for a discussion of scenes.

Have you got a scene that’s looking lifeless? Here’s how I pep it up.

Have something change.

No scene should ever go as the reader expects. If you have a character set out to buy a pint of milk and all they do is amble to the shop, buy their stuff and walk back, you’ve hit the snooze button. Instead, take that scene somewhere the reader is not expecting. It needn’t be a big twist. It could be tiny – a change of mood, a resolution to do something. But if nothing changes, the scene isn’t worth showing.
To keep the sense of progress through the story, a scene should always contain change. Otherwise it hasn’t earned its place in the story.

Make that change have consequences for the characters.

Suppose you add something to your milk-buying scene – the character realises her boyfriend claimed he bought a certain brand of cigarette from the corner shop, but that shop doesn’t sell them. So where did he get them? And isn’t it odd that they are the same brand smoked by his ex? Are they seeing each other again?
If a change has happened, it should have a lasting effect in the story. Again, it could be small, or it could set them on a new and dastardly path. Good scenes don’t exist in isolation; they affect what comes after them. And they are affected by what happened before.

If you have to fill a blank, bring something in that you introduced earlier.

In the thick of a scene, you often have to invent details off the top of your head. Where was your minor character John last night? The cinema, you write, because it doesn’t matter where he was, he’s not very important. But go back and look at what you’ve written about John before. Is there something else you already invented that you could bring in instead? Three chapters ago, did you send him, quite casually, to choir practice? Why not send him there again, or to the chemist to get throat lozenges? Now we’re fleshing John out and with very little effort.

Featured Today in Fiction Notes Stores

Bringing back ideas you used before is a great way to make the world of your story feel more solid.

Even if what you’re using is trivial it can build up – and who knows where it might lead? It’s a technique called reincorporation. It makes stories elegant and satisfying. And it adds to the feeling that everything matters.
Keep a list of everything you plucked off the top of your head because you needed to fill a blank space. You’d be surprised how useful it will be.

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By Elvin Lim

When the dust has settled on the electioneering frenzy of these final days, 2010, the third “change” election in a row, will better be read as an equilibrium restoring election.

In the Senate, Democrats are about to hand back just over half of their recent wins (5 seats in 2006, and another 8 in 2008) to the Republicans. Most predictions for the number of seats the Republicans will pick up in the House hover around 50 because there are currently 49 Democrats occupying seats in districts that voted for McCain in 2008, and they are about to relinquish these seats. Put another way, Democrats picked up 31 seats in 2006, and another 21 in 2008, and they’re about to return just about every one of them back to the Republicans.

This is not coincidence. It is the revealed majesty of the Newtonian system that the Framers of the Constitution set up, and our subliminal internalization of its logic. The Founders weren’t too fond of waves of popular passion, which is why they applied “a new science of politics” and created institutions arrayed alongside each other with the specific principle that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

The invisible constitutional hand appears to be working. Now that Barbara Boxer has pulled ahead of Carly Fiorina in California, as has Joe Manchin over John Raese in West Virginia, it is likely that the Democratic firewall will hold just enough to prevent a Republican takeover of the Senate. To take over the Senate, Republicans must take the seats in CO, IL, NV, PA, and WA. Indeed, because Republicans are polling ahead in each of these last 5 races, a nearly perfect partisan equipoise is likely to occur in the Senate. That means the 112th Congress which starts business on January 3, 2011, will likely see a slim Republican majority in the House, and an even slimmer Democratic majority in the Senate.

Another way to think about this election as equilibrium restoring is to observe the net neutral effect of the Tea Party movement. In some places, Tea Party candidates are giving seasoned politicos a run for their money. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul now look like shoos-in for the senatorial seats in Florida and Kentucky, and Sharron Angle is in a statistical dead-heat with Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada – which means, given the enthusiasm gap in favor of Republicans this year, Reid has a mountain to climb in the next two days.

Other Tea Party candidates, however, have turned out to be poor candidates. Principally, they don’t know how to handle the media and the rough-and-tumble of electoral politics. Some, like Joe Miller, think it’s OK to hand-cuff journalists; others, like Christine O’Donnell failed to realize that telling us “I’m not a witch” does not kill a rumor but sustains it. Others who have been inducted into office, like Scott Brown from Massachusetts, have long since forgotten their patrons. Like all third party movements since time immemorial, the Tea Party movement – now a flick of sunshine on a strange shore – is not likely to last more than one or two more electoral cycles.

All told, the Republicans are going to regain the seats they lost in 2006 and 2008. But, the electoral tsunami would most likely not be enough, as it was in 1994 or 2006, to flip both houses of Congress. And because of the truncated constitutional calendar, this year’s wave will stop short of the White House. The greatest prize of them all will stay in Democratic hands (a prize that will become especially valuable now that the Vice-president’s tie-breaking vote in the Senate will likely be activated in the months to come.)

A tsunami which converts half a branch is, arguably, no tsunami at all. For this to be a really significant wave that is more than equilibrium restoring, Republicans would need

Some things seem to never change. The sun rises and sets. Dogs chase cats; cats chase birds; birds eats insects and worms. Termites find wood in my house. Ants sneak in here and there, despite my exterminator. And I believe cockroaches will be on earth long after we humans have vacated the planet.

But changes do happen and one of the big areas where that seems to be true is in the relationships between man and woman inside marriage. In the early years, when one feels intense love, changes happen that can even be identified in the human brain. Studies have been done through brain scans that show marked differences in the brain configuration in persons that are in love.

It seems to me that the state of love also causes people to behave in ways that change in time. In the beginning,these couples not only think their partners are the most wonderful human beings on earth, but they admire and accept all their thoughts, their ways, and their behaviors totally.

The brain scan study took their experiment further and studied married couples later on in their relationships, say two or three years down the line. The changes in the brain had diminished if not disappeared altogether; the couples didn’t always think alike on all issues. One of them would like a neighbor; the other couldn’t tolerate that person. One of them would leave their socks on the floor; the other never turned a light off upon leaving a room. The list is long.

But we’re still in the early years, so no one says anything to the other. They just swallow the irritation and bring themselves back to the warm feeling that is still working in the early years.

Let’s look at what happens in the middle years in my next blog. My husband and I are going to have lunch now.

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By Elvin Lim

For the third election in a row, voters will be throwing incumbents out of office. In 2006, the national wave against Bush and the Bush wars gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress. In 2008, the same wave swept Obama into the White House. In 2010, incumbents are yet again in trouble. At least some of them will be expelled from Washington, and if so, the vicious cycle of perpetual personnel turnover and ensuing cynicism in Washington will continue. This is what happens when we become a government of men.

We need only look to the last anti-incumbent election, 2008, for lessons. The Republicans and the Tea Party Movement are running the risk of doing what Barack Obama did in 2008. They are promising change in the campaign, but they do not realize how difficult, by design, change is in Washington. But politicians aren’t usually in the habit of thinking about the election after the one right before them.

Should Republicans take over the House in 2011, they will quickly learn, as Obama has learned, that change does not come via elections in American politics. Elections only change the publicly visible personnel at the top; at best they open the door to potential change. The permanent government persists, the political parties survive, the interests endure. Most important, the constitution and its precise method for law-making remains. The political candidate who promises wholesale change makes a promise that cannot usually be delivered in a few years, and s/he runs the risk of becoming the victim of a new political outsider, a Beowulf who will promise to slay Grendel, but who shall soon find out that with Grendel dead, a dragon still remains to be slayed.

Watch the triumphant Republicans who sweep into office in January 2011. They will be filled with as much hubris as Obama was. Fresh from the winds of the campaign trail, they will think the world their oyster. How could they feel otherwise? The applause and rallies which flatter every politician confirm in their own minds that they are kings and celebrities, the invincible crusaders swept in by a tide of popular love.

Then government begins. And boy did the tough job of governing begin in 2009, Obama might now recall. When the tough sail of real governing fails to catch wind the way a campaign slogan did in the year before, a politician stands humbled. Befuddled, to be sure, but ultimately humbled. Worse still, a people sit dismayed. Tricked again, we withdraw into our private lives. Disgusted at government, resentful that we allowed our hopes to go up, furious that we believed the boy who cried wolf thrice. All signs point to this happening again in 2011, especially if there is divided party control of government and the Constitution is activated to do what it does best: check and balance, and thereby ensure gridlock. Then the cycle begins anew. With both sides disillusioned, the question will then become, which side will be less disillusioned to believe in a new anti-incumbent politician who shall cry wolf a fourth time?

This is a vicious cycle, and the only way to stop it is for every citizen to take a civic lesson or two in American government. Our Founders believed only in incremental change, in hard choices, in the give-and-take of inter-branch negotiation. The system of checks and balances was biased against seismic chances by design. No one, and certainly no branch monopolizes the truth, and no truth can be told ahead of time (i.e. as they are in campaigns) until all branches agree. Despite the message of the get-the-vote-out armies of either party, there are no messiahs, no crusaders in the system the Founders invented. The heroes we have constructed in modern campaigns are just demagogues exploiting the impatience of the frightened or the unemployed. There are no quick and easy solutions, and politicians know it, but they only want our votes for rig

Mo loves Fox Street but she especially loves it in the summertime.Sure she has to look after little sister Dottie, aka The Wild Child, but it was also the time of year that Mercedes comes to stay with her grandmother Da across the street.Mo cannot wait til Merce gets to Fox Street so they can hang out in “The Den” and drink Tahitian Treats together.

But this year, something has changed with Mercedes.She looks very grown up for one thing, what with her shaved head and her designer clothes. Mo knew that Mercedes had a new step father, but she didn’t know that they were “comfortable”. When Mercedes tells Mo that she’s starting to notice how run down Fox Street looks, and how even Da’s house isn’t what it used to be, Mo feels a distinct shift.And that is not a good thing.

Mo does not like change.

So when she takes a special delivery envelope for her Daddy one day, instead of passing it on like she promises she will, she opens it. It’s an offer on their house. Mo knows that her Daddy doesn’t like his city job, and she knows full well of his restaurant dream, and there’s no way she’s going to let him get this letter!

But no matter how much Mo wants things to stay the same, Fox Street is bound to change.Her Daddy’s dream is mighty big, neighbors may not be who Mo thinks they are, and her own sorrow about her mother is a shifting think in her chest.

Tricia Springstubb has written so much more than a simple story of growing up.She has written a whole neighbourhood full of folks so real readers will feel like they know them. Strong women like Da and Mrs. Steinbott bring the history of the street to life. The crazy Baggott boys bring vitality and movement. Mercedes brings progress and Mo herself is one of those kids that comes along every now and again who makes folks say, “she’s got an old soul”.

With hints of magical realism, and extraordinary turns of phrase that will give readers pause, What Happened on Fox Street is sure to generate buzz this year. There is something magical about this little book that will have readers looking for a flash of red in the ravines of their own lives.

I went to go workout today and when I got there everything was different. There's a big renovation project that just completed and the entrance to the club is in a completely different place and the workout equipment is in a groovy new building with a gorgeous view. Everything was so different that I had a hard time finding the door to get in. There was a sign pointing down a path and a bunch of yellow caution tape that scared me off. Another lady was not to far behind me and I asked her how to get in and she said, oh I don't know, I suppose the door right there and walked ahead of me. Yup, the one I didn't see, right in front of me. I replied that was probably a good guess. She walked right in. I felt like an idiot. I tried to work out on the machine I always workout on and it wasn't hooked up, so I tried another one and it wasn't hooked up either. I told the office staff who didn't know there were so many machines in need of electricity. Then I sat there a minute and felt like just going home. I mean, the workout mo wasn't right. Wasn't really feeling it.

But I went to the weight room upstairs instead. While I lifted I heard people beside me say things like: Everything so strange; Different; I hate change. And I thought about it. Change is hard. Change is exhausting. But, I don't hate change. I mean, it shakes things up, keeps things interesting. I would hate to be so totally a creature of habit that the LEAST little change would floor me.

I went back downstairs and worked on a machine that did work. Yeah, I didn't get level of workout I would have had everything been working right, but it was OK. And it is a lovely new building. What do you think of change? Does the least little change set you off?

One of the things to try when you’re in a writing rut is to change your routine or process. Always be open to try new things.

Most of my days are spent in front of the computer working on geeky software stuff. I type really well and fast—I even tried typing with my eyes closed. That work for awhile, but I was still in a rut.

So I went back to the very basics: Writing with pen and paper.

When I was in 5th grade, I wrote a soap opera screenplay in longhand. In high school, I wrote in longhand cursive. It wasn’t until I took that typing class that I gave up my pen and paper.

Now I’m finding that it has helped me get out of this rut. It’s taking a break from the computer. It’s giving me time to think a little more since my left hand can only keep up so much with my brain. It gives me a change of pace. It also keeps me away from the Internet. And I can take my pen and paper anywhere—no need to scout out great places near outlets.

Plus, I get the perk of when I do transfer the pages into my computer, I can do some more tweaking and think about the scene again.

So I think longhand my be my change to jump start my writing routine.

If you’re stuck in your writing—try something different. It just may be the one thing you may need to get that spark.

Last week I had the chance to attend meetings of the Hennepin County Library Media Mashup project. Media Mashup is an IMLS funded project that looks at how innovation and change happens in libraries. The way that’s being investigated is through the use of Scratch software with teens in libraries in Hennepin County and around the country. Last week’s meetings were inspiring and I left with several words bouncing around my head:

• Innovation – The Media Mashup project is very much focused on how innovation happens in libraries. It’s very clear from the project that there are barriers to innovation in libraries. However, that doesn’t mean innovation can’t happen and that’s demonstrated by the work of librarians around the country working with Scratch in order to help teens learn about technology and gain media and information literacy skills. When put to the challenge, librarians in the project are finding innovative ways to make the technology work – for example buying laptops so that there are computers in the library that can have Scratch on them. Librarians working with teens need to be innovative in order to breakdown barriers to successful service. Innovating may mean speaking up for what teens need. Which can be difficult. But, if it doesn’t happen are teens being well served?
• Risk – Librarians serving all different populations often find technology a risky proposition. As a part of the Media Mashup project teen librarians need to take the risk of learning a new software program – Scratch. They then need to take the risk of teaching teens how to use the software. And they need to be willing to teach the software without perhaps knowing everything there is to know about the program. But, taking this risk gives the librarians a great opportunity to mentor and support teens in their own development. A librarian who can take the risk of saying, “I’m not sure how that works but I can help you figure it out” is a librarian that will be successful with teens.
• Collaboration – The Media Mashup project centers on a strong collaboration between the Hennepin County Library and the Science Museum of Minnesota. These two agencies have worked together for a few years and it is clear that the relationship works. The Hennepin County Library and the Science Museum of Minnesota each get something out of the relationship. For one thing they get access to the skills and talents of each other. They get the ability to connect with teens in a variety of settings. And, they get the chance to be a part of a larger community. For teen librarians these types of collaborations can be key in guaranteeing success and making sure that teen services are respected both within the library and within the community at large. Sometimes these collaborations can seem like more work than they are worth, but if the time is invested the worth ends up being much more than the work.
• Change – Change in libraries is hard and as I listened to the discussions at last week’s Media Mashup sessions, it was clear that some libraries are better at change than others and that some librarians are better at change than others. Listening to the discussions I was reminded of a recent experience I had in my role as YALSA President. As YALSA Pres
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Yep. You gotta get feedback on your novel and you gotta act on it. On everything? Yep. But what if. . .

Yes! Oh! No? Uh-oh! Huh?

Okay. Here are five reactions I’ve had to recent feedback: Yes! Oh! No? Uh-oh! Huh?

• Yes! It’s great when feedback confirms what you were already thinking needed work. You knew this area was weak, and sure enough, the reader confirmed it. These changes or revisions to your novel are made easier by this confirmation.



• Oh! These are unexpected, new ideas for ways to solve a problem in a particular way. I love it when the reader gets what I’m doing in this novel and suggests a perfect revision. These are often ideas about adding, omitting, changing or rearranging.

For example, one comment recently was to take a line from page 76 and use it as the opening line. I’m still not sure it will work, but it’s shaken me out of my rut on that first line and now I’m more likely to find the right place to start.

Related posts:

1. 2 Types of Feedback
2. Critique Groups
3. Listen

Wow! It's taking a lot longer to get "back to normal" than I thought. I've almost got the studio set up, but then we'll be getting some new windows which means I have to move some things out of the way. Of course, I wouldn't exactly have time right now to get out there to work.

I'm still working on a doodle in my sketchbook, but it's taking a long time. I was able to doodle a little last Sunday - just a little fun. I suppose it's some sort of little magical dwarf and his elegant horse.

With the move and the home improvements that have followed, catching up on homeschooling record-keeping, and the running-around during soccer season, I'm lucky to have gotten this done.

Things will change, though. Especially since I just found out that I will be out of a job after the new year - Barnes & Noble is closing all of it's B. Dalton branches. I could transfer to the B&N about an hour away, but I can't see doing that commute right now, working until midnight, etc. My store manager is thinking about opening an independent bookstore. Risky? Maybe...but there's NOTHING else in this area. You have to drive an hour north or south to get to a bookstore. We'll see what happens.

Maybe I could teach some art classes. I don't know.

Of course, this has definitely been a year of changes: my dad passed away in January, baby arrived in March, spent months fixing up the old house and house-hunting, son started high school in August...might as well change jobs, too (I guess).

Last week I was chatting with a second grader about characters in stories.  I said, “As a reader, I know you’ve noticed that characters in stories usually change in some way.” “No they don’t,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I did say usually.  It doesn’t always happen, but usually, when writers write stories, they usually have the character [...]

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Last year, when I came back from the SCBWI L.A. Conference, I started this blog. And amazingly, Read These Books and Use Them is a year old. I’ve kept up with it on a regular basis–some weeks better than others, of course; but all in all, it’s worked. I’ve reviewed some great books, hopefully suggested some useful activities, and hosted some terrific authors. That is not going to change!

What is going to change is the sporadic way I’ve been blogging. I’m making it a priority to blog every day of the week except Saturday and Sunday (unless I missed a post throughout the week–which I’m not going to, I’m not!) I can’t say that the blog will be up first thing in the morning; but sometime, throughout the day, there will be a new post on this blog. I also hope to keep a bit of a schedule on the blog: here’s what I’m thinking for now. I’m going to give this schedule a trial period. If you have any suggestions or are thinking something else would be useful for you, your school, your children, your students, or your co-workers, please, please, please let me know. You can leave a comment here or e-mail me at margodll [at] aol [dot] com. I will also host some blog tours, and these may be on any day, regardless of the following schedule:

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Now, for the schedule. . .

Maniac Mondays: Here’s where I try not to sound like a maniac while I give my latest opinion on some educational trend, idea, lesson, way to do things, news, resource for teachers, librarians, parents, and/or homeschoolers. (Today, it’s Maniac Monday, and here’s the post about change. Don’t be afraid to change!!)

Tuesday Tales:This will look very similar to the posts that you are used to seeing because I’m going to review a book and give you some lesson ideas.

Wacky Wednesdays: On Wacky Wednesdays, I’m going to provide a fun reading or language lesson plan for you to use with students–you should be able to modify it in some way to fit your grade level or your child’s ability. It might be based on a poem or book; or it might just be a really wacky idea.

Timeless Thursdays: Timeless Thursdays are for timeless books, ideas, poems, rhymes, speeches, and anything else timeless that we might care about as educators and parents.

Un-Forgettable Fridays: These posts will also look similar to the way I posted before–using un-forgettable books and providing un-forgettable lesson ideas.

To close out my first Maniac Monday, let me say that I love the author, Deborah Wiles. Here are a couple of her books to check out: