How to use this Page

Emma D. Dryden is a children’s editorial & publishing consultant with drydenbks LLC, a company she established 5 years ago today, after 25 years as a publisher and editor with major publishing houses. I had the privilege of working with … Continue reading →

What Happens next? Trayvon’s Life Has to Count for Something!                                          By Monica Hayes, Ed.D., MAT, MSW (Health and Education Consultant)

The discussions inthe media and on line have focused on a variety of perspectives. There have been calls for investigations and arrests and in too many cases calls for caution, so that we do not rush to judgment. The major judgment has already been made and acted upon.  Young Trayvon Martin is dead; there was no evidence gathering, no statements taken...just assumptions and tragically misguided and unwarranted action. We have seen too many cases where the Black or Hispanci youth is arrested first, and questions asked later. Maybe.

The good news is that the loss of this young man seems to have touched millions and the parents are receiving much needed support in their quest for justice. The president's message gently reminded all parents about the senselessness of the act and the critical need for all of us to understand how such a tragedy could have happened.

On Meet the Press on Sunday morning, Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, his voice evincing both angst and rage, reminded those who haven't yet connected the dots that this loss is pervasive. The neglect by law enforcement and the lack of justice across this country, he said, in response to the deaths of Black you regardless of whom or from which race/ethnicity the perpetrator comes is staggering.

The quiet rage that has been rumbling in the Black community is building. Some in the Hispanic communities are looking at the enmity that too often exists among young Blacks and Latinos. Thoughtful and mutually respectful Whites are wondering aloud how this can still be happening. On Sunday's Meet the Press, Doris Kearns, the noted presidential historian spoike poignantly about the youthful innocence reflected in young Trayvon's face. She likened the situation the that of Emmitt Till! Remember that injustice?

~~~~There's more! To read the rest from Dr. Mon's Place, please visit her blog.~~~~

iTunes users can subscribe to this podcast

There was a period in my life when I was a consultant. There was an old joke about how if you ask a consultant the time he’ll borrow your watch so he can tell you.

That stings a bit. But the fact is that a consultant who doesn’t listen to their client in order to find out how his (or her) consultantly experience can best be applied isn’t much of a consultant.

To give a good answer about what time it is you need to understand what time the client thinks it is. This means listening to the client. Then when you figure out what to tell the client it’s kind of nice if they listen to you. But as long as they pay you they can listen to you or not, that’s their business.

Etymologically it wasn’t always this way. As we go back into the history of the word client we find that long ago your client had to listen to you. Listening was what made them clients.

As a consultant the word client is synonymous with the word customer. The sense of client as the person hiring a professional to help them out appeared around the time of Shakespeare 400 years ago. This meaning evolved because for almost 200 years before that the professionals being hired were invariably lawyers.

Although we can fire lawyers the fact someone has a lawyer usually means that they are actually in need of that lawyer and as such are pretty likely to listen to their advice.

It’s no surprise that a lawyerly word like client comes from Latin and the sense it had before the lawyers got hold of it was a kind of master/servant relationship with the client being the subordinate, which I’m sure suited the lawyers just fine.

Latin words of course usually originated back in Roman antiquity and in that context a client was a plebeian under the patronage of a patrician. The patrician protected the client but the client was pretty much a slave who had to come at the beck and call of their patrician. This was so literally true that the etymological meaning of client is “one who listens to be called” since cluere meant “to listen.”

by Brad Barkley and Heather Kepler Dutton 2007 The "fur" characters (including those not wearing fur, like princesses) have gone on strike at Disney World in Florida at the beginning of the summer. This forces the Disney folks to hire scab labor to fill in so that vacationers can continue to enjoy "The Happiest Place on Earth" without the ugly bits of the outside world creeping in. But this

by Helen Ward
illustrated by Wayne Anderson
Dutton 2007
(originally Templar Books 2005 in Great Britain)

When the tourists come for their annual visit to the moon the Man in the Moon and his Little Moon Dog shutter themselves in their home and hunker down for some quiet time. The tourists (later referred to as fairies, which they resemble) make faces at the Little Moon Dog while his master dozes in a chair. The boredom is too much for him and the Little Moon Dog escapes out the back door to play with his new friends.

The fairies are little demons, fixing the Little Moon Dog with wings and teaching him how to steal plums and drop them down chimneys. When it comes time for the tourists to leave they have so captivated Little Moon Dog that he finds himself spirited away with nary a care for his master.

Once in the shady wood (of a nearby planet?) the tourist fairies soon tire of Little Moon Dog. As the fairies taunt and tease him Little Moon Dog realizes they aren't his real friends and he is lonely. Waking to find his companion gone, the Man in the Moon sets about to retrieve his lost friend, bringing him home in a makeshift ballooncraft where they vow that the next time the tourists come they will escape on vacation together as well. The whole things wraps up with a little moral, which I will soon enough share.

First, I have to say I was a bit confused about how there is a hermit on the moon who gets visited by fairies that live on another nearby planet. I mean, does it need to be the moon, simply so it can be a Moon Doggie? Can't it just be set in an enchanted place? Everything about this book screams fairy-forest and the imposition of the interplanetary setting give the whole a sterile feel. The faux ugly-naive artwork doesn't help either.

I'm also not a big fan of books that utilize a delicate, arty font meant to highlight the fairy-like quality of the story but does little more than make it seem all the more precious. It's as if to say to the reader, in the most patronizing of tones, Now THIS is a SPECIAL story. I find it equally distasteful when some words are highlighted in BOLD to add EMPHASIS even in moments where it doesn't seem WARRANTED. Just as capital letters in email and text messaging have the effect of shouting, so to goes the feeling in children's books where the story suddenly feels as if certain words are being SPOKEN in a loud, CONDESCENDING voice from an old lady who smells like FLOWERS, LOTS and LOTS of FLOWERS.

As if that weren't enough, the story ends on this charming little note:

For the Man in the Moon AND Little Moon Dog know...
There is nothing quite so NASTY as a fickle FAIRY and nothing quite so NICE as a faithful FRIEND.