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Author and Illustrator Blogs
- Sarah N.: The language sounds delightful. I love getting to explore the interesting phrases of the past. That’s...
- Constance: I like the John Stilgoe quote! I took a course with him in college, and it was the kind of lecture that...
- Sally Thomas: We Tennessee natives are good at channeling unlikely voices . . . I can’t decide how scary that...
- Sue: I wish that *I* had a “certain exquisite reticence of the flesh!” Sounds good. Sue
- Jen Lynch: Being both a Lovelace fanatic and a Vassar girl I have read the queer little Queed. It is essentially the...
- Sara: I think I’m going to have to download Queed—after I read Carney (which I never have). When the...
- Melissa Wiley: Yes, it seems it was a quirk of my template. The post was set to be a sticky & I didn’t...
- Lauren: It’s been like that since you wrote that post. Love your blog
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from
this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
—Victor Hugo
“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of
Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
(from a post called
Way Leads on to Way)
Six Things to Include in Your Child's Day:
meaningful work
imaginative play
good books
beauty (art, music, nature)
ideas to ponder and discuss
prayer
Whence It Came
That really does sound like good news is coming our way. Thanks for the update, as always!
Posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 9:21 amDear Melissa,
Posted on July 26th, 2008 at 4:55 pmI have soooo enjoyed the Martha and Charlotte years. I was very sorry to hear they were being ruined through abridgment. I had just run across them for the first time this past spring when someone donated a pile of mixed Little House type books to me to use as I wished.
I had already made the decision to donate the paperback versions to the library and to try to purchase the entire set in hard back — the Martha, Charlotte, Caroline, and Rose years. I already owned a hard cover set of the Laura books, accumulated over 4 years as Christmas presents. I am 57 years old and grew up on a Missouri farm myself so I found them all fascinating. I just didn’t get to them until a few years ago because farmers don’t always get much time to read in the post WWII generations.
I have just spent about 8 hours online the past week getting all the books I needed. I had to cancel Amazon.com books when I found they were abridged [and let them know just how I felt that they had not indicated they were abridged at that.]
I was no longer able to afford the hard covers of Martha and Charlotte books –gee, the paperbacks are now $30 each mostly.
I am praying that there is a ‘copyright’ saint up in heaven that can figure out a way around this. Perhaps if we all request it enough from Harper Collins, they would reconsider their position.
Just keep your writing pens sharpened. Who knows what will come of it soon?
Mary B.