Welcome! Here you will find thoughts on the power of story--in our own lives and especially in the lives of children. Stories enrich. They inspire. They provide a new lexicon,…
Sure, I'm a little late to welcome the new year with my second-annual reading list run down, but I promise I have a good excuse! With the help of gravity…
***UPDATE*** I am happy to announce that Storm Chaser was awarded an Honorable Mention in the Spring Fling Writing Contest! Congrats to all the winners and thanks again to the…
Therefore since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. --Polonius, from Shakespeare's Hamlet Children's author Vivian Kirkfield knows that brevity…
For a quick weekend read, my daughter recently plucked a copy of Bruce Coville's My Teacher Flunked the Planet from one of our family bookshelves. I can't remember if it's…
What better way to remember a year than to revisit the stories it contained? Here's a (spottily) annotated list of what I read this year, with a few titles left…
The Demmon family moved once again this summer, from northern Virginia to southern Missouri. For my daughter, who is about to become a teenager (what?!), it is her eighth house…
On our walk to school this morning, my six-year-old asked, “What’s it like to be home alone when we’re all at school and Daddy’s at work?” “Well,” I said, “that’s…
I'm all for making full use of the local public library. But there comes a time, after checking the same title out over and over and over and OVER, to…
When I picked up my youngest from preschool this week, I was delighted to see on the colorful, hand-written poster labeled "What We Did Today" that the class read the…