If you have yet to read Jaclyn Moriarty‘s The Colors of Madeleine trilogy, then many pleasures await you. The third volume – A Tangle of Gold – was just published last month. It is fantasy that remains fully grounded in everyday experience. It has characters that I enjoy spending time with. It is about growing up, it asks
My mother was my first best friend. My mother is the reason I have succeeded in life. My mother is the reason I managed to live through adolescence. There have been many other important influences. Let’s not forget my sister, stepfather, friends, teachers, neighbors, and the many patient people who have managed to put up
74 years ago this month, five-year-old Barnaby Baxter wished for a fairy godmother. Instead, Mr. O’Malley – a loquacious, endearing, pink-winged con-artist – flew through Barnaby’s (open) bedroom window, and announced himself as the lad’s fairy godfather. For the next ten years, devoted readers of Crockett Johnson‘s Barnaby saw O’Malley elected to congress, running a
Welcome to the sixth aggregation of quotations that interest me – that is, the sixth blog installment of my “commonplace book,” a sixteenth-century tradition (that continued for several centuries), in which “one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement” (OED). I’ve thus far done two other “general”
When the state legislature decides to weaponize our classrooms, how do we respond? What should we do when the phrase “killing higher education” ceases being a metaphor and becomes state policy? I tackle these questions in “Just a Shot Away,” published today in Inside Higher Ed. Here’s the opening: Shortly after the Virginia Tech massacre,
Many have likened Donald Trump to a “schoolyard bully.” Back in September, Mr. Trump even admitted that his own campaign rhetoric had been “a little childish.” To best understand a candidate who addresses voters at a fourth-grade level, we need the stories of one of our most plain-spoken political analysts – Dr. Seuss. These four
Today, I’m joining other members of K-SAFE (K-Staters Against Fatal Encounters) and the KCGFC (Kansas Coalition for a Gun-Free Campus) at the statehouse, in Topeka. There, we’ll hand out flyers that – we hope – will show our legislators the grave danger the “Kansas Personal and Family Protection Act.” Yes, this is really the name
Perhaps you have also seen these memes drifting through your social media feed. There’s a photo of Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush sharing a hug. This was taken at Nancy Reagan’s funeral earlier this month, but one meme-maker offers the photo as evidence that her politics and policies are identical to those of George
As a famous author whose life spanned the twentieth century, Dr. Seuss (1904-1991) should have been often in newsreels and on TV, right? From time to time, he does appear on camera – but less often than we might expect. In celebration of what would have been his 112th birthday, here’s a brief (but far from complete)
Attention Harry Potter Fans! While you await Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (script to be published July 31), check out The Setup Wizard, the “Daily Accounts of a Muggle I.T. Guy working at Hogwarts.” Its premise is that, at Hogwarts, “students and staff alike have finally caved and demanded that their cell phones work