MLA’s coming up later this week. Can you bear to read yet another advice column? If not, then you may want to skip the following personal narrative that, yep, includes some advice (well, inasmuch as my personal example may be instructive… which it may not be). You may ask yourself: well, how did I get
For those of my readers who might be attending the MLA in LA this week, I am posting all of the Children’s Literature sessions. Hope to see you there! Â (Well, except for the first one. Â MLA’s sessions are – for the first time that I’m aware – beginning before 3:30 pm. Â So, I won’t have
Yesterday, I sent off (what I hope is) the final revision of the manuscript for my biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss. After I did, I began reading Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl (2010), which Donald Sturrock (the author) begins by describing his own relationship with his subject. It helped me understand
This post is for my fellow intellectual laborers – be you academics, teachers, authors, artists, carpenters, curators, architects, doctors, plumbers, web designers, or… well, any job that requires you to use your noggin’. Â If you think about it (and people reading this blog probably do think about it), intellectual labor covers many jobs – you
My article, “Obamafiction for Children: Imagining the Forty-Fourth U.S. President,” is now available on-line in the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly‘s current issue (35.4, Winter 2010). Â To give you a sense of its thesis, here’s a brief excerpt from early in the piece: To examine how these Obama biographies attempt to fit him into dominant national
Not That Kind of Doctor‘s delightful post on “The Five Stages of Grading” prompts me to share my own grading method: Procrastigrading. Â While the word is a portmanteau of “procrastinating” and “grading,” I do not mean “put off grading indefinitely.” Â Instead, give yourself a one-week deadline for each assignment (quizzes, exams, papers, anything), and begin
Lissa Paul talks about our new book, Keywords for Children’s Literature, forthcoming from NYU Press in the Spring of 2011. Â I say “our” new book, but we are merely the editors. Â We did each contribute an essay of our own (Lissa wrote on “Literacy,” I wrote on “Postmodernism”), but other experts wrote the other 47
Inspired by a tweet and then a blog post from Natalia Cecire, this mix is intended for those of you on the academic job-market — but I hope it provides some encouragement for anyone out there looking for work. 1)Â Respect ARETHA FRANKLIN (1967) If this isn’t the greatest cover song of all time, I don’t
With the fall term imminent (starts Monday), I’m posting a link to the latest iteration of my English 545: Literature for Adolescents. My goal is always “diversity” in many senses of that word.  We read books by writers of different backgrounds (African-American, Iranian, Chinese-American, Latino, Caucasian), genders, sexualities, classes — which are probably the categories most
Graduate schools don’t teach you how to get your book published. This blog post does.