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Book Reviews
Wicked Jack - “Narrated with a breezy Southern twang, this pleasingly tart picture book by a first-time author tells of a man so mean that even the Devil is afraid of him. Hillenbrand captures the slapstick humor of this feisty read-aloud with great verve in his finely wrought illustrations, Intelligent and fun, with a moral thrown in for good measure.”
— Publisher’s Weekly
Category Archives: Books By Connie
USS Monitor Crewmembers Buried
The year 2012 marked the 150th anniversary of both the launch and the sinking of USS Monitor. The news continues in 2013. On Friday, March 8, 151 years after they went down with the Monitor, two unknown sailors were buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. In case you missed it, you can watch the full ceremony (courtesy
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Edith Wharton in the Magazine Popular Science
I’ve gotten used to seeing Edith Wharton’s name all over the place but when I found out she’d popped up in the magazine Popular Science, I really had to check it out. Before I hit the link, I took some guesses on what her scientific connection might be. One possibility: She was intrigued by Charles Darwin and his hot new
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Julian Fellowes on Edith Wharton
I know both Downton Abbey and Edith Wharton fans will appreciate this article from the Berkshire Eagle in which Julian Fellowes, the writer of Downton Abbey talks about how his late-in-life reading of two Wharton novels inspired first his failed writing venture, then Gosford Park and then, of course, Downton Abbey. “She observes but she does not judge…” is Fellowes’
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Posted in The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton
Tagged Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge, Downton Abbey, Edith Wharton, Gosford Park, Julian Fellowes, Lily Bart, The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
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The Doorway to High Society
In Edith Wharton’s Gilded Age New York, the new-money people were storming the gates of High Society and the Old Guard (people of birth, background, and breeding) were making a vain attempt to keep those gates firmly closed. Today, Society is open to all comers! The only requirement to entry is the desire to become immersed in a particular subject
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Posted in Teachers' Resources, Thank You Very Much Captain Ericsson!, The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton
Tagged Edith Wharton, Edith Wharton Review, JESNY, John Ericsson, John Ericsson Society, Leif Brisfjord
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Diana Morón Meets Edith Wharton
When I wrote The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton, I was hoping the book would be discovered by high school teachers and used to introduce a new generation of readers to Edith Wharton. You can imagine my delight when Diana Morón, a sophomore at Porterville High School in Porterville, California, introduced herself to me by e-mail last November and asked
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Ericsson and da Vinci – A Conversation Across Time
A group of Italian artisans (Niccolai Teknoart SNC) has undertaken a marvelous project: using the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci to create models of the very machines da Vinci imagined. When I attended one of their exhibits at the Denver Pavilions (which runs through January 31, 2013) I was struck by how much da Vinci had in common with the
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Posted in Scenes from a Writer's Life, Thank You Very Much Captain Ericsson!
Tagged inventors, John Ericsson, Leonardo da Vinci, military vessels, Niccolai Teknoart SNC, Swedish-born, USS Monitor
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An Encore for Captain Ericsson – Now in Paperback!
When both the Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Virgina and the John Ericsson Society let me know they were having trouble finding copies of my out-of-print picture book, Thank You Very Much, Captain Ericsson!, I decided to spring into action. With permission from Holiday House, the original publisher, and Andrew Glass, the illustrator, I started a company and created a
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Thank You Very Much, Captain Ericsson – Coming in Paperback & Video!
About the Video Soon to be available on the website: A reading of Thank You Very Much, Captain Ericsson! (by yours truly!) in its entirety, complete with the original illustrations by Andrew Glass. This should be a great resource for you teachers doing a Civil War unit OR for parents/grandparents of 7-10-year-olds. About the Paperback As stated, a paperback version of Thank
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Teacher Resources & Lesson Plans Available For “Just Fine the Way They Are”
Since school will be starting soon, educators and parents who would like to engage their children in some fun learning activities can download lesson plans that accompany Just Fine The Way They Are; From Dirt Roads to Rail Roads to Interstates. Developed by two elementary educators who are also adjunct professors in the Department of Education at Earlham College, the
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The National Road Brings the Historic Road Conference to Indianapolis
The national non-profit group Historic Roads is holding their annual conference on September 20-22, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Dedicated to identifying, preserving and managing our nation’s historic roads and scenic byways, Indy was specifically chosen because of the region’s unique transportation history, which includes the Historic National Road. Read more about the work of this important group and the conference. >>
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My Dear Governess; The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann – Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
My Dear Governess; The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann edited by Irene Goldman-Price; Yale University Press, 2012. 296 pages; $30.00 (hardcover); reading level: adult. On May 31st, 1874, twelve-year-old Edith Wharton (then Edith Jones) wrote to her beloved twenty-five-year-old governess, Anna Bahlmann, inviting her to come to the Jones’ summer home in Newport, Rhode Island: “…we shall have
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National Road Yard Sale
Beginning on May 30 and running through the early part of June, folks will be setting up shop along the National Road (US 40) and creating one of the longest yard sales going: from Baltimore to St. Louis! For 9 years now, beginning on the Wednesday following Memorial Day, churches, museums, stores, and plain old ordinary people have been selling
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More Letters From Edith!
Just as my Edith Wharton biography was going to press, a stash of letters from Edith to her governess (and later secretary) was discovered. How can I get my hands on those? I wondered. The answer wasn’t long in coming. In April of 2011, when I spoke at The Mount, I met Irene Goldman-Price who was hard at work editing
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Just Check the Monitor’s Manifest!
This month marks the 150th anniversary of the sinking of the USS Monitor back in 1862, less than a year after its launch. As the most recent newsletter of the John Ericsson Society New York (JESNY) points out, the Monitor had a short life but left a long legacy, with Monitor class vessels actively deployed as late as World War
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Posted in Thank You Very Much Captain Ericsson!
Tagged 150th anniversary of the sinking of the USS Monitor, Cape Hatteras, Coordinator of Education and Outreach for the Monitor Sanctuary, John Ericsson Society New York, Mariner’s Museum in Newport News, Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, NC, Remains of two sailors from the Monitor, Shannon Ricles
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A Visit to St. Paul’s School
Late on a February Tuesday morning, I packed a pile of books and papers into the back of my car and drove south and then east along some winding Indiana roads that led me further and further into the country. An hour and fifteen minutes later, I arrived at one of the most charming little schools I think I’ve ever
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Posted in Events, Just Fine the Way They Are, Just For Writers, Scenes from a Writer's Life, Thank You Very Much Captain Ericsson!
Tagged Just Fine the Way They Are: From Dirt Roads to Rail Roads to Interstates, School Visits, Speaking, St. Paul Catholic School, Thankyou Very Much Captain Ericsson!
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A Late Arrival at Downton Abbey
I confess. I arrived late to the Downton Abbey party. When season one began I was intrigued, but Sunday nights didn’t work for me. Then everyone was watching it and my contrarian instincts kicked in: Who wants to watch what everybody’s watching? When season two began I told myself I didn’t want to jump in to the thing midstream. And
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Tales of the London Book Festival and John Ericsson Events
If you want to find characters for a novel, there’s no better place to look than a writer’s event. Since the January 26 awards dinner for the London Book Festival was an international gathering the “characters” were even more colorful: A former Yugoslavian who spoke very little English, a tall-tale teller from Montana, a charming widow from South Africa, a
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Posted in Scenes from a Writer's Life, Thank You Very Much Captain Ericsson!, The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton
Tagged Civil War ironclad ship, Greenpoint in Brooklyn, Grosvenor House, London Book Festival, Thank You Very Much Captain Ericsson!, Thankyou Very Much Captain Ericsson!, The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton, USS Monitor
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Win a Signed Copy of When Esther Morris Headed West!
You can win a signed copy of When Esther Morris Headed West! just by liking Connie’s Facebook page. 2012 is a big year for politics and in honor of Esther Morris, the first female judge in the United States, I’m giving away a signed copy of my book When Esther Morris Headed West: Women, Wyoming and the Right to Vote (Holiday House 2001), illustrated
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The John Ericsson Society Celebrating The 150th Anniversary Of The Monitor Being Launched!
If you’re a Civil War buff, you’ll remember that, 150 years ago, under the direction of Thomas Fitch Rowland (owner of Continental Works located on the East River in Brooklyn) and John Ericsson (designer of the Union Civil War Ironclad USS Monitor), skilled craftsmen laid the ship’s keel on October 25, 1861 and worked feverishly to complete her within the
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Postscript to Just Fine the Way They Are
You might think that, when a book is published, the story it tells is finished. Not true! In the final illustration for the picture book Just Fine the Way They Are, Richard Walz reaches into a mythical future to imagine what a post-automobile era might look like. He envisions a jet-pack like invention – a personal flying machine – that
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Just For You Teachers
When I asked two educators to create lesson plans for Just Fine the Way They Are, I had no idea how far the term “lesson plan” had evolved since my days as a first grade teacher back in the 1970s. The “Social Studies/Transportation” resources they have written for home-school and classroom teachers are formatted just like the “Writer’s Craft” and
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“Loud Voices”
Lucretia Jones could not have had an easy time raising her daughter Edith. She was a woman of average intelligence and superficial interests suddenly confronted by a child whose brilliance was apparent from the get-go. She probably tried valiantly to maintain her maternal authority and, if her daughter’s claim that pleasing her mother and pleasing God were at the top
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Jack is Back!
You just can’t keep a bad man down. Connected, as he is to Halloween (ever wonder where the term “jack-o-lantern” came from?), October is Wicked Jack’s favorite month and he was invited back to Indiana by the Richmond Symphony Orchestra. What were they thinking??? Aren’t symphonies stuffy organizations?? Evidently not! Five woodwind players from the orchestra were brave enough to
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Esther Morris Gets Some Company
“If you visit Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol,” I observe, in the Author’s Note to When Esther Morris Headed West, (Holiday House, 2001) “you’ll see fifty statues, one from each state, standing in a circle. Forty-nine of them are men. The fiftieth is Esther Morris…” That changed in 2009: Helen Keller, representing Alabama, joined Esther as the second
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On the Road
One of the joys of writing nonfiction is that your books take you places in the research phase and take you places again when people start finding out what you’ve written and want you to come and talk to them. So I was on the road or, more precisely, on The Road last weekend. Just Fine the Way They Are
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Posted in Just Fine the Way They Are, Scenes from a Writer's Life
Tagged Cobblestone Magazine, Comprehension Lesson Plan, Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge, John and Annie Glenn Historic Site, Just Fine the Way They Are, Muskingum University, National Road/Zane Grey Museum, Social Studies - Transportation Lesson Plan, Teachers Lesson Plans, The National Road, Writer's Craft Lesson Plan
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Shakespeare
I’m just home from the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario, reading through the “Twelfth Night,” and trying to pick up anything I might have missed when I saw it on stage. Shakespeare is a challenge and there’s no getting to the bottom of any of his plays. There’s no last word on what the bard was trying to say. There’s
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New Release: Just Fine The Way They Are
In this new historical non-fiction picture book children’s author Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge and artist Richard Walz worked closely with experts and firsthand accounts to tell a “just fine and accurate” illustrated story about how dirt roads of the 1800s turned into the U.S. highway system of today. >> Official Press Release Just Fine The Way They Are: From Dirt Roads
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Ship Ahoy!
A good illustrator will go to great lengths to make sure what s/he draws is accurate and matches the words in the text. Andrew Glass, who illustrated Thank You Very Much, Captain Ericsson! (my picture book about the inventor of the Civil War ironclad ship the Monitor) had a particular problem: the Monitor was at the bottom of the ocean
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Come For a Ride?
As the third set of lesson plans for Just Fine the Way They Are (“Writer’s Craft”) is posted and ready for you teachers out there to download, I realize how much I like the illustration my graphic designer chose for the “button” that clicks you to those lesson plans: A car in motion…a car obviously on its way somewhere…a car
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Backyard Stories
In 2004, I signed up for a Highlights Foundation Workshop on writing nonfiction and I grumbled silently for weeks before I set out for Honesdale, PA. The workshop leader, editor Carolyn Yoder, had asked each of us to bring a nonfiction piece about something “in our own backyard.” Up until then I had written about Greece and Rome and Korea
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Up and Coming Writers
Those of us involved with books – writers, editors, librarians, teachers – worry a lot about the whole reading and writing process. Will there be people in the next generation willing to read challenging literature? Will there be people in the next generation who can write articulately? I can name one for sure. She is Rachel Baumgarten, a high school
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A Green Truck
When I traveled out to Wyoming back in 1998 to do research for When Esther Morris Headed West, I was stunned when I got off the plane in Cheyenne. It was so unlike anyplace I had ever been I thought I might have landed on the moon. I walked across a brief stretch of tarmac into the terminal and found
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Arguing With Friends
I met one of my oldest friends in Athens where we both attended a year-long college program. Together we studied the architecture of the Parthenon, flew to Cairo and rode camels, and spent endless hours deciding which Greek island we would sail to next. When the year came to an end, she departed for her home in Los Angeles a
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Edith Wharton…Pleased
Connie & Emily Tarjick, poet Edith Wharton would have been enormously pleased at the event that took place at her former home – The Mount – on Saturday, April 29. She would have been pleased with the guests: aspiring high school writers who participated in the Edith Wharton Writing Contest, families and friends, published authors, and people from near and
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Translating
The biography that first introduced me to Edith Wharton was Shari Benstock’s No Gifts From Chance (1994). From there, I worked my way back to R.W.B. Lewis’ Edith Wharton; A Biography (1975) and then forward to Hermione Lee’s Edith Wharton (2007). By the time I’d devoured these three books I was grabbing anyone I met by the lapels and insisting
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Carsick
When I was in elementary school, my family lived in Ohio and we took frequent car trips to Galesburg, Illinois where my four grandparents and various aunts, uncles, and cousins lived. My parents would wake my younger sister and me up at 5:00 in the morning (my much younger sister and brother didn’t appear in my life until later), load
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