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Book Reviews
Wicked Jack Review - “In Wooldridge’s adaptation of this well-known folktale, Wicked Jack practices meanness on strangers instead of treating them right. The story offers an explanation for the mysterious light you see dancing around in the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina. Hillenbrand’s pencil and oil pastel illustrations greatly heighten the humor.
— The Horn Book
Category Archives: Scenes from a Writer’s Life
The Republic of Childhood
Just inside the cover of an 1895 book by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin entitled The Republic of Childhood is a librarian’s note: “Attention Patron: This volume is too fragile for any future repair.” In the aftermath of recent shootings and bombings, it’s tempting to ask if the Republic of Childhood itself (that brief season of life when protective adults create
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Reid Hospital Goes to the Library!
According to the preschool set, MONSTERS ROCK!!! When a group of Reid Hospital physicians’ spouses were invited to bring their children to Morrisson-Reeves Library in Richmond, Indiana, for the morning, they created a monster craft, ate monster cupcakes, and listened to yours truly reading monster books. Those who participated (and you, If you’ve found your way to this blog) wouldn’t be surprised to learn
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Posted in Scenes from a Writer's Life
Tagged Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge, Connie Wooldridge, Indiana, Morrisson-Reeves Library, parenting, preschoolers, Reading, Reid Hospital, Richmond
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Anatomy of Nonfiction
If you click on the “Resources” tab on the home page of my website, you’ll find all kinds of helpful information I’ve gathered (and continue to gather!) for writers, readers, and educators. The most recent addition is a blog by Peggy Thomas called Anatomy of Nonfiction: Writing True Stories for Children. A wonderful nonfiction writer herself, Peggy is also the daughter of longtime
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Highlights for Children and Me
Late on a Saturday night a few weeks ago, a writer friend and I arrived at the Boyds Mills, Pennsylvania, homestead belonging to the family that started, and still publishes, the venerable magazine Highlights for Children. The editor, Kent Brown, and his family have been intertwined with the magazine for three generations and my writing life seems to have been
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Posted in Scenes from a Writer's Life
Tagged Boyds Mills, Highlights for Children, Highlights Foundation Workshop, Kent Brown, Pennsylvania, Wicked Jack
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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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Build a Book Christmas Tree
Of course I’m behind on my shopping, my Christmas cards, etc. and of course I have no time to spare so of course, when a friend sent me a link to a site where people were building Book Christmas Trees I just had to stop everything I was behind on and build one of my own. Books came down from
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Posted in Scenes from a Writer's Life
Tagged Book Christmas Tree, Christmas, Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
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Visit to Northwest Elementary School
The drive to McDermott, Ohio winds through the greenest, most idyllic countryside you’ll find anywhere. Northwest Elementary School sits 5 miles off of US-23 and is home to around 800 K-5 students. A step inside the front door brought me into a high-energy zone: several parents in the office, classes of students filing through the halls…the next few hours would
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Writer’s Retreat
In February, I drove east for eleven hours, through Ohio and the very mountains of Pennsylvania I used to call home, to the town of Honesdale, Pennsylvania. I turned left onto the property of the family that created the magazine Highlights for Children and pulled up to a small cabin with two twin beds, a shower, a small refrigerator and
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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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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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The Good Company of Story
There’s a lovely sculpture by Victor Issa in the Frederic Meijer Gardens in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It’s called “Grandpa, the Storyteller” and it captures for me the essence of story: Story connects, it communicates across time and generations. As the novelist Graham Smith put it, “As long as there’s a story, it’s all right.” For me, a story is also
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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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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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Celebrate!
I started thinking about The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton in 2001. It was published in 2010. It seemed to me that, when it officially hit the bookstores, a celebration was called for. First, I alerted my “staff” (a.k.a., the special events committee of the Richmond Symphony Orchestra from whom Carl and I had purchased a catered event at a
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If Kids Can’t Read
If kids can’t read, this writer is out of a job. Which is why this writer was up bright and early last Friday morning to greet 100 students who, at the end of their third grade year, were not reading at grade level. If kids can’t read by the end of their third grade year, there is a high probability
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Serious Research
Writing for children often means doing serious research. I brought my husband along on a research trip just last weekend. I carefully observed two little boys, one aged two, the other aged four. I observed as they woke from their naps, the older boy dapper and ready to meet the world, the younger temporarily speechless with hair looking like someone
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Posted in Just For Writers, Scenes from a Writer's Life
Tagged children, connie, imagination, Kids, Research, Tantrum
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Fighting for Democracy in the Bagel Shop
My assignment: An article on the Development of Democracy covering ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and the years surrounding the Revolutionary War in the U.S. Length: 1400 words First draft delivery date: Four weeks I commandeer my usual table at the Fifth Street Bagel Shop and set to work. I start with the ancient Greeks to whom I’ve alloted 600 words.
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Posted in Just For Writers, Scenes from a Writer's Life
Tagged Colonials, Connie Wooldridge, Democracy, Greeks, Romans, United States
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Twenty Years
Twenty years ago, my husband and I, our four children, and our basset hound, Wobegon closed the door to our house in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania for the very last time and drove to our new home in Richmond, Indiana. I was sporting a full leg cast (a skating accident…don’t ask!) so I had to sit in the back with my leg
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Posted in Scenes from a Writer's Life
Tagged basset hound, broken leg, Connie Wooldridge, Indiana, moving, Pennsylvania, Philipsburg, Richmond
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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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Tree Calculations
When I was ten years old, I climbed a tree with my best friend every day of the summer. Its lower branches (all seven of them) began spreading within a foot or two of the the ground and each of them was thicker than the circumference of the two of us when we hugged each other. The branches grew in
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Posted in Scenes from a Writer's Life
Tagged 10 year olds, children, Connie Wooldridge, trees
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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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Say Thank You
Anyone out there who thinks saying “thank you” is a lost art should visit an elementary school – any elementary school – and give a presentation. In response to my talk to the 3rd and 4th graders at Crestdale Elementary School last week, I received the most colorful, creative, effusive thank you notes ever: I really like your book (Just
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Posted in Scenes from a Writer's Life
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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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I Don’t Talk – I Just Write
Here’s something I didn’t consider before I got into this writing business: As soon as you’ve published something, various groups start wanting you to talk to them. My first invitation came from one of my sons’ classroom teachers. What I (terrified!) wanted to say was: “I don’t talk – I just write.” What fell out of m mouth instead was,
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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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Mean Girls
There were some mean girls in my fifth grade class but I wasn’t one of them. I was a nice girl and I had nice girl friends. Four of us nice girls had formed a group to work on a school project and we had divided up all the tasks and figured out how we were going to get the
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Fairy Tale
I taught first grade at an English-speaking school for foreigners in Seoul from 1975-1977. Korea was a poor country at that time and the walk each morning from my small, Korean-style house to Seoul Foreign School was dusty and colorless. Animal carts and bicycles pulling heavy loads shared the road with cars and it was hard to find even a
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A Place to Write
Here’s some advice I received years ago that I’ll pass along to you: Never let yourself get tied to one specific place where you write. It’s much better to be able to write anywhere. Here’s the truth about how carefully I followed have that particular advice: My absolute favorite place to write is the Bagel Shop on Fifth Street here
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Thinking Hard
At an early age, I came to the notion that there was something to be understood in the world out there and that it would take some hard thinking to get to it. I did my first thinking on a wooden rocking horse with metal springs. Things to think about would pile up, I’d climb on my horse, think them
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A Real Writer
It’s 1990, I’ve just had my first few stories published in Highlights for Children and Cricket, and I’m wondering if I’m a Real Writer now. The editor of a Cricket story about the legendary King Canute, who ordered the tide not to come in, is intrigued about a plaque in Southampton, England commemorating the event. It was mentioned in the
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The Library
When I was in elementary school, going to the library once a week ranked even above gym class as my favorite thing to do. My librarian’s name was Mrs. Southward. She had us list the names of each book we checked out on a small, white sheet of paper. The first thing she did when we came into the library
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Broken
When our third child Sean was growing up, he liked to know how things work, which my husband and I tried to encourage even when things got dangerous or destructive. Stellar parents have their bad days, however, and when Sean was in middle school and I found his brand new bike in pieces all over the garage I shrieked, “You
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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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Scenes From a Writer’s Life
Since this is my very first entry, I thought I’d start by describing what I imagine this blog will look like. The title “Scenes From a Writer’s Life” will give you something of an idea. I’d like to give you some snapshots – “wordshots” really – from my life: things I’ve been and done and thought, all of them relating,
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