Many times I’ve compared this new world of websites, social media, blogging and internet radio to the Wild West! One new force in the book world is online book reviews, many of which are written by “MommyBloggers,” literature bloggers and online publications. I want to thank the many folks who are reading and reviewing Just… [Read More]
“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… [Read More]
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes – Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox; illustrated by Helen Oxenbury; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008. 32 pages; $16.99 hardcover; $11.99 oversized boardbook format; reading level: ages 2-5. Fox’s spare, rhyming text spotlights pairs of babies from around the world, connected by the refrain, “And both of these babies, as everyone knows, had… [Read More]
Maggie’s Monkeys – Reviewed by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
Maggie’s Monkeys by Linda Sanders-Wells; illustrated by Abby Carter; Candlewick Press, 2009. 32 pages; $16.99; reading level: ages 4-7. Being the older brother of an imaginative little sister can be a trial – especially when her pink monkeys take up residence in the refrigerator and only Older Brother seems to know they’re not real. Dad… [Read More]
Connie Speaking At “Appalachia from an Assets Perspective Conference” at Shawnee State University – November 21st
Connie will address the Morning General Session at the Appalachia from an Assets Perspective Conference at Shawnee State University on November 20 – 21, 2011. The theme for the 2011 conference is Enhancing Teacher Performance to Maximize Student Achievement. Attended by administrators, teachers and students from throughout Ohio, Connie’s talk, entitled “The Simple Elegant Act of Telling a… [Read More]
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… [Read More]
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,… [Read More]