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… [Read More]
“Loud Voices”
November 14, 2011 By
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]
Jack is Back!
October 28, 2011 By
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
October 10, 2011 By
“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]
Connie Interviewed by Simon Barrett of BloggerNews on BlogTalkRadio.com
October 5, 2011 By
Connie will be interviewed Live by Simon Barrett of BloggerNews on BlogTalkRadio.com at 1pm eastern on Wednesday, Oct 5th. Connie will talk about her latest book, Just Fine the Way They Are. Listen To The Show below… Listen to internet radio with Simon Barrett on Blog Talk Radio
On the Road
October 3, 2011 By
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… [Read More]
Shakespeare
August 29, 2011 By
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… [Read More]
New Release: Just Fine The Way They Are
August 23, 2011 By
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… [Read More]
Ship Ahoy!
August 22, 2011 By
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… [Read More]
Come For a Ride?
August 16, 2011 By
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… [Read More]