Lesson plans for Just Fine the Way They Are Two education instructors from Earlham College created these 3 lesson plans in Comprehension, Social Studies-Transportation, and Writing to accompany my book about the National Road. >> View/Download lesson plans & resources Just Fine the Way They Are is available as a Book, CD, or Cassette Two education instructors from Earlham College created these… [Read More]
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February 5, 2014 By
Behind the Beautiful Forevers; Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity Reviewed by Connie Wooldridge
February 3, 2014 By
Behind the Beautiful Forevers; Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo. Random House, 2012. 256 pages; $27.00 (hardback). Reading level: adult. In 1991, when a band of laborers was trucked in from Tamil Nadu to repair a runway at the Mumbai Airport, they decided to stay. They draped empty cement sacks… [Read More]
The Allure of the Archives
January 25, 2014 By
There’s a misconception out there that everything worth knowing is available online. Not true! There are whole worlds of information only accessible to those willing to take a journey, brave the sometimes intimidating protocol of an archival collection, open boxes or folders full of random papers, and dig into material that very few people may… [Read More]
Work in Progress #14: Mini-Timelines
January 6, 2014 By
As I emerge from the holidays and sit down at my computer again, I find it takes a long time to even remember where I was when I left off. I had written the first few paragraphs of Chapter 7 but stalled out for some reason. As I reread those paragraphs I find I don’t… [Read More]
Work in Progress #13: Holidays and Writer’s Guilt
November 25, 2013 By
It never fails. Every year about mid-November, my writing grinds to a halt for about six weeks. Every year, I try not to let it happen and every year it does anyway. In my defense, Thanksgiving is when our children and their families try to make it home. And Christmas is the time when I… [Read More]
Work in Progress #12: Pesky Permissions Issues
November 12, 2013 By
When I wrote the first draft of The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton, I quoted with wild abandon from her autobiography, her letters, and her fiction. I wanted readers to hear as much of the story as possible in Edith’s own words. I also quoted (with equally wild abandon!) from letters written to Edith by… [Read More]
The Poison Lady
October 28, 2013 By
Writers keep strange company sometimes. This particular weekend, I was invited to join a yearly gathering of mystery writers called “Magna Cum Murder.” What could I, a writer of nonfiction for children, have to contribute to a conversation on mystery-writing? Did I do research? I was asked. Then I could participate on the “Research, Reality,… [Read More]
Work in Progress #11: Umbrella Research
October 8, 2013 By
There’s another aspect to research that I never realize the importance of until I stop doing it. I call it “Umbrella Research” because it covers everything I write from Esther Morris taking a stagecoach out to Wyoming in 1869 to Edith Wharton living in her two elegant homes in France just after World War I. … [Read More]
Letters vs. E-mails
September 23, 2013 By
I plan to stop writing biographies as soon as the necessary background research takes me from old letters stored in archives to e-mails stored goodness knows where. I get nightmares thinking about researching e-mails and, frankly, I just don’t think I’m cut out for it. So I’ll continue to write about people long-gone who tended… [Read More]
Work in Progress #10: Writing and Living
September 17, 2013 By
I finished chapter 6 at a week-long writer’s retreat where I was happily holed up in a cabin in Pennsylvania and had no distractions. There were no “real life” things to do like dishes and laundry and I was surrounded by thirteen other people, busily writing in their own cabins, which spurred me on. The… [Read More]