slice #4

I have four favorite letters today.  M-A-U-I.  We are in the process of planning a return trip to Hawaii!!  We are traveling with my dearest friend & her husband, so I spent the afternoon at their house planning & dreaming of all things aloha!  We've all four been there before, & we're having fun comparing notes about what we want to do the same, different, or not at all. 

One thing we know for sure is we will definitely go whale watching.  Now, I am not an animal person.  At all.  We went whale watching on our first trip & I was instantly hooked!  They are now my favorite animal.  My friend & I drifted away from the condo sites to the Pacific Whale Foundation site.  These creatures amaze me.  One picture showed a baby jumping & it was completely horizontal.  Several showed a rainbow mist from the whale's blow hole! 

I can't think of many better ways to unwind after a Monday... fun company, gorgeous pictures of Hawaiian beaches, & virtual whale watching.  Lookout Hawaii!!!!

Here is a picture from our last trip:

slice #3



Sundays around our house are for recharging.  We very rarely have set plans, other than church.  Our weeks, like I'm sure most others experience, are hectic, busy, & full.  We are lazy most Sunday afternoons & don't feel guilty about it! 

The sky has been spitting snow all weekend, but not much of it has stuck.  Snow that doesn't stick & weekend snow really seem useless for teachers.  Just a tease.  This afternoon at church our worship leader thanked God for the snow that was quieting the earth.  I love that!  It made me think about how our Sundays quiet our minds, lives, schedules, & all the junk from the previous week.  They give us time to enjoy each other & reconnect.  Sunday evenings we usually talk about what each of us has coming up during the week & start gearing up to hit the ground running on Monday morning.  Sometimes our weeks are too hectic & we don't take the time to enjoy the moments we have.  But Sundays?  They quiet our earth.

slice #2

I've always been a reader.  Always.  Even before I could read, I loved books & was surrounded by them.  I have all these artifacts of a reading life & have been thinking about how I would like to curate them into some sort of project.  Photographs of them with some quick blurbs about them is what I keep coming back to.  I'm big on nostalgia & photography, so the two hobbies could really combine on this (future??) project.  So, I'm thinking this month some of my slices could be a perfect place to try out some ideas for this.

My sweet dad sent me a text this morning with this picture of me reading when I was little.  He said it was in honor of Read Across America.  I love that he cares so much to send these sweet little things!  Just beyond thoughtful, really.  I think it was taken Christmas 1976 when we were visiting my grandparents.  Just me & Drowsy hanging out with The Three Bears.  Love.

good old days #1 of 31

Last February my grandfather passed away.  He fell & broke his hip on a Thursday night, wasn't strong enough for surgery, and passed away on Sunday.  One day I still had all four of my grandparents.  The next day I didn't.  This past month I've been thinking about him often.  And missing him. 

Last Saturday during the Dublin Literacy Conference, when Ralph Fletcher invited us to write using his poem "The Good Old Days" in his general session, my thoughts immediately went to my grandparents.  This is what I came up with:

Sometimes I remember
the good old days

visiting a house with
both grandparents still inside

each having their
own brand of love

struggling to find
a balance

Nannie at the window
eager to listen

PawPaw in his chair
eager to share

I still can't imagine
anything better than that.

Dublin Literacy Conference 2013

Once upon a time two teachers in Tennessee had the good fortune of hosting an award-winning author in their classrooms.  The author realized that these two teachers would enjoy meeting some other like-minded educators she knew and recommended they look into a literacy conference in a small Ohio city.  Cheryl & I were, of course, the TN teachers.  Louise Borden was the author. Dublin was the city.  How fitting that the next time we were able to visit with Louise & hear her share was this past Saturday at the Dublin Literacy Conference.  This was the third year we've traveled to Ohio for this conference & we look forward to it all year!

This year's lineup was fantastic... & way too much for one post!  We'll post a little each day to highlight our favorite parts of the conference.

gitty daneshvari & tami lewis brown @ southern festival of books

The second session we attended on Saturday was Tween Life - Writing Characters With a Sense of Self with Gitty Daneshvari & Tami Lewis Brown.  We were a little late to this session.  Blame it on the Parnassus tent offering up the books of all the participating authors. 

Gitty draws inspiration from Roald Dahl.  She originally imagined her School of Fear series while wondering what it would've been like to go to a school that helped her overcome fears when she was younger.  Outlines are a key part to her writing process & she credits them with helping her become a more focused & stronger writer.  She is also one of the most recent authors to write for the Monster High series.  Gitty's upcoming series, The League of Unexceptional Children, was inspired by a time when almost all the other kids in her class won awards, but not her!

Tami also draws inspiration from Dahl, which we noticed was a theme with several authors!  We loved hearing her share that her book, Soar, Elinor!, was written alongside her students at the time.  She was helping them write biographies and decided to do one with them!  What an inspiration!!  Tami also shared how outlines have helped her grow as a writer.

Both Gitty & Tami shared how book tours help to reset their calibration & keep them in touch with their audience.  Yay for book tours!  We also appreciated the fact that both of these authors steer away from the "sexy non-sex", as Gitty put it.  They are truly writing to entertain these tween readers.

Gitty finished the session with this thought about endings, they don't "have to have a happy ending, but a hopeful ending."

ed young @ southern festival of books

The Southern Festival of Books is a free annual event held in the shadow of the capitol building on War Memorial Plaza in downtown Nashville.  Last year was our first year attending & we immediately knew it would also be an annual event for us.  We've decided to devote a post for each author session we attended, rather than cramming it all in one post.  Up first, Ed Young.

Ed Young's session focused on his newest book, Nighttime Ninja, written by Barbara DaCosta.  While seeking a diversion from his work on The House that Baba Built, Ed was cleaning out drawers.  He came across a small, self-published work by DaCosta.  Taking it upon himself to storyboard the 90 word book, the bumpy road toward publishing began.  The seemingly easy task of publishing the book became complicated due to creative disagreements between Ed & the publisher. He had created all the collages for the book, but was asked to reconsider using the original sketches instead.  "Well," Ed was prompted, "maybe you should just think about it."  His response?  "I'm done thinking.  Maybe you should think..."  Eventually the book was taken to another publisher and more of Ed's creative genius was allowed to shine.

Listening to Ed describe different artistic decisions I couldn't help but be reminded of my Choice Literacy workshop with Franki Sibberson this summer and our discussions about visual literacy.   Ed was extremely intentional about every decision, even down to how the ninjas dropping down the endpages turn into the title page.  At one point the book's designer made the decision to put a spoiler of sorts on the cover flaps.  Again, Ed's response was unwavering.  "Well, why don't you just tell the whole story right there?"  He believes that the pictures tell the story and the words only confirm.  He also shared his belief that certain stories demand certain colors, mood, & tone.

Ed's book dedication stems from his belief that it's all about suspense & that kids like that.  "There's something about mystery that intrigues us all."  Cheryl & I also loved his final thought - "Two minds are better than one if you want to make something great.  More minds are better than two."