TAKE TIME.
March 16, 2012
Reading demands engagement and is most definitely not a passive activity. A rendezvous with a book demands that you let go of all distractions. Pico Iyer’s essay, ” The Joy of Quiet” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Joy of Quiet&st=cse is a plea for stillness. He says: “In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight.” The average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen. The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day. Iyer’s article— urging us to slow down, to find time and space to think— brought to mind Ed Young’s 1990 Caldecott acceptance speech: “Take Time for 8 Matters of the Heart”
Take time for repose
it is the germ of creation
Take time to read
it is the foundation of wisdom
Take time to think
it is the source of strength
Take time to work
it is the path to patience and success
Take time to play
it is the secret of youth and constancy
Take time to be cheerful
it is the appreciation of life that brings happiness
Take time to share
it is in fellowship and sound relations
one finds meaning
Take time to rejoice
for joy is the music of the soul.
Distraction— a drawback of reading a book on a device.
March 6, 2012
A recent article in the NYT, “Finding your Book Interrupted…By the Tablet You Read It on.” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/business/media/e-books-on-tablets-fight-digital-distractions.html?_r=1&ref=books calls attention to some of the drawbacks of reading on a device. “Finding your Book Interrupted” speaks to the distracting nature of reading on a device. Children reading books they hold in their hands encourage then to acquire […]
The Cat in the Hat was a book that changed the way kids learned to read.
March 2, 2012
Theodor Seuss Geisel (3.2.1904), best known as Dr. Seuss is credited with “killing off” the Dick and Jane Books by creating the first I Can Read book in 1957. Here is the back story to how The Cat in the Hat came to be written. In 1954 John Hersey wrote an article in Life Magazine […]
Don’t even think of allowing your child to leave childhood behind without experiencing the sheer delight of the Frances books.
March 1, 2012
Russell Hoban, author of more than fifty books for children, including some true classics of children’s literature, died December 13,2011. His book, A Bargain for Frances is one of those books I will always remember, as much for the story line a for the conversation the book prompted. Badgers, Thelma and Frances are best friends […]
Aldous Huxley said, “ Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” Let’s prove him wrong!
February 27, 2012
Rules and parenting go hand in hand and all too often conversations on rules can easily sound like a sermon or a warning. As children get older they get very good at seeing one of these conversations coming and they tune us out. They have heard it before—and often they have heard it multiple times. […]
