IT just told me that the spam blocker — the captcha letters and numbers you need to write to post your comment — is not working I’ll let you know when it is fixed — this is for all of the SLJ blogs, not just this one

The Wall Fell So Recently, What Can History Tell Us That We Don’t Already Know? Tim Garton Ash, who not only knows a great deal about European history but also writes well, was in Prague during the thrilling days of the famous Velvet Revolution. He described those events  in articles in the New York Review [...]

Sorry For the Late Post I am getting old — and not being really ready to face that, I played some pick up basketball a few weeks ago and tore my achilles tendon. I had the operation Monday and am now reduced to hobbling around. The doctor says the best position for me is flat [...]

As the NBA Finalist List Shows So do you agree? Has the NF this year been particularly good? Which ones? Why? — Why both in the sense of what is it about that book that you thought was exceptional, and if you agree that there has been an unusually run of good books, why do [...]

The Digital Download Library and the Flat Test Scores Today’s newspaper defines the challenge for all of us. On the one hand, as the Times reports, you all in libraries have the challenge/opportunity of lending digital books: tinyurl.com/ylnc3ln. The article points out how this is a potential business threat to publishers (and thus authors, artists, [...]

I’d Love to Know How They Are Used I see from my Google tracker that most of the folks who recently visited my own website came there to look at one of the teacher’s guides I have there (Witch-Hunt, I always see more interest in this book around Halloween). And I just got this from [...]

Where Present and Past Meet We visited an old family friends yesterday and it was a reminder of how much we need those contacts in our hectic twittering lives. Our friend has recently had some health scares and so she had a special kind of sobriety and clarity. She seemed taller, more athletic, than I [...]

Where We Fit In the Push to Reform Education Yesterday afternoon I sat in on a webinar in which the Department of Education explained what it will be looking for in Innovation in Education grant proposals. As you may have read, the Department of Education is offering billions of dollars to improve education — most [...]

Books As Captured Time I must admit, I’ve been caught up in the media swirl — the leak about Bluestonehenge, then getting to go on TV to explain the discovery (here is the clip if you want to see it: tinyurl.com/yfxyesl), then the press release about my old author cooking at the White House. It gets [...]

from kids books to the white house Years ago I edited three books about native groups in Latin America written by Maricel Presilla — at least one,  Mola, tinyurl.com/ydn9eaa is still in print. Maricel still writes — mainly adult books about Latin food. But she is also a chef and authority on Latin cooking. And now [...]