Category: Writing
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Five Writing Mistakes I Learned from Harry Potter
I wrote this essay a couple of years ago after attending a rather dispiriting writing workshop, which was led by agents who pretty much insisted that if you aren’t doing what everyone else is doing, you will never get published. Each of the rules below were ones I heard at this conference. I’m republishing it now…
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Empty Shelves for Gifted Readers
For the gifted reader, the library is shrinking. As the classics recede further into the past, and thus further from our kids’ experiences and language, very little is taking their place. The child who dashes through easy readers at the age of four can finish the whole of English language children’s literature by nine or…
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The search for the girl scientist in literature
There are so few books for kids that feature girl scientists, we had to dig to find them!
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Birthing a book
People compare writing a book to having a baby, and in many ways its the same. You pour a huge amount of yourself into a book, whether it’s an autobiography or an academic treatise on a rare insect from Guatemala. But for me, the process of publishing my book, From School to Homeschool, has been…
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On Moral Fiction
I have a book, pages yellowed and stiff as if I’d been born much earlier than I was actually born, that my brother gave me when I graduated from college. He inscribed the front page, which is why I know when he gave it to me. Otherwise, I’d have to depend on my memory, which…