No Fear: A Defense Against the Dark

Asking parents to let their children read Frederick Douglas’ experiences as a child slave turned out to be a bigger ask than I had anticipated.They were ready to mutiny and return to Egypt with such tried and true favorites as Ben and Me and Johnny Tremain. It is hard to let children in on the secret that the world has dark corners and some of them are close to home. This experience pushed me to develop, No Fear, a guided reading experience involving history and children’s classic fiction. We begin by discovering that bad things happen and we end by thinking of ways to overcome bad things. The history is drawn from Penguin Random House’s excellent Who Was…Series and the classics include The Bad Beginning, Jungle Book and Charlotte’s Web.

I’m very proud of the resulting curriculum. My happiest imaginary readers are middle-grade students snuggled up on the couch with a parent for a read and a chat. Classrooms could use their read-a-loud time to work through the lessons. Matilda could work it out for herself or perhaps with a friendly librarian’s help. Querying is a chore, but I’m learning the ropes. Hopefully I’ll find the right agent soon.

Simply Hooked

 Expanding my homeschool/school club curriculum, Crow Hook, meant finding adults eager to teach students historical texts. I quickly realized I had been very lucky in my friends and fellow co-op moms. Most people finished school and are glad to be done. Teaching Crow Hook means at least a willingness to read the texts. Many people found it intimidating for me to hand them a reading list and wish them luck. Slowly the idea of writing a curriculum for adults presented itself, and I’ve been working away at it ever since. As I wrote the idea presented itself as having a life of its own apart from Crow Hook. People might really enjoy reading the texts for their own sake. I certainly had.

Simply Hooked is a four part collection of one hundred texts, some interesting, some important, sometimes both. It is a no pressure guide that simply opens doors without demanding readers walk through them. After a brief introduction, (readers are encouraged to rely on the included introduction that accompanies most of the texts) there is a Reader’s Guide with tips to make reading easier and a set of Prompts that hope to inspire the reader to take the connections deeper.

It means a lot when I say I like it better than Crow Hook.

Crow Hook

 Developed as a homeschool co-op class, Crow Hook is my history through literature curriculum for middle to high school students. I love it because there are no grades or tests just good dusty fun. I say dusty fun because the core of the experience is historical texts that are either interesting or important, usually both. Some examples would be the Tao Te Ching, The Wealth of Nations, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, A Long Walk to Freedom are important works. Physica, The Book of the Dead, The Jungle, Of Plymouth Plantation are interesting. 

The full course takes four years with twenty-five lessons a year. I ask students to read part or all of a text, and then I have fun activities for the group to explore the work together. I think it would make a great school club as much as it does a homeschool class. My favorite part of it all is an ever changing game called, “Slides.” Making connections between the texts is the most important part of interacting with them, so I continually create challenges to connect one work with the others to earn points, win competitions and build team spirit. It’s a great opportunity for kids to feel smart who might not show up on the school radar. 

Novelzzz

 In my mid-thirties I discovered that I require a creative outlet. For me, it is non-negotiable. Studying was incompatible with raising six small children, so I poured myself into a novel. I have a complete rough draft, but the plot is less than satisfactory. I’ve been letting it percolate and may soon be bringing it out for an update. In the meantime two other novels have sprouted from the same rich ground and I’ve worked on them as the spirit leads. 

I like working on novels. Finishing one to the level of personal satisfaction would be a treat. My protagonists are all female, either young or stunted so in need of growth. I like to be funny, but my core issues in each novel are serious. I am working to find the balance. Whether I publish a novel or not, I grow as a writer when I settle down to the rhythm of writing one.

Great Ideas Short Stories for Young People

 When I realized that I wanted to study history, literature and philosophy in a more serious, organized way I didn’t have much of a path to guide me. People in my community studied their Bibles and they were content. I had heard of Mortimer Adler during the education coursework for my college degree. Coupling that cheerful recommendation was my mother-in-law’s set of The Great Books which she was willing to pass on to me. It was a place to start especially when paired with Adler’s How to Read a Book. Once I got my feet under me I began to choose other paths, but I will always appreciate the Syntopicon. Its mountain top view of philosophy is stimulating and pleasurable. 102 ideas are described and their places of mention are cataloged from The Great Books.

In order to give my studies some shape without overwhelming rigor, I set myself the task of writing a YA short story about one of the Great Ideas every year. I believe there are eight of them now. Some years I’ve missed my deadline. The stories are quirky. Reality has been shaped to sketch the rough outline of the idea. The characters vary from story to story with some overlap and repetition to keep them interesting. I enjoy this project, but I find it gets more and more complicated and takes more and more effort. They are invariably longer than I thought they’d be.

This is a unique project. Its core comes from the 1950s. I like to think the fictional world and characters update that, but somehow the ancient Greeks keep sneaking in. 

You Tube/Off the Shelf

 I recently logged my library into Library Thing. When the final tally was over 2,000 books, there were a lot of feelings to be sorted, but the surprising feeling was joy. I’d been afraid my books were a useless pile of miscellany that served no purpose but to fill up shelves. Wrong! This is an impressive collection of organized materials that feed into each other where they are related and diversify to follow my many interests. My books are fascinating and useful. Ranging from Ancient Mesopotamia to Once-a-Month Cooking they generally offer a doorway into the subject with other books providing greater depth and support.

I needed to share my treasure. I am a great lender of books, but it seemed too slow and small a process for such magnificence as my library. I am working on a You Tube channel titled, Off the Shelf. I will choose four to eight books clustered around a subject and present them to the world. I hope to keep the offerings widely diversified, imitating a box of chocolates. The first episode “Ancient Mesopotamia” is coming soon.

Willow Stories

 I wrote “Famine of the Word” as a piece of experimental fiction. Strangled by Scripture my heroic main character fights to survive. I was pleased with the effect and felt ready to move on to other projects, but Willow and her plight lingered in my mind. I’ve written a second story and a third is percolating. Trapped in a fundamentalist world, I enjoy Willow’s measured actions to find a way out. The Scripture that is meant to control her sometimes, surprisingly, sets her free. I like the dance/chess game interplay between Willow’s life and the ever present Scripture. This is a project I will definitely expand, but I’m not sure how much further it could go, maybe a novella?