The TeachingBooks Blog
Many of us have come to the field of education because of our own love of learning. But with all the daily demands on our time, it can be difficult to manage our teaching responsibilities and feed our professional passions.
Stones for my Father is a book I had been meaning to write for a long time. My mother’s family is South African and I have always wanted to explore that part of my history. I was also interested in the Anglo-Boer War. To me, it is one of the most fascinating and overlooked conflicts of the twentieth century. 
When we stop to listen, poetry is all around us: in the rhythms that we walk, in the music that we listen to, in the natural world we experience. Fortunately, National Poetry Month gives us space to make this a curricular focus.
By now I’ve written a number of books and have enough distance from them, to see patterns emerge. Looking back, I’ve realized that so many of the children (or mice or other animals) who populate my work use imagination—as play, as an escape, as a tool.