Poetry Friday: Shapes & secret messages
In her book Diamond Willow (FSG, 2008), Helen Frost arranges the text of her poems into shapes that relate to the book’s theme. Frost also bolds the text of certain words so there is a hidden message, or poem-within-the poem,…

Author Robie Harris and illustrator Michael Emberley have worked closely together to create nearly a dozen age-appropriate books for children and teens on human development and sexuality, including It’s So Amazing!: A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families (Candlewick, 1999)and It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health (Candlewick, 1994). For Harris and Emberley, the entire research process is of the utmost importance when it comes to creating accurate informational books. From finding the right resources to portraying information in word and illustration, these two have insights to share about the inquiry process.

As educators seek to merge reading and technology into content areas across the curriculum, the following collection of brief recordings will aid them in their search for quality, fine-arts multimedia materials.
One of the questions I’m often asked by students—sometimes with tremulous voices—is about the dreaded “writer's block." It's as if they're asking about the flu or the boogey man. “Do I ever get it?” “Does it ever get me?”