Like my mother, I’ve become a collector of objects, especially while I’m writing. As I begin a new project, I gather items that tell me about the subjects or reveal setting, plot, or most importantly, the characters.
Tag Archives | Cultural Studies
Diverse Books: A Shared Mission
Have you ever thought, “Whose perspectives am I missing, and how can I include them for all readers?” Diverse books help us fill those gaps. When you’re teaching diverse books, TeachingBooks.net helps you instruct with authentic, respectful, primary source materials to enliven discussion and nurture insights. Here are examples to consider: Identify and integrate exceptional […]
Original Author Resources Enrich Student Experiences
A customer in Charlotte, North Carolina recently let us know that award-winning author Kekla Magoon would be visiting with their middle school students this fall. To support this author visit, we created an original Meet-the-Author Book Reading with Kekla and co-author Ilyasah Shabazz talking about their book, X: A Novel (Candlewick 2016). In this recording, […]
Guest Blogger: Duncan Tonatiuh
After creating three nonfiction books—Diego Rivera (2011), Separate Is Never Equal (2014), and Funny Bones (2015, all Abrams)—my editor and I both thought a fiction project might be interesting. We brainstormed and a suggestion that bubbled up was to take a well-known story, such as a fairy tale, and give it a twist.
Guest Blogger: Jenny Han
I want my readers to see that they can be all kinds of people and that they aren’t limited to a version of themselves that someone else decided for them. They can be the popular girl, the smart girl, the mean girl, or the screw-up. “Asian American girl” doesn’t denote any one type of person.
Guest Blogger: Lesa Cline-Ransome
My family listened to music in the morning as we prepared for the day, and at night as we cleaned the dinner dishes. I grew up on a steady diet of the R&B and soul music of the Jackson 5, Bobby Womack, and James Brown. Of Soul Train Saturday mornings and church service choir stands […]
Contests and Giveaways | April 2016
Each month we feature free and enjoyable book contests and giveaways! We hope you will enjoy the following opportunities as well as the author and book resources available via TeachingBooks.net. Win a free copy of Brick by Brick and Why? (Elementary) Enter to win a copy of Brick by Brick by Giuliano Ferri and Why? by Nicolai Popov, two books from […]
Guest Blogger: R. Gregory Christie
When a manuscript comes across my art table there’s always a little bit of terror attached to it. What’s the author trying to relate? How should I approach it? How would a parent, a librarian, and, most important, a child look at my paintings? If, as an artist, I can’t quell some of these questions, […]
Original Author Resources Help Prepare for Author Visits
A customer from the Oakland, California recently asked us to create original multimedia resources with author Alton Carter. In this original Meet-the-Author Book Reading Alton shares what inspired hime to write The Boy Who Carried Bricks and why he wrote this book.
Cross-curricular Uses for the Author Name Pronunciation Guide
The Author Name Pronunciation Guide, created by TeachingBooks.net, features more than 2,000 short audio clips by book creators sharing the true pronunciation and origin of their names. It is a freely accessible resource, ready-to-use to enliven and personalize your lesson plans across the curriculum. We’ve compiled a list of our favorite ways the Author Name Pronunciation Guide has […]