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.Guest Blogger: Kevin Henkes
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.
Recently I've been watching and listening to elementary school students as they engage with nonfiction. The range of topics that excite them is extraordinary and their conversations about their reading remind me how powerful a stimulus books can be to exploration and critical thinking.
At the end of last year, the UK media reported the pretty disturbing fact: nine percent of British children are leaving primary school with the reading skills of a seven-year-old. As it happens, I’ve met seven-year-olds who are well into the novels of J. K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, and even J. R. R. Tolkien, but the media was talking about thirteen-year-olds—and boys are the worst offenders, naturally—who can’t struggle their way through much more than a tabloid newspaper.
Would you like to listen to this year's award-winning authors and illustrators on their inspirations and influences? In this post, enjoy brief TeachingBooks.net recordings with the 2011 John Newbery, Randolph Caldecott, Michael L. Printz, Robert F. Sibert, Coretta Scott King, Pura Belpré, and Theodor Seuss Geisel medalists.
Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave (Little, Brown, 2010) is based on the true story of Dave, a man born into slavery in 1800 who created approximately 40,000 ceramic pots in his lifetime. Dave was owned by six slave masters, but was ultimately sold to a plantation that produced large clay pots. It was on this plantation that Dave was trained to make pottery and became a master potter.