Shala K. Howell's Blog, page 21

50 States of Public Art: Gators on the Geaux in Lake Charles, Louisiana

Public art is everywhere, and in some parts of the country you can even still go out and enjoy it. (Sorry, snow-packed Northerners, the public art portion of this blog is headed south for the winter.) This week on Caterpickles, we meet an eleven-year-old boy who is nearly as excited about his town’s gators as my daughter is about the Dedham bunnies.

[image error] See You Later Alligator by Fred Stark. (Photo by The Pelican Girls)
Gators on the Geaux in Lake Charles, Louisiana

Public Art Program: Gators on the Geaux, 2001-2002

Purpose: Fundraiser for the Lake Charles Symphony

Location: In and around Lake Charles, Louisiana

Source: Tip from reader Victoria M, who pointed me to a story on KPLC, Gators on the Geaux: Where are they now?

In 2001, the Lake Charles Symphony sponsored a public art project to raise awareness and funds for their music programs. The project called for artist-decorated alligator statues to be placed in 70 locations around southwest Louisiana.

The Gators on the Geaux alligators were primarily decorated with paint. Artists also used elements like glass scales and bones to add character to their creations.

At the end of the project, the alligators were sold to various collectors in the area. In a 2017 interview with Jillian Corder of KPLC TV, Lake Charles Symphony Executive Director Shelly Appleby said that the Gators on the Geaux program ultimately raised more than $150,000 for the symphony. 

In the intervening years, many of the gators have been sold on to other collectors, brought into private homes, or destroyed by hurricanes and vandals. All of which makes it much harder to find them out in the wild these days.

So why even mention them? 

Eleven-year-old Brandon Fruge hadn’t even been born yet when the Gators on the Geaux first appeared in his community. But after spotting an old poster of the Gators several years ago, he became obsessed with finding them all. He and his mother have devoted countless hours to hunting down the remaining Gators, and maintain a Facebook page of their finds.

This is a family after our own hearts.

Katrina Stephens and Lexi Hagen at The Pelican Girls have also spent quite a lot of time hunting down the Gators. So far, they’ve found and posted information on 23 Gators on the Geaux. (In fact, I pulled the picture of the See You Later Alligator by Fred Stark at the top of this post from their blog.)

You can find See You Later Alligator outside 1407 West Prien Lake Road in Lake Charles, and The Pelican Girls’ blog post about it here.

Want to see a few for yourself?

Your best best is to start with The Pelican Girls’ blog or to visit the Little Gator Hunter’s Facebook page to get pointers on where to find the remaining Gators on the Geaux in the wild. 

Good luck! If you do find a Gator, drop us a line here at Caterpickles. We’d love to hear all about him.

Happy public art hunting!



Take Our Poll
Related Links:

The Little Gator Hunter’s Facebook page
Gators on the Geaux: Where are they now? (KPLC TV)
The Pelican Girls‘ Gator Collection

Have you heard about the National Park’s free annual pass for fourth graders?

[image error]Just a quick post this morning to tell you about the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Every Kid in a Park program. In a nutshell, the program offers fourth graders (and 10-year-old home-schooled equivalents) a free annual pass to every national park in the U.S.

Big Bend, the Grand Canyon, Hot Springs, Mammoth Caves, Acadia National Park… whichever national park catches your fancy, this pass will get your fourth grader and a limited number of family members and friends free access to it.

Between now and August 31, 2019, your fourth grader can use their pass to:

Get free admission for themselves, any children under the age of 16, and up to three adults into any national park that charges individual entrance fees
Admit themselves, all children under 16, and all adults in one passenger vehicle for free to any park that charges vehicle entrance fees.

It’s a great deal and with a national park within two hours of every location in the United States, it’s definitely something parents of fourth graders will want to check out.

Related Links: 

Find a park near you (Find Your Park)
Every Kid in a Park (Official government website for the program)
Fun Facts about all 59 US National Parks (National Geographic. Note: There have been a few parks added to the system since this story was first published online.)
US National Park Annual Pass – Is it worth it? (A Brit & A Southerner)

How can you keep kids in the loop when you visit a sick relative without them?

My father has been having a few health issues lately. Since we live in California and he’s in Texas, most of the time keeping my daughter in the loop means chatting with my dad on the phone while she’s at school and relaying a carefully curated version of what’s going on to my daughter when she gets home.

Our approach has been to be truthful, but not detailed, and to not share with her anything that my dad doesn’t want her to know.

In practice, this means we give her the headline, and then stop to see what questions she has. My daughter, being the curious and caring sort, often has lots of questions. As you can imagine, respecting both my father’s need for privacy and my daughter’s desire for answers can be challenging.

For the most part, though, we’ve muddled through by keeping the answers short, factual, and to the point. We avoid speculating whenever possible by saying something along the lines of, “we don’t know that yet” or “I don’t have enough information to answer that yet.”

However, a couple of events have happened in the past six months that have resulted in my flying to Texas to help out. My trips kick my daughter’s questions into a much higher gear. Unfortunately, situations that are improved by my physical presence are also typically situations that my dad doesn’t want us to talk about too freely with his grandkids.

What’s a parent to do when their child’s curiosity runs into the brick wall of their grandparent’s right to privacy?

When I travel to visit Grandpa without The Eleven-Year-Old, I need some way to talk to my daughter about what’s going on without exposing her to all the details of recovery that:

a) Grandpa rightly doesn’t want her to know

b) A child doesn’t have the perspective or the life experience to deal with.

While visiting my dad in the hospital last month, I accidentally hit upon a good solution – a little narrative I call “Travel Penguin Visits the Hospital.”

I thought I’d share it with you in case you also wanted to try it.

Before I continue, a few caveats: 

My father’s condition was serious, but not immediately life-threatening. I wouldn’t have done this if things had been touch-and-go.
I was careful about the times I picked to pull out Travel Penguin, so that it didn’t irritate my dad’s medical team or get in the way of my dad’s care.
As in all things parenting, your mileage may vary. My child responded well to this, but yours may not. Fortunately, you are the world’s expert in your child, and as such, you will be able to tell from reading this post whether or not this might work for you.

Who is Travel Penguin? 

Whenever either Michael or I go away on a trip without The Eleven-Year-Old, she tucks a stuffed penguin into our suitcase. The agreement is that we will take a photo of Travel Penguin doing something vaguely interesting on our trip to show The Eleven-Year-Old when we get back. (It’s what we do instead of bringing home physical souvenirs.)

As you might imagine, we have a giant collection of photos of Travel Penguin sitting on planes, posing outside hotels, and pointing his flipper at various landmarks. (Digital photography has really improved parenting.)

[image error]Travel Penguin watches the ground crew at San Jose Airport prep the plane for take-off. (Photo: Shala Howell)

On my last trip to Texas, I took things a bit further. Quite a bit further, and depending on which of us here at Caterpickles Central you talk to, maybe a little too far.

I took Travel Penguin with me to the hospital.

Why did I take a stuffed penguin into a hospital? 

Understandably, my father didn’t want me taking a lot of pictures of him while he recovered or sharing too many details about his recovery with my daughter, but The Eleven-Year-Old very much wanted to know what was going on.

I used Travel Penguin as a proxy for my dad, and sent home daily pictures of Travel Penguin getting his blood pressure checked, having his temperature taken, washing his hands as he entered the room, and, once my dad was feeling up to it, going for walks with Grandpa down the hall.

[image error]Dad’s nurse kindly checked Travel Penguin’s blood pressure for us one afternoon. It was a little low, but nothing to worry about. (Photo: Shala Howell)
So, how did it work?

Sending pictures of Travel Penguin spending time at the hospital worked beautifully as a way to reassure my daughter that things were ok without violating my dad’s privacy. Of course, it only worked when Grandpa and the nurses were in a position to have fun with it.

Obviously, there are lots of times in a hospital stay when pausing the action to take pictures with a stuffed penguin is wildly inappropriate. Still, I wanted to send my daughter at least one picture every day, so Travel Penguin and I explored other parts of the hospital too. Here he is checking out the garden outside the hospital.

[image error]Travel Penguin inspects the garden outside. (Photo: Shala Howell)

I think he was a little miffed about the sign in the garden, because the next day at lunch I caught him complaining to the fish in the hospital aquarium about it.

[image error]Travel Penguin chats with the fish in the lobby aquarium. (Photo: Shala Howell)

Anyway, you get the idea.

“Travel Penguin Visits the Hospital” turned out to be an excellent way to help my daughter feel like she was part of an important family event while respecting Grandpa’s boundaries and allowing him the space he needed to heal. Honestly, it was helpful for me, too. Finding fun ways to pose the penguin once or twice a day helped lighten the mood a lot.

And yes, before you ask, I thoroughly sanitized the penguin before I brought him back home. After all, as Daddyo says, “The immune system helps those who help themselves.”

What about you?

Have you used something similar with your kids? If so, I’d love to hear about it.

Take Our Poll

Related Links: 

Wordless Wednesday: The Eight-Year-Old helps the University of Chicago get into the Guinness Book of World Records (Caterpickles)
Wordless Wednesday: The Seven-Year-Old practices medicine (Caterpickles)
Daddyo’s Winter Survival Tip: “Don’t taunt the hand plague” (Caterpickles)

Revised March 1, 2019

The Curiosity Files: 9-year-old boy discovers missing link in human evolution

Last week in my ongoing search for hard data about the benefits of remaining curious, I came across an article in Thrive Global about Matthew Berger, the 9-year-old who discovered a missing link in the story of human evolution while he was out walking with his dog.

Matthew’s father, paleoanthropologist Lee Berger, Ph.D, was exploring the Malapa caves in Gauteng, South Africa when 9-year-old Matthew got bored and wandered off with his dog Tau.  At some point in his hike away from the caves, Matthew tripped on a rock. Instead of simply getting up and moving on, he decided to see what had tripped him. It must have been a pretty interesting looking rock, because Matthew picked it up and showed it to his father.

[image error] Artist’s rendering of Au. sediba. Commissioned by the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History. (© Sculpture Elisabeth Daynes / Photograph S. Entressangle. Via the Paleoanthropology Society’s Special Issue on Australopithecus sediba.)

Being a paleoanthropologist on high alert for hominid fossils, his father recognized his son’s rock as a fossilized hominid clavicle (collarbone).  Matthew’s curiosity, and his father’s willingness to entertain it, tripped off ten years of research and exploration in the site. Over the next several years, researchers have found some 135 fossils from at least three different individuals at the site. Enough specimens have been recovered that ultimately researchers were able to determine that the collarbone and the associated fossils belonged to a previously unknown species, Australopithecus sediba.

The 2 million-year-old Au. sediba shares some characteristics with members of the genus Australopithecus, particularly in its skull. Its pelvis, however, is characteristic of members of the genus Homo. And then there’s the matter of the legs, which to paleoanthropologists appear to have a mix of features from both genera. While this complicates the question of where to slot Au. sediba in the human evolutionary tree, it seems fairly clear that Au. sediba is one of the missing bridge species between early humans and their predecessors.

Stephanie Fairyington, who wrote the original article for Thrive Global, and the researchers who study Au. sediba, both seem fairly awe-struck by the power of 9-year-old Matthew’s curiosity. Without it they point out, the Au. sediba fossils might still be hidden near the Malapa caves. What else, they ask, do we miss because we no longer have the curiosity of a 9-year-old child?

As a parent of a curious child myself, I’m less impressed by Matthew’s curiosity, and more in awe of his father’s willingness to entertain it. Reading this story, I couldn’t help but think of all the times I’ve said no. No, you can’t pick up that rock. No, you can’t go back for whatever that is under the bush. Stay on the path. Stay focused. Keep moving. We don’t have time to indulge your curiosity now. No. No. No.

The odds are profoundly against my ever recognizing a fossil even if my daughter did stumble across one in our daily lives, but I can at least try to do a better job of not shutting her curiosity down completely. Not because we have much hope of being the team that discovers the next link in the chain of human evolution, but because if the rest of Fairyington’s article is to be believed, staying curious is linked with greater well-being, increased creativity, a greater capacity to learn and to remember, and reduced rates of depression.

If I could equip my daughter for life with all of that, I’d be a pretty successful parent indeed.

Related Links: 

A 9-year-old boy discovered the missing link in human history by slowing down and remaining curious (Thrive)
Special Issue: Australopithecus sediba (Paleoanthropology Society)
What’s so important about fostering curiosity anyway? (Caterpickles)

50 States of Public Art: The Street Murals of St. Petersburg, Florida

Public art is everywhere, and in some parts of the country you can even still go out and enjoy it. (Sorry, snow-packed Northerners, the public art portion of this blog is headed south for the winter.) This week on Caterpickles, we’re treating ourselves to a quick peek at the street mural scene in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The Street Murals of St. Petersburg, Florida
Derek Donnelly’s mural, 365 Million Things To Do, was painted in honor of Florida’s more active retiree set. (Artist: Derek Donnelly, photo via the Visit St. Pete Clearwater website)

Title: 365 Million Things To Do

Artist: Derek Donnelly

Location: The Morean Arts Center at 719 Central Avenue, St. Petersburg, FL 33701

Photo Source:  Visit St. Pete Clearwater website

For the past four years, the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance has sponsored an annual street art festival. Held in October, the SHINE Mural Festival is an enormous, open-air, art exhibit held all over the city of St. Petersburg. Several new street art pieces are unveiled at the festival every year. The city uses the annual SHINE festival as a way to revitalize once neglected areas, spark conversations, and increase community involvement.

In between festivals, of course, visitors and locals in St. Pete’s are always encouraged to revisit past favorites, like Derek Donnelly’s 365 Million Things To Do mural on the east side of the Morean Arts Center. 

Want to see it yourself?

If you happen to find yourself in St. Petersburg, you can download a map to the various murals from the 2018 SHINE festival here. Alternatively, you can find a list of street art all over St. Pete at the Visit St. Pete Clearwater website.

If you prefer a guided tour, the Florida CraftArt Gallery leads a four-block there-and-back walking tour of 30 murals in the Central Arts District every Saturday morning from 10-11:30 a.m.

Not planning a trip to St. Pete, but want to see the murals anyway? Take a virtual tour of the 2018 SHINE Mural Festival here. The virtual tour includes photographs, artist information, locations, and a bit of background information for each work.

However you see it, drop us a line here at Caterpickles. We’d love to hear what you think.

Happy public art hunting!



Take Our Poll
Related Links:

SHINE Mural Festival website 
Map to 2018 murals (St. Pete Arts Alliance)
Virtual tour of the street murals from the 2018 SHINE Mural Festival (Visit St. Pete Clearwater)

Book Review: Sorcery & Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot (Cecelia & Kate #1)

Sorcery & Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot (Cecelia & Kate #1)

By Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

Harcourt, 2004

Age Range: Middle Grade and up

The events in Sorcery & Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot play out over a series of letters between two cousins in Regency England.

Kate has been sent to London for a debut season — well, really her younger sister’s debut season, but since her younger sister can’t officially have a debut season in London until Kate has had hers, Kate has to endure a debut season as well. Kate is rescued from an utterly dreary round of balls when someone tries to poison her at the Royal College of Wizards. Capturing the culprit spices up the rest of the season quite nicely.

Kate’s cousin Cecelia has remained quietly in the countryside, but still has plenty of exciting events of her own to write about. A strange man has started following her (although he is frankly quite terrible at it), and a series of strange incidents have made her wonder if she has magical powers too.

What I thought of it

I picked up this book, because I’ve been challenged by a friend to complete the BookRiot Read Harder challenge for 2019 and I needed an epistolary novel for one of the tasks. The Eleven-Year-Old and I enjoy Wrede’s wry sense of humor so much that we make a point of reading every Wrede novel that comes our way. So when I discovered Wrede had co-written an epistolary novel, it only made sense to give it a try.

Just as I hoped, this book made light work of the epistolary novel task. The letters are light-hearted and paint a vivid picture of the events in the story. In classic Wrede style, the humor is never neglected, even as the cousins realize that they have stumbled onto two ends of the same dastardly plot and the stakes continue to rise.

Even the Author’s Note at the back of the book is well worth reading. In it, Wrede and Stevermer explain how they wrote the book as part of the Letter Game. To play the Letter Game, the authors told each other a story over a series of letters exchanged over several months. Each author’s narrative had to depend at least in part on developments in the other writer’s story. But, critically, neither of them could tell the other where they intended to take their half of the story. They had to reveal it slowly over time as part of the game. Part of the fun, after all, is to maintain a coherent narrative even as your writing partner randomly throws narrative bombs at your plot.

The only coordination the two writers did came toward the end, when one asked the other how many more letters she needed to wrap up her narrative, so that she could be certain to wrap up her own at roughly the same time.

Who might enjoy this book

Readers who enjoy a dash of magic with their middle grade approved Regency romance
Readers looking for a fun epistolary novel for the BookRiot Read Harder 2019 challenge

And now it’s your turn. What are you reading this week?

Take Our Poll
Related Links

More book reviews on Caterpickles
Book Riot’s 2019 Read Harder Challenge (Book Riot)

What’s so important about fostering curiosity anyway?

I am astounded and mortified that January is almost over and I have yet to post anything on Caterpickles.

Happy New Year, by the way.

There are often good reasons for it when I take a break from the blog. This time the main one is simply that I’ve been putting what little writing time I’ve had these past few months into other projects, including the next book in the Caterpickles Parenting Series.

This next book focuses on science and how parents without a science degree can handle their child’s curious questions without enrolling in a college-level refresher course. Because it’s about science, it seems only proper to include some actual data about why curiosity matters. 

As a result, I’ve been doing a fair amount of reading and thinking about curiosity lately. One of the first articles I came across was this one by Daisy Yuhas of The Hechinger Report entitled “The Benefits of Cultivating Curiosity in Kids.” 

In the article, Yuhas talks about a set of studies that demonstrate that curious people tend to be happier in their jobs, better at social interactions, and enjoy greater academic success. 

Reader, I had questions.

Are curious people really happier in their jobs?

Unfortunately, the study on curiosity in the workplace that Yuhas links to in her article is hidden behind a paywall. It was also relatively small — with a sample size of only 233 adults — and published in 2001. This particular combination happens a lot when it comes to curiosity research.  Considering the central role curiosity plays in driving things like scientific research, scientists are asking surprisingly few questions about curiosity itself.

At the moment, the best information I have to offer you on this point is an anecdote from my own life. (Talk about a small sample size! Don’t worry, I will find something more substantial for the actual book.)

You may have noticed a definite shift in tone and reduction in frequency of Caterpickles posts over the past few months.

Here’s what happened.

You see, I have all these writing projects that I’m supposed to be working on, and around November of last year, I discovered I had very little interest in writing any of them. In fact, I had a very great interest in never writing again and going back to school to become a librarian.

I would be an excellent librarian. Even Google thinks so. I know this, because when I searched for “librarian” in the Google Photos app on my phone, this popped up.

[image error]Yes, it’s a selfie. I forget why I took it. Probably something to do with Facebook.

Although, to be fair, Google also suggested this:

[image error]I have no idea why this picture is on my phone. I suspect the Eleven-Year-Old might have been involved.

And I think we can all agree that Grace Elvis, Super Criminal has no place in a library.

Still, based on my own experiences volunteering in a local library this school year, I am pretty confident I’d love the work. The only possible exception might be the part where I have to host visiting authors to talk about their books. Don’t get me wrong, I love meeting visiting authors. I would just hate the part where I had to listen to them talk about how they showed up and did the work of writing when I had allowed myself to stop. That would bother me.

I recognize now, of course, that all of this was largely some combination of seasonal depression and burnout talking, but at the time dropping everything writing-related seemed like a reasonable thing to do. 

So I gave myself permission to do it. “Self,” I said, “For the rest of the year, your only job is to follow your curiosity wherever it leads you. If you end up wanting to write about it, fine. If not, that’s fine too. Just stay curious.”

Following my curiosity turned out to be a wonderfully restorative thing to do. Which is no doubt one of the reasons I find myself back here at my desk, actively working on the very same writing projects that just two months ago I had given myself permission to quit forever.

You don’t have to tell me that curious people are happier and more productive in their jobs. I am living it.

Now if only I could find some non-anecdotal proof.

Are curious people really more successful socially?

Again, the study Yuhas links to here is hiding behind a paywall. The study by Todd B. Kashdan and John E. Roberts, “Trait and State Curiosity in the Genesis of Intimacy: Differentiation from Related Constructs,” was published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology in 2004, and has been cited several times by other people in the years since. I remain hopeful that I will be able to find some actual data for the book over the coming weeks.

For now, though, let’s work with the abstract. From what I can tell, the researchers found that curious people are more likely to be perceived positively in social situations. The effect of curiosity was blunted somewhat in folks with higher social anxiety, but overall, being curious was linked with having greater success in forming personal connections.

Although I haven’t yet seen the data behind this result, on an intuitive level it makes sense. Curious people are more interested in learning about whomever they are talking to, which is pretty flattering for the person with whom they are talking. Small wonder curious people are more likely to make a positive first impression.

Do curious children really do better in school?

It all boils down to this, doesn’t it? As parents, we want to give our children the best possible start in life. And that means helping them get the most out of whatever academic opportunities are available to them.

And on this, finally, there is some research to talk about. An April 2018 study of 6200 kindergartners demonstrated that greater curiosity was associated with improved scores in math and reading. The study was done by Prachi Shah, an associated professor of pediatrics at the University of Michigan.

To some extent, again, it just makes sense that curious kids would learn more in school. After all, academic performance is not simply a matter of intelligence. It’s also about being motivated to pay attention, work harder, and as a result, learn more. Curious kids are more likely to do all of that.

And again, there is some research to support this contention. An article in the Atlantic describes the work Adele and Allan Gottfried of California State University have been doing to trace the development of giftedness in children over time. Their decades-old Fullerton Longitudinal Study began with a group of 107 healthy, full-term, normal weight 1-year-old children back in 1979. The Gottfrieds have been following the progress of the kids in their study at regular intervals ever since.

Not surprisingly, when the children entered school the Gottfrieds found a clear link between cognitive giftedness (defined in the study as an IQ of 130 or more) and academic performance. Nineteen percent of the children in the study had an IQ over 130, and as you might expect, those children tended to perform at a higher level across various subjects starting in kindergarten.

However, the Gottfrieds also found that by the time the kids are adolescents, motivation matters as much as intellect. (Motivation, for the purposes of this study, is defined as enjoying school; displaying an active curiosity; being willing to try challenging, difficult, and novel tasks; and persisting until those tasks were mastered.)

The Gottfrieds found that being intellectually gifted didn’t automatically mean a child would also be motivationally gifted. Only 8 of the study participants had both an IQ over 130 and intrinsic motivation. Although the motivated students weren’t always the ones with the highest IQ scores, their teachers consistently described them as working harder and learning more. As a result, motivated students outperformed their peers in math, reading, and on the SAT.

Clearly, curiosity is an academic gift in its own right.

To some degree, the principle of work harder in school and you’ll do better seems blindingly obvious.

What’s more interesting though, is that the curious children from impoverished backgrounds in Prachi Shah’s University of Michigan study scored just as well as affluent children on math and literacy tests.

Can the simple act of instilling curiosity in our kids level the socioeconomic playing field?

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that more research in this area is needed. However, there’s little doubt that parents as well as teachers play an important role in fostering curiosity in kids. 

So, what does that look like? What can we parents do to foster curiosity in our kids at home?

In this area, as in so many others, more research is needed. Shah is planning future research into parenting styles that foster an active, curious mindset in children. In the meantime, we have a few clues.

Encourage kids to follow their own interests.

Often a child’s interest lies far, far outside the classroom. Maybe they love soccer, collect rocks, or have an encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs. Teachers have to figure out how to relate those extracurricular interests to whatever it is they’ve got going on in the classroom.

But as parents, we have the luxury of allowing our child to explore whatever it is they are curious about in the moment without worrying about the impact on year-end test scores.

Take advantage of it. Curiosity feeds on itself. The more we allow our kids to take the lead on exploring things that interest them, the more they will want to explore.

Model curiosity for your children.

In 2015, a team of MIT researchers used a story telling app and an interactive robot to demonstrate just how contagious curiosity can be. It turns out, having anyone — even a robot — show an active interest in how a story will turn out makes kids more likely to take an interest in that story themselves.

What does modeling curiosity as a parent look like?

Well, it can mean giving kids experiences that take them out of their everyday lives — taking them to a zoo, a science museum, story time at the library, or to a play, for example.

But it can also mean much simpler and less time-intensive things, like asking questions about the public art you pass on the way to the grocery store, the books you are reading together, or the TV show you’re watching at home.

Don’t just focus on your child’s intelligence. Praise them for working hard, for trying again when they make a mistake, and, dare I say it, for asking questions. 

We are so used to thinking that academic achievement is a product of intellect. Many gifted and talented programs focus exclusively on one marker of academic potential — an IQ or standardized test score. But as the Gottfrieds’ work shows, over time it’s our children’s willingness to put in the work that is really going to matter.

[image error] Want some more ideas? My book, What’s That, Mom? provides 15 accessible, practical strategies for using public art to spark conversations with children between the ages of 3 and 10 — no artistic talent or insight required. Available on Amazon, IndieBound, and wherever online books are sold.
A final note, and then I’ll let you go

In addition to describing the Gottfrieds’ research, the Atlantic article “Schools are Missing What Matters Most About Learning” includes a brief story about Orville Wright. Orville and Wilbur Wright grew up in poverty, a fact which made their invention of flight all the more miraculous for one of their acquaintances. After all, that acquaintance pointed out, the Wright brothers had had no special advantages growing up and look what they did. They were a marvelous example of what people could accomplish in spite of their origins.

Orville Wright violently — but oh so politely — disagreed. “…to say we had no special advantages [is incorrect], … the greatest thing in our favor was growing up in a family where there was always much encouragement to intellectual curiosity.”

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to lately. I’d love to hear from you.

What sorts of things have you tried at home to cope with or nourish your child’s active curiosity? 

Take Our Poll

Related Links: 

The Benefits of Cultivating Curiosity in Kids (The Hechinger Report, via KQED’s MindShift)
Schools Are Missing What Matters About Learning (The Atlantic)
The Six-Year-Old Watches Cartoons: Superman, Episode 3 — The Arctic Giant (Caterpickles)
Through the Lens of the Five-Year-Old: The Bunny at Dedham Crossing (Caterpickles)
“Why did they draw that dinosaur underwater?” (Caterpickles)
“Why was Darwin so obsessed with pigeons?” (Caterpickles)
My book: What’s That, Mom? How to use public art to engage your children with the world around them… without being an artist yourself

Thank you for spending another year reading Caterpickles

[image error]

My daughter didn’t have any new questions about Santa this year (sniff, sniff… she’s growing up!), but in case you feel like a little holiday reading, here are a few of our favorite holiday posts.

“What’s a sugar plum and why does it get its own fairy?” 
Caterpickles thinks too much about Christmas carols: “How do you troll an ancient Yuletide carol?“
Caterpickles thinks too much about Christmas carols: “What’s a bobtail?”
“Why do some people call Santa Kris Kringle?”
“How old is Santa?”
“When is Santa’s birthday?”
“Does Santa smoke?” (Or, How to use Santa to talk to your kids about smoking)

Happy holidays, y’all.

4 books that share well with middle-schoolers

In the Before Times when I was childless, I swore that if I ever did have a child, I would read every single book my child did. This sounded like an excellent plan, in the absence of any real information.

Once I had a child, I actually tried it. At first, it was easy. Especially in those first few weeks, when my daughter could only enjoy a book if someone held it for her.  But once my daughter gained the ability to grab board books independently, I started to fall behind.

For a while I caught up, thanks to my daughter’s decided preference for reading the same books over and over again and our family’s decision to work story time into the bedtime process. It also helped that picture books are short, so I could read lots of them in one sitting.

Still, I could see where things were going. By my daughter’s second birthday I knew I would never be able to keep up with my daughter’s reading over the long haul. Instead, I decided to simply keep an eye on what she read, read any book that she seemed particularly obsessed with, and continue to read certain books out loud with her.

Fast forward nine years, and her books are too long to read out loud. We still listen to audiobooks as a family on road trips or while crafting together, but for the most part, our family reads independently.

Still, I’m a firm believer in parents and kids reading books together well into middle school. Talking about books is simply fun. And if the book happens to touch on an issue that your middle schooler is struggling with, it can create a marvelous opportunity to talk about some deeply personal issues from a not-so-personal angle. That gives your child a chance to think about how he or she would respond if a similar situation came up in the real world, and you a chance to dole out some parental wisdom without making your child think you are chastising her actual behavior.

As a result, I’m always on the look out for books to share with The Eleven-Year-Old. Here are four of our favorites from Family Book Club this past year.

Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole by Katherine Lasky

Format: Movie, Audiobook

Age Range: 9 years and up

[image error]Excerpt from the Amazon book description: 

This box set contains the first three books by Kathryn Lasky, which are the basis of the animated movie, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole.

The Capture, Book One

Soren is born in the forest of Tyto, a tranquil kingdom where the Barn Owls dwell. But evil lurks in the owl world, and Soren is captured and imprisoned in a dark canyon where there is a mysterious school. It’s called an orphanage, but Soren believes it’s something far worse. He and his new friend, the clever and scrappy Gylfie, know that the only way out is up. To escape, they will need to do something these fledglings have never done before – fly.

The Journey, Book Two

It began as a dream, a quest for the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, a mythic place where an order of owls rises each night to perform noble deeds. There, Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger hope to find inspiration to fight the evil that dwells in the owl kingdom. When Soren and his friends finally arrive at the Great Ga’Hoole Tree, they face challenges they never imagined.

The Rescue, Book Three

Ever since Soren was kidnapped, he has longed to see his sister, Eglantine. Now, Eglantine is back in Soren’s life, but she’s been through an ordeal too terrible for words. At the same time, Soren’s mentor, Ezylryb, has mysteriously disappeared and may be in danger. Something deep within Soren tells him there is a connection between these mysterious events. To rescue Ezylryb, Soren must face a force more dangerous than anything that even the evil rulers of the owl orphanage could have devised.

What we liked about them: 

True confessions: We watched the movie first, and were content with that experience. We might never have read the books at all, frankly, if we hadn’t stumbled across the audiobook at the library shortly thereafter.

While listening to the book, we quickly realized that they left a ton of stuff out in the movie. That made for some interesting conversations about narrative choices and owl habits. Both The Eleven-Year-Old and I preferred the story arc and species insights included in the book. She does want me to warn you, though, that the audiobook is super long (16+ hours). “I could have finished the books faster if I’d just read them myself, Mommyo.”

Pack of Dorks by Beth Vrabel

Format: Paperback

Age Range: 8-12 years

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Excerpt from the Amazon book description: 

“Lucy knows that kissing Tom Lemmings behind the ball shed will make her a legend. But she doesn’t count on that quick clap of lips propelling her from coolest to lamest fourth grader overnight. Suddenly Lucy finds herself trapped in Dorkdom, where a diamond ring turns your finger green, where the boy you kiss hates you three days later, where your best friend laughs as you cry, where parents seem to stop liking you, and where baby sisters are born different.

Now Lucy has a choice: she can be like her former best friend, Becky, who would do anything to claim her seat at the cool table in the cafeteria, or Lucy can pull up a chair among the solo eaters—a.k.a. the dorks. Still unsure, Lucy partners with super quiet Sam Righter on a research project about wolves. Lucy connects her own school hierarchy with what she learns about animal pack life—where some wolves pin down weaker ones just because they can, and others risk everything to fight their given place in the pack. Soon Lucy finds her third option: creating a pack of her own, even if it is simply a pack of dorks.”

What we liked about it: 

By turns hilarious, painful, and wise, this book is above all real. It’s so easy to relate to Lucy, Sam, and April. We all know Beckys, and many of us have been Becky at one point in our lives.

As a parent, I especially appreciated how Beth Vrabel made it clear that being a good friend is something you have to learn. You will make mistakes. Other people will hurt you by making mistakes of their own. The trick is to grow past it.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

Format: Movie, Ebook

Age Range: 12 years and up

[image error] Excerpt from the Amazon Book Description:

“Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards

In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin lives with his kind but distant parents, his sadistic brother Peter, and the person he loves more than anyone else, his sister Valentine. Peter and Valentine were candidates for the soldier-training program but didn’t make the cut—young Ender is the Wiggin drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training.

Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the alien invaders. His psychological battles include loneliness, fear that he is becoming like the cruel brother he remembers, and fanning the flames of devotion to his beloved sister.”

What we liked about it:

Both Michael and I had read Ender’s Game years ago, and wanted to introduce The Eleven-Year-Old to it as a science fiction classic. The Eleven-Year-Old didn’t think the book itself sounded that interesting, so we talked her into watching the movie.

Now for the honesty. The Eleven-Year-Old found the movie intriguing enough to start reading the book. But she quickly lost interest in it. That was disappointing.

Still, watching the movie together as a family was enough to spark some conversations about dealing with social isolation and bullying.

The Cat Who Said Cheese by Lilian Jackson Braun

Format: Audiobook

Age Range: Written for adults. But, The Eleven-Year-Old assures me, aside from some references to drugs, these books are totally ok to talk about on Caterpickles. 

[image error] Excerpt from the Amazon book description:

In this mystery in the bestselling Cat Who series, a murder sends Jim Qwilleran and his cats, Koko and Yum Yum, on a trail that will demand all their feline intuition and mustachioed insight…

With the Great Food Explo approaching, there’s a lot of scrumptious activity in Moose County. Residents can’t wait for the restaurant openings, the cheese-tasting, and the bake-off, among other festivities. But there’s nothing as tasty as a morsel of gossip, so when a mysterious woman moves into the New Pickax Hotel, the locals—including Qwill—indulge in lots of speculation. But then a bomb explodes in her room, killing the hotel housekeeper—and now Qwill and his kitty sidekicks, Koko and Yum Yum, must put aside the fun and figure out who cooked up this murderous recipe…

What we liked about it: 

Middle schoolers are at an interesting age when it comes to reading books. They still love books written expressly for their age group, but they are profoundly curious about the books their grown-ups are reading. Every time I pick up a book, The Eleven-Year-Old clambers onto the arm of my chair and asks to read its back cover. Sometimes she asks to read the book itself, but given the type of mysteries I typically read, this rarely seems like a good idea. 

That said, I’ve had my eye on Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who… series for several years. I’ve never actually read one until this year, because frankly, the thought of a cat detective feels both gimmicky and improbable to this adult reader. But once The Eleven-Year-Old began campaigning in earnest to be allowed to read grown-up mystery novels, I decided to give Braun’s cat detectives a try. 

Discovering that our local library had not one, but four, The Cat Who… audiobooks available for loan clinched the deal. The books themselves are a charming combination of inside cat jokes, gossip about small town life, and murder with petty crimes on the side that work very well as spoken tales. The Eleven-Year-Old absolutely adores them. So if you and your mystery-curious middle schooler like that sort of thing, you might want to give these a try.

What about you?

Found any good books to share with your middle-schooler lately?

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Related Links: 

Book Review: Pack of Dorks (Caterpickles)

Event Alert: Curves Los Altos Holiday Boutique

Just a quick post to let you know that I’ve got another book event coming up.

The Curves in Los Altos, CA is holding its annual holiday craft sale December 6-8, 2018. For three glorious days, the gym transforms into a pop-up holiday gift shop.

My books will be there, along with tons of quilts, hand-bound journals, paintings, toys, decorations, baby clothes, & other handcrafted items. The sale is open to the public.

Hope to see you there!

~ Shala

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