Monica Edinger's Blog, page 42

A Victorian Wild Thing, Lewis Carroll

I admit to a particular fondness for subversive books and soBetsy Bird, Julie Danielson, Peter Sieruta’s Wild Things! Acts of Mischief in Children’s Literaturewould have been right up my alley even if I hadn’t known the three authors long before the book came into being. And so I was pleased as punch when Betsy and Julesinvited me to answer a few questions about someone who created my favorite subversive book, Lewis Carroll.

We know that you’ve done a fair amount of research on Alice in Wonder...

Girl (AKA Lena Dunham) Wants to Make “Catherine, Called Birdy” Movie

Lena Dunham discussed a wide array of topics with writer and author Ariel Levy during the 15th annual New Yorker Festival on Friday night, including her aspirations to turn Karen Cushman’s “Catherine, Called Birdy” into a feature film….”It’s a really interesting examination of sort of like coming of age and what’s expected of teenage girls,” Dunham said. “I’m going to adapt it and hopefully direct it, I just need to find someone who wants to fund a PG-13 medieval movie.”

From Lena Dunham Wants...

Africa is My Home: Maine Kids’ Present

African drums got the students’ attention in a skit portraying the 9-yearold character Magulu from the book, “Africa is My Home: A Child of the Amistad,” written by Monica Edinger and illustrated by Robert Byrd. The character spoke to the children about her experience being captured by slave traders and placed on the ship Amistad, where slaves took control of the ship in a mutiny.

“(This is a) dramatic tale of how slaves revolted and took over the boat and were later captured,” the Magulu char...

Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s Sam & Dave Dig a Hole

It wasn’t love at first sight, but now I am completely and utterly smitten with Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen’s Sam & Dave Dig a Hole.Ihad taken aquick look when I received it, but thenlastFriday at the very end of the day, after having seen Travis Jonker’s post of theoriesabout the ending, I read it aloud to my 4th graders and all hell broke loose. You want theories? My class hadthem in spades. I had to practically shove them out the door — on a Friday, mind you! And then yesterday, having dec...

Congratulations to the Kirkus Prize Finalists

On October 23rd, the winners of the new Kirkus Prize will go home with a whopping $50,000. While I’m sure that award will be much appreciated it is about the honor as well. Yesterday the finalists were announced and I am absolutely delighted with those in the youngreaders category.They are:

El Deafo by Cece Bell. I was waiting for the finished copy to post about this fantastic graphic memoir and so will soon. The more I think about it and read about it the more I admire it, somuch so that I’m...

In the Classroom: Dealing with Difficult Language

As a longtime 4th grade teacherthere are times when racist language appears in our classroom work. Each time I try to educate my students, but in a way that doesn’t seem hectoring, no easy task. For I think it is a fine line we teachers walk — while most of the kids may well take in all that we say, others may be quietly dismissive and go away with the opposite thought. And I try to keep in mind that what might be horrifying to me because of the history and knowledge I bring to a word, may no...

Africa is My Home: Come to the Children’s Africana Book Awards this November in DC

The Children’s Africana Book Awards will be celebrated with a festival at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art on Saturday, November 8, 2014. You can find out more about it as well as register (it is free) here.

The lovely people at Africa Access (who administer the award) created the following for those specifically interested in Sierra Leone and, thus, my book. I’m pretty excited!

Did you know children were on the Amistad?


















Magulu
(Sarah Margru Kinson)

About 1830, a girl named Magulu was born in...

Learning about Africa: Time lapse: Driving through Freetown’s Ebola Lockdown

As heart-wrenching as it is for me, I have been watching this obsessively as the places are so familiar to me. Just imagine your city or town so deserted for such a reason.

Gregory Maguire on Writing and Inspiration (especially for Egg & Spoon)

If I can collect a little assemblage of items that put me in a mood of the book, then I find some place in my study where I can put them out. For “Egg and Spoon,” I had some wonderful things. I had a 1940’s era paper mache Baba Yaga’s cottage. It’s only standing on one chicken’s foot; it got broken somewhere along the way. I have a number of matryoshkas I’ve collected over the years. I have a number of painted eggs I’ve painted myself starting 40 years ago; I used to paint one every Easter. S...

Learning About Africa: Ishmael Beal Tells it True “Still, the ways in which Africans are portrayed as less human have not lost the power to shock. “

Ishmael Beah,in “The West ignores the stories of Africans in the middle of the Ebola outbreak” writes bluntly about much I’ve been thinking, but afraid to say. He begins:

It wasn’t surprising that Western journalists would react with doom-and-gloom when the Ebola outbreak began in West Africa. Or that the crisis would not be treated as a problem confronting all humanity — a force majeure — but as one of “those diseases” that afflict “those people” over there in Africa. Most Western media immed...