Hope Edelman's Blog, page 8

The Powers of Persuasion

When I was down running errands this afternoon, the girls wrote an argumentative essay trying to convince one of us to bring them to a movie this afternoon. "I didn't even use any comma splices!" Maya announced, as she handed me the two-page, typed essay, tucked into a plastic report cover. And done in five colors of type. Here you go:

Why We Should See UP
By: Maya and Eden

Maya and Eden are anxiously awaiting your opinion on the following. We would like you to consider us seeing

Spelling and More Spelling

News has come down the pipeline that the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District is going to experience somewhere in the vicinity of a bazillion dollar shortfall over the next two years, and that all bets are off on what's going to have to be cut. At first we parents thought we were looking at our kids losing art and music instruction (bad, but not devastating) and were worried class sizes would go up (which they very likely will). Now word is that one of the three Malibu elementary schools

First-grade spellers

Eden goes to public school in Malibu--a small, well-funded, really excellent public school. Her teacher this year is the same one Maya had in the first grade, who we were hoping she'd get because we liked her so much the first time around, and like her just as much the second. Very high-quality academics. Still, the list of spelling words she brought home last week was off-the-charts funny. It's like the kids got eight years of spelling quizzes rolled into one. (They're learning about the rainfo

Dispatch from Amsterdam

We've been here two days, having tagged along with Uzi on his business trip for the girls' Spring Break. I haven't been to Amsterdam since 1989, when I was backpacking through Europe and staying in youth hostels, and though the city center hasn't changed much physically, I'm here under a whole new set of circumstances now. We arrived on Monday morning, and after a four-hour nap Maya and I walked over to the Albert Cuyp Market to pick up some food. It's about 6 blocks from our hotel, in the multi

Coming Home, Take Two

This return from Belize was rockier than the last one, and I've been trying to figure out why. It wasn't that I wasn't happy to be back, or to see the family--I missed them terribly. And it wasn't just that I was reluctant to step back into the usual early morning/bus stop/errands/workday/dinner/homework routine/bed too late routine, although that was undeniably a part of it.

I've been back a week now, and here's what I think: that there's something to all the talk about how modern society is in

Doing the Turnaround

Eight days in Belize, followed by seventeen days at home, followed by ten days in Belize. That's pretty much all of February. I'm in the middle of the turnaround right now, assisting with sixth-grade homework and sorting through mounds of laundry before I taxi back to LAX. The first eight days in Belize were nonstop research and filming, with small pockets of fun fit in. Jeff and I went twice to San Antonio, the Mayan village that's home to the first bush doctor I saw in 2000; stayed at Crystal

Heading down to Belize

After an intense weekend that had me cooking for 30 people who came over for a book party Saturday night (to celebrate the release of Paula Derrow's new anthology, "Behind the Bedroom Door") and then filming a Spanish cooking video with two eleven-year-old girls for three hours on Sunday, I'm about to head down to Belize to fact check my book and open up to whatever unexpected or random adventures take place, as they often do down there. I'm a bit nervous about leaving the girls for a week, but

Stepping Back Into the Fray

What would make a writer vanish on November 9 and resurface in mid-January? Well, a book deadline, for one. Meaning...ta da! Finished. Manuscript brought to New York on January 8, went into production on January 9, and since then I've been full up with doing all the things that didn't get done for the past two months while I was chained to my office chair. The title is The Possibility of Everything, the publisher is Ballantine, and the publication date is September 29. All good. No, great. It's

Eden's Version of the Pledge of Allegiance

Seriously. This is how she thinks it goes.

"Everybody stand up, ready, set, go. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic one nation, under God invisible, with liberty and justice for all, everybody sit down."