This is one of my favorite photographs among many powerful photographs taken by my son Jonathan, now a professional photo-journalist in Birmingham, Alabama. One adoptive dad pointed out the photo tickles memories and sensations of a painting of the Last Supper. You can see a much more stunning version here: http://jkgphoto.com/home/?p=60 The photo matches some stunning efforts to
My heart will keep drifting to Japan, to the immense city of Tokyo where I looked out of my hotel room and saw nothing but roofs stretching to the horizon. It drifts also to the tidy sweetness of the neighborhood of my first school visit, to the cooks in their hole-in-the-wall-places where we stopped to
I love international schools! They are such places to explore… music friends from all continents possibilities the power of words. Often the classes are small. Always, the classes are full of kids who were born in lots of different places, all bringing their knowledge and ideas and traditions and family connections and passions into one little space.
Eeeee. This sun bear is Lady, and she’s getting a shot at life. I’m reeling with the joy of a repeat author visit to Pasir Ridge International School in Palikpapan, Indonesia, the place where kids and faculty inspired me to create Dakota, Lanie’s best friend who is getting to live out Lanie’s dream and work
In the past week, reading student work from the Vermont College MFA in children’s literature has taken me into the strangest places. A music-thumping pit. A shop with furry antlers dangling in a corner. A grubby gym with my teacher’s false teeth near my head. Into a family destroyed by a dictator. Into a family
This week the Bat Poets graduated to the melancholy lilt of the bagpipe and the sounds of sentences from their own stories, and I flew home from the residency for the Vermont College MFA in children’s and YA literature, aka Boot Camp for Writers. Take clump of writers who are comfortable with solitude and often spend their
Twenty-some years ago, I spent New Year’s Eve in a hospital room in Trinidad, Colorado, having a baby. Every other person who came through the labor room (and there were plenty, as I remember) suggested I wait and have the first new year’s baby. The others said I should have the baby now and get a
Travel at Christmas is woven into my bones. When I was five and six, my mom homeschooled me (and my siblings) in Maji, the remote southwest area where I spent a magical, outside childhood. But when I was 9, my older sister and I got trundled down to the savannah and put on an EAL
Last December, I flew to Portland to say a final goodbye to my dad. In some ways, he left our lives so suddenly. One day, he was jogging in the park across from the house, planting potatoes and tending his strawberries and kiwis, experimenting with cooking, considering global challenges. The next day, his car coasted into
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