Yesterday, we drove over the bleak midwinter (okay, mid-fall) prairies to the Kansas farm where my husband, Leonard Goering, spent his childhood. (He resists saying he “grew up” there, commenting that he didn’t grow up until he went off to Northwestern University in Chicago.) The day made me think about some eerily beautiful and strange connections of my
These kids were born into Ethiopian families too poor to afford the uniforms that allow children to attend public school. Yet here they are. They attend school…they eat bread…thanks to never-ending efforts of an Ethiopian-American father who quit his job to found a school and has the audacity to think a regular person can keep a school going. The picture
I had one of those driveway moments when I heard Peter Sagal talking on the radio about whether maybe humans are wired to always want more. As he says, “A medieval emperor would look at my stocked refrigerator, my closets filled with clothes, my powerful machinery, and immediately start coming up with ideas for a new
Last time I was in Minneapolis, it was Jan. 2 and the very beginning of the Year of Lanie. I was meeting (for the second day in a row) reading families who love American Girl books and were excited about Lanie. My sister Joy even got a member of her family to come to the American Girl
One of the most impressive things for me about having been a volunteer for Ethiopia Reads for nearly ten years is a new understanding of how much good can be done by the marshmallows of the world. This tea party in Boulder involved dress-up and kids and Lanie and Poli (a doll and a bear), but it did
When my American Girl editor and I started talking about Lanie and who she was, we set a goal that this character would show girls that we all can make a difference around the world AND in our own back yards. With all the author speaking I’ve been doing, added to my volunteer work for Ethiopia
Jane Kurtz-American Girl Event-8.5×11- FA10[1] *Reading *Book signing *Special activities …says the flyer from the KU Bookstore about a Lanie event I was asked to do on Saturday. 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. Jayhawk Ink Kansas Union Level two Saturday, Nov. 13 My grand kids liked to sing a Jayhawk song
I remember the first time I heard from a mom who had kids adopted from Ethiopia. Sandra Snook lived in Chicago in those days, and she was headed for Montana on vacation with a van full of her children–and she asked if she could stop in North Dakota so they could meet the author of
Growing up in Ethiopia as an outside girl gave me the most fascinating things to look at and wonder about and worry about. A lot of life in Ethiopia gets lived outside. People do drive around in cars and buses, of course, but an awful lot of them spend more time traveling in ways that
Reading splits opens the world and lets the light peek through. But how, exactly, does it work its magic? Every fall for a whole week, I surround myself with some of my best writer buddies and sink into a sea of words. Yesterday, we were discussing something a masterful wordscraftsman once said–about how the spine tingles when we encounter a powerful
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