“My ‘a’ looks terrible,” my six-year-old mumbled during our handwriting lesson. Failure. It’s something none of us enjoys. But it’s something we all experience often, especially when we are learning a new skill. How do our children respond to failure? In his talk “Critic to Curator,” author S. D. Smith explains the difference between posture […]

The opinion we form of any book is greatly determined by the expectations we bring to it. This is apparent from the hundreds of online reviews I’ve read of The Green Ember.  In this review, I’ll share how I discovered the book and how my expectations were set. I’ll share the strengths of the story […]

“The morning it happened — the end of my lovely world — I did not water the lilac bush outside my father’s study.” The lilt of Esther Hautzig’s memory of exile in Siberia–seared by privation, filth, and loss–keeps an almost magical, storybook intonation. Her cadences are soothing, even when her recollections are barbed. The World […]