Margin Notes
These blog posts search ordinary moments in my life. That's where magic hides. Always.
Here Be Dragons
Ancient cartographers wrote Here Be Dragons to indicate unexplored territories and their imagined dangers. Fair warning, I guess, if you enter mysterious lands. I’ve lived plenty of places in my life and every one of them is a mapped dot —a city in a county in a state. Nothing mysterious is left. But I tell…
Sudden Angels Part 3: A Voice from the Closet Floor
If you're lucky, you meet a sensational person at some point in your life. I mean larger-than-life sensational. Unforgettable. Someone who picks you up and turns you around before you ever know your feet are off the floor. Florence Parry Heide, legendary children's author, was that person for me. It was 1988. I had moved…
Fifth Grade: Fifty-Year Puzzle
I remain haunted by one incident in Mrs. Wilson's fifth grade classroom. I still struggle to understand it. Our class was assigned to do the February school newsletter. Some students visited kindergarten through sixth grade teachers to collect information. Some talked to the principal, the band leader, the cafeteria staff. It was the primitive era…
Fun at the Fair
When you go to the fair, you know what to expect. You admire a 500-pound watermelon. You coo over a blue-ribboned pig on a leash. You think fried butter on a stick is a good idea. But sometimes the fair can take you by surprise. That's what happened to me last Thursday when I was…
Comments on DAUGHTER OF A THOUSAND PIECES OF GOLD
We adopted our daughter from China in 1997, and no one was allowed to visit orphanages then. Too much negative press closed those doors. We received her at a hotel, having no idea what her life looked like before that day. Only 11-months old, she certainly couldn't tell us, and there's reason to believe she's…
Sudden Angels Part 2: Instant Relatives
When I was a little girl, my summer highlight was visiting my grandparents' farm in Crawford County Illinois. I gathered eggs, made mud pies, and chased lightning bugs. But the best part was the Saturday night picnic. Relatives arrived by train, car, and pick-up truck. One of my dad's best friends came in a dazzling orange and…
Desperately Writing Always
Writing with my mother is among my earliest memories. My three-year-old mind was fascinated by my mother's literal writing with all its loops. Hers was a round hand, bouncing wherever it landed on the paper. I was desperate to learn how to make a pencil say things. I hovered over her arm as she wrote grocery…
Sudden Angels Part 1: When Nuns Run
I try to walk our dog Maria twice a day. We found her through Animal Ark, a no-kill shelter association who rescued her from the Red Lake Reservation where she'd been left at a dump with her two puppies. Hers is a difficult biography, and her soulful eyes indicate she's been through plenty. She's learned to…
Volunteering: The Importance of Sitting Still
Because I’m a writer, I spend a lot of time alone. Too much time alone probably. When we lived in North Carolina, I decided to volunteer at a retirement village to get myself out of the house and to show Maggie, who was twelve, a way to get involved in communities. I was…
Our Parenting Mistakes
When my husband Cliff and I adopted a baby from China, we were amazed at all the advice we got. One look at us and people must have known we didn't know up from down. A woman watched me let Maggie crawl in the grass and offered, "If you let her keep doing that, you'll…
Third Grade: Certain People
Miss Winkelman was strict and unsmiling. I learned valuable lessons from her that have lasted my lifetime. They had nothing to do with academics. She kept an Ivory Soap Chart listing our names. Once a week she checked for clean hands and nails. We also had to produce a spotless handkerchief or a packet of…
Sixth Grade: English Major Math
When our sixth-grade teacher Mrs. Doty announced we'd be doing story problems, I could hardly wait. Math with words? What could be better? I loved stories. The problem on our homework sheet had something to do with speeding boats. I told my dad I didn't get it. He said he could solve it but not…
You Never Know about a Teacher
When I was in the ninth grade, English teacher Mrs. Billman announced we’d be reading poetry. She distributed mimeographed sheets fresh off the press. We held them to our noses, sniffing the chemical odor, hoping to become momentarily light-headed. She’d given us ee cummings’ “anyone lived in a pretty how town.” It begins: anyone…
Second Grade: The Learning Lottery
After reading about my dismal kindergarten experience, a mother emailed me. She worried that her kindergarten daughter might be learning to coast as I did. I reassured her that gifted educators were out there. My second-grade teacher more than made up for my lackluster beginning in school. With second-grade teacher Mrs. Miller, I definitely won…
Still Sorting and Folding
I know SCBWI members haven't wondered what happened to me after my first essay appeared twenty years ago in their bulletin (Read my previous post.). For those who are thinking about giving up on writing, it might be worth knowing, however, that I finally got published. So, yes, it's possible. Money and awards don't roll in. …
The Sorting and Folding of Writing
When I started writing picture book manuscripts in the late 1980s, I was fortunate enough to meet Florence Parry Heide, who authored over 100 children's books before her death in 2011. She insisted I join the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Desperate to see myself in print, I submitted this essay that appeared…
Minnesota Spring
It's the first day of spring. In St. Paul, Minnesota, the wind chill is -12 degrees. I'm working at my desk in fingerless wool gloves, looking tragically like Bob Cratchit. The yard's snow-filled birdbath and pot of greenery looked spirited in December. Not now. But once upon a time when we lived in North Carolina,…
First Grade: My Dick and Jane Dilemma
Sometimes people ask me why I became a writer. I have several explanations, but the clearest answer involves the Dick and Jane readers, lining school shelves in the 1950s. Those characters puzzled me. Their lives unfolded inside a book, but there was no story. Try as I might, I simply couldn’t understand why they only…
Dancing at the Children's Literature Prom: Continued
See me smiling in the group picture from the previous post? Midwestern nerves of steel. A whirlwind was afoot in the back story for this day. Maggie, the Sweet Moon Baby herself, was in her school’s entry in the Minnesota State High School League One-Act Play Contest. Because they won at sub-sections (Hurrah!), they…
Dancing at the Children's Literature Prom
When we moved to St. Paul, MN, I joined the Children's Literature Network, an association devoted to reading, writing, promoting, teaching, illustrating, and loving all aspects of children's books for every age level. An incredibly decent bunch of folks. Each winter their newsletter appears with a photograph of authors and illustrators who have been invited to…