Quote from Mark Twain

Since spring, with schools closed due to the new Coronavirus, teachers and librarians have taken to story time by remote. And my in-box has been filled with requests from around the country for permission to read my books, including The…

Last week, in a tiny farm town near Dinuba, CA (Tulare Co.), I was privileged to lead a writing workshop for around twenty Migrant students. The students ranged from grades 4-8th. My goal was to get them to write with…

Since school closures began due to the Covid pandemic, I’ve received scores of emails from teachers asking permission to share my books with their home bound students. (Music teacher Jen Meyer of Iowa was the first to contact me with…

Ten years ago, following my assemblies at a rural school in California, I was asked to spend an hour with a small group of Migrant students. They ranged widely in ages and still spoke only Spanish. The idea was for…

See if you can answer this two-part word quiz: Which word originated in South Asia: picture, teacher, jungle or chocolate? Which word originated in South Africa: snack, shack, trek, or steak? (Answers below.) I thought of these questions to kick…

My “Creative Jazz Writing Workshops” this summer left me with fodder aplenty to start a new book. As I made the rounds to fourteen (count ‘em!) Migrant Summer School sites in towns like McFarland, Wasco, Taft, Arvin, Lamont, Rosamond, Tehachipi,…