


Students from Ms. Grady's class I video-chatted with from Hickory Creek Middle School in Frankfort, IL.
A New Twist for Video Chats
A video chat this week with students at Hickory Creek Middle School in Frankfort, Illinois, a community 35 miles south of Chicago, involved a new wrinkle for me. Students in three different English Language Arts classes at the school were asked by their teachers to...
Diving Deep into the Worlds Between the Words
A young reader sent me the above rendering of Mr. Spiro’s philosophy of life – “the quartering of the soul” from PAPERBOY. I love it when readers – young or old – make a deep dive into a book, any book. There are the words on the page and then there...
In Memoriam: My Writing Dog
I don’t remember the date when Willie first joined me at the foot of my writing desk, but I know he was less than a year old. My writing routine, born out of working many years at afternoon newspapers, began around 3:30 in the morning. I would climb out of bed, make a...