Children's Author & Educator
I am thrilled to announce that Louisiana readers nominated OPENING THE ROAD for a Louisiana Readers’ Choice Award! This is such an honor, and I am beyond grateful to know this work of nonfiction is resonating with kids. Click here to find a list of other titles nominated for this award.
How exciting to know my book is hanging out with the Newbery Medal winning book by a fellow Kidlit For Growing Minds member, Rajani LaRocca.
Merci beaucoup to my home state!
Blogging about my OPENING THE ROAD!
To celebrate OPENING THE ROAD: VICTOR HUGO GREEN AND HIS GREEN BOOK, I created a video using Doodly. And below the video find FREE content for curious kids I created to use with the book in the classroom.
I can’t wait to hit the road with Victor’s story. Let’s go!
So honored that The Classroom Bookshelf, an SLJ blog, wrote an extensive article on how to use NO VOICE TOO SMALL in the classroom to lift student voices! A great resource and extension to the book’s free activity guide.
Click on each image to access a few interviews, videos, and more!
We discuss our No Voice Too Small Book Club featured in the Flipgrid Discovery Library!
Check out this Buckeye Book Fair YouTube introduction to No Voice Too Small.
How to introduce activism to young kids. Asked and answered!
Kidquake Sizzle Reel!
Kidquake presentation.
Driving the Green Book is a brilliant podcast series hosted by Alvin D. Hall that explores travel and the Green Book during the era of legal segregation in the United States. Listen to stories from African Americans who used the guide to travel safely. And Hall makes connections to today’s events involving traffic stops and unfair treatment of Black travelers.
Read more about it and listen to the first episode at USA TODAY. And then subscribe!
Blogging about THE KING CAKE BABY!
Sub It Club featured the query letter that lead to the acquisition of my manuscript for The King Cake Baby. To see that post at the SubitClub blog, click here.
Every writer knows the importance of a query letter. A what? That’s what I asked after writing an early draft of my story. Upon learning the purpose of a query and what it entailed, I then set out to learn how to write one. Essentially, it’s a letter that accompanies your manuscript when sending it to an agent or editor and includes the following components: the hook, the book, the cook. Huh?
No worries, at Sub It Club you can learn a lot about how to write a query and more. Writers work hard on perfecting the manuscript they hope to sell. But first you must sell your story idea to an agent or editor through your query. The intent is for the person reading it to want to read your picture book manuscript or pages to your novel that’s attached.
Almost done. There’s more? Yep. To complete the submission process, you must know what agents and or publishing houses are a good fit for your manuscript. Huh?
No worries, hang around the Sub It Club to learn all about it!
My article, The Unexpected Expected: The Transition of My Third Culture Kids, is featured in the March 2014 edition of the Among Worlds Magazine. The magazine targets issues faced by Third Culture Adults & Kids (TCAs and TCKs). This March edition is dedicated to Reentry and Repatriation.
As an adult I have reentered and repatriated more than once. And although there are some similarities shared through reentry to one’s passport country the transition of a child has different challenges.
“Of course we expected the kids to be asked, “Where are you from?’’ A question often asked over and over while living abroad, but their answer usually sufficed and immediately identified them as ex-pat kids. Upon re-entry, one answer did not project that identity. One answer was incomplete. Stating where they grew up or where they lived or where they were born were only parts of their stories. Our struggle as parents is to help them feel whole.”
I told some of their stories about their adjustment and shed light on what I observed during their transition.
I am happy to report my teen and young adult child are indeed well-adjusted in their passport country. And they are still and will always remain third culture kids with third culture adult parents.
