While I was out in Idaho, Jesse Posey gave me a sketch that he had written about growing up there during the depression years. It was a very interesting piece about habits of gratitude coming out of a hard beginning.
Since this piece has been published in a magazine (Jesse couldn’t remember where), I’m not [...]
My children loved The Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald starting in the 2nd or 3rd grade. I enjoyed reading them out loud immensely.
There’s a good Wikipedia article about this series, so I’ll only give a brief summary here. Each book is a series of episodes about a Catholic family living in southern [...]
When I was growing up, I was attracted to books about children facing very difficult times and finding a way to thrive. There was a fair amount of change and insecurity in my growing up — my father died when I was two, my mother moved her three preschool children to New York City [...]
When I was going through the MAPP program, one of our assignments was to watch the Wizard of Oz movie — Judy Garland, Somewhere over the rainbow, and all — and to write an essay exploring character strengths based on what we saw.
I suspect that Sherri Fisher’s article in Positive Psychology News Daily, Professor Marvel: [...]
The Wizard of Oz is a wonderful book to read aloud. It is witty, quick-paced, and wise. AND it is just the first in a series of 14 books by L. Frank Baum about the kingdom of Oz, each one a new adventure with more and more odd characters, each with their own [...]
I’ve always been fond of L. M. Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables. I think of her as a great contributor to the positive canon, not just in the Anne stories, which are full of humor and duty and compassion for the human condition. But also in the short stories that [...]
One of my friends saw the posting about a Positive Canon of Children’s Books and said she’d love to have ideas for reading to her son, who just latched on to the Mrs. Piggle Wiggle books. So this first one is for her - with a series that is great for just-about readers or [...]
If somebody asked you whether you’d like to read a book about a collection of friends reshaping their lives after one dived into shallow water and permanently injured himself, would you jump at the chance? How about a book about a family and friend reshaping their lives after the daughter attempts suicide?
These are not [...]
Since Christmas day, I’ve been re-reading Tamora Pierce’s young-adult fantasy series, Protector of the Small. The story, which takes place in a fantasy kingdom, describes the adventures of a young girl, Keladry, going through knight training, from page to squire to ordeal to knighthood to first quest, against the opposition of many people who [...]
Here’s something that I wish I had learned before I had children:
Process praise focuses on the effort and strategy behind a specific behavior. “You worked hard!” “You thought of a terrific way to help that person.” In contrast, person praise involves making global assessments based on specific behavior. “You are so smart!” “You are [...]
