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Books Our Middle Schoolers Deserve
When I was teaching sixth grade, I took a group of my students into our reading room to pick a book for our next literature circle. They unanimously voted for The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer. I have to admit, I didn’t want to read that book. It sounded weird. But I ended…
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Dear Dad
I’ve been reflecting about my life as a storyteller recently. And my dad keeps coming up in conversation. I went back and read a letter I wrote to him in his final days where I had written about the lessons he taught me. Even fourteen years later, I carry his voice and lessons with me…
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How Ancient Eats Came To Be
I grew up in the kitchen. When I was too short to reach the counter, my dad pulled out a drawer and propped a cutting board across it for me to use as my own counter. I chopped peppers, eating nearly as many as I put into the salad bowl for dinner. We learned to…
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Balancing Innovation: The Double-Edged Sword of Technology in History
This morning, I was toggling between multiple work tasks. I was writing about the history of the Electric Revolution of the late nineteenth-century for our new modern history series. An article about the history of gramophones reminded me of another item on my to-do list: researching recordings of the Jubilee Singers. I took a quick…
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My Own Wild Words
I’ve had writer’s block for several years. That may come as a surprise for some of my readers. After all, I’ve released multiple books during that time period. My cookbook, Ancient Eats: An Edible Exploration of the World, was the last passion project. The work I have done since then has been merely…work. It did…