Articles about 'Authors'
December 30th, 2012
Towards the end of WWI two cousins, young girls, took photos with fairies they said they had met. Later they admitted they faked the photos. Yet many people at the time believed they were real, including the author of the Sherlock Holmes stores, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!
The fairies came to be called the "Cottingley Fairies". ...
August 23rd, 2012
Dav Pilkey is the author of the Captain Underpants series… which gave both my son and daughter (and my husband) hours of pleasure. In the video below, you can see him drawing Captain Underpants while explaining how reading gives you superpowers!
April 17th, 2012
Where the Bee Sucks is from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. In the play, it’s sung by the fairy spirit Ariel. You can read this lovely song below and listen along to two different renditions of it – one recited, the other sung.
Where The Bee Sucks (Shakespeare)
Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell...
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December 7th, 2011
The Gift of the Magi is a short story written by O. Henry in the early 1900’s.
The story is at heart of what the holiday season and gift giving should be about… a selfless act to make another person happy… it’s not about the money you spend that’s important… it’s the sentiment behind the...
October 15th, 2011
The chant "Double, double toil and trouble" from Shakespeare’s "MacBeth" echoes in my mind every year at Halloween-time. Here you can listen to it and read along…
MP3 of Double, double toil and trouble
Round about the cauldron go; In the poison’d entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone ...
September 20th, 2011
A version of Gulliver’s Travels for kids from 1910 was just released in mp3 audio recordings on Librivox.
The recordings are of a book called Gulliver’s Travels Told to the Children by John Lang.
Check out the blog post below to read about a project you can do with students relating to this book…
Using...
June 17th, 2011
Hans Christian Andersen wrote many well-known Fairy Tales for children. He was born in the city of Odense, Denmark in 1805. In the photo you can see a statue of him in a park in Odense.
We have a Danish song written by H.C. Andersen on Mama Lisa’s World called Hist, hvor vejen slår en bugt...
June 3rd, 2011
Project Gutenberg just released "Songs from Alice in Wonderland" for free on the internet. Scores and midis are provided in the online book.
Here are two songs in the book for your enjoyment…
How doth the little Crocodile
Listen to Midi Tune
How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the...
December 23rd, 2010
Our tree looks like The Grinch this year… It’s bizarre!
Here’s why…
We keep our pup Mango in our living room area. Everything else is gated off. When we leave the house, she tears up anything left within reach.
This is a big problem at Christmastime. The living room is the only place for...
May 1st, 2010
Helen Korablev sent me links to some bilingual Russian English tales online. They were originally written in Russian, but they have English translations next to them. Two were written by the famous Russian author, Pushkin.
Helen wrote:
Lisa, hi!
I’m sending you links to some lovely Russian tales. I hope it will be useful...
March 2nd, 2010
Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss and thank you for all the entertainment you’ve given us throughout the years!
Here’s a cool Seuss link Ed Gawlinski sent me…
Who’s Who and What’s What in the Books of Dr. Seuss
And now some pearls from Dr. Seuss himself…
“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no...
February 19th, 2010
Alice in Wonderland is coming out in theaters next month in the US… starring one of my favorite actors, Johnny Depp! Adding to the excitement is that it’s directed by Tim Burton. He directed Edward Scissorhands (starring Depp), The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory...
September 29th, 2009
I clearly remember being seven years old and listening to Elton John’s rendition of the Beatle’s Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds in my suburban backyard… Looking up at the sky and imagining a girl there, possibly me, floating with diamonds, a rainbow in the background (I guess due to the colorful imagery in the...
September 18th, 2009
The proverb “Good fences make good neighbors” has been around for a couple of centuries in different forms. One place it can be found is in Poor Richard’s Almanack by Benjamin Franklin. His version is: “Love your neighbor; yet don’t pull down your hedge.”
It’s interesting that the specific wording of the proverb,...
August 7th, 2009
The Bee
His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for the bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!
Emily Dickinson – Poems XV
May 7th, 2009
Project Gutenberg just released an online version of Anatole France’s book "Les enfants" in English. It’s called "Our Children", which is a collection of little stories for kids. It has some lovely illustrations.
I read a couple of stories from it to my daughter yesterday and she enjoyed them. The book is from around 1886. So...
May 3rd, 2009
The noiseless little noises of earth
Come with softest rustle;
The shy, sweet feet of life;
The silky flutter of moth-wings
Against my restraining palm;
The strident beat of insect-wings,
The silvery trickle of water;
Little breezes busy in the summer grass;
The music of crisp, whisking, scurrying leaves,
The swirling, wind-swept, frost-tinted leaves;
The crystal splash of summer rain,
Saturate with the odors of the...
March 30th, 2009
Check out the trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. (Coming out on October 16, 2009.) It looks awesome!
Thanks to Troy McDonald at PeekaBookaZoo for pointing this out!
March 9th, 2009
A lot of mystery still surrounds the life of William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616). No one can really say for certain… but this is now believed by some scholars to be the only portrait painted of Shakespeare that he actually sat for during his lifetime. It’s thought to have been painted in 1610, when he...
March 5th, 2009
Nancy wrote to me looking for: “the complete poem by Walter de la Mare which starts with: ‘Someone came a-knocking on my wee small door….’”
Here is Walter de la Mare’s poem called SOME ONE:
SOME ONE
Some one came knocking
At my wee, small door;
Some one came knocking,
I’m sure – sure – sure;
I listened, I opened,
I looked to...
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