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There’s some seriously powerful energies been brewing up lately. Can you feel them? On one hand, I feel my intuitive abilities have just leaped up a notch. I’m feeling much like young Superman who burned holes in the wall from not knowing how to control his superpower vision. On the flip side of all this psychic mojo is a lot of STUFF is releasing that I’m guessing really need to be released. A step up must move a ton of crud out of the way.

Back when I was in high school, I was pretty dedicated to my dancing. And in the process of dancing in lessons after school and in high school dance classes, I was overusing my dominate leg tendon too much. When I was forced to run several miles around a track in a gym class I hated (still have nightmares about gym classes) I seriously pulled that tendon to its breaking point. For the first time in my life, I was on crutches trying to navigate my life until it healed.

I’m thinking that when we get hurt emotionally in life, whether from someone else’s actions, or from loss, or just from life circumstances, we are injured and have a wound, much like my hurt tendon.

The other day I got triggered. My emotions were set to high and you would think I was injured that day, but it was that old wound just getting re-injured. You know that saying, salt in a wound? That’s just what happens after big wounds. Some wounds don’t heal properly the first time around. Or, maybe, we just couldn’t feel at the time. It wasn’t safe and now that we are, it can truly heal. And just like any injury, the best thing is to stay off the leg for awhile so it can bring itself back into balance, and that means looking at the trigger and deciding what needs to be expressed, or felt, or even avoided what can trigger for healing’s sake until we are off the crutches. (Interesting how my dance injury did keep me out of gym class for several months, but forced me to miss dancing).

Years later, I am still dancing whenever I get the chance to, even spontaneous bursting into steps when the radio plays, but that leg still carries a small throb as a reminder to take it easy, and be extra careful with my soft spots.

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You may enjoy my post on Broken Leg Theory, which is also included in my book, Help! I’m Sensitive. 

RECITAL Lightning strikes a chord and Autumn tap dances on a floor of encrusted gold and ruby… while Thunder claps in appreciation —                       and Winter waits in the wings. Filed under: writing for children Tagged: autumn, ballet, dancing, fall, free verse, free verse autumn poetry, free2rhymeornot, freeverse, freeverse poetry, micropoetry, poems, poetry, poets, recital, […]

Alice V. Lickens‘ debut picture book, Can You Dance to the Boogaloo? was published last week and I rushed to get this post ready for you because I think it’s a very special début; I’d put money on Lickens becoming a big star for she has a delightful, beautiful and eyecatching style.

Essentially an illustrated poem about the joys of making music and dancing, this book is a joyous, sumptuous feast for the eyes. Cats and crocodiles, lions and tigers parade through the pages tapping out a vibrant beat, leaving readers and viewers with a massive smile on their face.

Lickens’ animals have a hand-printed look about them (although actually they are hand drawn, then digitally coloured and layered with various textures) and her use of colour and pattern work very well with many very large scale images, almost bursting off and over the edge of the pages, making this book perhaps especially good for reading to groups.

Whilst Licken’s illustrations bowled me over, the text doesn’t quite match the brilliance of the images. The cadence and rhyme don’t flow quite as easily as in, for example, Doing the Animal Bop by Jan Ormerod, which is a shame in a book about enjoying rhythm and musical patterns. But please don’t be put off by this small criticism: Can You Dance to the Boogaloo? is a very impressive and exuberant entry into the wonderful world of picture books by Lickens (a past recipient of a Sendak Fellowship) . I’m already looking forward to Lickens’ next book, ‘How To Be A Cowboy’ which should be out in Spring 2014.

Naturally enough reading Can You Dance to the Boogaloo? got us making music. Lots of LOUD music!

We made finger castanets out of old lids by adding finger sized tubes of cardboard onto the back of each of two lids.

We created bugles out of garden hosepipe and funnels, decorated with insulation tape (colourful and easy for kids to use) and crepe paper streamers.

Empty plastic containers made excellent drums, whilst washed out plastic milk bottles were filled with coloured pasta and decorated with sharpies (permanent pens – these work well on plastic) to create shakers.

Silver foil mini pie dishes stuck on to lollipop sticks made good cymbals.

With our little band ready we then danced and danced AND DANCED (!) to

The Marcels’ Blue Moon

Who Put The Bomp by Barry Mann

Johnny Cymbal’s Mr Bass Man

The Chordette’s Lollipop



If you want more inspiration for homemade musical instruments you could try these links:

What are you going to put on to dance to now?

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of Can You Dance to the Boogaloo? from the publishers.

I’ll be sharing this post over at Kerry’s Read and Romp Round Up on her blog, Picture Books and Pirouettes – a fantastic celebration of dance, movement and children’s literature.

You may ask me, what has dancing got to do with funeral?  I will tell you that when you go to the funeral of your old dancing instructor you can think of almost nothing else. Such was the case with the service I went to this week.  It was for my dear Ethel Friel Barker.

It all began when I was in about third grade.  My older sister was taking dance and gymnastics and so I wanted to too!  My younger sister followed along after.  Each week we would tromp down her stairs in our leotards, set our dollar on her piano and begin our lesson.

Bring on the tap shoes!  What fun we had learning those dances.  The costumes came next.  Many times they were made by our mothers.  I remember the rumba costume the most.  The top was all gold sequins sewn on to satin.  The bottom was an open skirt that showed off your dancing legs!  haha!… a pair of green satin shorts underneath..and nothing skimpy!…then there were the ruffles of satin colors on the trailing skirt. I remember Ethel teaching us all how to shimmy.  We all laughed!

Each year Ethel would travel to New York to Dance Caravan.  She would learn all the dances and come back and teach them to all her students.  She had students of all ages from the tiniest little ones to the high school kids.  I remember two boys who learned a Russian dance.  Their dance number was mixed with gymnastic moves.

Besides the lessons,  Ethel would arrange for us to have shows.. at no extra cost to us. We traveled to girls homes, boys homes, a home for the mentally challenged.. and then even some Christmas shows for the American Legion.  As shy as we were, it helped us to learn how to be in front of people.  We learned about different people and the situations they live in.

When we got to high school, Ethel helped us with our gymnastic routines.  She rented out the Grange Hall, lugged all her black mats over and we tumbled and practiced for our meets.  All for that same one dollar bill on her piano.

Our lessons continued through high school and we occasionally went to see her for a class… just for fun.  My last class was when I was pregnant with my first daughter.  I remember going slow… I did a limber over… and then felt my daughter kick! That was the end of that!  ha!

Many friends gathered for the memorial service.  My sisters sat next to me and three other friends, all in the same row.  When the minister asked us to read something, I watched as ALL of us dug into our purses for our glasses.  Ethel would have laughed at that sight!  We all laughed and cried.

When the service was over and we sat at our tables for a small lunch, we talked and talked about our dances, our costumes and Ethel.  Before everyone left, we spread the word through out the room that anyone who wanted to, could participate in the performance of the Waltz Clog!  This was the dance that Ethel taught every student. ( My sisters and I do it periodically, even now for fun).

The people gathered… most dressed in black and white.  We almost looked like we were in costume.  .. and then we began.  We sang the tune as we stumbled though the dance moves laughing!  Our last steps were always … just as Ethel taught us,  ”step cut the pie” with our feet.

What a wonderful remembrance. What a wonderful person she was!  We will always celebrate Ethel!

This brings me to this thought.  I have been thinking about it a lot in the last few weeks since I know four people who have died recently. There are many people who live life helping others. It’s such a wonderful thing.  They give and give and give until it’s time for heaven. Their memorial services are happy sad, but often joy filled.  Others take and take and take until their last day. Those services are sad. … almost tragic.

I prefer happy! I like the thought of people dancing at my funeral. .. and singing loud!

Here are three pictures of our Ethel!  She lives on in our hearts always!

Everyone knows Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., but there are many other African Americans who have contributed to the rich fabric of our country but whose names have fallen through the cracks of history.

We’ve asked some of our authors who chose to write biographies of these talented leaders why we should remember them. We’ll feature their answers throughout Black History Month.

Today, Alan Schroeder shares why he wrote about Florence Mills in Baby Flo: Florence Mills Lights Up the Stage:

 
 Rabbit's Snow Dance

Rabbit loves the winter. He knows a dance, using a traditional Iroquois drum and song, to make it snow--even in springtime! The other animals of the forest don't want early snow, but Rabbit doesn't listen to them. Instead, he sings and dances until more and more snow falls. But how much snow is too much, and will Rabbit know when to stop? A hilarious fable!

If you liked this, try:
Bear has a Story to Tell
Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs
Chloe
Snowmen at Work
Brave Squish Rabbit

5 Stars Silly Frilly Grandma Tillie Laurie A, Jacobs Anne Jewett Flashlight Press 32 Pages Ages: 5 and up Inside Jacket:  Sophie and Chloe are lucky that their Grandma Tillie knows how to be royally silly. To their delight, whenever Grandma Tillie babysits she seems to disappear, only to be replaced by a parade of [...]

First up: An Apology.

This post will mention Christmas.

Sorry.

Yes, I know it’s still months away, but Christmas cards are on sale everywhere I go at the moment and so I’m jumping on the bandwagon and giving you what may be my only Christmas post all year so be generous, and stick with me… please?

The Story of the Snow Children by Sibylle von Olfers is an utterly delightful wintry tale full of whimsy, sprinkled with magic and sparkling with charm.

You know how when parents are off out of the scene, all sorts of interesting things can happen that might otherwise never be possible? Well one day when Poppy is left alone, she spies a group of snowflake children dancing through the sky. She can’t resist going out to join them (who can blame her?) and they quickly invite her to visit the Snow Queen. Her palace is “a castle of ice all shining white – the turrets like sugar, the walls smooth as glass.”

Poppy and her new friends share a huge feast, a ball and enormous amounts of fun but at the end of it all Poppy is tired and wants to go home. The Snow Queen understands and returns Poppy back to her mother in a polar-bear drawn sleigh. All’s well that ends well, sweet and simple as that.

This tale is full of comfort, joy and excitement; Poppy’s Snow Queen couldn’t be further from that found in Narnia. And the final line is so deliciously tantalising, addressing the reader directly, as it does, about the possibility that we too might one day be able to visit the Snow Kingdom.

The illustrations are full of pale blues, greens and white, with Poppy in her red coat, hat and gloves acting as a perfect foil to the cool wintry landscapes. Sibylle van Olfers’ style has often been compared to that of Kate Greenaway and Elsa Beskow, and in this book the snowdrop panels used to frame her pictures have echoes of Arts and Crafts design.

Image: http://www.steinerbooks.org/

The Story of the Snow Children has recently be re-published in mini-format (only a little bit bigger than an iPhone) and this little edition would make a perfect stocking filling, especially if you can conjure up some snow for Christmas morning.

Photo: CaptPiper

Having read The Story of the Snow Children we just couldn’t resist trying to create our own palace of crystal, all sparkling and bright.

First we made some snowflake crystals using powdered alum (also known as potassium alum or alum potash – we ordered ours online). We three-quarters-filled a clean jar with hot water and then stirred in powdered alum one spoon at a time until the solution was saturated (i.e. until we could see the alum collecting at the bottom of the jar and no longer dissolving in the hot water). We then hung a star made out of bent pipecleaners into the solution using a paper clip hooked round a pencil, making sure the pipe cleaner didn’t touch the sides/bottom of the jar. Within a couple of hours this is is what we had:

You can imagine how excited we were! We then tried to repeat the process but with many more snowflake shapes.

Perhaps because our solution wasn’t so saturated, the second batch of snowflakes took much longer to grown (several days), but an unexpected bonus was that beautiful crystals did grow on the bottom of the container we were using, so we turned that on its side to create our crystal palace.

We decorated our palace with the crystals we had grown, and then populated the palace with some painted figurines to represent Poppy and her new friends.

Around the side of the palace we stuck sugar cubes using icing sugar as glue, to further create the illusion of a building made completely from sparkly crystal.

Here are some of our crystals close up:

Growing the crystals was a great deal of fun, and definitely worth the price of a packed of powdered alum. Science, sparkles + a sweet story = success!

Whilst making our crystal palace we listened to:

Other activities which would be fun to get up to along side reading The Story of the Snow Children include:

So… is Christmas on your radar yet? Are any books you’re hoping to give or receive in mind?

Disclosure: I received a free copy of The Story of the Snow Children from Floris Books. I was under no obligation to review the books and I received no money for this post.

Once you’ve finished a book what do you do with it? Shelve it away so it can barely be seen?

How about, instead, exhibiting it on a window sill or mantelpiece to invite comment, to become an ever present part of your life?

Not all books lend themselves to this of course, but High Times: A History of Aviation by Golden Cosmos, and Swan Lake by Ping Zhu are not your everyday sort of book.

An almost wordless, non-fiction accordion book, High Times: A History of Aviation takes you on a journey from Icarus via Leonardo da Vinci, to the Wright Brothers, through the Second World War on to Concorde and the Space Shuttle. Key dates and inventions are picked out and briefly explained in the book’s wrap-around cover, which acts as a key for details to spot in the exciting and broad landscape presented as the book opens out.

Ping Zhu’s Swan Lake, which takes the same format, is entirely wordless. One side of the book shows the audience watching a performance of the ballet, whilst on the reverse you can see behind the scenes as the ballerinas prepare themselves to go on stage.

Both books are wonderfully tactile to hold and interact with. Printed on heavy-weight card these are books you really want to feel between your fingers.

Swan Lake‘s illustrations reminded me of 1960s illustrations, and the girls really enjoyed exploring the audience and making up stories about the different characters they could see, from the bored looking lady with a pearl necklace to the rather mysterious animals who have somehow snuck in to the theatre (they made me think of a Finnish illustrator I like, Hannamari Ruohonen, who also creates fabulous wordless picture books).

The printing technique and bold colour scheme of High Times ensures the book feels both retro and modern. Again, there is lots of fun to be had looking for details, from the family going on holiday with their rubber duck, to the zoo animal being transported by Boeing 747. This book is a great example of how science (in this case, engineering and inventions) can also be explored through art. Team it up with The Fabulous Flying Machines of Alberto Santos-Dumont by Victoria Griffith, illustrated by Eva Montanari (which I reviewed here) and The Story of Inventions, by Anna Claybourne, illustrated by Adam Larkum (which I reviewed here) and you’ve got a terrific trio of books to inspire the next generation of flying machine inventors.

But these books are not just for the young. Both NoBrow books are immensely stylish, and as such, will no doubt appeal to adults as well as children. I can easily imagine them unfolded and on display in beautiful, architect designed houses. And why not?

Displaying stories and illustration on your walls is great way to integrate books into your lives, and at £10 a pop I can’t think of a cheaper way to get some eye catching, discussion-inducing art up on your walls.

Inspired by the idea of displaying an illustrated story, the girls set about making their own “mural book”. I blu-tacked a length of fax paper (yes, such a thing still exists, I got mine from Rymans) up our staircase and the girls took turns to illustrate a story chinese-whisper style.

M would illustrate a stretch of paper, then J would take over the story and add her twists and turns. Because I was nervous about pen marks going on the wall I illustrated a simple border along the length of the paper and explained that the girls had to draw inside the border. This worked really well and The HWA (Humane Wall Association) can confirm “No walls were harmed during the making of this book”.

The story grew and grew…

The narrative was somewhat complex, with lots of free association going on, but some of my favourite cameos were these:

“Zeus sent down thunderbolts onto the dinosaurs escaping by bicycle.”

“The dragon and the unicorn came to the magic castle.”

The girls’ mural book is still up on the wall and it’s the first thing anyone sees when we open our front door. I rather like how a story welcomes people into our home.

Whilst we were all illustrating we listened to

Other activities which could be fun to get up to alongside reading High Times: A History of Aviation or Swan Lake include:

What books have you enjoyed recently that are gorgeous enough for you to want to display them as art?

Disclosure: I received free copies of High Times: A History of Aviation by Golden Cosmos, and Swan Lake by Ping Zhu from NoBrow Press. I was under no obligation to review the books and I received no money for this post.

Dancer a Day:

Various comic book and pop culture characters cutting the rug and gettin’ down? Of course. Thank you, Jesse Lonergan. I needed this: Dancer a Day. Here, check the archive. Great stuff.

He’s got another blog, too.