What a lovely surprise I received today by the lovely Suchita Senthil Kumar @suchita_senthil! Suchita is a 17-year-old blogger from India and, according to her Twitter handle, an “artist creating chaos,” which I absolutely love. Suchita is currently blogging about her life during Covid and how she works to find balance in a crazy world …
Many years ago, while I was a student at UNC-Wilmington, I had the good fortune of studying under a man named Stanley Colbert. He offered a piece of advice I have never been able to forget: “When telling the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears,’ bring on the bears.” Mr. Colbert had …
My mama has always had a gift for turning the ordinary into something extraordinary. My childhood was a time of magical possibilities, thanks to Daddy and his storytelling, D&D adventures, George (the family ghost), and Mama’s creative energy. Recently, I watched an episode of The Carol Burnett Show (thanks to Amazon Prime) in …
Comic strips are magical. In fact, they are probably the most genius of all literary genres. Think about it—a story gets told in three or four panels. Panels, not paragraphs, not pages, and certainly not chapters. Even more amazing, cartoonists are able to evoke emotions with very few words or images. We laugh, …
Recently, Daddy was featured on the Raised on DnD podcast with Neil Cardarelli. A gamer for forty years, Daddy raised all three of us to play (my personal favorite was DragonQuest 😊), hosted a D&D club at school, and invented his own game, Skill Master, where players use a deck of cards instead of …
Having an imaginary friend is a rite of childhood. These friends can exist in whatever form, in whatever color, in whatever texture their creators devise. In the movie Inside Out, Riley’s imaginary pal is Bing Bong, a pink elephant made out of cotton candy with a cat’s tail and yellow and red striped legs. …
Growing up in the ‘80s, I celebrated the mixed tape. My family has always loved music, and my sister Kathy and I spent much of our allowances on cassette singles and albums by our favorite artists. The house rocked to the tunes of Billy Joel, Whitney Houston, Madonna, and John Cougar (Mellencamp). We boogied …
The greatest storytellers can inspire generations. I ought to know because I grew up with the best storyteller in the world—my dad. While most kids crave a song or two at bedtime, or perhaps having a book read to them, I always looked forward to the sun going down because it meant story time with …
Every child has a magical place that is all his own. For Lucy Pevensie, it was the wardrobe in Professor Diggory’s house. For Harry Potter, it was Diagon Alley, the doorway to the wizarding world. For my son, it’s the old tobacco barn in the field behind our house. For me, it …