Tag: children's books

Side By Side

Barbara Gruener

Today I’m thinking about the power of the side-by-side walk ‘n talk, a reflection that started for me on Easter Sunday morning when we took this family walk.

Our granddaughter, Leah, who is not quite 14 months old, is a bit cautious around adults she doesn’t know very well yet, so, as you can imagine, she’s not sure about letting her Uncle Joshua, who lives three hours away, play with her or talk to her, much less hug or hold her.

What I did notice, however, was that on this Sunday morning stroll, she reached for his hand.

My heart melted the moment I saw this, so I asked his wife, Auntie Ariana, to capture this Kodak moment for me because Leah was just a chattering away, almost as if unaware that she didn’t really know her walking companion well enough to let him guide her down the sidewalk.

Or maybe, it’s just not as vulnerable to walk side by side as you talk?

I’m reminded that my Dad and his siblings always used to stay in the car and talk, sometimes for hours, after they’d return from an outing. Is it possible that it’s just easier to share personal issues and deeper insights with someone side by side?

Our poolside chairs sit side by side; could it be that that’s why it’s our favorite gathering place …

when the weather cooperates (and we have new chairs!)?

In our book, Birdie & Mipps, the siblings take a stroll to talk through an issue that Mipps is having, an inadvertent problem he caused and needs solve, a friendship that he wants to save, but they don’t sit down face-to-face. Instead, they’re on a walk ‘n talk alongside one another.

Side by side. So it’s comforting, not uncomfortable as Birdie helps Mipps face what he’s done, understand why it’s a problem (even though quite by accident), and talk through what he can do to mend his misstep.

What are your thoughts on this? Would you rather chat face to face or side by side? Perhaps it matters what you’re chatting about? Sound off in the comments or drop me an email.

In the meantime, drumroll please: Our Focus-group feedback is favorable and our incredible illustrator McKenna is feverishly working up the sketches for my third picture book, due to release later this year. Thank you, dear reader, for sharing in our excitement.

Do keep checking back as details will soon start to unravel. 🧶

March Wellness

Barbara Gruener

You’ve undoubtedly heard of March Madness, but today I’m thinking about March Wellness after flying to Wisconsin to co-present a WellBEing growth session at the LACCS Character Conference.

Wait, is taking in a sunrise over Texas an act of self-care? I’m going with yes on that one, because it certainly fed my soul to watch this beauty unfold out of my window of that early-morning Southwest flight to Milwaukee.

We started our session with an improv in character from the movie Inside Out 2; here, I’m warming up to play the role of Anger, who’s mad because she can’t find her bodyguard, Sadness.

It was great fun to engage our audience in this way! Next, we went through some activities and tools to add to the self-compassion and wellness arsenal of these passionate educators.

Who needs a head hug?

Finally, we invited participants to take a look at what’s on their plate, literally and figuratively, as we created self-care wheels complete with strategies that will nourish us mind, body, and spirit.

I continue to delight in opportunities like this one to plant seeds of inspiration and love in the hearts and souls of leaders who are still in the schoolhouse doing the holy work day after day, shaping the hearts and minds of our true national treasure, our kids.

Click {here} if you’d like to read more reflections about my March trip home.

In another news, my favorite laptop turned one and is she ever a little sponge!

Need another wellness idea? Grab your favorite toddler and ask her to bring you a book, then savor the silliness and pure, unadulterated joy of reading in tandum.

It might just be more happiness (and wellness!) than your heart can stand.

Meaningful Author Connections

Barbara Gruener

Today I’m feeling called to talk about connections, sparked by this Amazon review.

Just a few days into the new year, while I was at my childhood home caring for my Stepmom as she was dying, I received an email from a reader. Here’s a part of it.

Hello, how are you? My name is Michelle … I am a teacher in NJ. I have been teaching in the same town & school for 22 years … I absolutely love Mr. Quigley’s Keys … I am currently teaching 3rd grade and I LOVE reading to my class. We read 1-2 stories a day and I feel they are picking up a stronger passion for reading. Every month the students pick their favorite read aloud that I have read over the entire month to find the winner for our classroom. We call it “Bookflix” of the month.  Every March, I do the same thing but we make it like a tournament of books and each book battles another to make it through to the next bracket. We do this to celebrate March Madness with the NCAA basketball.

Well, being a relatively new basketball fan because of Caitlin Clark‘s days at Iowa, I think it’s soooooo cool to imagine Mr. Quigley’s Keys in a March Madness bracket. As you might imagine, it gave me great pleasure to send her class family a signed copy of Keys. I’ve also offered a virtual author visit, so, who knows? I might even get to meet them. Eeeeeeeek!

Michelle ended her letter with this: I look forward to hearing  from you if you have any time. I love telling my class I spoke to a REAL author. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Now here’s the thing: I will never forget the day that Phillip Hoose of Hey, Little Ant fame first emailed me. He’d enjoyed a blog post that I wrote about his rhyming “to squish or not to squish” treasure, and he invited me to write an article and submit it to Teaching Tolerance Magazine. I did, and it was not only accepted, but it was my first payment for a piece I’d scribed. My first author gig, if you will. Oh sure, I’d been writing for as long as I can remember, but getting paid for my words felt like next level, for sure.

Our friends Tricycle Press decided to put an excerpt from that article on the back of the hardback books 8th edition and beyond, and it felt so dreamy. Download a teachers’ guide from the publisher {here}.

Then when we invited Phil to come to Friendswood from the East Coast and lead a Family Character Night we hoped to call “Picnic With The Author Of Ant,” we were over-the-moon with delight that he agreed. Families brought their dinners to our gym, spread out their picnic blankets, and ate dinner while Phil lead a good old-fashioned Sing Along and then a read aloud of his blockbuster book.

So, Michelle, I can still feel what it feels like to hear back from an author, and I, for one, am grateful that you followed your heart and made this meaningful connection with me. Oh, and not that I’m uber competitive or anything, but I do so hope that Keys does well in your 3rd-grade March Madness bracket. 🔑💜🗝️

SnOw Much Fun

Barbara Gruener

This just doesn’t happen in H-town. And yet, today, it did.

Snow in Texas, about 2″ of the fluffy, powdery stuff fell this morning and beautified our town. It was so quiet and serene outside, except for the laughter of the neighborhood kids as they created snowmen, threw snowballs at one another, and made snow angels.

Ok, ok, not just the kids! I challenged my Johnny Angel to make a snow angel, but when he declined, I decided to give it a try.

Tomorrow we’ll have our second snow day, because this afternoon the snow started to melt, which means tomorrow it will likely be an icy mess. Here’s our 2025 picture-perfect postcard.

It was also a snow day in my home state of Wisconsin, not because of a warm blanket of snow, but because of dangerous sub-zero temps. So my Aunt and her 8-year-old grandson used it as an opportunity to practice his budding literacy skills with a Birdie & Mipps read-aloud. His grandpa is my Uncle Dan, the one who gave me a nickname when I was just about this little guy’s age.

I love the idea of our book being a Snow Day read.

What book did you share with someone special today?

Extension Activities

Barbara Gruener

Happy December; to celebrate the holiday season, I’m making enrichment resources for my books. Click {here} to download this Birdie & Mipps word search and look to find most of the words are vertical or horizontal.

I used to make my word puzzles by hand, when I first taught Spanish in the 1980s. I really thought it was a great way to get in some vocabulary repetitions, seeing and searching for those words in both languages. Now there are many freebie worksheet generators online, and I’m grateful.

Click {here} to download the Mr. Quigley’s Keys word search and look for this one to have a diagonal word or two as well as vertical and horizontal ones.

As always, the natural next thing is to ask your learners to create their own word searches, either by hand or using a worksheet maker like this one.

If you’d like to gift a signed copy of any of my three books, I’ve now got them all in stock and would be happy to send them your way.

Before you go, check out my reflections on The Cost of Kindness at Character.org. I scored a 83 on the KQ (Kindness Quotient) questionnaire.

What’s your KQ?

Giving Empa-KEYS

Barbara Gruener

This evening, I spent time stringing 40 vintage keys for the first-grade classes on my next author visit.

During my 40-minute visit, we’ll discuss empathy, one of the themes in Birdie & Mipps, and I’ll point out that empathy is key to connecting with someone by heart. I’ll refer to the key I’ll be wearing as my key reminder, which I also use to illustrate how authors play with words and sometimes even make new words, like calling my necklace an empa-KEY. They giggle and then get so excited to know that I’ve brought one for each of them, all different in shape and size, just like us. So fun, just like this comic that my friend Liz sent my way this week.

In the book, I mention that when mom calls me Barb-a-ra-Suz-anne, that likely means that she’s angry or frustrated with me, so this makes me smile.

Know what else makes me smile? Last week, a family that I babysat for during college 40 years ago reached out to inquire about the best place to buy a copy of Birdie & Mipps. I told her that I’d be happy to send a copy, so that I could sign it for them. Our longstanding and close relationship is one that I treasure, for sure, so I sent priority mail their way, complete with the book and a cardinal ornament. This beautiful text came in on Friday.

Words have power; I am, at once, grateful and humbled by Barb’s kind affirmations. That’s right, she and I share the same name, another way that we are connected. The gift of her friendship and love for four decades way outweighs what she felt was my generosity in sending them a book. A win-win, for sure.

Kindness doesn’t have to be a grand gesture to be great. Share a story. Send a text. Or, like what happened to me this afternoon, pick up the phone and Facetime a former teacher, a neighbor, a Grammy, an old friend. You may not know whether they’re running on empty, but I’ll guarantee that it’ll fill their emotional reserve right up and make them want to return the love in kind.

Kind words are keys that unlock all doors; they’re also a beautiful blanket that warms our world.

As we inch our way toward Thanksgiving 2024, how will you express kindness and gratitude this week? Who has shown empathy, compassion, and kindness toward you?

In Loving Memory

Barbara Gruener

I had a really vivid dream about Mipps a few nights ago, that he came back and wasn’t really dead after all; instead of soaking in and savoring every second with him, I was stressed about how to tell him that we’d given all of his things away, and that he no longer had a job or a place to come home to.I woke up so sad and out of sorts. Then these treasures came in the mail for me.

These hand-crafted, loving reflections from a few of my friends at Howard Elementary’s 4th-grade students are extraordinary in their own right, but extra special to me because of how they are personalized.

In love-ing memory of Mipps … I am so sorry that he died.

These ooze with empathy, which is all about moving from me to WE; don’t we look happy together?

And more empathy: If I lost my mom, I don’t know what I would do. Oh, dear Brooklynn, I hope that you don’t have to find that out for a very long time.

I love it when a random sloth shows up, because it’s what they’re good at drawing right now. It takes me back to when I figured out how to draw Snoopy and then drew that dog over and over again.

And the pop-up cards completely made my day.

Check out the 3-D effect of the pop-up sun and flower; how masterfully this scene parallels a page from Birdie & Mipps, complete with the red cardinal and my Bambi reference from the book:

… but you can call me Flower, if you want to.

On days when you feel out of sorts, find a child, read them a story, then write the author a thank-you note. I strongly suspect that it will put you back on track in no time.

Blessings, dear reader; have a fantastic weekend.

Kindness Knows No Calendar

Barbara Gruener

Today I’m grateful for the invitation to write a guest post at The Kind Voice blog. In the piece, called Because Kindness Knows No Calendar, I detail why it’s important to model and teach empathy before we jump to “be kind.”

Empathy is the theme of both of my picture books, and it’s got a chapter in What’s Under Your Cape as well. It’s a glorious virtue that I think the world could use more of, especially in our schools. Want more integration ideas? Check out Empathy In A {Shoe} Box, Happy ShoesDay, Empowering Empathy, and Sesame Street’s Empathy clip with Mark Ruffalo and Murray.

Speaking of Sesame Street, the most-recent Elmo clip deals with grief, which has an underlying empathy message; watch Andrew Garfield and Elmo {here}.

Need some empathy titles for your #SEL shelves?

By the way, when empathy goes up, guess what goes down? That’s right, anxiety! Talk about your win-win.

Happy November, dear reader; thank you for checking in with me periodically. If I can ever help you in your character building, please reach out and let me know how.

Quilting the Personal Narrative

Barbara Gruener

Today I’m grateful for my mid-week visit to talk with these first graders about the process of writing. I used this t-shirt quilt as a hook, to illustrate how a personal narrative is all about capturing a bunch of magical moments and putting them into a mosaic like this patchwork throw of all of the character Ts that I wore during my 14 years working at their school alongside their teacher, Mrs. Quigley.

Listen in as these budding authors helped me out; their voices melt my heart.

What a booster shot of energy and joy help them on hooking their readers, whetting their appetites, and leaving them wanting more.

I also brought along my Pack rat puppet (see his tale sticking out of the bag?) to share how writing is basically spinning a tail, er, tale about what’s happening in our lives, how it looks, how it sounds, how it feels. We talked about getting playful with words and using them to shape your story, just like a potter creates with clay and they create with play-doh. They giggled and laughed, and it made my soul sing.

Then I read an essay that my son, Jacob, wrote at their age; they listened respectfully as I read his reflections on trustworthiness, then we worked together to help Jacob think of a stronger hook.

Do let me know if ever I can come to your class to inspire your learners.

What hook would you use to start YOUR personal narrative?

Belonging Matters

Barbara Gruener

Today I’ve been thinking about the gift of belonging after my friend Margaret texted me this picture of her school’s 2nd annual Literacy Night.

She shared this with me: “At our Literacy Night, each teacher was asked to pick their top five books parents should have in their homes for children to read. Your book made the pick for our second grade teacher.” Gosh it feels good to belong; just look at Mr. Quigley’s Keys next to Where The Wild Things Are. Be still my author’s soul.

But why does belonging matter so much? We are wired for connection; it’s a fundamental human need. We are social beings who thrive on interactions with one another. Just above our basic physical needs like food and shelter and our need for safety come love and belonging on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. It simply feels good to belong.

So, by extension, when we dig deep and write from the heart, it feels good that a teacher chooses our book to be included in her recommendations for parents to read at home. I’m honored and I’m grateful.

And for Margaret to share it with me? A bonus kindness that has sent my heart soaring. Thank you, my friend, for your thoughtfulness and love; I’m so blessed to belong in your circle.