| Quick Links to Content |
|
|
| On Family Reading,
monthly column from
Julie Douglas |
 Devoted to Books At a recent READ from the START program, a mother told of her little daughter who was hopelessly, completely in love with a book. In this article I'll show you how to pick them. |
| On-Line Conference in Interpretive Writing |
| If you work in a museum and have wondered about the written side of interpretation, this on-line seminar at the MuseumED web site might be something to investigate. It's February 20-21, 2008. |
| 2008 Caldecott Medal for Illustrated Children's Book Announced |
The American Library Association just announced the 2008 winner of the Caldecott Medal is The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. From an opening shot of the full moon setting over an awakening Paris in 1931, this tale casts a new light on the picture book form. Hugo is a young orphan secretly living in the walls of a train station where he labors to complete a mysterious invention left by his father. In a work of more than 500 pages, the suspenseful text and wordless double-page spreads narrate the tale in turns. Neither words nor pictures alone tell this story, which is filled with cinematic intrigue. Black & white pencil illustrations evoke the flickering images of the silent films to which the book pays homage.
|
| 2008 Newbery Medal for Distinguished Children's Literature Announced |
In Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz, thirteenth-century England springs to life using 21 dramatic individual narratives that introduce young inhabitants of village and manor; from Hugo, the lord's nephew, to Nelly, the sniggler. Schlitz's elegant monologues and dialogues draw back the curtain on the period, revealing character and relationships, hinting at stories untold. Explanatory interludes add information and round out this historical and theatrical presentation.
 |
| Visit Us Online | Archived editions
Web: mohumanities.org
Digital Humanities projects
Blogs: Humanities in Missouri
Creating Interest
Between Semantic and Social
Wiki: MissouriHumanities.org
Prefer to subscribe to Missouri Passages feed and read it in your browser, or subscribe to a text only email version? www.MissouriPassages.com | | Support the Council | 
Purchases from online retailers amazon.com, eBay, and others yield an donation to the Council with no cost to you. The retailer contributes a portion of their profits on each transaction when you shop through giveness.com/mohumanities |
|
| Hot Competition
for "New Harmonies" |
| Thirty-three Missouri towns want to host the
touring Smithsonian exhibit on American "roots music" when it comes around
in 2009. That's how many applications we received by the end of December,
and it indicates a huge degree of interest in programs about music in our
lives. We will only have the exhibit long enough to serve six of the thirty-three
towns, though, so the level of competition will be pretty high, and we'll
have to assure good distribution. Thanks to everyone who applied! We will announce the six host communities next month. |
Twain
Museum Lesson Plans Appeal to Thousands
|
 To
be specific, the Mark Twain Museum in Hannibal has tallied over 18,000
downloads of lesson plans from its web site.
Many of the lesson plans were created in teachers' institutes that we supported.
There is visionary thinking behind the museum's cultivation of teachers.
The Museum realized that it depends on a national population
that loves the stories of Mark Twain. So it has moved powerfully in a direction
that stimulates great teaching! Look at the ways the museum encourages
teachers...there is
even an annual cash prize for "Creative Teaching." The deadline
for submitting an application for that prize is March 15. |
The
Impact of a Governor's Humanities Award
|
| This is our last call for nominations for the
2008 Governor's Humanities Awards. The annual ceremony at the Governor's
Mansion is always a high point in our year. People bring family and friends
from all over the state, and several former award-winners make a point of
coming back to be a part of the occasion. You can scarcely imagine what this
kind of award means to the recipients. (Look for details
and nomination forms on our web site. They are due by January 25 to
Megan-Marie K. Cahill.)
In hopes of showing the profound
effect of this award, I want to share a letter
from John O. Roberts, an award-recipient from St. Clair. His account exemplifies
just one of our award categories. We hope you will look at the categories
of award and see if you know of a person or an organization that is deserving.
|
Interactive
Document Exhibit?
|
| Greg Olson at Missouri State Archives is a member of a small think-tank I meet with on the subject of visitor-centered thinking. He has created a remarkable experiment at the State Information Center to see if he can interest a variety of visitors in the connection between documents and historical paintings. His account of this project provides a lot of food for thought. |
Civil
War Podcasting at the Border War Network
|
They've achieved liftoff! I mean the twenty
history organizations who are learning the ways and means of digital recording,
oral history interviews, and podcasting. I'm so impressed! First, look at
the map that shows the
location of each site in the network. When you hover your mouse over any
site, you see its name. Click on the site and up pops a description of the
place with contact information. Click on Stories and
you go to an index of all the podcasts the network has produced in the last
couple of months.
Here is one that I think is a great example of how quickly
this network creates know-how. Click on the podcast about "Sarah
Osborne, Civil War Soldier." The announcer on this podcast is Candace
Walker, Education Director at the John Wornall House Museum in Kansas City.
A week before she made this podcast with Melva Hargett, Candace didn't
know what a podcast was and hadn't been to a meeting of the Border War
Network. I told Candace about the podcasting project and she made a bee-line
to Harrisonville for some training. Yikes! Look at how fast things turn
around when a group of people form a win-win project for themselves! |
Julie
Douglas's Pioneer Experience
|
| My colleague, Julie, has a remarkable background.
Besides being a writer and a former Kindergarten teacher, she worked at the
Living History Farms in Iowa. I asked her to write a piece about visitor-centered
thinking there, and she worked it up over the
Christmas break. |
Walter Bargen Named Missouri Poet Laureate
|
 I was very pleased to see that Governor Matt Blunt appointed Walter Bargen of Ashland to be Missouri's first Poet Laureate. Walter gave several talks and readings through our Speakers Bureau in 2001-2002. He is highly regarded among Missouri writers, and this appointment gives serious writing a real boost. Walter has an elegant web site of his own, where you can see about his many awards and books. |
i phone,
i tune, and now i tube
|
| All the buzz I've tried to stir up about podcasting
led to a recent purchase of an iPhone, and therein
lies a tale of discovery
that I decided to share in my January 14 blog. In it you'll find links to
a few of my favorite tunes in their video form on YouTube. |
|
Published monthly by the Missouri Humanities Council, a tax-exempt, non-profit organization
affiliated with the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Federal agency.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Permission to reprint with this attribution, "Missouri Humanities Council, mohumanities.org" and email or post notice of use.