LITLINKS GUEST POST: Our Warming Earth, Sea Ice and Krill

Lit Links: An Easy Way to Find Out How Baleen Whales Eat

This week at LitLinks you can find my article about how you can use my book A WARMER WORLD in connection with reading and STEAM activities. I am happy to contribute to Author/Speaker Patricia Newman's wonderful blog featuring ways to connect STEM and STEAM books with literature in the classroom. My article features hands-on activities and reading strategies for using my book with students, helping them understand the concepts in the book. It posted on April 17, 2024 , joining dozens of previous posts by other children's book science writers and illustrators.

Many thanks, Patricia, for the opportunity to contribute to your terrific site!

BOOK REVIEW of SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL in BlueInk Review

With thanks to BlueInk Review for the very nice review of my memoir SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL. (Reviewed in March 2024). 

From 1948 to 1966, Caroline Scheaffer Arnold's father served as director of the North East Neighborhood House (NENH), a settlement house offering a social center for students and the surrounding community. Here, Arnold recalls those years, encompassing the students, employees, and her friends, while also exploring NENH’s impact on her adult life. 

Arnold’s family lived in an apartment on the top floor of the NENH bordered by a long hallway. Across the hall was a kitchen, a community dining room where all residents and staff ate family style, and a resident living room. The lower floors housed dormitories for staff and other occupants (typically students from the nearby university), an auditorium, gym, and offices. NENH also served as a community hotspot hosting sports, clubs, and social resources. 

Pulled from her remarkable memory but supplemented by research, the book captures the unique settlement house lifestyle. Arnold recounts, with a dramatized but endearing voice, moments of heartwarming tenderness: a wedding where everyone chipped in, collecting popsicle wrappers to earn gifts for loved ones; her father's attempt to invest in stamps, only to wind up gifting her pages of below-value stamps and a note "hope your envelopes are large enough," and summers spent at NENH's project Camp Bovey. 

The book is episodic with each section acting almost like a short story, anchored by a clear emotional core. One of the more touching recollections is when Arnold returns home as an adult after her father's passing to discover letters and memos showcasing the joy he had running NENH and founding Camp Bovey, which became a beloved institution. The book captures life in colorful anecdotes, and Arnold draws the intriguing settlement house residents with a loving hand. 

Part memoir and part time capsule, the author's recollections are supplemented by photographs, letters, journal entries, and newspaper clippings. Endnotes provide even more personal insight, all resulting in an enjoyable encapsulation of one family's experiences as the settlement facility transitioned into modernity. 

Highly recommended for fans of Jennifer Worth's Call the Midwife trilogy.

Settlement House Girl: Growing Up in the 1950s at North East Neighborhood House, Minneapolis, Minnesota

By Caroline Scheaffer Arnold

Caroline Arnold, 208 pages, (paperback) $14.99, 9798864903285

BOOK REVIEW of SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL in the Northeaster, Minneapolis, MN

I thank Cynthia Sowden, editor at the Northeaster newspaper in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for her nice review of SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL: Growing Up in the 1950s at North East Neighborhood House, Minneapolis, Minnesota and for publicizing my book signing April 18th at East Side Neighborhood Services. 

After highlighting major elements of the book, she writes: “Settlement House Girl” is an easy read. Arnold has authored books for children, and she writes in a clear, straightforward manner. If you’re a collector of Northeast history books, it’s a good one to put on your bookshelf.

You can read the whole article on Page 6 of the April 3, 2024 issue of the Northeaster.

BOOK SIGNING in Minneapolis, April 18th, of SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL: SAVE THE DATE!

If you will be in Minneapolis on Thursday, April 18th, please join me from 6:30-8:00pm at East Side Neighborhood Services where I will be giving a program and signing my new memoir SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL: Growing Up in the 1950s at North East Neighborhood House. 

Find out what it was like to live at a working settlement house in the 1950s. Learn about the early days of Camp Bovey, the ESNS camp founded by my father Les Scheaffer, now celebrating its 75th year. Learn about the roots of my future career as a writer, and how these experiences shaped my view of the world.

Until I was ten I lived with my family at North East Neighborhood House, a settlement house in Northeast Minneapolis, now East Side Neighborhood Services. The 38 chapters of the book range from my first days at the NENH nursery school, to after school clubs and community holiday celebrations at the settlement house, to family and school life. Four of the chapters are about my summers at Camp Bovey and their connection to NENH. Few families lived in settlement houses as ours did. When my family moved out, it was the end of an era.

I hope you will be able to come!

East Side Neighborhood Services

1700 2nd Street NE

Minneapolis, Minnesota 54513

For more information, contact ESNS at 612-781-6011

SETTLEMENT HOUSE GIRL: Growing Up in the 1950s at North East Neighborhood House is available at Amazon or to order at your favorite book store. 

SUN FUN: GET READY FOR THE ECLIPSE Coming On APRIL 8, 2024! 10 Projects for Kids

On Monday, April 8, 2024, a solar eclipse will be seen over North America. The path of the full eclipse will pass over 13 states and a partial eclipse will be seen in many more.

It is never safe to look at the sun directly. Here's how you can experience an eclipse safely. This project is in my book Sun Fun, originally published in 1981 by Franklin Watts, and now available as an e-book on Amazon or downloadable on Epic at your school or library.

Sun Fun includes 10  projects for primary school age children to learn about the sun-- a paper plate clock to tell time by the sun, how to make shadow puppets and solar art, creating a pin-hole card for watching an eclipse, and much more. You can preview the book in this video on YouTube about how to make a sun clock. (The illustrations in the book are my own, created in the days of pre-separated art. I had to make a separate drawing for each printed color!)

Enjoy learning about the sun and  watching the eclipse safely!

I LOVE THANK YOU NOTES!

Thank You card from student at Esperanza School, Los Angeles, CA

A wonderful package arrived in the mail the other day, filled with thank you notes from the students at Esperanza School, where I had visited 3rd and 4th graders about a month ago. 

In this card I am depicted in front of the giant TV screen I used to present my slides.

During my visit I gave a slide presentation showing my books, my life as an author, and a little bit about me growing up.

Another student created an illustrated book with chapters.

I then showed them how books are made and we did a short exercise in which they folded a sheet of paper to make a tiny blank book. I discovered that after my visit they had turned their little blank books into thank you notes. Each one was different and delightful. I was thrilled to see how much the students had absorbed from my presentation.

Many wrote about their favorite book.

One student made a wonderful illustrated guide for making a tiny book! Get a paper. Fold paper. Fold paper again. Finished!

When I was growing up I never had the opportunity to meet a real live author at school. Cards like these show me what an impact a visit from an author can have on students. I thank teacher Elizabeth Williams for sharing the students' cards with me. They are all wonderful. These are just a few samples. 

 

PLANTING A GARDEN IN ROOM 4

Seeds planted in rows in the Room 4 garden box.

For a number of years I have worked with kindergarten teacher Mrs. Best and her kindergarten class in Room 6 at Haynes Charter School in Los Angeles as a volunteer in her classroom. We did three books together, HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6, BUTTERFLIES IN ROOM 6, and PLANTING A GARDEN IN ROOM 6. Mrs. Best is now in Room 4 and has a new batch of kindergarteners. 

Last week I helped the Room 4 children plant this year's school garden. We planted peas, lettuce, beets, spinach, radishes and beans. With luck and water and plenty of sunshine the children will be able to harvest the vegetables and make a salad by the end of the school year. While they wait for the seeds to grow, they are learning the parts of a plant--roots, stem, leaves, flower.