Blog: #kidlit Book of the Day - Page 1298 of 1303

Space: The Whole Whizz-Bang Story
by Glenn Murphy (Author)

Booktalk: What is a black hole? How do we know that stars and galaxies are billions of years old? What is the difference between stars and planets? Find the answers to these and other space-related questions in this funny and informative book.

Snippet:
Hang on a Minute — What Is the Universe?

That is a very, very good question. One that most people don’t bother to ask.

The Universe is all there is.
Literally.

EVERYTHING. All of it.
It contains everything from vast galaxies, stars, black holes, planets, moons, oceans, rivers, lakes, land masses . . . plus every single life-form that lives on (or in) them.

Six Traits Mini Lesson

Trait: Voice Use this nonfiction middle grade book as a mentor text for voice. No stuffy lists of facts here! This is not a classroom lecture. The informal tone makes it feel like a conversation.

Trait: Organization The conversational tone is also seen in the way the information in the book is organized. How? The book is organized like a conversation. A question (in bold) is followed by an answer. And that answer leads to the next question. The next page of the book begins like this:

Snippet:
All there is? Like, EVERYTHING?

Yep. Everything. The word ‘universe’ comes from the Greek, meaning ‘all together’ or ‘turned into one’.

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

Fearless Creating: A Step-by-Step Guide To Starting and Completing Your Work of Art
by Eric Maisel (Author)

Booktalk: For writers, painters, or performers in any field, new hope for overcoming creative blocks and finishing the art of their dreams.

The blank page, empty canvas, or uncarved stone will often fill artists with dread. But so may the thought of finishing, showing, or even selling their work. It is in this “artistic anxiety” that creative blocks begin.

With an understanding that could only be gained through years of experience in counseling artists, writers, and performers, Eric Maisel, Ph.D. discusses each stage of creation-wishing, choosing, starting, working, completing, selling–and the anxieties particular to each. He then shows how these inhibiting tensions can be turned to artistic advantages, how truth and beauty arrive in the work of art precisely because, and only when, anxiety has been understood, embraced, and resolved. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Snippet: Like a Laurence Olivier who experiences severe stage fright but still acts, like a Maria Callas who experiences severe stage fright but still sings, it is our job to exclaim, “Both creating and not creating make me anxious, and I choose the anxiety of creating.” The task is to replace paralyzing anxieties with hungry-mind anxiety, with the anxiety of wanting so badly to create that the walls of Jericho will not stand up to our trumpeting. This is perhaps a strange idea, but our goal is not to grow calmer but to substitute one anxiety for another. But in fact every challenge in life is met exactly that way.

You choose to do something challenging not because you expect a worry-free experience, but because you want the experience so badly that you accept beforehand the new anxieties you are about to experience.