Lauri Meyers .

Whatever your views are about the Common Core, I have to say there is definitely a lot of focus on writing! My daughter’s first grade class had Writers Workshop and even had a special event for parents to hear their opinion pieces. (I learned A LOT about why Minecraft is awesome and how beautiful cardinals are.) This focus sparked some questions from a pal of mine. “Miss Lauri, can kids write books?” “Anyone can write a book.” “Yeah, but can 7-year-olds write books?” My illustrations when I was a kid are not as good as Josie's! “I happen to know some very cool kids who write. Like Erik Weibel , who is 13 now, but used to be 9 when he started blogging and well, I’m sure he was 7 before then. His sister Josie is an illustrator and his friend Felicia wrote a book , or well her pets did.   “We had an author visit the school which was so cool!” “Yeah, that was totally cool. Erik and Felicia interview real authors in videos at The Write Chat.  Some...

We got 10 visitors for my daughter's birthday – caterpillars! Just like in The Very Hungry Caterpillar, these critters start out tiny as a pin head and are huge (in a small sense) within a week. Then the calls from down the stairs begin, “Mom, one is in j-formation! J-formation!” So you watch and you think you will catch it spinning its chrysalis, but you get distracted and when you come back it’s all tucked inside its new apartment. "J-FORMATION!!" We observed all of the caterpillars do this. Well, not all. Not George. He just kept climbing around, maybe wondering why no one would answer his request to play croquet. Maybe he just wanted to be a little fatter. Maybe he was the shy one and enjoyed having a little space to explore without his sister giving him caterpillar wedgies. Maybe. Or maybe George had a case of Metamorphosis Procrastination. He would worry about not knowing how to make a chrysalis. “What if I accidentally do it upside down and ...