Subject: Friend, author thoughts (Sendak, Dante, Hubbard), convention specials, and more
8 May 2012
Dear Friend,
I hope you're having a beautiful spring. When we arrived back from the Memphis and Cincinnati conferences recently, we came home to a world abloom. Each evening, the air is fragrant with the scent of roses, Carolina jasmine, viburnum, calycanthus (a lovely melon-scent), pinks, and other blossoms both cultivated and wild. Even the tall purple and yellow irises bear a sweet perfume. My Don Juan rose has climbed into a crape myrtle, and the climbing hydrangea is slowly devouring the front steps. This is one case where a picture isn't really worth 1000 words, but of course, I've added one anyway.
The Convention Specials have been posted. These are the same offers I share at conferences, because I know that not all of you will be able to make it to a convention (though if you can possibly do it, it's totally worth while). This year, I figured out how to offer some of the e-books as bundles as well, so those should be available soon (e-book downloads have to be tested and approved before they can be sold). Enjoy!
May the rest of your school year be joyous!
Blessings,
Janice Campbell
Articles from the Blogs
What Matters in Entrepreneurship is Whether You Can Get a "Message to Garcia"
Diligence is something that we can all try to teach, but sometimes it's hard to convey to students what we mean by being diligent or doing a job thoroughly. This article is centered around an article by Elbert Hubbard that perfectly illustrates the meaning of diligence. It's also a good example of a distinctive writing voice, and may be a good subject for a copywork assignment for your teens. I hope you enjoy sharing it with your students.
You may also be interested in Entrepreneurship vs. an MBA, another infographic-based article.
History of Homeschooling: An Infographic
Long before anyone thought it was a great idea to institutionalize children and young people for most of their waking hours, home education was happening. This interesting infographic shares a bit of history and offers a rather odd comparison of homeschool with traditional schooling.
*Note: Read the whole article by clicking the title-- it's a link, and will take you to the correct blog.
Resource of the Month
The World of Dante is a beautifully designed website, chock-full of context information for Dante's works (Paradisio, Purgatorio, Inferno). Even if you haven't yet reached the World Literature level of Excellence in Literature, I think you'll enjoy browsing here. There is art, music, maps, and many useful links.
News from the World of Books
Maurice Sendak, best known as a superb children's author and illustrator, passed away yesterday. You'll find a brief video of a reading of Where the Wild Things Are, my favorite book from childhood, at the Excellence in Literature Facebook page (I hope you'll "Like" the page while you're there-- I try to post good things for book lovers). I believe there are only 10 sentences in this book, but each is beautifully crafted. And the monsters are adorable!
Upcoming Conferences
I'm delighted to be part of each of these conferences, and hope I'll meet some of you there. You'll find workshop listings on each of the websites (click on the conference place name to go to its website for more information).
California Homeschool Convention, Long Beach, CA, May 24-26, Booth 607 at the Long Beach Convention Center: I'm looking forward to visiting one of my favorite places in the world-- Southern California, which is my hometown. If you don't live in SoCal, this would be a good opportunity to visit and let your family do some fun tourist activities while you enjoy the conference in glorious solitude. In addition to the many museums and traditional tourist areas, there are places you can visit for free or at low cost, such as the beach, mountains, or desert, or Huntington Library (beautiful gardens), the L.A. County Arboretum, Oliveras St., Chinatown, Little Tokyo, and many other things I'm doubtless forgetting. And while there, don't forget to eat a lot of really great Mexican food-- the taco trucks that roam the streets have yummy fare. Other goodies include pastramis from The Hat (not your usual pastrami on rye), See's candy (Toffeettes! butterscotch squares! California brittle!), lots of fresh, fresh fruit and veggies, and much, much more. As you can tell, I wish I were going to be there longer;-).
ICHE: Naperville, IL, June 7-9, at the Illinois Christian Home Educator's State Convention at Calvary Church. In addition to four keynote speakers and over 100 workshops, this lovingly planned conference offers several interesting Special Features, including 30 Days of Prayer and Devotions leading up to the conference, Generation Joshua and iElect, a Young Entrepreneurs section, and a multimedia presentation called How Big is God?
Northeast Homeschool Convention, Hartford, CT, June 14-16, at the Connecticut Convention Center. I don't have as many details for this conference yet, but will try to get them to you as the time draws closer. We are planning to drive directly from ICHE to Hartford, so if you have any suggestions for places we really must see (or meals we really must eat), please feel free to reply to this e-mail and share them.
I hope you've enjoyed this issue of the newsletter-- it's a bit longer than usual, but there seemed to be a lot of things to share. Plus, it took almost three days to finish, due to the new system my mailing service has installed. It will probably be very nice when it starts working right, but it's not there yet. I'm pretty sure that my stock of patience has gone way up due to the tribulation of repeatedly losing things!
Don't forget the Convention Specials, and please feel free to share this newsletter with others. Just let them know you sent it so they'll know whom to thank.
Blessings,
Janice
www.ExcellenceInLiterature.com