Digitally Doodling (& STEAMing) a Must-Have Book Created by @benokri & @dianaejaita for @WriteOutConnect #WriteOut2022 @WritingProject

During a phone call with Ranger Kristin Lessard from Weir Farm National Historical Park and Dr. Richard Novack, Fairfield-Warde High School, we decided we wanted to give teachers participating in the 2022 collaboration between CWP-Fairfield and a National Park several books to spark their creativity and teaching interests - ways to get kids thinking, doodling, creating, analyzing, and recording. Included in this, was a sight-unseen adoption of Every Leaf a Hallelujah by Ben Okri with illustrations by Diana Ejaita. I knew from the cover, alone, that I wanted to order this, so I contacted Possible Futures, an independent bookstore in New Haven, Connecticut, and then had the order placed. 

Sticking with our Doodling and STEAMing ahead theme for this year's #WriteOut (using hula-hoops to target areas to write about and detail), I went out back and took a photo of fallen leaves. After doing this, I imemediately ran inside to read Okri and Ejaita's book. 

Wow. What a fantastic text to accompany the outdoor world so many of us are writing about "write" now, with a profound narrative that is international, necessary, true to African storytelling, and beautifully accompanied with amazing colors and illustrations -- an example where words and visuals meet the eye in brilliant ways.  I am now a fan of artist Diana Ejaita and the ways she tells a story through visualization.

We all need to walk with Mangoshi in search of the flowers that can save the ones we love. Like the trees, we need to let our roots intertwine to be pro-Earth, pro-Truth, pro-History, and pro-Possibility. 

I'm playing with the digital notebook form this morning to visually capture my thinking after the reading experience (and can't wait for Ralph Fletcher's updated version of his classic book, The Writer's Notebook, to arrive in January - it is update for digital note-taking, too). 

Science notebooks. Journals. A Writer's notebook. A sketchpad. A doodle-pad. A digital document. How we learn and collect information is partially innate, but also dependable on stellar educators who show young people the possibilities of how they take in (and process) information. 

Text is visual, too, but images are just as powerful. 

That was the theme of Karen Romano Young's talk last night, and she brought several scientists to make her case. It was won of the best programs I've attended in a long, long while. 

Now, if only I can figure out a way to sell all these fallen leaves in my back yard to make a profit! Too bad they can't be molded to form seeds and roots after the rakes, leaf-blowers, and wind! 

Either way, order Every Leave a Hallelujah for your classroom. You won't regret it. And today, get your kids outdoors with a pen, a notebook, and curiosity. That's what it is all about.