I was sharing a short bio of author and poet Jimmy Santiago Baca with my high school students the other day. To give the abbreviated...

First, let me apologize for the photo of the anorexic cheerleader. (Somebody needs to bring that girl a taco plate. Grande!) I only...

This isn't the song I thought I was going to write, but it's the song that wanted to be written. A gift to family and friends. Please...

The morning I realized I was going to quit teaching was not a morning of difficult students. There was no run-in with a grouchy building pri

“This is one of the main reasons I believe that adolescence can be so fraught for so many. Just as we start to catch the barest glimpses...

I often tell students that, once I have completed a story or a poetry collection and have rather miraculously gotten it onto the desk of...

Maybe books should come with disclaimers. Go, Dog. Go! WARNING: Readers may become unnecessarily critical of other people’s hats. Harold...

8 = Number of picture book rejection letters and non-replies in 2018 An embarrassingly low number! I vow to get a lot more writing done...

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and for many, that means friends, family, and…pie! Lots and lots of pie! I’m a big fan of pie. Fruit pies...

I had the pleasure of providing a number of outdoor community concerts this past summer, sometimes playing back-to-back shows with other...

I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s worth repeating. I love clearly-defined poem requests. I love requests that, when you open the front...

There are a handful of questions that turn up over and over again from students when I’m visiting schools. How many books have you...

I’m here in San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala - my first visit to this wonderful, noisy, disparate, and warmly welcoming country. San Pedro...

There’s a gem of an anecdote tucked away in Michael Feinstein’s book Nice Work If You Can Get It. George Gershwin had accidentally left a...

There’s a 13th century tile fragment displayed on the wall of St. Edward’s Church in the Cotswold village of Stow-on-the-Wold, England....

Each year I tell myself this is the summer I cut way back on props and complications and create an engaging, high-participation library...

Kim and I are home from a wonderful 15 days in England. A handful of those days were spent in the southern countryside where we were able...

I was invited to submit a poem for an anthology recently on the topic of parent/teacher conferences. This poem turned out to be not quite...

This past weekend, between programs in South Dakota/Iowa and Kentucky, I had the pleasure of staying with my good buddy Mark just outside...

In the Country Music Hall of Fame are two yellowed pages torn carelessly from a comb-bound journal. You might struggle to find them....