Linda K Sienkiewicz

Writing life, line by line

Unlikable Female Characters to Love

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Women who refuse to play nice: Jamie Canaves, author of the list 100 Must-Read Books with Unlikable Women, writes that she loves unlikable female characters in novels: "They refuse to be boxed into the idea of what girls, women, mothers, sisters, and girlfriends should be. They refuse to smile through their problems, to not be a burden, to make the right decisions, to play nice. They are human. … [Read more...]

Every Least Sparrow: Special Needs Parenting

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A Parent's Expectations: Looking back, Carolyn Walker writes that it was good that she and her husband didn’t know what to expect when their daughter Jennifer was diagnosed with Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome shortly after her first birthday. They believed she would be “delayed,” and they nurtured her as such. Soon, it became apparent that she would be far from "normal." In Every Least Sparrow, … [Read more...]

Fun with math. Really.

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Playing Foxland! I have to share this amazing math game my granddaughter made for school called "Foxland." We had so much fun playing the other day. Actually, I was quite pleased to discover that I remembered how to use a multiplication table. My skills are a little rusty. The game pieces are little foxes! The game moves really fast. You pick a card and solve the math problem (such as 5 x __ = … [Read more...]

Wading into Writing for Children

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It began with a Ghost Crab Incident On a family vacation last summer, my daughter took my then 8-year old granddaughter and 3-year old grandson to the beach after dusk to look for Atlantic ghost crabs (they're most active in the evening). Dozens of them were skittering around, and it was fun watching them until a large crab startled Oliver by running across the top of his shoe. That was it. From … [Read more...]

The Cold War: Bomb Shelter Drills

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Memories, not so fond I read this post on Twitter: Making America Great Again. Bringing Families Closer Together. Bringing back the #NuclearFamily   And it brought back memories of the bomb shelter drills when I was in elementary school. They were frightening, to say the least, and they certainly captured the Cold War feel of the time. As a child, I didn't understand why our teacher … [Read more...]