I remember when my son first started playing organized sport games how much I wanted to be out there, protecting his little ego. At the same time, I knew he had to figure it out for himself. Each game I have had, and continue to have millions of different thoughts flying through my head. (more…)

JoAnne Pastel and Kakie Fitzsimmons are facilitating a featured break out session called: Following your Passion Around Education and Childhood Literacy at The 17th Annual Hubbs Children’s Literature Conference on February 28th. The conference is an annual event hosted by the University of St. Thomas and is for teachers, librarians, parents and anyone interested in quality children’s literature. (more…)

Reprinted with permission from Dr. Marguerite A. Wright, senior clinical and research psychologist for the Center for the Vulnerable Child at Children's Hospital in Oakland, California and is author of the book titled: I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla: A Guide to Raising Healthy Black and Biracial Children in a Race-Conscious World (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998) 120-122. We highly recommend the book to parents and educators of every ethnic background. An excerpt from the section, titled "Do White Children See Race Differently?"

In the first part of Wright's book, she outlines the developmental stages of how young children learn about skin color first and then race. She is discussing the meanings they associate with these attributes. Dr. Wright shares how to raise black and biracial children (and indeed, all children) with as little racial bias as possible in our race-conscious world. She ends her section on preschoolers with this passage. (more…)

To read the article in pdf format please click here: MarineMax Magazine Interview with Author JoAnne Pastel, bring Bur Bur’s Boating ABC’s to a real life adventure By Betsy Clayton for MarineMax Magazine

Children and their imaginary friends get blamed for lots of things, But JoAnne Pastel’s son, William, and his made up buddy, Bur Bur, are different. They got credit for nudging William’s family toward the boating lifestyle aboard a Sea Ray 320 Sundancer.

Bur Bur, in fact, has gone from imaginary to being a character in Pastel’s multicultural children’s book series, Bur Bur and Friends. An illustration of the outdoorsy kid is displayed on the stern of the boat Pastel and her husband, Bill Dunlap, share on Lake Minnetonka. (more…)

At Farmer’s Hat Productions, we love books. This darling little girl used her literary creativity and video production skills to blend the two. It was posted as a test in social media by her father, who works at Fallon Advertising agency and in less than a week, this video has received over 500,000 hits, made boingboing, Cute Overload,trended #3 top shared link on February 12th Twitter, YouTube honors now incl #3 – Most Responded Pets & Animals, #13 – Most Responded (This Week) – Pets & Animals category.

This makes such a strong case about the power of viral media. Take a look at this blog post from Fallon and scroll down to see some of the key things they learned from this process. (more…)

Written by an anonymous mom

My 13 year old daughter recently had an incident with her friends. The girls are all part of the multicultural club and they were working on a project collect food for the troops in Iraq. On a night they were assembling packages, there was a large bubble gum bag on top of a box. One of the girls tore the bag open and took “just one piece” and the others decided to participate, including my daughter. (more…)

An excerpt from the book Making Healthy Families. Posted with permission of Dr. Gayle Peterson MSSW, LCSW, PhD, founder of Making Healthy Families, a website that has won an award from the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists for exemplary information that benefits families. Below are the 7 tips for making healthy families.

1. Orientation: Creating a safe atmosphere for learning from our mistakes€

Mistakes are accepted as an opportunity for learning. Family members are assumed to be inherently good. When mistakes are made, attention is focused on understanding the behavior. Responsibility, rather than blame is encouraged. Natural consequences may be given, but punishment for the sake of humiliation is avoided. (more…)

Posted and written by Kakie Fitzsimmons

February is Black History month. I want to honor it with my son because when I was young, we didn’t learn much about black history in school. My son is biracial and I want to be sure he gets it not just because it is his history, but because it is OUR history. (more…)

The Sick Bug is a book written by author Suzie Bazil and illustrated by Shawn McCann. It is a recipient of the 2009 Gold Mom’s Choice Award. We recently spent some time with Susie to ask her more about writing the book.

What was the inspiration behind writing your book “The Sick Bug”? (more…)