Caroline McAlister
  • Home
  • Books
    • John Ronald's Dragons
    • Brave Donatella and the Jasmine Thief
    • Holy Mole!
  • About
  • Blog
  • For Teachers
  • Contact

Martin Gardner and Math Games

10/24/2015

1 Comment

 
​http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/12/opinion/the-importance-of-recreational-math.html?_r=0
      It’s funny for me to be writing a blog post in response to an article about recreational math.  I am after all the most mathematically challenged person in the universe.  My children realized by about fourth grade that they had already surpassed me.  When students ask what they need to make on a test to get an A in my class, I tell them they will have to do that math themselves. 
      But enough about my math challenges.  I was surprised to see in the article the name Martin Gardner and to discover that he was famous in the math world for creating elaborate puzzles.  I, of course, know Martin Gardner as the editor of the annotated Alice in Wonderland.  
Picture
       And it makes perfect sense that as a mathematician, Martin Gardner would be interested in Lewis Carroll.  Lewis Carroll taught mathematics and logic at Oxford. 
       But the more important connection between Gardner and Carroll is their love of puzzles and play, their belief that learning should be fun.  Perhaps if I had played more mathematical games, I would have less trouble now adding up my students’ grades.  And I certainly hope, as the article suggests, that recreational mathematics will find a place in the Common Core.
1 Comment

Tolkien's Map

10/24/2015

2 Comments

 
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/23/jrr-tolkien-middle-earth-annotated-map-blackwells-lord-of-the-rings
​

I was thrilled and intrigued to read about this new discovery of Tolkien “ephemera” as Blackwells calls it.  The map reveals many of the reasons I love Tolkien.  First of all, it shows how much his imagination was visual as well as textual and linguistic.  He was a happy man with a sketch pad and a set of ink pens; his artwork helped feed his writing and vice versa.  
Picture
​Consider the careful details that went into just the imaginary postage stamps on his Father Christmas letters.  Just the lettering itself on the stamps is beautiful.  Tolkien understood that text could be art and art could be text.
The discovery  also reveals his love of maps, which Bilbo Baggins shared with him.  “He loved maps, and in his hall there hung a large one of the country round with all his favorite walks marked on it in red ink.”  Maps were integral to Tolkien’s fantasy worlds, to his plots, to his writing process.  As writers we could all learn from him to do more mapping.
And most importantly of all, the detailed annotations reveal his scholarly, curmudgeonly insistence on perfection.  They reveal his desire to control how his work was printed and transmitted down to the smallest minutiae. 
Hooray for Tolkien!  What a great find!
2 Comments

    Caroline McAlister

    Caroline is an avid reader, children's writer, and teacher. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and dog. Check out her bio for more!

    Archives

    December 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    July 2015

    Categories

    All
    Abingdon
    Adam Gidwitz
    Alberto Manguel
    Alice Medinger
    Antonio Iturbe
    A Secret Vice
    Book Review
    Book Trailer
    Boo Review
    Caucus Race
    Childhood
    Class
    C.S. Lewis
    Dita Kraus
    Elections
    Eliza Wheeler
    Emily Jenkins
    Every Campus A Refuge
    Fantasy Writers
    Game Theory
    G. B. Smith
    Historical
    Hobbit Food
    Holocaust
    JRR Tolkien
    Katherine Rundell
    Ken Jennings
    King Edward's School
    La Belle Sauvage
    Lewis Carroll
    Libraries
    Lilit Thwaites
    Maphead
    Maps
    Middle Grade Fiction
    Nerds
    News
    Noel
    Our Lady's School
    Oxford
    Philip Seargeant
    Picture Books
    Quenya
    Rachel Bachman
    Refugees
    Robert Gilson
    Rooftoppers
    Scuppernong's
    Similes
    Sindarin
    TCBS
    Tennis
    Tennis Seeding
    The Art Of The Lord Of The Rings
    The Chronicles Of Narnia
    The Hobbit
    The Inquisitor's Tale
    The Kilns
    The Librarian Of Auschwitz
    The Shadow Man
    Thror's Map
    Tolkien
    Tolkien Reading Day
    Tolkien's Letters
    Tolkien's Lost Poems
    Tolkien's Poetry
    Tournament Brackets
    Victorian England
    Warren Hamilton Lewis
    World War 1
    Writing Process
    Writing Technology
    WWII

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly