Library Lady's Corner
New Release - Parzival: A Forerunner of the Modern Human Being June 25 2024
ParzivalForerunner of the Modern Human Being
The archetypal legend of the famous, bungling hero, Parzival, holds lessons for all human beings. We start out as ignorant ingenues, without a clue about the great world; stumbling after what we believe we want and wish to be, hurting others, making wrong assumptions, following rules others have laid out instead of finding for ourselves what it is that we are called to do.
Book Review - Verses and Poems and Stories to Tell March 10 2024
The Waldorf Class Play and Reccomended Reading January 11 2024
From grade one through grade twelve, the annual class play is an essential feature of the life of every Waldorf class. The play is often the defining event of the year, the event most clearly remembered and most often referred to, long after much else of what happened is lost to memory.Book Review: Handbook of Research on Waldorf Education — Jost Schieren, Ed. August 25 2023
Here, at long last, is a book which identifies the scientific underpinnings of Waldorf Education!!
Published by Routledge, the internationally acclaimed academic publisher, this book defines the exclusion of Waldorf Education for 100 years from circles on educational science, missing the opportunities for mutual stimulation and collaboration.
Book Review: Louis Braille - A Blind Boy Invents Braille July 24 2023
How can we stand firm in love and gratitude when misfortune descends upon us? Trust in the purposefulness of all that comes our way is a difficult skill to master! Louis Braille demonstrates to us a humbling answer to this challenging question and to mastering the demanding skill of trust.This latest release from Waldorf Publications has us excited like never before. Louis Braille, a Blind Boy Invents Braille is another masterful telling of a story by Jakob Streit, made possible by the Streit Family Foundation in Switzerland and by Nina Kuettel, the fine translator.
Book Review: From Mechanism to Organism: Enlivening the Study of Human Biology August 16 2022
At long last, a resource book for high school teachers, parents, and students that brings to life the experiential approach to the complex subject of human biology! Michael Holdrege’s decades of experience at the Chicago Waldorf School teaching middle and high school science and math shines on every page of this penetrating book. From Mechanism to Organism contains wonderful illustrations that demonstrate valuable ideas for teachers to use in bringing different aspects of the ninth-and tenth-grade science in a Waldorf curriculum to high school students.Book Review: Waldorf Book of Blessings from Around the World June 07 2022
Waldorf Book of Blessings from Around the World is now available!
Gratitude! What an uplifting attitude of soul to cultivate and maintain! It can be difficult to find in today’s contentious world; yet here it is in abundance in this little book by Warren Lee Cohen. It is overflowing with gratitude for the food we eat and the friends and family with whom we share our meals. All around the world, families and friends ask for blessings on their meals with a spirit of quiet peace. So many different cultures and languages are represented in this powerhouse collection!
Book Review - Honey Bee Haven January 12 2022
Honey Bee Haven that is a real delight. Teaching ourselves and our children about the precious work done by pollinators, especially bees, has become a topic of some urgency in the last decades. With gloriously colorful pictures, done in watercolor paintings by the author, and the simple telling of how bees live and work, a penetrating story gets told in this little masterpiece of a book. It is about the significance of the work of honey bees, and about our part in making them feel appreciated, cared-for, and loved!
Book Review: The First Waldorf Teachers December 08 2021
Read of them in the NEW Waldorf Publications book: The First Waldorf Teachers: Twelve Biographical Vignettes of Leaders of the First School
Tomas Zdrazil has collected twelve biographical sketches of the twelve teachers and Emil Molt, the bold industrialist who started the whole idea of a new school, in one collection, wrapped in a single book by your friends at Waldorf Publications!
Book Review: Bare Hand Crafting - the sequel to Bare Hand Knitting November 01 2021
Bare Hand Crafting II, the Sequel to Bare Hand Knitting I, Is Here at Last!If you loved Bare Hand Knitting, here is Aleshanee Akin’s next volume, Bare Hand Crafting 2! It is filled with more advanced techniques using yarn, thread, and your own two beautiful hands! Many have asked about this upcoming treasure trove of creativity and now it is here! In addition to learning how to knit without needles, you can learn to hand knit in three dimensions, and to crochet, embroider, and combine all your skills to make lovely things to wear, to play with, and to enjoy.
Book Review: Form Drawing October 11 2021
Form Drawing is a book about a subject unique to Waldorf schools. This book offers the best introduction to form drawing this Library Lady has ever seen! Form Drawing is full-color and bursting-with-illustrations—it is a must-have for understanding this powerful and engaging artistic subject!
Beginning on the first day of first grade, form drawing helps artistically to develop in children a sense of space, movement, balance, proportion,
Book Review: Like a Phoenix from the Ashes March 02 2021
Burnout is a global phenomenon, particularly during this pandemic. There are reports of illnesses related to burnout from almost every country around the world. During this time of fear about illness and death, and lock-down that curtails events that give our hearts contact with others — celebrations, artistic opportunities, and chances to rejoice — burnout becomes a particularly timely issue to discuss.Book Review: Xavier Sings Stories of His Alphabet Friends January 12 2021
Technology has opened vistas galore on the science of brain development. One remarkable discovery for Waldorf teachers and parents is how potent music is in developing memory. All of us are much more likely to remember something if we learn it in song.
This isn't surprising in one significant way: music often makes us feel, sometimes very deeply. It cultivates a mood, and we are more likely to recall the mood than the content. If something is very funny or very sad or very moving or very shocking, we are much more likely to remember than if there is no mood at all. Once the mood is evoked, the content then follows.
Book Review - Tatatuck’s Journey to Crystal Mountain October 07 2020
Finding a story that has authentic imagination is a true delight and this story of a small gnome hero has just that! Tatatuck is an ordinary root pulling gnome who wishes to become a crystal mining gnome. He is small and so his dream seems highly unlikely to be fulfilled. One day he is asked if he feels brave enough to travel over the seven mountains to Crystal Mountain to bring back an important jewel for the gnomes.Book Review: Growing Up Healthy in a World of Digital Media January 02 2020
Growing Up Healthy in a World of Digital Media: A guide for parents and caregivers of children and adolescentsThis is an essential and timely book that addresses the dangers of screen time, addiction, and EMFs on human beings, especially on young ones. It helps empower parents and teachers to be mindful and vigilant. The overwhelming acceptance of digital media (digital everything!) happened as if without Input from us, parents, teachers, everyone! Schools, businesses, and ordinary people were, within a decade, all managing, reading, learning and communicating on wired, digital devices. Only recently have the deleterious effects of free-range use of digital media become well-known. Behavior disorders, depression, addiction, loss of concentration, and general feelings of malaise or unhappiness have been traced back to screen time for many. The younger the user, the more powerful the impact.
Book Review: Truth, Beauty and Goodness June 07 2019
Truth, Beauty and Goodness: The Future of Education, Healing Arts and Health Care
Lectures by Michaela Glöckler
This book offers the best we can offer to children in need of special care. The transformative powers of truth, beauty, and goodness are those that give birth to love, the most potent agent in a child’s development possible.
Interview with Betty Staley, author of "Tending the Spark" May 02 2019
Betty Staley’s new book, Tending the Spark, Lighting the Future for Middle Schools Students, has generated a spark! Clearly, all of us responsible for this vulnerable age need help in understanding. Meg Gorman stepped up to interviewing Betty to find out more about her motives in writing this book.Book Review: Tending the Spark April 04 2019
Tending the Spark: Lighting the Future for Middle School Students is Betty Staley’s latest contribution to better understanding child development to better educate the child. This is a book every parent and teacher of eleven to fifteen-year-olds must read! Tending the Spark covers a multiplicity of topics related to raising and teaching middle-schoolers. Everything from physical development, brain development, peer pressure, social media, and creativity are covered in this thorough sweep through middle school changes and realities.Interview with Frederick Amrine, author of Kicking Away the Ladder March 26 2019
We asked Fred Amrine, author of the newest release from Waldorf Publications, Kicking Away the Ladder, the Philosophical Roots of Waldorf Education, why he wrote his book and why its content is so important.
Fred Amrine: It’s very important for people to understand the roots of Waldorf education in German idealism. German idealism was, in fact, Steiner’s first choice as a vehicle and a language in which to put forth Anthroposophy. For a variety of reasons, this didn’t work out....
Book Review: Kicking Away the Ladder March 12 2019
It’s important to investigate the philosophical underpinnings of something as influential as the educational approach for our children. Clues about the image of human development, respect for life on earth, and the reasons for different methods used can be more deeply understood by comprehending the founding principles of educational philosophy.
In addition, following the lines of philosophical thought trains our own thinking and promotes clarity; qualities our children are inevitably going to imitate. Since the crown jewel of all education is thinking (clearly and inventively, lately called “executive function,” or “critical thinking”),
Book Review: Music from Around the World for Three-Part Recorder Ensembles December 17 2018
Music from Around the World for Recorder, edition II, by Michael Preston, is a robust collection of wonderful tunes and arrangements representing cultures of the world, designed and composed for three recorders — soprano, alto, and tenor.Michael Preston’s book has in it all that is needed to envelop youngsters in beautiful harmony. His thoughtful and beautiful arrangements are fashioned to avoid technical difficulties that can be found in some recorder arrangements.
Book Review: Research Bulletin, Special Issue: Technology’s Rightful Place October 15 2018
This new book from Waldorf Publications is a compilation of three consecutive issues of the Research Bulletin all devoted to examination of technology and the results of its use. The Research Institute for Waldorf Education (RIWE) held three international colloquia over as many years, expanded board meetings over several days, with presenters who prepared different aspects of technology, the element of silicon, and research on electronics. The book offers a handy reference to fine essays on the power, miraculous effectiveness, and devastation that result from technology’s defining of our culture.Book Review: Matt McFlack and His Flyaway Kite July 26 2018
Here comes a darling children’s book about a little fellow who spends his wealth on a kite, blue yellow, and white. Through rhythmic verses, the story is told of Matt’s difficulties with a kite that demonstrates it has a personality of its own and takes train rides, wind rides, and long sails away from his little friend.The illustrations are beautifully rendered with colors that express the friendship of the kite and the boy very well.
Book Review: The Four Temperaments May 23 2018
Helmut Eller’s new book, The Four Temperaments gives us a fresh new look at the four temperaments — sanguines, melancholics, cholerics, and phlegmatics. Eller goes into great depth in examining all the implications of the tendencies in youngsters (and in people) of one temperament or another, giving teachers and parents powerful means with which to reach children and to help them to find their way as they grow.- Page 1 of 2
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