Everything I need to know, I learned from a children's book
Children's literature chosen from The Lion and Lamb Peace Arts Center will lay a foundation for understanding the value of presenting and reinforcing life's lessons through picture books. Interactive sessions are customized for audiences of all ages and interests to focus on a variety of topics, including but not limited to the following: kindness and respect, appreciating and accepting diversity, cultural understanding, bullying, resolving conflict, immigration, aging, grief, and more.
Louise Matthews

Encourage your child to write
Many children experience writing as an odious task. Other children find writing easy - even pleasurable. What makes the difference? As a writer, parent and teacher of writing, Susan Streeter Carpenter has come to believe that a household can be organized to be more conducive to writing. Parents can model and encourage appreciation for words on paper. Communities can also encourage writing just as they encourage music or sports. A writing workshop can be fun for groups of children of all ages.
Susan Carpenter

The Lone Ranger: A character of violence or an appropriate positive role model for the ages?
The story of the Lone Ranger is presented and illustrated by the speaker's Lone Ranger toy collection. In the early years, some members of society considered the Lone Ranger episodes to be violent and unsuitable, especially for children. An analysis of the history of the Lone Ranger and its creators and participants reveals their alternative values for that radio and television program. All participants are encouraged to bring an old Western related toy or a story about the Lone Ranger or Lone Ranger toys they may have had at one time.
Ronald Friesen

Keeping a journal: How and why
Some journals serve as logs of daily events or special journeys. Some serve as personal meditations. Some are utterly private; others are wide open to the public; still others are closed letters meant for a few dear readers. For some journaling is a weird compulsion; for some it's essential to sanity. A journal session will touch on a variety of options for journal-keeping; hopefully participants will come away with some new strategies and ideas as well as a clearer idea of what journals mean for them.
Susan Carpenter

Fiction reading
Susan Streeter Carpenter will happily read from her published work including short stories, poems and a novel, Riders on the Storm. If the audience wishes, she will lead a discussion about how stories come into being and what can be learned from writing them. She's happy to discuss the craft of writing fiction, as well.
Susan Carpenter

The Writing of the Little House Books
Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote: "Dear Children, I lived everything that happened in the books." Many years later, I learned what she meant: she did, in a sense, "live everything that happened" in the books, but she also lived a great deal more. And she did not write events exactly as she lived them; in fact, the books were a collaborative project with her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Why does a daughter insist that her mother take all the credit for authoring best sellers? What in those books really happened? Why are they so beloved?
Susan Carpenter

The Power of Fairy Tales
Just when we thought “fairy tales” (notice that most of our favorites contain no fairies) were long-gone, beloved in childhood perhaps but now out of date, movies and television are proving that Fairy Tales are stronger than ever in the culture. This session deals with how the language, the characters and the plots of old stories have stuck with us, deep in our subconscious understanding of who we are. Susan Carpenter brings her experience as a literature professor, her research and her love of stories, to some re-telling, some history and psychology in the tales, and some group participation, into a presentation that should be fascinating and fun.
Susan Carpenter

More info...
Rebecca Janzen

For more information or to schedule a speaker, contact the public relations office at news@bluffton.edu at least two weeks prior to your meeting.