On January 22, 2007, the American Library Association awarded The Newbery Medal (the most prestigious book award for children’s literature) to Susan Patron for her book “The Higher Power of Lucky.”  The book is about a ten year old girl named Lucky living in a tiny town in the California desert who fears being abandoned...Read More

The Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is the name of a group of viruses that includes more than 100 different strains or types.  It is sexually transmitted and can lead in some cases to cervical cancer.  Cervical cancer can lead to loss of fertility, ongoing health problems, and even death (4000 women a year die from cervical...Read More

When Albert Einstein was four, his father gave him a simple magnetic compass for his birthday.  Later on, in adulthood, Einstein wrote that this simple toy served to unlock his feelings of curiosity and wonder about the world   He said that from that time on he was filled with a desire to ferret out the...Read More

I’ve written a book for educators called The Best Schools: How Human Development Research Should Inform Educational Practice (publisher:  The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, December, 2006).  In this book I suggest that our educational climate has become totally overwhelmed by what I call an “academic achievement discourse.”  This discourse concentrates on accountability, rubrics,...Read More

A report presented at the American Heart Association’s 8th Annual Conference on Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology suggests that college students who drink heavily may be setting themselves up for heart problems later on in life.  The research measured levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) in college students who had different drinking patterns (CRP is a...Read More