Opening Secret Doors: Literature and TEDxSonomaCounty
In his TEDxSonomaCounty Talk this past June, children’s author Mac Barnett said, “A good book is a secret door.” Our seventh graders just completed writing novels for the November National Novel Writing Month, and we look forward to reading the doors they have opened as they work toward publishing their work. Our kindergarten teacher Mr. Bush is in the same process with a children’s book. Many doors are being opened at Sonoma Country Day School!
__________________________________
Brain Pickings blogger Maria Popova reviewed this past weekend Fictitious Dishes, written by Dinah Fried (2014), a secret door that leads the reader into a scrumptiously visual world of literary food. The author selected famous meals from two centuries of literary history, researched probable recipes, cooked the meals, and then artfully displayed the results accompanied by the passage from the book. To whet appetites, I shared at Assembly samples, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865) and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1910-1911) to Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (1851).
I earned a chuckle with my quote from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960), complete with the Southern accent: “‘Gracious alive, Cal, what’s all this?’ He was staring at his breakfast plate. Calpurnia said, ‘Tom Robinson’s daddy sent you along this chicken this morning. I fixed it.’ ‘You tell him I’m proud to get it—bet they don’t have chicken for breakfast at the White House.’” You can enjoy more of these “fictitious dishes,” either at the Brain Pickings blog or by purchasing the book as a holiday gift for the literary foodie in your family.
As I mentioned in my opening, we had the great pleasure of hearing Mac Barnett speak at TEDxSonomaCounty this year. Mr. Barnett is the author of many beloved children’s books and the former executive director of 826LA, the free writing tutoring center in Los Angeles.
A quick word, first, about our fourth annual TEDxSonomaCounty, which will be on Saturday, November 7, 2015, in the Jackson Theater. We are moving the date to the fall with the intent of making this tremendous opportunity available to more members of our school community. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. The organization started in California in 1984 with the mission “to spread ideas,” which sounds a lot like our mission to bring learning to life. Many of our students have watched TED Talks in class or Assembly, or an educational animation from the TED-Ed site.
For those of you who have yet to attend a TED or TEDx event, you will see speakers and performances, discussions and displays, multimedia presentations—truly many different ways of sharing ideas worth spreading. The primary TED Conferences are held annually in Long Beach, CA, and the United Kingdom. TED has become a global phenomenon through independently organized TEDx conferences (x = independently organized event), such as ours, which are hosted all over the world.
Mac Barnett was a highlight of TEDxSonomaCounty, and his Talk has since had nearly 1 million views on the Internet and was featured for several weeks as the TED Talk of the Week on the main TED website. To close Assembly today, we watched a portion of Mr. Barnett’s Talk, and I invited you to watch it over the holidays, as well as to enjoy others from our TEDxSonomaCounty events here.
Brad Weaver, Ed.D
Head of School
Sonoma Country Day School
We are…
The premier, fully accredited, independent TK-8 college preparatory school in Sonoma County. Located in northern Santa Rosa and proud home of The Jackson Theater, SCDS offers a challenging academic program rich in fine and performing arts, music, world languages, and social and emotional learning. For more than thirty years SCDS has been the school that brings learning to life.
