Events
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Start: 7:00 pm
Another native of Seattle (following Michael Byers) who's moved away but makes visits back such as this is nonfiction prose writer Colette Brooks. She first read at Elliott Bay for her PEN-Jerard Fund Award-winning meditation on cities, In the City: Random Acts of Awareness. She's here now with a new book on another form of awareness, Lost in Wonder: Imagining Science and Other Mysteries (Counterpoint). This is a readerly and writerly bridge between the casually informed layperson and the 'expert'—the latter a category to which so much scientific weight in the culture has been assigned (or allowed)—as if others don't have a serious stake in participating and perceiving. Again, awareness, which includes wariness within it, along with much deep pleasure. Billy Collins comments for In the City seems apt for Lost in Wonder: "A lively mix of narrative, reportage, memoir, and meditative essay. This is an engaging book, so fraught with self-consciousness as to bring into question our notions of writing and literary structure."
Start: 7:00 pm
Co-presented with the WASHINGTON CENTER FOR THE BOOK AT THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. A few years after a captivating Central Library appearance for his best-selling book, Teach Like Your Hair's On Fire, award-winning teacher and author Rafe Esquith returns to discuss his newest book, Lighting Their Fires: How Parents and Teachers Can Raise Extraordinary Kids in a Mixed-Up, Muddled-Up, Shook-Up World (new in paper, Penguin). Summer break time it may be, but the lessons in this book are good for the whole year, and for years to come. Using a field trip to Dodger Stadium as a literary 'frame,' Rafe Esquith expounds on areas of character and behavior such as focus, decision-making, humility, patience, and more. "The most interesting and influential classroom teacher in the country." – The Washington Post. "Rafe Esquith is a genius and a saint. The American education system would do well to imitate him." – The New York Times. A teacher at Los Angeles' Hobarth Elementary for twenty-four years, Rafe Esquith is the only teacher who has been awarded the President's National Medal of the Arts. Free admission is on a first-come, basis. Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison & Spring). $5 parking is available in the Central Library garage on a limited basis for those attending the program. For more information on this evening, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600, Seattle Public Library at (206) 386-4636, or see www.spl.org.
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