Thursday, May 15, 2008

BOOK REVIEW & GIVEAWAY: Child of Wonder: Nurturing Creative and Naturally Curious Children (Wonder Collection) by Ginger Carlson


Child of Wonder: Nurturing Creative and Naturally Curious Children
Author: Ginger Carlson
Publisher: Common Ground Press; First edition (April 1, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0979702704
ISBN-13: 978-0979702709



Have a seat, put your feet up, and get ready for a motivating creative activities you can do with your children or students. This is a wonderful book to help parents and educators better understand and stimulate their creativity. She begins by defining creativity and nurturing then goes on to describe how you can encourage a child’s creativity by giving you step-by-step instructions and recipes for creative activities. Even if you think your child is creatively challenged she will explain in detail how to spark that creativity that you feel is non-existent. The most helpful part of this book for me was how she went into detail about how to set up and organize your creative environment. Carlson briefly describes Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences and has provided checklists developed by Thomas Armstrong, Ph.D., to consider your child’s natural intelligences when setting up your home environment. As an artist I have more supplies than is imaginable and it can be extremely disorganized. Not to mention my husband is a musician and both of us are athletic. As you can imagine my child is probably overwhelmed by supplies and tools to be creative. The first part of this book had me so intrigued that I could not put it down. As an educator, artist, and parent I was overjoyed to find a resource that had endless resources for me to refer to. There are often times that I question how I could be encouraging those around me in a different way and this is exactly what I was searching for. This is a book that every parent and educator with a creative child should read and enjoy.

About the Author :

Ginger Carlson, M.A., Ed. has nearly twenty years experience working with families of young children. She has served as adjunct faculty at the University of Oregon, and taught in public and private schools in the United States as well as in International and Embassy schools abroad.

http://www.gingercarlson.com/Welcome.html



GIVEAWAY:
Courtesy of the publisher, and The Opinionated Parent I have one copy of this book to giveaway. If you would like to win a copy, just leave me a comment. Please no I want to win stuff, but instead comment about my portfolio or give helpful advice on how to get discovered. You MUST have a U.S. address to be eligible for this contest. Be sure to leave me an email to contact you if you win... make it easy on me.
Anonymous comments without an email will be deleted.
OPTIONAL: I would love for you to write your own post, inviting your friends to check out this site. Spread the word because everyone can benefit from this giveaway! Blog about this giveaway on your blog with a link back to this contest let me know and you will be entered for this contest twice.
Deadline to enter is June 1st at 11:59 PM EST.
Winners will be notified via email as will be announced here on my blog. Winners have 72 hours to reply or will forfeit their prize to an alternate winner who will be drawn at random.
The Opinionated Parent

16 comments:

Matt J said...

I don't know how to get discovered, but I do know that success comes from openness to life's messages, resourcefulness, creativity, and continual evaluation of our purposes and choices. I think your drawings are beautiful and I wish you success!

I am enjoying The Wondershop blog and the book sounds really great. I am wanting to focus more on encouraging art and creativity in my children. The experience and ideas from others is a real support from me, a girl raised on TV.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Matt J said...

Blogged ya. Today's "This Week's Favorites" post.

Mary512 said...

What beautiful portraits! You could do tattoo artistry. People love portrait tattoos, but there arent many good portrait artists. Blogged ya:
http://mommyland512.blogspot.com/2008/05/win-child-of-wonder-book.html
Great giveaway, thanks!

Jo said...

Your portraits are beautiful. This might be an indirect way to get discovered, but I would like to direct you to www.wetcanvas.com, if you have not been there before.
Its an amazing artist community which is the sole reason I got back into art. It has enriched my life and I have been blessed to find lots of really wonderful professional artists there who are willing to help and guide. Its a great fun place to hang out too.
Thanks!
Bhavana

Anonymous said...

Do you have an Etsy shop? Depends on what magnitude you want to get "discovered" I suppose. I will say that I am very impressed with your work. My goodness, what a wonderful gift you have that others can treasure!

Barb said...

After looking at your gallery, one of my suggestions would be to have a picture of the original next to the picture of your work so that people can see how true to the original your work is.

As a photographer, one of my ideas to get your name out there is to contact a local photographer whose work you like, and ask if you can donate a drawing to one of his/her clients or to the photographer themselves to hang in their studio. Then you blog about it, hopefully they will, too.

You want to get your name out locally first. As Mary & Heather say, "get famous in your home town first". :D

I'd love to have the book; I've had my eye on it for a while.

barb at perfectlynaturalphotography dot com

Yelowflower said...

I think that exposure is the surest method of success...the more people see your work the better the chance that the RIGHT person will. Good luck in your journey - I think you will do well.

Reiza said...

This might be obvious, but what about offering a freebie? Obviously, offering things free (and especially registering with Prizey) bring a lot of people your way. You could offer a free sketch. That would certainly get you some exposure.

Anonymous said...

I like the "Hey Jack!" drawing

dolls123[at]gmail[dot]com

Genevieve P said...

I've always wished I could draw... lovely work! Etsy seems to be a great place for these kinds of things.

melonkelli said...

If you could work with a photographer, I think that would give you more exposure.

Do you enjoy working with animals? You might advertise in "dog centric" areas like Adoption fairs, pet stores, Bark magazine, dog parks.

Joanne Kennedy said...

Wow! I just took a look at your work and it blew me away!

The one of the dog really got to me. It brought up feelings of sadness as I wanted to rescue the dog from behind the bars. His eyes look so sad to me.

To draw people like you do really does take a lot of talent. Not everyone can draw people and make them look so perfect like you.

I'm not sure how to get discovered but you really need to.

Maybe you could do drawings of some talk show hosts like Ellen, David Letterman or Jay Leno and try to get them to have you on the show.

I think you should also send your work in to different magazines and see if you get in there.

Good luck. I know someday you will be seen by the right person and will make it big someday.

Joanne

Belinda said...

The gift you gave your hubby for Christmas is beautiful. Wish I had the talent to give gifts like that!

My advice would be to keep on sketching and expand your portfolio if possible.

Brooke said...

Your drawings are well crafted, really old fashioned and sweet. To really round out your portfolio, I think you need more action or narrative images that capture people DOING what they like - like the guitar player.

Free Art Printables said...

I like your portfolio a lot, you're work is very talented. I think the only changes you could make are to make the labeling simpler to seem more professional, and bigger pictures to see the details, but I love the drawings and how you captured the characters. If you check on my blog page, I have a link to my on-line portfolio and you can see how I set it up. It may not be what you want though....Thanks for stopping by my blog by the way and I have you entered! Jen R

Anonymous said...

The book looks great!

I like your portraits, especially the expression on your daughters face in Senior Moments