I was lucky enough to be home this afternoon to hear Terry Gross play an excerpt from her 1986 Fresh Air interview with George Shearing. The jazz piano great died yesterday. He was 91. Shearing was born blind. When Terry Gross asked him if his piano teachers thought a blind person could learn to play, […]

I have a pass to swim laps at the Chicago Hilton pool on Michigan Avenue, and I wanted to swim Sunday morning. The lobby would be packed with fans partying before the afternoon game at Soldier Field, so Mike agreed to work out, too. That way he could walk Harper and me there. Along the […]

None of the events I presented at in Madison last week had much to do with children’s books, but I brought a copy of Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound with me anyway. I always do. Strangers who meet us often ask what Hanni and I are doing on the road. “I’m a writer,” I […]

Chicago Public Radio titled the essay Writer Beth Finke Goes from Teacher to Student, and aired it as a back-to- school piece. If you missed hearing it on the radio, you can listen to it online here. A clue to those of you who are as much of a computer nincompoop as I am: in […]

This afternoon I’m giving a presentation to school teachers attending the Sandberg Literacy Institute at University of Toledo. Part of my job is to give them ideas of how to use Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound in the classroom. I figured heck, as long as I’m gathering resources to share with these teachers this […]