Both inside and outside the walls of the stone building where the art lessons took place, Carr's students were inspired to explore technique and medium. The spare, free-verse poem told through the voice of one of Carr's art students provides a portrait of this artist who taught drawing and painting to children to support herself in the early 1900s. Even bridges can be considered places, allowing people to travel from one location to another.Ĭanadian artist Emily Carr's passion for teaching art to children is celebrated in Susan Vande Griek's The Art Room. Through well-researched text and illustrations, readers can also discover places that no longer exist.

Whether it is to a single space such as an art room or to an entire city like Tokyo, Japan, insight is gained from individuals who inhabit those places. One of the values of literature is how it takes readers to places they know or have never visited.

And finally, books themselves serve as stepping stones from print to readers' imaginations by using creative forms of expression. Other times, literature introduces beliefs, cultures, and people from other generations that readers have limited knowledge about. At times, this occurs through vicarious experiences when books link readers to various places or time periods. This month's column explores books that serve as bridges for readers. By engaging in discussions with other readers who have read the same book and who are willing to express their own interpretations, shared connections may occur. By interacting with a story, readers generate their own connections.

It can clarify ideas or concepts that may be unfamiliar and allow readers to approach a familiar topic through an interesting perspective.

Literature has the potential to build a bridge that can take readers from what they know to new information. The river to tomorrow is as long as it is wide the bridge will get me over see me to the other side 'I Am the Bridge' from Remember the Bridge by Carole Boston Weatherford (p. The bridge is men and women, famous and unknown, leaving paths of memories timeless stepping stones.

Zazoo richard mosher