Daddy Mojo, Author at Daddy Mojo

Teaching Resilience: Life Lessons from ‘The Girl Who Figured It Out’

When I teach middle school or high school I sometimes use the phrase “I don’t care” to reply to some students who are making excuses for them or someone else. They don’t speak. I/They never do their work. I/they am not/aren’t smart. After the student is done watering down my expectations I’ll tell them that “I don’t care…about that unrelated issue they were trying to distract me with and that they are capable of doing the simple, age-appropriate task that I’ve asked them to do. There are some students who get momentarily put-off by what they deem as a rude comment, but then they’ll think about it and hopefully internalize that they need to raise the bar of what they can do. The Girl Who Figured It Out got that message, albeit in a kinder, elementary-age package with colorful illustrations and a can-do message about overcoming obstacles that life throws your way.

The Girl Who Figured It Out is inspiring non-fiction that relates to any audience ages six and up.

More youth would benefit from adopting her manta

Bird Girl: Inspiring Young Minds through Nature and Art

Why should students care about the life story about a woman who lived more than a century ago and studied birds? Gene Stratton-Porter is well-known in ornithology, but outside of that arena you probably haven’t heard of her. This is one of the things about well-made illustrated books that make the genre so much more than it appears to be. Bird Girl: Gene Stratton-Porter Shares Her Love of Nature with the World doesn’t break any new ground in regards to the story, even though it’s one young audiences don’t know. At it’s core, the book is about finding your way and exploring what you love. Instead, this is a great book because of the unknown variable (Gene Stratton-Porter) and the illustrations by Rebecca Gibbon that are used to tell her life story.

Bird Girl is an illustrated book about a woman that kids won’t know, but whose topic they’ll love and is in a package they’ll enjoy.

Birds, passion, nature and photography

1001 Silly Would You Rather Questions to Spark Family Fun

I’m a substitute teacher and I was in a tenth-grade class the other day. They had finished the ‘work’ they had to do online and I was attempting to pry additional work out of their surly teen souls. I did get confirmation of needed assignments from one student, but they had already waved the white flag of surrender. It was just an essay on something, they wouldn’t tell me what it was on, but it was a paragraph of original thought that had stressed this student to the point of Tik Tok-removal despair. This brings me to The Ultimate Book of Would You Rather Questions: 1001 Family-Friendly Challenges for Kids, Teens and Adults.

The Ultimate Book of Would You Rather Questions is the silly, fun, left-field, impossible queries that builds friendships and families.

Conversation in the form of questions for kids that don’t want to talk

My Mummy Vs. Your Ghost continues the promise of the Versus Series

Why do middle school students read? A more accurate question to posit would be why don’t middle school students read more? I praise those in sixth-through-eighth grade who willingly read as it’s more commonly done under duress. It’s the kind of torture or discomfort that’s normally reserved for vampires who are shown sunlight as they climb the ceiling like a spider trying to escape its deathly rays. They just want that dark corner of the room, with the squinty whites of their eyes attempting to burn a hole through your conversation-starting soul; before they can revert to their dark, sullen place, much like an early teen. My Mummy Vs. Your Ghost is also known as Versus Series book 2 and manages to pull a Superman 2, Lethal Weapon 2 or The Empire Strikes Back.

My Mummy Vs. Your Ghost is the second book in The Versus Series by Paul Tobin and cements this series at one of the tops in MGLIT.

This book is awesome. This book series is spectacular

70 Puzzles You’ll Get Wrong: Insights from Puzzle Me Twice

The subtitle to this puzzle book by Alex Bellos is so true. I’m a relatively clever person so I approached each of the set ups in Puzzle Me Twice with, what I thought was, a calm head and a clear mind….and I got most of them incorrect. I rationalized it by saying that they were incorrect because once I read the correct answer I realized my response was too quick. Had I really taken my time the book would have confirmed to me the genius that I think I am. However, in my self-imposed course of humble pie, I jumped in the rabbit hole of Alex Bellos’ other puzzles and have lowered my genius peg down to humble puzzle novice.

Puzzle Me Twice is jammed with 70 deceivingly easy puzzles you’ll get wrong, but have fun doing them.

This is not the bad puzzle book that you seek

Rube Goldberg’s Big Book: STEM Fun for Young Builders

For a children’s concept that’s seemingly so simple, it took me years to understand it. In theory I should love Rube Goldberg. I love books and the idea of engineering, tinkering with things, plus what’s not to love about Rube Goldberg? It’s like steam punk. You’ve rig up everyday objects and arrange them so that their energy will make an impact on something, like opening a door or squeezing toothpaste out of the tube. It’s a simple act made needlessly, but entertainingly, complex. Rube Goldberg’s Big Book of Building solves the issue that I had with the process on the very first page.

It took Rube Goldberg’s Big Book of Building to finally get it through to me how it works. This oversized, reference book is funny and loaded with can-do, simple machines for all ages.

It’s rubetactular and done with things that already have in the house

Like No Other, illustrated animal book magic for elementary school

Ask an upper-elementary student to do a report on something and they’ll pick the strangest, creepiest, most uncommon one in the book. They might determine who they’ll research by how gross their name is, how ugly they are or how remote their habitat is, thus Brazilian Spitting Death Spider Monkeys of the word unite. Like No Other: Earth’s Coolest One-Of-A-Kind Creatures is an illustrated book for middle-elementary ages through lower-middle school that’s mostly creepy and not too much common.

Like No Other, an illustrated book on strange animals who are the last ones in their family tree uses art and oddity to succeed.

The power of strange animals…..for the win!

Coping with Burnout: Insights from Being With Busyness

Burnout, anxiety and overwhelm are all friends in the world of Inside Out. OK, burnout is more akin to Bill & Ted and overwhelm would undergo a Pixar name-change, but all of the characteristics that they represent are present in that world. Being With Busyness: Zen Ways to Transform Overwhelm and Burnout is by Brother Phap Huu & Jo Confino. It’s a self-help book on coping with the stressors that everyone has. My stress points are different than yours and usually revolve around people who look like me but are roughly 30 years younger. Does Being With Busyness shed new light on the issues that make us all a bit freaky?

Being With Busyness: Zen Ways to Transform Overwhelm and Burnout is a Buddhist/Zen/self-help book that’ll do the trick for some.

Being with Busyness is a contemporary zen primer