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"My 8 year old son absolutely enjoys Chester-Comix. He is able to relate to our history lessons more now than ever before." Beverly, homeschooling mom |
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Posts Tagged ‘Virginia’
Rustling the old leaves
Written on Monday, March 17th, 2008 [permanent link]For all the exploring I do with my boys, we still make the classic Locals mistake! We have lived in Virginia for 15 years and still missed some great sites nearby. We’ve travelled hundreds of miles to climb rocks at Gettysburg, view the Cyclorama painting in Atlanta and walk the woods of Shiloh, but we had never stood at Cold Harbor. So a few weekends ago we took a traipse through Civil War sites around Richmond.
We were amazed at how many defensive earthworks survive in the woods. Almost 150 years after they made the difference between life and death for some soldiers, these earthworks still run right behind people’s backyards! I always get a better sense of a story or event when I can walk the land where it happened, and it was chilling and beautiful to see how the defensive earthworks still snake over the land around Richmond
Truman has a great eye for detail, and he discovered that the cannons posted outside one farmhouse used in the 1862 Seven Days Battle were actually cast in 1863, as we could see from a stamp in the barrel. He was . . . horrified!
And this photo is not of Grant’s tomb — it’s his cabin. Truman stands guard over the place where Union General Ulysses S. Grant stayed on a bluff above the James River during the months of siege against the Confederate railline at Petersburg, Virginia, just south of Richmond. It’s part of a pretty park in what is now Hopewell, VA, a place we’ve driven through to get to church for 14 years – and we’d NEVER stopped until after church this rainy Sunday!
Tags: Bentley Boyd, Chester Comix, Civil War, Confederate, Ulysses S. Grant, Virginia
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An Author's Stride
Written on Friday, January 25th, 2008 [permanent link]I’ve spoken to school groups for more than a decade. Each visit energizes me as much as it does the students and teachers I meet. Last week I was up in Fairfax County, Virginia, for a whole day at Mantua Elementary and had a great time talking to students about rough drafting, language, symbolism and my Author’s Purpose in creating Chester’s adventures — and I think I even held the students’ attention from the snow falling outside!
Now I’m going to work with WorldStrides to connect to school groups VISITING Virginia! I worked for this great Charlottesville-based company last spring as an on-site coordinator, steering school groups to their destinations in the Historic Triangle and making sure their hotel stays were pleasant. Now I’m offering an evening program for WorldStrides client groups called “Hysterical History” for school groups looking for something to do after the museums close.
We’ll brainstorm ideas as I cartoon about the historical stories they’ve witnessed that day. We’ll talk about what the early American experience says to our lives now. We’ll talk about Why things happened. And we’ll draw a big nose on George Washington. It’ll be fun! I have five school groups scheduled for the spring already, so if you’re coming to Virginia with WorldStrides, ask about my “Hysterical History” program. You can find out more about this school travel company at www.worldstrides.com.
Tags: Author's Purpose, Bentley Boyd, Chester Comix, student tours, Virginia, WorldStrides
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