Rose Wenjen Eulogy by Noreen Wenjen (given 12-28-2020) Today, we celebrate our beloved mother and grandmother, Rose Miyako Wenjen, for a life lived well. Although she was small in stature, just under 5 feet tall, her unique blend of traits balanced perfectly. Her quiet strength offset her sweet personality. She was both easygoing and hard-working….
Author: Pragmatic Mom
Win Book Bundles at Multicultural Children’s Book Day Twitter Party
In honor of our seventh Multicultural Children’s Book Day, we are increasing our Twitter Party Book Bundles prizes from five to SEVEN books! More books, more diverse KidLit discussions, and more FUN! Please join us Friday, January 31st 9 pm-10 pm EST Use hashtag #ReadYourWorld to find the party We will be giving away 14…
Sumo Joe Virtual Author Visit
I was thrilled to do a Skype author visit with 120 kindergartners! They were well prepared having read the story ahead of time. They also came up with questions that the Media Specialist had collected ahead of time. For such a young group, the teachers asked for a 20-minute visit. The kids were great and…
10 Unexpected Gifts from Blogging for the Last Decade
I can’t believe it’s been a decade since I started blogging here at PragmaticMom. I had a few other blogs that I created during the past ten years, but this is the only one that I’m still doing maintaining. Blogging has really changed over the past decade. It was once the darling of SEO (Search…
6 Children’s and YA Books with Epilepsy
I met Sarah Marie Jette at our first NESCBWI Meet & Greet for YA/Children’s Writers and Illustrators of Color. as part of the new NESCBWI Equity and Inclusion Committee that I am on. She told me about her new book and we were both struck by the lack of children’s and YA books that have…
Sumo Joe’s 6 Month Anniversary and How I Celebrated
I’m grateful that my mother was able to read my debut picture book. My mother was always supportive of everything we did and when my sister and I started writing and publishing books, she would make a point of purchasing five copies. At the time, she was living in an Independent Living facility so she…
Speaking at Asian American Studies at UMass Boston
It was such a pleasure to speak at UMass Boston Asian American Studies class recently, taught by Dr. MinJin Kim. My thanks to Priya Sonal who found me on social media. She wrote to me: Hello Ms Mia, I saw your recent post on Instagram, My heart felt sorry for you and your family’s…