- Aug 17
Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Lamps
A TRUE TALE WITH
A CHERRY ON TOP
Peachtree
pub. 6.24.2025
32 pages
Ages 7 - 10
Author: Sandra Nickel
Illustrator: Julie Paschkis
Character: Clara Driscoll
Overview:
"Drawing inspiration from her childhood gardens, Clara Driscoll created designs for Louis C. Tiffany's stained glass windows. Clara had such a flare for glass that Tiffany put her in charge of a special workroom, staffed with women—called the Tiffany Girls. But Clara wanted more. She wanted to create a three-dimensional work that would make light bloom. So she figured out how to engineer a lamp—how to shape and bend glass and light it so that her designs sprung to colorful, vivid life.
Today, we all recognize Tiffany lamps, but we almost forgot the woman who created them."
Tantalizing taste:
"To recreate the flowers, Clara searched through two tons of glass sheets stored in the baement. She found whites dappling to greens and yellows ripening to orange. With the help of the Tiffany Girls, she made each lamp burst with color, turning her love of nature into bright bouquets of glass...
Louis [Tiffany] died and so did Clara, and still, no one knew Clara had designed the lamps.
Until one day .... Clara's letters to her sisters and mother were discovered in an attic. Another bundle was found in a desk. And the readers learned the secret that had been hidden for so long.
Clara Driscoll was the creator of the garden lamps. Because of her, light bloomed - and still blooms - throughout the world."
And something more: Sandra Nickel in the Author's Note explains: "Missing home is often bittersweet. But in Clara's case, being homesick not only led her to create one of the most iconic pieces of American decorative art, it also resulted in her documenting that creation by writing hundreds of letters to her mother and sisters. Clara's letters act like a diary and tell us about her creative work and love for her home..." And it's wonderful learning that author Sandra Nickel read these letters -- incredible primary sources which add such depth to this beautifully written and illustrated true story!
How To Discover a Shape
A TRUE TALE WITH
A CHERRY ON TOP
Candlewick Press
pub. 3.4.2025
48 pages
Grades 2 - 4
Author: Amy Alznauer
Illustrator: Anna Bron
Character: Marjorie Rice
Overview:
"When Marjorie Rice was a little girl in Roseburg, Oregon, in the 1930s, she saw patterns everywhere. Swimming in the river, her body was a shape in the water, the water a shape in the hills, the hills a shape in the sky. Some shapes, fitted into a rectangle or floor tilings, were so beautiful they made her long to be an artist.
Marjorie dreamed of studying art and geometry, perhaps even solving the age-old “problem of five” (why pentagons don’t fit together the way shapes with three, four, or six sides do). But when college wasn’t possible, she pondered and explored all through secretarial school, marriage, and parenting five children, until one day, while reading her son’s copy of Scientific American, she learned that a subscriber had discovered a pentagon never seen before. If a reader could do it, couldn’t she?
Marjorie studied all the known pentagons, drew a little five-sided house, and kept pondering. She’d done it! And she’d go on to discover more pentagonal tilings and whole new classes of tessellations"
Tantalizing taste:
"Maybe it was math and art together or those two marvelous ideas - fitting and forever- but quiet, wonderstruck, earth-moving Marjorie was drawn in ... to a story that had begun eons before she was born ...
Marjorie had never gone to college. Her children knew more math than she did. But still, she couldn't help it. A beautiful, brave idea began to take shape in her mind.
'What if I could find still another type?'"
And something more: Amy Alznauer in the Author's Note explains: "Marjorie [made] a gentle trap for spiders... so she could safely carry them outside. Marjorie loved nature in general, but I imagine she must have felt a particular kinship with those small, eight-legged creatures in her home who, like her, spent much of their time quietly spinning shapes in secret."
- Jul 29
Updated: Aug 28
How the Slants® Took Their Fight for Free Speech to the Supreme Court
A TRUE TALE WITH
A CHERRY ON TOP
Red Comet Press
pub. 10.15.2024
48 pages
Ages 8 - 12
Author: Mia Wenjen
Illustrator: Victor Bizar Gómez
Character: Simon Tam and The Slants®
Overview:
"Music is a way to transcend cultures and divides. Simon Tam used his band's name, The Slants®, to make a powerful statement that racist insults could no longer be hurtful to Asian Americans.
But then the U.S. Trade and Patent Office tries to stop him. In his eight-year battle to win trademark protection, Simon would go all the way to the Supreme Court in a landmark case to rout out structural racism in our government systems.
Mia Wenjen takes us back to Simon's early days and the formation of the band, to the long battle to claim the name they chose to use. We learn of his motivations and the years-long struggle that leads ultimately to the Supreme Court of the United States."
Tantalizing taste:
"Simon realized that if he could show that the judicial system was racist, he could right a history of wrongs. He decided to fight for his rights - in court.
Fired up, Simon talked to Asian American leaders in his community and online. Everyone wanted him to keep fighting, so he went to court to make his case ...
Two thousand pages of support came pouring in but was not enough. Simon lost his case, but he refused to give up, and The Slants continued to perform."
And something more: In the back matter, author Mia Wenjen explains "I was one of the hundreds of Asian Americans who Simon Tam asked to write a letter of support for his case. I was struck by Simon's eloquence and determination to fight against an invisible form of racism - structural racism is our court systerm... I was struck by the fact that there have only been a handful of Asian American cases heard by the Supreme Court."
"In 2019, The Slants® officially retired from touring to focus on their nonprofit organization, The Slants Foundation. The band continues to compose music but no longer performs. The Slants Foundation provides mentorship and scholarships for Asian American artists who want to incorporate activism into their work: TheSlants.org."
As a prior intellectual property attorney, I admire the dedication, activism and persistence of Simon Tan, Mia Wenjen and many others who prevailed in righting this wrong.
