Episode 6: The Art of Making History Fun and Inclusive, A Conversation with Mint and Bloom Learning

Weirdschooling: Season One, Episode 6

Mint & Bloom Learning

Originally Released September 27, 2023

Intro: <Original bright piano sea shanty music rising in the background with school bell sound.> 

Sarah: Welcome to Weirdschooling. I’m Sarah. 

Jennie: And I’m Jennie. We’re parents, friends, lifelong learners and self-proclaimed weirdos. 

Sarah: We’ve found that some of the best educational methods have emerged when we let go of conformity and explore the unconventional and unique 

Jennie: Because no one’s brain operates the same way and that’s exciting. And what works today may not work tomorrow, and we can adapt. 

Sarah: We’re all in this weird and wonderful world together.

Jennie: So let’s learn outside the box! 

<Original cheerful, organ and piano sea shanty music fading out in the background.> 

Sarah: When I heard the title of your new history curriculum, it made me think of a John Lennon song. The title is not exactly the same but I think a lot of the sentiment might be similar. So it got me thinking, about music and how much music and what resonates with everybody individually, can really. So since Weirdschooling is an education podcast, I thought it would be really fun if we start chatting with our fantastic guests today, and find out which song resonates with you and your own educational approach.

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: Yeah, awesome. Mine is, uh, kind of dorky, but it's from a children's album that was beloved in our household, from a band called Rabbit, and the album is called Connect the Dots, and the song is called “Recipe for Love,” I'm gonna sing a couple lines here: “We can do it ourselves, things are better when they're homemade. Think about all the money we're gonna save. It may not be perfect when it's said and done, but getting there's gonna be so much fun.” Isn't that so cute? 

Sarah: Oh I love that! It’s so cute!

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: it's so perfect for her too because everything she does is homemade.  

Sarah: I love that so much. And that's not dorky. That's amazing. That's really endearing and cool. 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: Thank you. You know who I love? Her name is Ashh Blackwood on TikTok, and she has this character, Aunty Gladys, and she has Aunty Gladys mantras, and do you know the one that, that's called “You're Gonna Be Okay?” I sing it to myself all the time.

She says, “Puff out your chest, take a deep breath. You're going to be okay. Is it loud in your mind? Just take your time. You're gonna be okay.” And y'all, I sing it to myself all the time. Sometimes these homeschool days, you know, we're in the thick of it. And I'm like, “Puff out your chest …”to hype myself up for a good day of learning. 

Sarah: I love that. What scares me even more than singing in public is singing in a recorded fashion and especially since this is rapping, that would be really awkward coming from me. But this is, one of my favorite duos, a group called, Blackalicious and, the song is “Do This My Way” from their album Nia. The song is all about, embracing being who you are and it is the most fun song ever, but it's the hook that is at least my dream approach. 

And it's: “It's such a beautiful thing, this musical thing when I can do it my way. Ain't shoot no blanks. I just refute what you think a quite unusual thing. Yes, it's a mutual thing because it's the root of all things and we aim to be.” Things change all the time. You're doing your own kind of weird journey. And, I think what's really nice about this is it just reminds me like we can do it our way. It's okay if it's not the same as everybody else's, and it's also okay if it's not the same thing that we were doing last year, which is something that we've been kind of grappling with too. Okay, Jennie, what's yours and are you going to be singing? 

Jennie: Um, no. This is actually a quote from a song, that I had in my eighth grade US history classroom when I was teaching it. And it's less about method and more about motivation for learning. And it's from the song “Gorilla Radio” by Rage Against the Machine. The lyric is, “It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?” It just kind of grounds our purpose and makes me think that, we have a real purpose for learning. My kids are going to hopefully go into the world and be agents of change for the good.

And also, it speaks to those teachable moments. It's like, well, if you want to learn how to make bread today, right now, I guess, let's do it because the motivation is there. I love the range of our songs. Let's list all of these on our show notes, please. That way people can go and listen to all of them and go into their day just pumped. 

Well, we're so lucky to have two great guests today who are willing to sing and engage and share their great insights. And our guests today are Helen Allen and Arielle Arizpe. They are both secular, eclectic, progressive homeschool educators. Helen is the founder of Mint and Bloom and Ariel is her self-described type A big sister. And together they operate Mint and Bloom and create secular curricula and lesson plans featuring art, literature, and creativity-based activities. So thank you both for being here today. Let's start with Helen. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and what brought you to, create Mint and Bloom. 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: Thank you so much for having us on today. My experience in school wasn't great. I've always been really artistic and I've always had ADHD, so I was really good at the stuff that brought me joy. When I got to high school, I loved speech and debate and I've always loved history.

I was okay in English, but everything else was just brutal, y'all. And I just kind of went through all of grade school feeling pretty dumb. I eventually did go to college, and I studied acting and theater. And then I ended up getting to go to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford upon Avon and study classical acting in theater.

Part of why I wanted to homeschool was wanting to have my children be able to learn in an environment where there could be an abundance of art and music and literature where we could read the end books, where there wouldn't be so much pressure or competition. It was really important to me. I'm very lucky. I love homeschooling my children so much. It's my favorite thing to do, but I'm extra super lucky because I also teach a bunch of other homeschool kids. And Mint and Bloom was born in the pandemic. It was way back when in 2020, when I thought, okay, we might be at home for a couple of weeks.

I wanted to create some virtual meetups, whereas basically like my kids could have face time with their friends so that they wouldn't lose their bond, so that they could stay connected, and then I thought in a couple weeks, we'll get back to it. And then here we are. We're still going. And now, I teach in person. A bunch of homeschool kids and we still have our virtual Mint and Bloom classes going. So it's been. I guess if you want to say nine years, if you count from the very beginning, but yeah, really. So the last three years we've been doing mint and bloom learning. 

Jennie: Oh, well, thank you so much, Helen. So Arielle, if you could go ahead and share with us, what is your background, both like personally and professionally, and then your connection to Mint and Bloom? 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: I have always been a pretty intense person, so I was, really driven and, I wanted to be big and powerful. I loved politics. I loved watching like Crossfire. If you remember that show on CNN, I would watch as a little kid, like I wanted to work in the office of management and budget. I decided when I was like 10, I'm going to work in politics and I'm going to change the world.

I went to college, and I studied political science and history, and I got my first job out of college, working on a congressional campaign, and I was like, I absolutely hate this. There are obviously people doing good work in politics, but you have to put in the grunt work for years of networking and fundraising, I'm like, I don't want to do either of those things.

And to get to the jobs where you're doing policy work, you have to spend a lot of time in the trenches doing the bad stuff and I was like this can't be it and so like the plan I had had for myself since I was ten years old. I was like this isn't it? And so I kind of had to think about, “What do you care about?” Like reinvent, you know, who I thought I was. 

And so I went back to school, got my Master's in education with the goal of becoming a teacher. But in the meantime, I got a job working for Region 13, which is a division of the Texas education agency. And I worked as, a data expert. And so I would help schools collect data on, how their kids were doing on like the standardized tests and I would help them disaggregate their data. And so I was in every school system in central Texas where we live. And I was like, I don't want to be a part of the system. So it was like a second kind of like, this isn't it.

But then I left my job the day before I had my first kid and, it really put me on the path that I'm on now, which is to think about alternative solutions to “think outside the box,” as you guys say, yeah, 

Sarah: That's really interesting to me. I think what I'm hearing in both of your stories is, that our own experiences as kids, students, and young professionals really shaped what we wanted for our own kids and also just the world around us. So I'm wondering if, you could talk a little bit about Mint and Bloom Learning and how you took this really wonderful place for learning and art and excitement and, shifted that to create, your history curriculum, Power of the People. I purchased this for my daughter and we've been doing this and, I've been completely blown away.

She is so engaged. She loves it. When we're looking, at the curriculum together and we're doing the projects, it's clear that there is such intention, and that's what really spoke to me when I was looking at the work that, everything that you do, there's thought behind it. So long question aside, I'm wondering if you could just speak to what drove you to create a history curriculum? 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: Oh, thank you so much for, saying it was “intentional” is the absolute highest possible compliment that we could have on that. They see us. Yeah, you get it. We grew up in rural Texas, suburban Texas. We went to a high school where we were the Texas Rebels and we had the Confederate flag as our school flag. And I was in the marching band and I marched to “Dixie.” We had terrible history classes in school. But, my Spanish teacher in high school slipped me a copy of Howard's [Zinn’s] People's History of the United States, 'cause like I said, I was fired up about politics, but I was so ignorant mm-hmm and I, I only knew what I knew. 

And that book blew my mind open, but so at the same time, I'm having this oh, look, all the history you've learned is wrong. And I'm like, Oh, and look at what I've done with my life. I've been complicit in this horrible entrenched system so it's something that I think about all the time now. It's like how easy it is to get swept up in the flow of what your, community or culture or whatever is doing and to just go along with it without thinking about it. And since then, it's been trying to re learn and unlearn and do better. 

So Arielle had that experience with, realizing how complicit all of us white folk are in systemic racism, when it came time to teach our kids history, as homeschoolers, we knew that we wanted to teach it virtually.  So Arielle and I were extensively researching what secular curriculum is available to us that teaches history, that is inclusive, that is progressive, that features stories of people from the global majority and y'all, it didn't exist.

Sarah: How do you actually define progressive and secular education? 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that. Me too. By “progressive,” we really just mean inclusive and treating people with respect. Progress, as we define it means you are inclusive of LGBTQ plus, you're inclusive of the people of the global majority.

You're not just telling the same stories that you see in the traditional school textbooks. You're consciously seeking out a wide range of voices, from sources that tell the stories. Yeah, we use these three questions all the time. They are who writes the stories, who benefits from the stories, who is missing from the stories. It is with those questions in mind. So when we say progressive, those are the vibes.

Sarah: Oh, thank you for that. Think that's, that's such a beautiful, and really complete perspective. There is this sort of idea in some people that I've spoken to that if you use the word “secular or progressive,” they think you're automatically flying your protest flag. I think in some ways, I think that's an accurate and great representation of what I think progressive is at this point in our political and, sociological landscape. But it sounds like there's also not the element of, like you said, “indoctrination” that I think, people with different opinions fear that there is when they hear the word “secular and progressive.”

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: We do want to talk about change on a systemic level and not on a person-to-person level. Arielle reminds me often to not frame it in terms of what I'm against. But to instead talk about what I am pro, what I stand for instead of what I'm pushing against.

Jennie: It sounds like Power of the People and your approach to curriculum writing and to education is something that Someone of any faith background, any political ideology could come into if they were willing to engage in critical thinking and to explore a broad range of perspectives.

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: You absolutely have to be open minded to do this curriculum and if you come into it with totally holding the opposite beliefs that I hold as the person bias writing this you could have such incredible discussions and I think both sides would be the better for having that conversation so much of the way that we write and the way that we craft all of our curriculum is with a respect for the learner in mind. Often a lot of kids think of history is boring and it's because whitewashed history is boring. Arielle worked so hard to find a book to base our history curriculum around and this book tells the stories that are left out of history books but there's a reason why the response is so favorable from kids and they're like, “this is interesting.” It's like, “Yeah, it is. History is fascinating when you're actually telling the truth about it.” 

Jennie: The way that you described history and the way that you teach it to kids and the way you write your curriculum. It isn't like, just a story. It's an activity. It's a conversation with the past and it's a conversation with people. And I think that that speaks to your title of power of the people. It's an active description. 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: Thank you for saying that because. At the heart of every lesson is an activity that invites the kids to think of the problem and think of a solution in an artistic or outside the box kind of way. It gives them agency. Ariel always says, look at what happened. And imagine what could be 

Jennie: This is great. In Power of the People in your curriculum for people who maybe haven't seen it or haven't gotten to have the experience that Sarah's daughter has of using it, what is kind of the general layout of the curriculum and how is it structured 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: Arielle's respect and the way that she designs for my sweet little neurodivergent brain is the reason that all of our curriculum looks the way that it does. It is the formatting.

Y'all, when I was in my early days of homeschool education, so often, I would research a curriculum, buy it. A lot of them are very expensive. I would print and bind it, I would open it, I couldn't do it because it is not accessible for a neurodivergent mind to figure out how to do this curriculum.

It's not accessible for so many curriculums out there. Mint and Bloom looks the way it does for my brain so that somebody with a neurodivergent mind or a busy schedule or whatever is going on can open it because if you make it accessible to neurodivergent people, it's just going to be broadly accessible.

Sarah: There seems like there really is a lot of intentionality between the way that you approach your relationship with each other. And your own strengths and gifts, but then also the relationship between the actual learner and the teacher, whoever's actually implementing it at home. And that's something that's special. I haven't seen that in a lot of curriculum either, is the idea of there is somebody actually having to implement this thing at home. 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: One of the things that we want people to know is like if there is a thing that is not right for you in the curriculum, tell us. We love that it's so much of it is a community and a collaboration. Yeah, that's how good things happen is with many people's inputs coming to it.

But that thing that you said about the relationship between the educator and the learner is so important to us. So our next. And this month. We really like play off of that. It's a grammar workbook and, we're working on that more and more of there being a relationship between the narrator, the educator and the learner because it's just, it's fun and it keeps it from being really dry.

It's so much more fun when you feel, even if you're an only child and you're alone, if you feel like there's someone in the workbook that cares about you you're not alone in this learning journey, we're all celebrating you.

The name of the workbook is: A Melancholy Grammar Workbook for Melancholy Students. And you would think that they were sort of glib and dim all on their own, and we respect them if they are, but it turns out there's a lot of melancholy students, a lot of these educators are lining up for this one, and it's so exciting. It's a celebration of weird. Yeah, it fits into your, whole vibe here

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: So my daughter, my sweet little nine year old, y'all, she is a moody emo queen and I am obsessed she really is just a New York Times critic, y'all. She really considers all curriculum and says, “this isn't good.”

And so she finally said to me, why are they like this? Couldn't you just write me one that isn't? And I was like, “Oh, that is kind of my job. I guess I could.” So the Melancholy Grammar Workbook was born from the sweet moody emo child. And it's a very funny book. We hope that the kids will find it funny.

We hope educators will find it funny, but really it's like we tell them right up front. Like, we're not trying to change you. We love your cold, dark soul. Like we respect you. And like, we are here for it. But what's neat about it, I think is that you never see. The curriculum writer on the page of a worksheet. Did you remember The Stinky Cheese Man? Yes. And it was like, he breaks the fourth wall between the author and the kid.

And it was like this, wow, this book is incredible. And this is sort of an attempt to do that. Like, we're co-conspirators with the kids. Yes. That it's, “co-conspirators in learning” is a good way to put it. There's so much to the kids. They love interesting stuff. They love a scandal. They love to be scared. They love, learning things that push the boundary a little bit that feel a little bit, extra, that feels a little bit not scandalous or taboo, but that kind of vibe where it's just like, it keeps it from being boring and to be able to have this conversation with the learner throughout the book has been so much fun for me and Ariel to write. It's just been really fun to make this one and I'm so excited to see what people think of it. 

Jennie: How do you define success with Mint and Bloom?

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: Yeah, the feedback is everything. That's how I measure our success. It makes me so happy. 

The other day, someone wrote to us and said that for the first time their daughter with ADHD, expressed an actual interest in learning. And it's just like, I could cry. It means, it is that it heals an inner part of me that didn't get that. It's so meaningful when people write to us and say that they feel represented 

But more than anything I think it's like when I get to hear that families are doing this work together and they're talking like it's not just the kids like the adults are also learning and discussing this stuff my definition of success is that these conversations are happening and, I feel enormous gratitude.

We're so thankful for it, but it's not really a money-making venture. We try and keep our learning affordable and usually with homeschool curriculums or any curriculum, they're separated by age group or grade level and what we did with power of the people is made it age inclusive. Every single lesson has options for every age of learner, and we don't sell them separately. It's all included because we wanted it to be that a family with different aged children could learn alongside each other.

One of my favorite things is to hear from parents that they print out, I could cry again, that they print out the art activities. And do the work alongside their children that there are adults that are maybe like, haven't made art for themselves in months or years that are making art next to their children that are learning history alongside their children.

And so many of them say, “I never learned this stuff in school.” And it's like, yeah, I didn't learn it on my Texas public school education either, y'all. It's so powerful to send the message to our children that we are all lifelong learners. And I tell our Mint and Blue Learning community all the time: I am so thankful that they educate the way that they do. It really restores your faith in humanity. 

We write this work with love, and we're very thankful when people tell us that it's working and we're thankful when they tell us if they need a fix. We're just thankful for the community and the conversation.

Jennie: I'm thinking about myself as teaching in a public school. Before I had kids, I would have loved to have a resource like this because whenever you take things and you de age them, like you talked about being for everyone, it also allows for modifications for all different learners who are on all different levels, regardless of if that aligns to their age or not. And so it's just been inspiring to hear your approach and to feel the waves of inclusion and thoughtfulness that go into what you're doing.  I'm really grateful that you all did the hard work to create this curriculum and then also to share it because you could've just kept it for your own little neck of the woods and just had the most brilliant little tiny community. So I’m grateful that you shared it as well.

Sarah: If you could just share where listeners could learn more about Mint and Bloom Learning, also about this very exciting new Melancholy Grammar Workbook, and just connect with you, that would be great.

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: Our website is mintandbloomlearning.com and you can find us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube at mintandbloomlearning. if you're looking for the history curriculum, Power of the People, our YouTube has, Arielle takes you through like literally looking at every page of the book. Yeah. If you wanna do that. 

There's a video from me on our YouTube for just like how to get started with Power of the People, we have a blog going on the website where there's a like frequently asked questions post about it. We really love communicating with the Mint and Bloom Learning Community in all of these ways.

Jennie: And we'll link all of these things on the show notes as well as on our socials so people can find everything and connect. Cause it's all about that community.

Sarah: I guess it's the time that we all look forward to, to share our Weird of the Week. This is a time when we share something that was a standout, bizarre experience, a strange fact that you learn, just some sort of funny moment. Arielle, would you like to go first? 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: Yes, We are homeschoolers. So one of the things we do in our week is, in person classes and sort of a collaborative group, in our city. My younger son, had his first science class, with that group on Tuesday, and they did all of these different balloon experiments and he posed one of the, experiments for my husband and I and stumped both of us. You have two balloons and one is almost full of air and one has some air in it, but not much. Barely inflated. And they're both connected to a pipe. So a balloon on each end of a short pipe that has a valve in the middle. What happens when you open the valve to the air in the balloons? So it can't escape. It's going to be either in the balloons or in the pipe, but where does the air go?

What actually happens is that the big balloon gets bigger and the small balloon, deflates. There's all of these ways that explain it, like Laplace's Law, Hooke's Law, the, Flow of Fluids from High Pressure Regions to Low Pressure Regions but to me, it was not at all what I expected to happen. And then even the explanation, I'm like, wait, what? 

Sarah: Oh, that's great. Helen, do you have a Weird of the Week? 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: I teach four classes, they're art and literature based classes, and we had our first day this past week, and my very first class of the day is a studio art class, and I introduced the kids to this, community mural that I created and the theme of this mural all any of the kids can come up and draw on it to fit the theme and the theme is like woodland critters, like little animals that live in the woods and live in like little mushroom houses or like a little acorn house.

And somebody said, “Oh, could I do a little family of mice having a tea party in the meadow?” And I said, “Oh yes, I love that. “ And somebody else said, “Could I do a little hedgehog, but the hedgehog is also a mailman?” And I said, “Oh yes, I love that.” And then one of the little boys said, “Miss Helen, have you seen Stranger Things by any chance? And I said, “Yeah, yeah, I've seen Stranger Things.” And he said, “What if on the top half of the mural is all the stuff they're talking about,” and kind of jabbed his thumb toward the cutesy folks next to him…”What if the top half is what they're talking about? But then the bottom half is just a demon world that has all of those critters in it, but evil. So like what if the hedgehog is there and he's still a mailman, but he's evil.” I was like, yes, I am vibing. This is it. I love weird. And that kid went for it.That was just an awesome, weird moment and I just absolutely loved it.

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: And nothing at all like what I expected and that's what I love about kids. If you give them a little room, they will impress you every time. 

Jennie: Oh my gosh. Well, Sarah, do you have one? Our guests have had excellent Weird of the Weeks, which I feel like I'm ill-prepared to match how good these were. 

Sarah: Oh, they were excellent Weird of the Weeks. I do have a small one. My daughter I think sounds a lot like your daughter. She basically thinks that she's Wednesday Addams, so I've been trying to find, some sort of book or something, that has a similar vibe, but related to animals. Because she loves animal facts. And I have not found exactly that, but we were at this, fun like resale bookstore place that, that we love, and she found this book, called Sad Animal Facts, and it's written by Brooke Barker.

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: I own this book. I love this book. It's so good, isn't it? It's brilliant. Yes, absolutely. 

Sarah: So if you haven't seen this book, on every page there's a little sad animal fact with a very sad illustration. And the fact that she has picked up on because my son really wants a chinchilla because we can't have too many weird animals in this house. And the sad animal fact for, uh, the chinchilla, is that when chinchillas get wet, they never get dry again. There's my weird fact, 

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: That's really good. Yes. We are kinship spirits.

Sarah: So Jennie, is this insect related? 

Jennie: It's not insect related. My Weird of the Week have been insect related. This Weird of the Week has to do with just seeing wonder and joy and awe in my children when we had the blue supermoon that happened at the end of August. It popped up in my feed, and it was of course, 30 minutes after they were already supposed to be in bed when I was like, “The blue supermoon.We have to get outside and go look at it.” My husband was like, “Oh my gosh, oh, okay.” 

And so we go out front and all of our beautiful trees, which we love so much, completely obstructed any hope we had of seeing any moon. And so my husband was like, “Guess we won't see the moon.” And I was like, I'm getting my keys as he says that so we get in the car, and I'm like, “Okay, guys, let's go find the moon.”

And so we get in the car, and we just get to the regular road right outside of our driveway. I'm like, Oh, it's there. It's like right there. We did not need to get in the car. So had a neighbor been watching this, they would have seen us feverishly back out of our driveway, park in front of our own house, and then pile out of our car barefoot onto the pavement, and my kids were like sitting on the ground, looking at the moon, talking about it, recording it, and so the weird is really us, like we were the weird, we weren't the danger, like in Breaking Bad, we were the weird. And, so yeah, the Weird of the Week was us, my family.

Arielle & Helen, Mint and Bloom Learning: The middle, the shortest and weirdest road trip. 

Jennie: Yes. Right, exactly. Exactly. 

Sarah: Weirdschooling is a My Kind of Weird Productions podcast and is co-created by hosts Sarah Woolverton-Mohler and Jennie Ziverk Carr with music by Brooks Milgate. 

Jennie: You, your ideas and feedback MATTER, so like, subscribe and leave a review! Share your weirdschooling experiences or challenges on our social media channels at instagram, facebook, or our website at www.weirdschooling.com. 

Sarah: We’re here for you– so feel free to join our engaging Weirdschooling Community Facebook group for inclusive, open-hearted idea sharing and camaraderie. 

Jennie: You’re dismissed to go be the weirdest brick in the wall of this wonderful world!

<Original bright, organ and piano sea shanty music fading in the background with school bell sound.>

Resources: We encourage you to connect with Helen and Arielle and all that Mint and Bloom Learning has to offer! To to view their wonderful history curriculum or their new grammar workbook, A Melancholy Grammar Workbook for Melancholy Students, v.1, click here.

You can also follow Arielle and Helen on their Mint and Bloom Learning socials:

 Instagram 

Facebook

YouTube

TikTok

Arielle's Music Pick for Setting the Educational Mood

Helen's Music Pick for Setting the Educational Mood

Sarah's Music Pick for Setting the Educational Mood

Jennie's Music Pick for Setting the Educational Mood

Ashh Blackwood on TikTok

A Conversation with Brooke Barker, author of Sad Animal Facts

Article about Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies

Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present