Royal Fireworks Press Blog: 2016
Lewis Carroll, the Original Mathematical Novelist by Robert Black
Author Robert Black reflects on his inspiration for math in fiction. Whenever I give a presentation on my Mathematical Nights books, there’s one name that I always mention: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, mathematical lecturer at Oxford University during much of the Victorian era. You may know him better by his pen name: Lewis Carroll. From the […]
The Importance of Philosophy by Sharon Kaye
Philosophy is the story of brave thinkers who can change the world. Here’s a question for you: What is your touchstone book? The book that changed your life. The book that made you realize who you are and what you stand for. You may not have fully realized it when you read it, but looking […]
We Must Advocate for Real Reading by Michael Clay Thompson
If I ruled the world (I recently observed that this is increasingly unlikely), every school system in the United States would make a powerful literature program the centerpiece of its educational strategy. The opposite is what is happening; school systems are ditching real literature for dumbed-down textbooks, with exactly the effects on students’ minds that […]
The Life-Changing Moments that Resulted in the MCT Curriculum by Michael Clay Thompson
In my history with Royal Fireworks Press, there have been two momentous events without which the MCT curriculum would never have been possible. One was, clearly, my first encounter with Dr. Tom Kemnitz, the very embodiment of fanaticism about curriculum and the lives of children that I myself felt. The MCT language arts curriculum reveals […]
Why Math Fiction? by Robert Black
Sharing the Mathematical Experience I grew up in a mathematical household. Not only did both of my parents teach high school and middle school math, but my mother was the school’s “math coach”—the faculty advisor for the national, state, and local math competitions that students entered. One competition in particular always posed some strange problems, […]