Jennifer Atkinson’s The Thinking Eye, her fifth collection, looks at the syntax of our living, evolving world, paying close attention to the actual quartz and gnats, the goats and iced-over, onrushing rivers. The poems also look at the looking itself—how places and lives become “landscapes” and the ways the lenses of language, art, ecology, myth, and memory—enlarge and focus our seeing. If it’s true, as Gaston Bachelard says, that whether a poet looks through a telescope or a microscope, [she] sees the same thing, then what Atkinson sees is an earth filled with violence and beauty, human malice and ten thousand separate moments of joy. Clearly in love with the earth and the (English) language—all those inter-dependent lives and forms—Atkinson pays attention to both with a Bishoppy eye, a Hopkinsy ear, and an ecopoet’s conscience. Behind the book’s sharp images and lush music creaks Chernobyl’s rusty Ferris wheel.

NOTE: This storybook includes a read-aloud option which is accessible on Google and IOS devices. Blast off with the gang to an alien planet in outer space. In storybook 3 of the We Thinkers! Vol. 1 social emotional learning curriculum for ages 4-7, Molly, Evan, Jesse, and Ellie learn how to communicate with friendly aliens by thinking with their eyes since they don’t speak Bleep! Bleep! Bloop! They quickly learn that our eyes are like arrows that point to what we are looking at and probably thinking about, too. They figure out what the aliens might be thinking and feeling by using their eyes to follow what the alien’s eyes are pointed toward and the expression on its face. It’s so much fun to figure out what’s going on in a situation, communicate, and make new friends—all by using our eyes! Continue building on this important social concept with the fundamental concepts taught in storybooks 4-10, which align with the corresponding teaching units within the related curriculum. Best practice: teach these concepts in order, starting with storybook 1 of 10 while using the corresponding curriculum.

In our current global networked culture that puts so much emphasis on the virtual and the visual, the mind and the body have become detached and ultimately disconnected. Though physical appearance is idolised for its sexual appeal and its social identity, the role of the body in developing a full understanding of the physical world and the human condition has become neglected. The potential of the human body as a knowing entity – with all our senses as well as our entire bodily functions being structured to produce and maintain silent knowledge together – fails to be recognised. It is only through the unity of mind and body that craftsmanship and artistic work can be fully realised. Even those endeavours that are generally regarded as solely intellectual, such as writing and thinking, depend on this union of mental and manual skills. In The Thinking Hand, Juhani Pallasmaa reveals the miraculous potential of the human hand. He shows how the pencil in the hand of the artist or architect becomes the bridge between the imagining mind and the emerging image. The book surveys the multiple essences of the hand, its biological evolution and its role in the shaping of culture, highlighting how the hand–tool union and eye–hand–mind fusion are essential for dexterity and how ultimately the body and the senses play a crucial role in memory and creative work. Pallasmaa here continues the exploration begun in his classic work The Eyes of the Skin by further investigating the interplay of emotion and imagination, intelligence and making, theory and life, once again redefining the task of art and architecture through well-grounded human truths.