Dawn Meredith - Author

I am SO excited to announce that my newest book, The Boy Who Went to War is here! purchase from Amazon.com I've been working on this project with 91 year old veteran Jim Haynes for five years, interviewing Jim, collecting documents and photos and writing his story. I am so privileged to be the guardian of this true life account of what it was like to be a boy in England at the start of World War II. The son of a policeman, Jim joined the Royal Navy at age sixteen, trained at HMS Royal Arthur, HMS Drake, HMFS Paris and ended up on the brand new River Class frigate HMS Avon in the Atlantic, dropping depth charges on German U-Boats. Jim had many adventures. He saw ships blown up, picked up survivors of the Tonsberg Tarifa just as they ran out of water , saw a WRN (Women's Royal Navy) buried at sea, saw King Farouk's bombed palace in Alexandria and much more. As an inexperienced teen, Jim got into trouble in the out-of-bounds area of Alexandria markets and had to be...

Homework. Lots of parents disagree about it's importance. Well here's my two cents' worth, after 25 years of teaching. It helps. As long as you do it together and make it fun, not a terrible chore. It consolidates what is learned at school and takes the pressure off the student. Its difficult to somehow absorb everything while at school, especially when the teacher is going too fast or the child has days off due to illness, or has emotional issues that prevent her/him from attending mentally. Done the right way, homework can be a fabulous, confidence booster. You just need 2 things - to take the time to sit with your child and have the right resources. So, this year my daughter's new teacher is advocating an online study program for homework. This I am NOT in favour of. Nothing is better than face-to-face instruction. As a teacher of many years, both Primary and Secondary education, I have found certain resources helpful and decided to purchase copies for home use. Th...

About time I collected some more awesomely cool steam punk pics for you! I love the ingenuity of steam punk, the way it incorporates art and machinery and persistence with a dreamlike lens into the future. Or is it the past? The glory of the Victorian age of mechanisation was, in part, the beginning of much suffering and alienation in the world, but at the same time thrust humankind forward in great leaps to the technological age we now 'enjoy'. For me, Steam Punk seems to try and preserve some of that old fashioned humanness while exploring the extraordinary with a childlike fascination. Interesting questions surface - Will the future mean complete mechanisation of everything, including insects? Will we utitlise brass and copper once again, in a way we haven't before? Enjoy my selection, obtained from wallpapervortex.com I think this one is actually fractal art, made with a complicated method of mathematics! But it does have a steam punk feel, with the l...