Books like Mapping Inner Space — picked by fans

This book changed my life. It answered my questions about why students so often didn’t like school despite so many efforts to force them to! (Yeah, it sounds dumb to me too, now.) 

Since reading this book, I've completely changed the way I teach. Inspired by these insights, I have written several books. I've become courageous about being like Alfie, who is an engaging writer, completely fearless, and committed to human well-being and all the ways our institutions, including schools, contribute to or undermine the best of our spirit—individual and collective.

Even when people in authority challenge me, I am inspired to speak the detailed truth, so much of it learned from this book! (It also has many well-digested sources.)

My private art school offers classes exclusively in basic to advanced drawing techniques, with a focus on achieving varying degrees of realism across a range of subjects.

To accomplish this, I have designed a method that utilizes exercises and structured instruction. However, I am cautious not to impose too many limitations with my Monart® Method because I believe that too much structure can hinder students' creativity. 

Nicolaides' The Natural Way to Draw was the perfect addition for my lesson plans. The loose style effectively captures the essence of the subject while encouraging students to maintain a realistic interpretation.

The speed that is involved in his quick sketching technique makes it possible for the student to practice shape and feeling. 

The book provides clear and simple instructions with lots of illustrations.

I personally recommend this book because it is a must-read for anyone dealing with students who struggle with learning or underperform in certain subjects.

Over the course of my 45-year career, I have encountered hundreds of individuals, including myself, who have struggled with math despite being highly skilled in drawing or art.

Howard Gardner, the head of Harvard University's Project Zero, has been a leader in the field of intelligence research since the late 1970s. His work rendered IQ tests irrelevant for measuring intelligence in education.

Understanding Gardner's work is critical to understanding how individuals function, and it has changed the way I interact with difficult students.

Reading this book gave me a new perspective on intelligence and helped me see it in a completely different light.

After reading this book, I discovered a new art form.

Lucia was a multifaceted creative professional. She collaborated with schools to train teachers in creative journal writing, developed a method called "healing the inner child," and co-wrote The Arts in Schools program with L.A. school officials.

The book discusses brain functions and ways to enhance creativity. The author recounts her experiment with drawing and writing using her non-dominant hand and encourages readers to try it themselves.

I tried it out as a test subject, and instead of drawing upside down, the author asked me to write a question with my dominant hand and answer it with the other.

The answers were unexpectedly profound, and drawing with my non-dominant hand was an eye-opener.

My students loved this process.

Alright, so a theme seems to be developing here, but in this case, ‘Don’t mess with nature’ gets a Canadian island treatment (those poor Boy Scouts). And, of course, a storm is coming. And, of course, the communications go out. I was gripped and frankly grossed out by this Stephen King-esque tale. 

There are also shades of Frankenstein and Lord of the Flies, and I love a horror novel that asks the question of which monsters are worse—the ones we create or the ones that lurk inside. 

This is an exceptionally well-written and meaningful study that has greatly helped me understand how the national subject is conceptualized in Canada. As an immigrant to this country who became a citizen through a challenging and demoralizing process, this book has enabled me to see how some of us are framed as belonging while others are excluded from the Canadian nation. I have also learned how (above and beyond the national mythology surrounding it) multiculturalism has been deployed to boost Canada’s profile as a liberalizing nation while, at the same time, operating as a tool to control ethnic and religious minorities.  

This book should be made into a movie! Yes, it is written by two legal historians and yes, it is about a court case, but it reads like a thriller. Great characters, twists and turns in the plot, prime ministers, feisty ladies, the whole nine yards. It is the story of how a British court decided that women were “persons” and thus could be appointed to the Canadian Senate. At the time, only certain “persons” were eligible and only men were considered “persons.” It is not about eugenics, but the events take place around 1929 and the authors do a great job of explaining what Canadian society was like then. This helps us appreciate why the ground was so fertile for eugenic ideas and why women like the “persons” involved in the story were also eugenicists.

I love how this book weaves in discovering who she is, a humorous element, and winding hilarious stories where you never know what's going to happen next. It also talks honestly about being frustrated as a woman and trying to date, the expectations put on us as women, and how these discourage us from taking our own path.

Now writing on Only Murders in the Building, Newman has a lovely, comedic voice.

I first discovered Charles de Lint as a fantasy writer, so I was curious to see he had written a cyberpunk novel. While it is a bit of a departure for him, I was very happy to see that he still brings in fantasy touches. I liked this book because of the animist idea of spirits interacting with our world, even when that world is a futuristic dystopia. I also liked there’s a lot of hope, especially in his depiction of the indigenous Claver society.

I loved seeing this world through Gahzee’s eyes as he journeys from his own society (which is sort of proto-solar punk) to the dystopian city, as well as between the human world and the spirit world, as he finds his “Tribe of Three.”

Part of the challenge of writing my novel was trying to study the various cultures, people, rituals, economies, beliefs, and ways the locals survived. This anthology had a bounty of information and a variety of stories that were written by northern authors who knew the area, some of them living there for prolonged periods of time.

The word “Taaqtumi” is an Inuktitut word that means “in the dark”—which seems appropriate. With story titles like “Insinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard” and “Wheetago War II: Summoners,” you can see that the native POV is important to these stories. It is so important that I hired one of the authors, Repo Kempt, to be my Arctic advisor on my book—to help me get the details right.