【推荐1】Ellen Ochoa’s life journey offers an outstanding example of how invention can lead to adventure. She first worked as a creative engineer and went on to become the world’s first Hispanic female astronaut.

Ochoa graduated from San Diego State University in 1980 with a degree in Physics. Mindful of her mother’s stress on the importance of education, she entered graduate school at Stanford University. When Neil Armstrong had first walked on the moon, Ochoa was 11 years old. It never would have hit her then that she too might someday become an astronaut. However, in 1983, when Ochoa was on the way to earning her PhD in Electrical Engineering, Sally Ride became the first female U. S. astronaut. This gave Ochoa the encouragement to aim high. Upon graduation, she applied to NASA to become an astronaut herself.

At Stanford, Ochoa specialized in designing optical (光学) systems that study the objects that they “see”. After graduating, she continued this work at Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sandia’s work for NASA includes developing optical, computerized recordings and models of events and phenomena (现象) in space. In time, Ochoa became the co-inventor of three optical devices. Later, working at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Ochoa branched off into developing computer systems designed for space exploration. Here she also managed a team of 35 scientists.

Ochoa’s excellence in optics and computer hardware had caught NASA’s attention. In 1990, NASA accepted her into its astronaut training program, and in July 1991, Ochoa became an official U. S. astronaut. Less than two years later, Ochoa flew as a Mission Specialist on a Discovery Space Shuttle Mission.

Ellen Ochoa has won numerous awards for her success as an engineer, an astronaut, and a role model– not just for Hispanic or female ambitious scientists, but for anyone who believes that excellence will finally find its recognition and reward.

【推荐1】There’s no end to the work to do with improving diversity in children’s media, especially for storybooks. Children need to be able to see themselves in the characters of the stories they hear and read, at a stage where they’re building their understanding of the world around them.

Shachi Kaushik’s new book, Diwali in My New Home, brings the festival of lights to life for an immigrant community.

This picture book is for children aged 5 to 8. It speaks to Indian children’s experiences living abroad when they’ve experienced life in India. The story is about a girl, Priya, who loves being with family and friends to celebrate Diwali. But Priya and her parents began living in the United States this year, and no one seems to know about the holiday. Priya misses the traditions in India. As she joins the lights together and creates rangoli art(地画艺术), Priya introduces the festival of lights to her neighbors. And even though the celebration is different this year, it’s still Diwali.

Kaushik was a lawyer before she discovered the joy of telling stories to young children. Storytelling began when she volunteered in Texas, where she hosted a monthly storytime for children. Seeing the joy on the children’s faces inspired her to write children’s books.

When asked “What’s the secret to making children pay attention to stories?”, she said, “I would say the secret is to be present and not to be shy from acting, singing or dancing. Be a performer. While reading, use facial expressions and voice to add excitement to the story. Also try asking questions like ‘What do you think will happen?’. Let the little ones’ imagination flow. Lastly, try adding a finger play song and some dance moves to get those little ones into the mood.”

【推荐2】For more than a century, Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) has been celebrated as an artist’s artist. For nearly as long, the banker’s son from Aix-en-Provence has been credited with laying the groundwork for the 20th-century avant-garde (前卫派思想). But the curators (负责人) of the largest Cézanne exhibition since 1997 decided that more could be learned about the great French post-impressionist simply by looking more closely at his paintings.

Of the 80 oil paintings in this show, which will later travel to London’s Tate Modern, eight have been subjected to infrared X-ray and other imaging technologies to determine how he made each mark. The curators’ conclusion: What made Cézanne a pioneer and enduring inspiration is that in every landscape, still life, portrait, and figure painting, he was trying to communicate emotion with every brushstroke, building each image sensation by sensation.

Unlike other artists, Cézanne seems “less concerned about what he is depicting than how he is building a picture,” said Kyle MacMillan in the Chicago Sun Times. In paintings such as Still Life With Apples (1893-94), “standard rules of perspective are overthrown and the objects look like they are about to slide off the table.” But the impact that Cézanne had is obvious in this show, which “goes to great lengths” to highlight which works were collected by fellow artists, said J. S. Marcus in The Wall Street Journal. Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse all owned Cézannes, and Jasper Johns has loaned the show one of Cézanne’s drawings of female bathers, a favorite subject of the earlier artist that is showcased in this exhibition’s final room. The figures in these works “often have an impassive (冷漠的) quality, leading many critics to wonder if he filled his celebrated apples with greater emotion than his human subjects.”

But not that the show tells you how to interpret Cézannes. “It’s up to you to wind your own way. It’s what Cézanne did, after all.”

【推荐3】Walk around the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and you may see a green animal named Sluggo and a flying pig named Philomena. You might even see street artist David Zinn drawing them using only sidewalk chalk and charcoal (炭笔).

At the age of 12, David began working as an artist. His dad was writing a computer instruction and worried that it would be boring to read. So he asked David to draw pictures of turtles (the name of the computer program) to explain it. The publisher liked his drawings, and soon David had the job of drawing more turtles in action. “I learned a great lesson, which was that, to make money as an artist, I couldn't always draw what I wanted,” he says. “I had to figure out how to draw a turtle drinking tea and other things like that.”

David worked for 20 years as a commercial (商业的) artist, but he often felt cooped up (禁锢) sitting at a computer for 10 hours a day. Then, on a sunny afternoon about ten years ago, he brought some chalk and started drawing on the sidewalk. That's when Sluggo came to life.

“One of the reasons I like to put art on the street is to take people by surprise,” he says. “I can have fun drawing, and knowing it will be washed away helps me not think too much. It frees me up.”

It takes David about two hours to complete one drawing. He uses a lot of sidewalk characteristics in his street art. It can be difficult to draw on surfaces that are not flat. He has to notice where shadows will land so they won't destroy the 3D drawings he creates.

Today, more and more people are accepting and looking for his work. David's artwork can also be found across the country and even throughout the world. Photos of his drawings have been shown at many universities and museums.