the wonder-room, january 2025

Our very first cabinet of curiosities on this here Wonder Farm

A cabinet of remedies by artist Inés Ixierda that captivated me last year at the Hella Feminist exhibit at the Oakland Museum

Dear fellow wonderer,

Have you heard the term wunderkammer? Translation: room of wonder or wonder-room. Also known as a cabinet of curiosities. These began as collections among 16th century aristocracy. Mini museums, rooms full of strange artifacts and ephemera, from history and other parts of the world, both natural and man-made. Old sundials, “mermaid’s hands,” daguerrotypes, unicorn maps, taxidermied hummingbirds. Later, the concept would spread to those outside the monarchy, regular folks who enjoyed odd collections, sometimes collected in a cabinet, sometimes in a museum or even a circus. These images fascinate me.

If you followed my blog, Wonder Farm, you know how much I love links. Sharing ideas, information, inspiring stuff. Trouble is, sometimes too many links can overwhelm, or undermine the conversation at hand. In my regular monthly posts here, I hope to focus on a specific topic, and invite conversation on that topic. (Next up: a post about how kids’ creativity has been decreasing since 1990.) I don’t want those posts to get laden with too many links–though as I’ve done my research, the links have been fascinating.

Hence, The Wonder-Room: a monthly follow-up to the original post, where we can share related links–plus other collected goodies that capture my (and your!) curiosity.

Since this month’s letter was an overview of where we’re headed, let’s open the doors of this first wonder-room with links related to overarching themes of this newsletter and my book:

• This recent op-ed at the New York Times–here’s a free gift link–about giving kids autonomy in their educations is right up my alley. “Only 33 percent of 10th graders report that they get to develop their own ideas in school. The result? In third grade, 74 percent of kids say they love school. By 10th grade, it’s 26 percent.” There are some ideas here, both for the classroom and at home. (Lessons that homeschoolers tend to figure out, often the hard way. Ahem.)

• The Mother of it All podcast with Miranda Rake and Sarah Wheeler–“where we go deep into the culture of modern motherhood and have the conversations that truly challenge, feed and excite us”–is fantastic. Episodes constantly intersect with themes of this newsletter, including how social media storytelling has changed motherhood and the backlash against “the parenting-optimization era” and building child-friendly cities.

• Just yesterday I picked up my pre-ordered copy of The Good Mother Myth, a brand sparkling new book by Nancy Reddy that I started reading last night and has already got me riled up. It’s a work of science, memoir, and cultural criticism that looks at the origins of our beliefs about “good motherhood,” especially the work of mid-century researchers who pitched themselves as parenting “experts”—mostly men. (As a psychology major who took a lot of developmental psych classes and was assigned this stuff, I’m giddy to read the dirt!) Reddy’s free Substack on care and creativity, Write More Be Less Careful is its own wunderkammer. You might begin getting to know her via her own appearance on The Mother of It All.

  BONUS WONDER-ROOM UPDATE! Just after getting home from the bookstore, I found on my porch a copy of The Good Mother Myth that Nancy’s publishing house had sent. So now I have an extra copy and it goes to one of YOU! Details below.

• Speaking of autonomy for kids, do you know the work of Let Grow, an organization advocating for childhood independence and free play? Two of their projects especially excite me. One gives kids “a simple, life-changing homework assignment: “Go home and do something new, on your own. Climb a tree, run an errand, make a meal…” Another helps parents and schools develop before and after-school Play Clubs that mimic the unsupervised neighborhood play of previous generations.

• One founder of Let Grow is Peter Gray, a longtime researcher of play, whose work I’ve linked for years. If you’re interested in independence and play for kids, you want to subscribe to his newsletter, Play Makes Us Human. It’s impossible to link favorite letters there because so many of them speak to my own concerns, but maybe start with one of his first, What Exactly Is Play? and follow your curiosity from there.

• Want a little preview of my book? Here’s a clip of a reading a few months back, a section from a chapter of my draft-in-progress about a family trip to Spain and an essay I’ve been trying to write for almost twenty years. Part of a reading with some beloved fellow writers from my Parakeet year-long book-writing program, my appearance starts at 24:30.

Please add to this Wonder-Room! What’s captured your own curiosity lately? Anything goes, doesn’t need focus on themes of this newsletter. Share a link or two below and let’s get our brains sparking, build something kooky and captivating.

And here’s what we’ll do with that treasured copy of The Good Mother Myth: Leave a comment here on Substack—preferably with a linky treasure for our Wonder-Room—before noon PST tomorrow, January 24. I’ll use an old-school bloggy random number generator to pick a winner. (And I am so sorry to say that this is open only to U.S. addresses, which totally bums me out because I know I have international readers and I’m definitely not feeling rah rah USA right now, but international shipping concerns me for its complications and costs. Please know how much I appreciate you and I hope you get your hands on this book. )

Truly,
Patricia

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