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Our most nuanced skills for communication were lost when we lost our tails, so the story goes.
Huk and Tuk explore ways we can compensate for this loss, by telling stories - tales - through polyphonic listening and by entering into dialogue to create a new, deeper understanding of ourselves and the world we live in.
Doing philosophy with children inspired Maria deVenza Tillmanns to recreate the bonds of meaningful communication in the writing of this whimsical, playful story. Philosophy should make us - children and adults - re-think what we think we know and push the boundaries of accepted practices. Hopefully, it will also make us laugh about taking things too seriously.
About the author
Maria teaches a "Philosophy with Children" program in underserved San Diego schools in partnership with the University of California, San Diego. In 1980, she attended Dr. Matthew Lipman's workshop on philosophy for children and later wrote her dissertation on philosophical counseling and teaching under the direction of Martin Buber scholar Dr. Maurice Friedman. She has publications in a number of inter-national journals. For Maria, philosophy is an art form, and she enjoys painting with ideas. Philosophy has helped her navigate the world in all its complexity, including having a multicultural background and having been raised in the US as well as in the Netherlands. She came back to the US to study and moved across the Atlantic multiple times.
