Why We Are in Need of Tails

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.

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.

Blair Thornley is an award-winning illustrator living in San Diego and Truro, Cape Cod. Among her extensive client list are The New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, L A Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Herman Miller, and Neiman Marcus. She created the cover illustrations for a reprinted series of Peter De Vries's books, and was a contributor to the recently published Collected Fables by James Thurber. Thornley's work is shown regularly at Harmon Gallery in Wellfleet, Massachusetts and has been exhibited at Judy Saslow Gallery in Chicago, Pasadena Museum of California Art, and at the Society of Illustrators in New York.