Read Alouds Inspired by the Pandemic
April 9, 2020 Comments Off on Read Alouds Inspired by the Pandemic
You need only consider the two chapter books I’ve just finished reading to my children to glean the wild fluctuations in mood characteristic of Home Life During the Pandemic. The first, Laurie Halse Anderson’s Fever 1793—a historical novel set during the Yellow Fever epidemic in Philadelphia—is dark, gripping, macabre, and mind-blowing. The second, Louis Sachar’s Wayside School: Beneath the Cloud of Doom—thirty interconnected stories about the students at the quirkiest school in literary history—is silly, preposterous, dry-witted, and a rip-roaring good time…while still being a tad apocalyptic, because I can’t resist a theme. If we’re doomed to spend all day, every day, in each other’s presence, while the pendulum of the wider world swings dramatically between fear and hope, heartbreak and grace, serious headlines and funny memes, it seems only appropriate that our read alouds should follow suit.
When They Want the Truth
September 5, 2019 § 2 Comments
When I was eight, I led my father into our coat closet, pushed aside the coats to make a small opening, closed the door, and sat him opposite me on the floor. As we both hunched uncomfortably, I handed him a piece of torn notebook paper and a pencil. On the paper was a list of every swear word I had ever heard. “I want you to write down what each of these words mean,” I said. “Please,” I added, so as not to sound bossy.
I’ll never forget the way my dad didn’t miss a beat. As if this was a natural ask from a firstborn. He didn’t speak, just wrote down a word or two beside each of mine. When he was finished, he handed me the list, and that was that. We stood up, opened the door, and went our separate ways.
In the safety of my bedroom, I got up the nerve to look at what my father had written. It may have been the most anticlimactic moment of my life to date. Female dog. Human feces. I’m sure there were others, but I can’t remember the complete list. I stared in disbelief. I wasn’t entirely sure what all of them meant (what the heck was feces?), but I did know they didn’t sound particularly harmful, certainly not worth the drama which ensued each time someone used one of them at school.
In that moment, I also knew I wasn’t getting the whole truth. I thought the answer was in my father’s pencil strokes, but what I failed to realize was that I actually craved a conversation with him. I wanted to understand what was so terrible about these words. I wanted to understand why they were used the way they were. Looking back, I even wish he had explained some of the gender politics behind them. But I didn’t know how to make any of that happen.
In an effort to demystify these words for me, my father stood in the way of my more fully understanding the world I was sharing with him. « Read the rest of this entry »
How The Penderwicks Saw Us Through 24 Days of Rain
October 25, 2018 § 6 Comments
Last month, Northern Virginia saw twenty-four days of rain. Adding insult to injury, this deluge of wet, gloomy weather happened during the one month each year when our family barely holds it together in the first place. Where the ensuing chaos of back-to-school transitions is trumped only by the fact that both my children once upon a time insisted on entering the world within two weeks of one another (and have since insisted that their celebrations never overlap).
Fortunately, we are not strangers to the salvation of the right chapter book series for back-to-school season (see here). Still, I have never been as thankful for one particular set of literary characters as I was last month. « Read the rest of this entry »
Into the Woods
January 12, 2018 § 2 Comments
After the holiday dishes were done, after the last of our guests flew home, our family did what we do best on winter breaks: we hunkered down and read.
In a somewhat bittersweet turn of events, JP was less interested in listening to me read than he was in reading his own book (Five, Six, Seven, Nate!, the sequel to Tim Federle’s fabulous Better Nate Than Ever, which I can at least take credit for introducing to him last fall, on our trip to New York City to catch his first Broadway musical). Emily, however, was game to join me each day on the couch and insisted we read Emily Winfield Martin’s newly-published and ohhhh-so-lovely Snow and Rose (Ages 8-12, slightly younger if reading aloud).
When the winter doldrums threaten to take over, we fantasize about escape. But who needs a tropical beach vacation when you have the mysterious, enchanted, dangerous woods of our imagination? (Um, still me. But that’s a different post.) « Read the rest of this entry »
Laughing Our Way Back to School
September 8, 2016 § 5 Comments
(Before we get started—HELLLLOOOOO AGAIN!—I thought I’d link to three guest posts that I wrote as part of a Summer Reading Series for the local blog, DIY Del Ray. There’s one on picture books about the garden; one on recent new installments in our favorite early-chapter series; and one on my favorite middle-grade chapter books so far this year.)
And now, let’s get down to today’s business.
As I write this, my kids have been back in school for a few short hours. The house is blissfully, rapturously, guiltily quiet. The good news is that I can finally do laundry in the basement without my children scootering—and I mean, quite literally scootering—around me. The bad news is that I can’t get cuddles or kisses or giggles whenever I want.
As my kids get older, it becomes harder and harder to see summer end. I will miss my buddies. I will miss our lazy mornings (only the mail carrier knows how long we stayed in our pajamas). Most of all, I will miss our adventures—the way every new shade of green, every sun-kissed rock, every goldfinch and swallowtail and cicada becomes something to marvel at and remark on.
And I will, of course, miss the many hours we curled up to read together (as well as the times when we were too busy catching a ferry or celebrating a swim meet or chasing fireflies to read at all). Lest you think my silence this summer meant that we didn’t discover piles of new books, I can promise you redemption this fall. We have a lot to catch up on.
Beginning with what we read at the very end of our summer break. « Read the rest of this entry »