Teachers who don't teach book club...pretty pictures edition

Book club hasn't tackled a graphic offering...until now. We read Shaun Tan's Tales From Outer Suburbia, a collection of out-there short stories.

While reading it, I thought it was fine. The stories were OK. The pictures were pretty. But it didn't stay with me. Until I started to talk about it.

We started with the poetry story, which is a poem itself. The idea being that all the poetry people write and throw away or hide gets collected in a big ball rolling around full of thoughts and feelings. We said you could use the story as an intro into writing poetry. What is poetry for? Who is it for? How do you really "do" poetry? This is one way:


Then there was the story of the exchange student who left quickly without the host family knowing if he enjoyed his time...until they found this:


And my favorite illustration, of a boy lying in the indentation a whale (yes, whale) made in his front lawn:


Turns out, even though I don't have words to quote, the stories, the images, and the feeling are still with me.

Next on the list is classic science fiction: Ender's Game.

"Pictures must not be too picturesque."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Book club is suffocating my reading

Book club is tomorrow. I've once again procrastinated reading the selection, except this time it isn't the library's fault.

It's mine. And it isn't for lack of trying.

Going Bovine is the trippy and amusing tale of a boy who gets Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and has to save the world from Dr. X (who is also the only person who can cure his disease).

It is 480 pages long. I've been trying to read it for a week and I've just now made it to page 250.

I feel like a high school student. I'm sitting in the back of the class thinking this book is lame and what does it have to do with me and why aren't there Cliffs Notes on it and do we think Chris likes me?

Only I'm also a teacher, so now I feel guilty. I have a need to be prepared for book club. But I'm not having fun. And I don't understand why.

In the book, the protagonist just got picked up by some happiness junkies who have created a Utopian community dedicated to happiness and they say hilarious things like: "Don't hurt your happiness."

So the writing is fine. And, after reading the acknowledgment section, I was convinced I AM Libba Bray.

And the plot is fine. There's even a punk rock angel. And allusions to Don Quixote. And garden gnomes who talk. And jazz musicians. And fire demons.

So why the ennui?

I guess I have 230 pages to answer that question.

"I'm just saying it's not all windmills and ninjas."
Libba Bray

Teachers who don't teach book club...little women edition

Over the last few sessions, our book club has run into a conundrum: do we dislike some YA books because they aren't good or because we are too far away from the target demographic (aka OLD)?

And so, in honor of the the end of winter (and our childhoods), we read Little Women.

Full of seasonal changes, our book club has been adding members. Face and Ams rallied and spent all weekend listening to LW being read aloud. Literary bonding makes me smile.

I went away for the weekend and grabbed my copy of LW from 4th grade on my way out. Upon returning to Chicago, I video chatted Face and Ams (FAMES) because...BETH DIDN'T DIE in my book, and my book only spanned one year.

How was that possible?

After much confusion, we realized my little kid edition separated Little Women and Good Wives into two separate books whereas new editions smash them together in about 500 pages. And so, I embarked upon a 2 day, 300 page marathon finishing 2 minutes before leaving for book club and endless fish and chips...

Where I got to hear Face's philosophy that the plot is actually driven by the men of the story. He stands by it:


I almost like the book(s) more as an adult. As a child, I loved the story and feistiness of Jo. As an adult I was all: whoa, hello road map to becoming an adult.

With any book that people enjoy, the characters, themes, and plot get inserted into conversations. And so we chomped away on fish and chips and someone would chime in: that's so Laurie, you're such a Jo, at least you can make jam, or oh, the professor.

I've concluded that I can still project myself back to being young(er) because Little Women (and Good Wives) maintain their hold on my heart.

"The best of us have a spice of perversity in us, especially when we are young and in love."
Louisa May Alcott

Teachers who don't teach book club...merlin edition

This book club we read The Lost Years of Merlin - by T.A. Barron - which chronicles Merlin's magical youth.

This book was: FUN.

Even though it was definitely meant for a younger audience (4-8th grade), that doesn't mean I didn't have a great time reading it. Sure, there were shenanigans like ummm, Merlin: when you go on a sea voyage...take water! Also, as an adult reading it, the plot trajectory was quite apparent. Even then, I still wanted to read to confirm.

This book was delightful and could easily be used as supplemental reading during a mythology unit.

The best part of the book, though, deals with perception. In our world, we name the stars and gather constellations and their stories. In the place Merlin was born, however, they make "constellations" out of the space between stars, the black space.

Did that just rock your mind?

This example lets the book begin a discussion of broadening worldviews and accepting (and welcoming) difference.

Luckily, there are two subsequent books in the series. I'll definitely be including the series in my classroom library.

"Nothing like a good read to finish off a day of good reads."
T.A. Barron

The muddled, befuddled, and downright confusing history of love

*SPOILER ALERT - if you went to Saint Mary's and are still reading The History of Love...stop reading.

The topic? Unrequited love.

The question? How long do you hold on?

If you listen to Jane Austin's Persuasion, women love longest when all hope is gone. However, one of the male characters in the One Book One Saint Mary's selection (The History of Love) is trying to prove that some men should share this sad title.

The History of Love is also about the art of writing and life. And it is filled with beautifully tragic words like: "When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely."

But then love walks in: "Maybe the first time you saw her...Part of you thought: Please don't look at me. If you don't, I can still turn away. And part of you thought: Look at me."

And then love walks out: "For a long time, it [your heart] remained hollow...If it weren't for her, there would never have been an empty space, or the need to fill it."

And then there was this immensely sad part that wasn't even about love at all. It was about getting older. This man would purposely go out in public and make a ruckus (aka spilling milk at the coffee shop or knocking down a KY display at the grocery store) just so that people would notice him. Why? So that he wouldn't have to die on a day when no one noticed him.

...

But then, I got to the end, and it was like I was watching The Sixth Sense all over again. Because I said: huh? Wait a minute. That other guy doesn't exist? This isn't amateur hour. I'm basically a professional reader. So when I get to the end of a book and 1. am confused about who ACTUALLY wrote the book that the ENTIRE book is about and 2. didn't realize the guy has a heart attack in the last sentences (thanks for clearing that up Wikipedia)...I must call shenanigans and say that some clarifying sentences needed to be strategically placed in between the poetic ones.

I ask: why make a book confusing on purpose when the foundational story is great? You don't need all the pomp and circumstance.

I will show this by providing a short synopsis:

In The History of Love that is about a book named The History of Love, there is a first guy who wrote the book about a girl he loved and basically has dedicated his life to unrequited love, but he gave it to another guy - I'm still not sure why - but I think it has something to do with WWII and the other guy published the book under his name to get a woman to love him, but he put the first guy's self-written obituary as the last chapter like a 'sorry'. And the first guy goes his whole adult life not knowing that his great work has been published. In other news, the first guy has a friend - who turns out to be imaginary - who also used to love the girl - which is why their friendship ended - and who is also a writer and he also might simply be another version of the first guy but this is complicated by the fact that he really did used to be a guy who loved the girl and subsequently died - I think - and I thought for a minute that the first guy stole the book from the imaginary guy but turns out I don't think so and the first guy gets his book back - secretly in the mail - and the entire thing ends with him dying on a park bench next to a girl who was named after the girl in the book because her father gave the book to her mother and it turns out the mother is the one who is translating it into English for a man who turns out to be the first guy's son who the first guy thought never knew he was his father since he had to let another man raise him because the love of his life thought he was dead and gave up on him.

See? NOT NECESSARY.

"Once upon a time there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists, where everything was discovered and everything was possible."
Nicole Krauss