You’re My Only Hope
When Princess Leia meets hope and my nineteen year old self (and also, perhaps, the thirty-four year old mom version of myself I am now).
May America Awake
One of our major school goals this year was to dig deeper into American history with the kids and really talk about the role that minorities played. We wanted our kids to be given more than a passing reference to Squanto, Sacagawea, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Our hope was to give all of us more information to work from so that we could better love our neighbor.
Unexpected
Have you ever read a book that wrecked you in an unexpected way? You’re reading a book that should be light and easy and, before you know it, you’re sitting there with tears streaming down your face, unable to read aloud another word because something deeply hidden in your heart just had light thrown on it.
Why We Read Biographies
Much like travel writing, where you get to see a different part of the world without ever leaving the comfort of your own couch, biographies and memoirs enable us to experience another’s point of view, feel another’s feelings, live another’s life. This is the kind of opportunity we don’t really get even with those that we know the most intimately.
Beauty to Share
A quartet of books to share with your kids and a couple more for you to breeze through if you need to reassess where your time is going and why.
Knitting My Heart to Another's
My lovely friend J. Elle's new book Wings of Ebony comes out this week (tomorrow!). In honor of her and upcoming Black History month (and MLK Day, which I missed already), I wanted to spend some time reading books that would give me a window into African American life.
Book Your Thanksgiving Now!
Looking to do a last minute pre-Thanksgiving library run so you're stocked up for your Thanksgiving break (and prepared in case everything shuts back down after Thanksgiving due to Covid)? This is your last minute list!
Squashing in a Book Blog
There is not enough time in my days right now, but it appears that there is always enough time to read.
Books on Quarantine
This week, finally succumbing to the insanity that is social isolation, I accidentally lit my hair on fire.
Here's to Sahabats
Do you ever read a book and find yourself saying, "Yes, exactly!" as you read? And then it feels like every conversation you find yourself in opens right up to discussing it? And it's not that you agree with everything the author is saying, but that you read it at just the right moment when it resonated with you in just the right way?
Fall Reading
There's something about fall (even the pretend Florida version of fall) that makes me want to curl up under a blanket with a good book and a large mug of something hot. I also don't turn down snuggling with children and reading out loud to them. In case you are on a similar wavelength, I thought I'd provide a few of our latest and greatest.
Still Hot
Those of you who know me, know I love Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. So much so that this year I bought a pencil case of Max in his wolf suit with the iconic words "I'll eat you up!" written on it. (Incidentally, the Man, who is not a Sendak fan, asked me, "Who bought this weird pencil case? That kid has something coming out of his butt!")
Fiction Detox
It's been a fun few weeks of fiction detox. I mentioned to my librarian that I was taking a few weeks off of novel reading, and she looked at me with a blankly confused expression and asked, "Why in the world would you do that?"
Books for Suffering
There are seasons in our reading lives when we begin to notice themes emerge. I'm not talking, of course, about how we have a preference for reading military biographies or historical fiction or young adult novels. I'm talking about how we find ourselves reading books that centralize around something that is resonating within us.
Books for Me, Books for You
It's been a reading summer for us, lots of afternoons curled up on the couch with the Bigs enjoying books out loud...at least until Bruiser starts to interrupt more than every other paragraph, which is when I throw in the towel and make them go play legos.