I lead a quiet life and reading keeps me steady. Here are a few recommendations: Oona out of Order by Margarita Montimore. It’s got everything I like in a book: romance, grief, and time travel.…
Category: Book Reviews
The Inner Pandemic
Matt Richtel’s December 2022 interview on NPR’s Fresh Air explained the teen mental health crisis in the U.S. as our “Inner Pandemic” : NPR/Fresh Air While this book is in no way a replacement for therapy,…
One for the Murphys
Even though North Country School had to shut down a little early because of that thing that begins with “c” and ends with “d”, the sixth graders and I were able to read One for…
Published: Oh Reader
Grief and growth take center stage in The Third Mushroom, a middle-grade novel by the talented Jennifer L. Holm that serves as a follow-up to The Fourteenth Goldfish, a book I shared with my first…
Where Reasons End
I’d started this novel by award-winning Yiyun Li at least five times since it was published in 2019. I finally sat down with it, reading once through and then again to take notes, in early…
Melissa
I just finished reading the brilliant middle-grade debut, George, by Alex Gino with my sixth graders this winter. The novel is about George embracing her identity as Melissa. The book layers in so much about…
Starfish
The standing starfish pose is something I demo and offer to students who need an energy boost. It’s an effective stretch, especially right after lunch. The stretch is a signature move for the main character,…
The Shakespeare Requirement
I started Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Notes on Grief this summer. I read the first two chapters and set it aside. I couldn’t do it. Not yet. Soon. The grief books are piling up. That’s a…
Published: What a Children’s Book Taught Me (and My Students) About Grief
Michelle Cuevas’s powerful children’s book, The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole, features prominently in my essay about navigating grief while preparing for my new role as an English teacher at North Country…
Published: What’s Your Grief – Books & Broken Hearts
The website What’s Your Grief published a piece I wrote this summer. It highlights three contemporary middle-grade books that are ideal for facilitating meaningful conversations and classroom activities about trauma, grief, and loss with students.…