The Work: My Search For a Life That Matters - Wes Moore

Moore, Wes. The Work: My Search For a Life That Matters. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2014.

How do I find a life that matters? I don’t always know if my students are asking this question, but I surely think they should be. I have been fascinated by Moore since his first book The Other Wes Moore.  I was eager to add this newer work to my summer nonfiction reads. His thoughtful work does not disappoint.

Moore has quite an impressive resume: Rhodes Scholar, decorated war veteran, White House Fellows program.  His accomplishments in themselves are inspirational. The insights into his motivation are even more so.  He writes with passion about the aftermath of September 11, 2001.  He is honest about his desire to do something meaningful with his life, even if he doesn’t always know for sure what that might be.  He traces the influences of the mentors in his life, a coach, a commanding officer, and grandfather. Interspersed with his own life story are biographies of the people whom he admires. He includes the founder of the KIND company and the head of the Peace Corps.  Without fail, these are people who have overcome adversity to better serve the world in which we live.

I really, really liked this book.  I want my students to read it.  Having said that, I don’t anticipate the selling of this title to be an easy one.  I will market it to my advanced students first.  His successes and the premise of his first book will, perhaps, intrigue them.  The structure, with the alternating chapters about different people who do important work, will engage the students who might be overwhelmed by his reflection.  Students are more accustomed to reading sound bites now, and I believe the structure will create this illusion. I have students who aspire to change the world.  I will definitely be sharing this book with them. I will be hitting up my library search to seek similarly inspirational titles about people making a difference. The military angle is also exceptionally interesting to many of my students.  I have a variety of directions to go and am eager for the fall to choose one and get started!

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The Start of Me and You - Emery Lord

Lord, Emery. The Start of Me and You. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.

Sigh. How can I not like a book that relies so much on references to Miss Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Paige Hancock fancies herself to be Elizabeth Bennett. (Don’t we all?) But nerdy Max suggests she is more of a Jane and persists in calling her Janie for much of the book. The stuff of which dreams are made.

But Paige isn’t necessarily ready to dream. She is a year out from the loss of her boyfriend in a drowning accident.  She still, however, is getting “the look” of pity from many who surround her. She still has nightmares of drowning herself.  The school year is new, and she creates a list, prepared to live the rest of her life.  She will be more social; she will try new things; she will find a way to date her secret crush; she will swim.  Paige works hard at her list, but she is not completely prepared for what life brings her - most notably her friendship with Max, cousin of the secret crush AND for her divorced parents to begin dating...each other AND the stroke of her beloved grandmother, already suffering from alzheimer’s.

I really like Paige and know my readers will too.  She has issues with her overprotective mother. She has her best girlfriends to see her through the dark times.  She thinks she loves one guy, and all the while she is (spoiler alert; not really...we see it!) falling in love with the other.  She experiences much of the real experiences that my students are experiencing each day. I like that her parents are present, and even in the struggle, they grow closer.  I like the relationship that Paige has with her grandmother - precious.  As noted, I love the literary allusions.  At one point Paige notes, “He’d handed me a new mind-set, wrapped in literary references.” She uses “book lover’s math” to calculate how many books a gift card will get her.

I will enjoy book talking this lovely coming of age story in the fall.  My readers will fall in love with the story and witness first hand how Paige finds her inner strength and changes her world.  I love that her story will give my girls hope to life to its fullest. I think I might do a "Starting Over" slide in my book talk and showcase some of these strong young protagonists.  Oh, and I love that maybe a reader or two might be encouraged to give Jane Austen a try. Just maybe.

The Ghosts of Heaven

Sedgwick, Marcus. The Ghosts of Heaven. New York: Roaring Brook Press, 2014.

A mind bender is just what the reader gets from Marcus Sedgwick.  I feel like I need to read his stuff multiple times in order to begin to understand it.  I surely don’t feel like a veteran AP literature teacher.  Here’s the thing though.  I had to wait until summer to even get to read The Ghosts of Heaven for the first time.  I start teaching at upward bound soon, so - no rereading just now.

To summarize this book is difficult.  The content is organized into four quarters.  I read them in the order that they are published, but theoretically they work in any order.  One is set in prehistory and focuses on a young girl, who struggles to decipher original writing on the walls of a cave, to make magic for her people’s hunt, to survive the invasion of another group of people.  I am transformed back in time.  Another is set during the height of witch hunts and executions.  A young girl who is a healer like her newly passed mother, is learning to use herbs to help the neighbors who come for aid at all hours.  She only wishes she could heal her brother who suffers randomly from debilitating seizures.  Then new priest arrives.  His mission? To remove her village from the clutches of evil and witchcraft.  Another, and likely my favorite, is set in an insane asylum sometime in the 20s.  The new assistant superintendent is learning the secrets of the supposedly progressive assignment while keeping some pretty profound secrets of his own. The story revolves around him, his daughter Verity, and the alarmingly lucid, but “insane” patient who guides them both. And the last quarter I read set sometime in the distant future - beautiful science fiction, and I don’t always love science fiction - in a spaceship hurtling toward a “new earth.” The sentinel who wakes every 10 years to check the ship’s progress notices some startling developments. People are dying; systems seem to be failing; he might not really know the truth of his journey.  What do all of these stories have in common?  The spiral - at some level the character’s are drawn to, mystified by, afraid of the spiral - seen in nature, in stairways, in paths through space.  

I love that Sedgwick’s work transcends labels.  The book is marketed as young adult, but is populated equally by characters of all ages. I will definitely have to market this to my older and more sophisticated readers, but am pleased to have it to offer to them.  Honestly, I can’t wait to have a few of them read it, so that we can talk the ideas through together. I love his talent at creating works in different eras and styles that stand independently and yet work seamlessly together - historical fiction, science fiction, prehistoric fiction. One of the reasons that I have to work so hard to understand the meaning is that I am drawn into the narrative and just need to know what happens, so I rush.  A second reading becomes almost necessary...but the time. I love that this book forces the reader to be an active reader, to seek connections, to look beyond the words on the page. This book is intriguing; thought provoking; a mind bender - exactly what I’ve come to expect from Marcus Sedgwick.  

Keep Poetry Instruction Alive

I am passionate about poetry. I love reading it. I love teaching it. I love reading and talking books in verse for my library and reading a talking books that highlight poetry for my library. I have become increasingly concerned about the nudges that we are getting through the core that can effectively reduce the amount of time that we feel "justified" in teaching poetry. So...I appreciated Amanda Ronan's "7 Reasons to Keep Poetry Instruction Alive." She notes that "in today's classrooms it seems like poetry has been pushed to the side." She notes a study by the Pioneer Institute that analyzes the teaching of poetry in core classrooms. As educators we must consider her 7 reasons as we craft the curriculum that guides our English instruction. These are (1) Length, Kids sometimes respond more readily to shorter works.  (2) Inference, Inferring is a skill that is easily taught in poetry and applicable in many academic areas.  (3) Emotions, Forget the common core; literature is about touching emotions, and kids need to think about their emotions and the emotions of others. (4) Figures of Speech, Can there be too much practice with these? (5) Historical, I love teaching history and literature to getter.In AP, we often discuss what aspects of our culture and history will be reflected in poetry. (6) Performance, I have had some great experiences with having kids perform poetry.  (7) Critical Thinking, An excellent way to encourage critical thinking skills. . If we consider the points made in her article it becomes clear that poetry instruction does indeed support the skills required by the common core. Further, poetry instruction creates smarter students and better people. These things still matter.