happy finals week – remember, sixth grade – no more blogging for grades – i mean it – don’t even try – i won’t approve them… 🙂

“fire in the ashes” – a former teacher, current teacher advocate, wrote about the kids he wrote about for years – in other words, after spending years working with young kids and now 20-ish years down the road, how did those kids turn out??? it was a fascinating read from my POV because basically, there was no way to tell who was going to succeed, who would fail – a lot was based on how the kids responded and what they were asked to respond to – very good reminder that a “success” story isn’t always college an a billion dollar job – it’s a kid that grows up to be a man and treat others with respect

“the yearling” – i didn’t think i had read the book and i always feel bad assigning books that i haven’t read so i went back and committed to it – and then discovered a few paragraphs in that i had read the book – probably in my childhood b/c i could remember a few things but not all 400 pages – as a summary, it was good – it didn’t win the newbery, it won the pulitzer in ’38 – so an adult award for its writing – the dialect is classic – the backwoods south the writer captures doesn’t exist any more – so that’s cool to experience – when you read a book like that, you realize how similar most books are that you’re currently reading

“remarkable” – new book – ungifted kid living in a gifted town – a mystery – pirates – a science fair dance – cute book – to the author’s credit, she doesn’t make the main character realize that she’s actually brilliant – the character stays “sort of” average – the gifted people are ego-centric and not favorable, to say the least – again, cute book

“mulberry street” – i read this to my write in the middle folk friday – we used it to rock at the festival – our stories should be collected and published – in other news, i walked them to death on the campus…

“sweetness” – oh, what a sad book – the life of an NFL great – walter payton – who died too early – who strayed so far from who he was at 20 – reading his story makes you aware that if the who you are at 18, 20, etc. is good, you shouldn’t start running after different things when your circumstances change (are we reading this tiger woods???)

happy finals week,

maf