Last week during #titletalk on Twitter someone mentioned that she’d been trying to read Shiver but couldn’t get into it. I responded that Shiver is my niece’s all time favorite book — she is obsessed. Someone else chirped in saying that of Maggie Stiefvater’s books, she loved The Ravenwood Boys and Scorpio Races best. I, too, loved those Ravenwood boys, but I’d yet to read the other. I think about five different people joined the chorus, tweeting about Stiefvater’s books. Quite the popular recommendations.
Three days later while scouring the crowded book shelves at the thrift store, I found a brand new copy of Scorpio Races for .75. Book-a-holic deal. Later that week, I had five hours to spend on a plane and read this great little book half the way home. I have a few students in mind who will grab it right out of my hands when I talk about it.
I love that.
Go here to read the author’s reasons for writing this book. She includes a great narrative about writing, and even failing at writing, along with a beautiful painting that hangs in here living room. Fascinating.
York in the 1980s, a time when vagrants and panhandlers were as common a sight in the city as kids on bikes or moms with strollers. The nation was enjoying an economic boom, and on Wall Street new millionaires were minted every day. But the flip side was a widening gap between the rich and the poor, and nowhere was this more evident than on the streets of New York City. Whatever wealth was supposed to trickle down to the middle class did not come close to reaching the city’s poorest, most desperate people, and for many of them the only recourse was living on the streets. After a while you got used to the sight of them–hard, gaunt men and sad, haunted women, wearing rags, camped on corners, sleeping on grates, asking for change. It is tough to imagine anyone could see them and not feel deeply moved by their plight. Yet they were just so prevalent that most people made an almost subconscious decision to simply look the other way–to, basically, ignore them. The problem seemed so vast, so endemic, that stopping to help a single panhandler could feel all but pointless. And so we swept past them every day, great waves of us going on with our lives and accepting that there was nothing we could really do to help.
who murdered people. They only know of serial killers from TV and the movies. I get the “pleasure” of introducing them to a real life psychopath. It creeps me out a bit that this is such a popular book, but students love to read it.
Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Tess called my room to see if I had another copy. Sadly, I did not– then.
I mentioned before that I gave a Pulitzer Prize winning novel to one of my AP English students recently. He gave it back to me three days later.
Three Teachers Talk 