Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my blog!

This blog is primarily to publish book reviews for a course on literature for children and young adults, but I imagine from time to time I'll post a musing or scribbling about children's or young adult books in general.

I don't really ever remember consciously dividing books into "kids" or "adult" books.  They were just books.  I spent a few years in the children's area of my local library, but began to branch out before too long.

I don't think you can "outgrow" a book.  (Although parents out there can attest to getting tired of a book!)  I still get a smile out of reading Where the Wild Things Are.  I still have a complete set of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books.  I read my first set until it fell to pieces.  Literally.  To this day, I have no idea where the cover of my very first copy of Little House on the Prairie is.  I've used children's books as teaching tools (how to take notes) and as the starting point for a lesson in the judicial system (putting the Big Bad Wolf on trial using The True Story of the Three Little Pigs), and as part of a unit on the American Revolution (Can't You Make Them Behave, King George?).

I've always harboured a wish as a history teacher to incorporate more historical fiction as part of our units.  The class could compare the fictionalized version of events and compare/contrast them to what really happened.  You could even use Shakespeare's Henry V and compare Will's version of English history to what actually happened.  (Spoiler alert: Henry did not propose to Katherine mere days after the Battle of Agincourt.)  There are so many options available for so many reading levels.  Maybe one day.

Sometimes I like to pull a picture book off the shelf and examine the artwork.  The variety of techniques used is astounding.  A book with spare black-and-white line drawings is no less beautiful than pictures with richly detailed and vibrantly hued paintings in its simplicity.  The beauty lies in the details the illustrator has chosen to share with us, letting us fill in the blanks with our imaginations.

We should take time in schools to teach kids to learn to read strictly for the pleasure of settling down with an old friend, or finding a a brand-new one.  Testing isn't teaching, and reading a sample standardized test excerpt isn't going to make a child want to run to the library and find out what happens in the next book.

Until next time...