what I’ve been reading lately:
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Sad Little Breathing Machine by Matthea HarveyGraywolf Press, 2004
Poems filled with twists of meanings, wordplay that depends on the break of a line (“Little was left of the forest./Large was ten miles ahead.”). Images that resonate (ducks glowing softly in the night, snow falling between trains). Wit and subtlety and a little bit of sadness. As entire pieces, the prose poems are my…
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On Subbing: The First Four Years by Dave RocheMicrocosm Publishing, 2005 (2nd edition)
I was reading this on the train, and a man came over to me and asked something about the title. Internally, I rolled my eyes: no, it’s not that kind of subbing. In this slim volume, Dave tells of his experiences over the course of four years as a substitute educational assistant (EA) in special…
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Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West by Donald WorsterOxford University Press, 1985 (originally Pantheon, 1985)
In this history of the American West, Worster writes against the myth of the West as a place of rugged individualism, a place of democratic opportunity that existed in contrast to the hierarchically structured East. By focusing on the issue of irrigation, he aims to show that the West has (and has long had) a…
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My Father’s Dragon and Elmer and the Dragon by Ruth Stiles GannettScholastic (originally Random House, 1948 and 1950)
These two short books, both illustrated by Ruth Chrisman Gannett (the author’s stepmother) are so wonderful and charming. In the first, young Elmer Elevator runs away from home to free a young dragon from wild animals who are keeping him captive. In the second, Elmer and the dragon head back towards the town where Elmer…
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Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne JonesHarper Trophy, 2001 (originally 1986)
Clever and funny and all-around wonderful, exciting and perfect for reading aloud. (The movie, while quite different from the book, is excellent as well.)
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The Railway Children by E. NesbitPuffin Books, 1994 (originally Wells Gardner, Darton & Co., 1906)
Such a charming story about three city children who move to the country with their mother when their father suddenly has to go away. Peter, Roberta, and Phyllis (the latter two known mostly as Bobbie and Phil) have various adventures in and around their small village: they befriend the stationmaster and the porter at the…
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Eats, Shoots, & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne TrussGotham Books, 2004 (originally Profile Books, 2003)
This weekend, I saw a cash register with a scrolling display that made me want to scream: “Thank’s for shoping at [store name].” Errors in spelling and punctuation jump out at me and grate on my nerves: it’d be fair to say that I’m a stickler when it comes to language and its usage. Somehow,…
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Deliver Us From Normal by Kate KliseScholastic, 2005
Charles Harrisong lives in Normal, Illinois, and feels like his family is weird beyond helping. It’s not even that his family is so weird, although his younger siblings can be loud, his mom is sometimes embarrassing, and his older sister is independent and quirky. It’s more that Charles is acutely aware of what lies behind…
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Happiness and Education by Nel NoddingsCambridge University Press, 2003
In this smart and eloquent book, Noddings argues that happiness should be taken seriously as one of education’s aims. She argues that our society presently seems to have an economic view of education: people go to school in order to go to college and people go to college in order to get better jobs (and…
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Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer CholdenkoG.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004
Alcatraz, 1935, from the perspective of Moose, a twelve-year-old kid who’s living on the island because his dad’s an electrician there. Historical details (Al Capone’s mother’s visit to the island, the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge) and family drama (but not melodrama). Much of the book is about the narrator’s sister, Natalie, who’s autistic;…