Summer has finally begun and I find myself reading and reading and reading. Being an advanced copy reader for Simon and Schuster, I receive many books over the course of a year. Few I actually get to read during the school year due to the amount of work I put into teaching; but come summer! Wow!
Before school let out, I had the joy of reading Colm Toibin's Brooklyn. I was so moved by the rhetoric and style that I assigned it as a summer-read for rising Juniors which is the English class I teach during the year. My students are Honors and AP students so we are not just reading it for plot line. Brooklyn, a runner up for The Brooker Prize, lends itself very well to the study of syntax, tone, rhetoric and the other elements required of AP Language and composition students. Honors students looks at sentence structure and manipulation so again they have an excellent source to study. Most of these students are taking US History which will have a unit on immigration and Brooklyn also provides an avenue for discussion here as the protagonist is an immigrant from Ireland in the 1950s.
But since the 2009-2010 year is over, I have been able to read several books over the last couple weeks. Four of these I'd like to share with you:
1. The Finishing Touches by Hester Browne - a highly enjoyable and funny read that is touched with intrigue as Betsy Philmore returns to London to reestablish her adoptive mother's legacy.
2. A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhove - a memoir by a Russian immigrant of growing up in Leningrad - as she knew it then. It is a hauntingly inspired novel that you will not read but live.
3. 29:A Novel by Adena Halpern - oh, such a funny fairy-tale that all of us "maturing" ladies have given a thought or two of being possible! A delightful relationship between a grandmother and her granddaughter ends with some truths that hopefully we have already learned.
4. The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom - a historical novel set in the south in the early 1800s brings the reader face to face with the ugly truth of slavery and the virtual slavery of white females. You will shed tears and feel rage grow within you as you read this novel but it is so filled with love that you will hug yourself for choosing the read this book.
I would love to hear from you and learn what you are reading and your assessments. I am all about getting more people reading. Please share your finds with me and others.
This week was about reading and I will continue to read but this blog will feature other occupations of this summering teacher. Join me each week for the Adventures of a Summer Teacher.
