This is not a book that I had been meaning to read, but it’s the first 7th grade reading assignment for this year, and I figured I might be able to help my son a bit if I read it too. Oy! I was not prepared for the gut punch of this story and I wonder what kind of conversations it will generate amongst 12 year olds. Walk Two Moons is the story of Salamanca Tree Hiddle and her family falling apart. She’s just a […]
Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad is sitting atop the NYT bestsellers chart and is an Oprah pick. It is an amazing novel about race, injustice and the American way. The story of a slave named Cora’s quest for freedom from slavery is also the story of America’s racism throughout history. Whitehead imagines a mid-nineteenth century America where the Underground Railroad was an actual physical railroad existing beneath the earth. As Cora’s first station master says, If you want to see what this nation is all […]
Homage to Madeleine L’Engle
The new school year has just bgun for my two middle schoolers, and this novel by Rebecca Stead is just the sort of thing you would want to put into the hands of kids that age. Stead’s 2010 Newberry winner is an homage to Madeleine L’Engle and her classic novel A Wrinkle in Time. As in that novel, our heroine, 12-year-old Miranda, finds herself grappling with the concept of time travel, but unlike Meg Murry, she will not be the traveller. Earthbound Miranda has to […]
A Mile in Their Shoes
I don’t know if author Carolyn Parkhurst has a child on the autism spectrum, but if she does not, then she is an incredibly thorough researcher and empath. Her latest novel Harmony focuses on a Washington, DC, family of four who join a sort of commune in New Hampshire in order to help their 13-year-old daughter Tilly, who has an autism diagnosis. The leader of Camp Harmony, Scott Bean, is an independent educator whose approach to working with children on the spectrum and their families […]