Childhood Favorites Post #1: Nostalgia in Bridge to Terabithia

All summer, I will be making my way through seven "childhood favorites" that I'm reading in preparation for my first unit in the fall. Luckily, this is the kind of work that I am more than happy to do. Bear with me, wait for adult books in between, or be inspired to pick up one of your favorites.

Bridge to Terabithia is a story about a boy with 4 sisters, a boy who feels misunderstood, a boy who wishes he were brave.  It is a story about friendship and imagination.  But most, for me, Bridge to Terabithia is a book of nostalgia.

I can't put my finger on the moment that I couldn't pretend anymore, but I do remember bring sixteen, baby sitting, and realizing that the magic of imagination and pretend had slipped away years before and I hadn't even realized it.  It is a visceral realization of growing up.

As I read about Jess and Leslie creating their imaginary kingdom of Terabithia in the woods near their houses, I could think only about the worlds I created for myself in the woods across the street from my house, the places I made in our unfinished basement...and being able to physically will myself to believe it all for hours on end.  While I was reading, Jess and Leslie became kindred spirits.

They were moved by beauty, the feeling of fullness and wanting it to last forever: "They took turns swinging across the gully on the rope.  It was a glorious autumn day, and if you looked up as you swung, it gave you the feeling of floating. Jess leaned back and drank in the rich, clear color of the sky.  He was drifting, drifting like a fat white lazy cloud back and forth across the blue."

When I was younger, summer nights were the greatest.  All of the kids in my neighborhood would be running through our adjoining backyards, soaking up every last shred of daylight and catching lightning bugs into the twilight. Even though I knew there would always be another summer evening with cool grass beneath my feet and the smell of trees and creek and corn in the air, my heart broke when night finally came and we all had to go inside.  I spent many evenings after bed time with my face pressed against the screen, trying to breathe in the evening air for as long as possible.

They felt the need to create sacred spaces: "This is not an an ordinary place," she whispered.  "Even the rulers of Terabithia come into it only at times of greatest sorrow or greatest joy.  We must strive to keep it sacred. It would not do to disturb the Spirits."

Once in college, a few friends of mine and I found ourselves in an enormous grove of pine trees that were planted a hundred years ago in straight lines spanning for hundreds of yards.  Without even thinking, my friend Erin and I started sprinting down the aisle of trees...running and jumping seemed the only proper response to such a scene: we were so utterly joyful that merely starring at it all wasn't enough.  My friend Matt took a picture of this pre-digital photography and caught us both in midair. It was in a frame for years and below it I pasted the quote: "Perhaps they could run over the hill and across the fields to the stream and swing themselves into Terabithia."

This happened again when I went to England with two kindred and we saw true English countryside for the first time.  We just couldn't believe that it existed in real life the same way we had pictured it in our minds in all our favorite books. I do have physical proof of our giddiness:

When the tragedy is revealed at the end and Jess' horrid sister tells him blatantly, it literally plunged my heart like a dagger, even though I knew all along what was coming.  Jess and Leslie are just too kindred for it to not hurt like crazy.  It is the moment that the magic makes the first break: where it's impossible to be completely immersed in imagination. But. It doesn't mean that it no longer exists.

Bits of the magic come back to me sometimes and remind me that the world is enchanted.  Most of the time it's when the eastern woodlands smell like Ohio.  Some of the time it's when the sun is setting and the light is perfectly orange and the shadows purple.  Sometimes I feel again athe essence of my heart aching because of all that is beautiful and good. And real.

Soundtrack for this book for me:
Pacific Street/Hem
Why Should I Cry for You/Sting
All At Sea/Jamie Cullum
Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own/U2
Yellow/Coldplay

reading. history. and reading historical fiction.

David Brooks is pretty solid.  One of his editorials this week was about the importance of liberal arts degrees in an economic time when it seems more smarter to study something that is more directly practical to a specific job. Reading (and looking at art/studying history/listening to music, etc.) makes us people more in touch with the complex depths of humanity that cannot be measured, quantified or simply named.

Last weekend, a student asked me to read Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosay. Though it will never be a book award winner, it was a relatively well written, powerful story about July 16, 1942, when the French government rounded up thousands of its own men, women and children to be delivered to to concentration camps.  Sadly, this event was not something that was taught in French history classes until recently--which is sadly too often the case for the darkest moments of any country's history.

The story follows a ten year old girl who was taken from her home and a modern American woman who moved to Paris after college and has lived there for 25 years stumbles up on her story and realizes her personal connection to it.  As she visits the lonely, rarely visited places of the roundup, the plaques read "remember and never forget," though she realizes that most people have intentionally chosen to forget, believing that it is a safer, less painful path.

In relation to historical fiction, without story, history often becomes memories of menial note taking and impersonal timelines.  We lose the deep, complex narrative of the human race.  I was appalled that I had no idea this happened in France. Similarly, I was appalled that I moved to New York with a college degree in hand, and had no idea about what happening in the Sudan.  I took two classes about African women writers. Curses.

The moment people begin to forget its own dark corners is the moment that they become closer to resurfacing.  And, on the opposite end, the second we begin to forget the bright moments is when we lose our grasp on what is real, good and true and therefore lose everything, collectively or as individuals.

On clouds. Sort of.

If I count my college friends and their current careers, I am not joking when I say that all of them (ten or more) are currently employed as teachers, counselors or youth workers. I do think this is something of an anomaly, but still, crazy.  It was amazing to live life with people whose passions overlapped so deeply with my own.  

Obviously the world opened up in a million different ways when I moved to New York seven years ago.  One of which is that I made friends in every field possible: finance, consulting in every capacity, fashion, art, real estate, non profits, law.  Being around all these different kinds of people only enhanced my nerd-like nature and made me want to be constantly learning more.  It has been through knowing such a group of diversified interests that has fueled my interest in uncovering the need the world has for a balance of macro thinkers (simply, how the world needs to change and operate on a large scale) and micro thinkers (how the world needs to change and operate on a small scale). 

I am a micro person.  My best skills are found in a single classroom of thousands in Brooklyn alone.  My best moments in my career typically occur while having a conference with a thirteen year old student about a book they read or a story they wrote.  But, my current theory is that micros need to be macro-ly aware and macros need to be micro-ly aware. 

So. Finally, my point. Literature lends itself to knowing more about both.  Therefore, everyone should read more books. 

I have been on a historical kick lately.  I'm currently reading two books about Vietnam: All the Broken Pieces (young adult) by Ann E. Burg and The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.  I am learning the broad strokes of the war, through the narratives themselves and the research they have both led me to: causes, complications, perspectives from both sides.  And then, obviously, there are the stories of the characters where the Vietnam war begins to have faces, reminding the reader that war is intensely personal and involves hearts and hopes, devastation and destruction.   A good friend of mine  recently posted a quotation on his blog, via Wired Magazine, that I haven't been able to get out of my mind for some time: 

"Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science, once divided the world into two categories: clocks and clouds. Clocks are neat, orderly systems that can be solved through reduction; clouds are an epistemic mess, “highly irregular, disorderly, and more or less unpredictable.” The mistake of modern science is to pretend that everything is a clock, which is why we get seduced again and again by the false promises of brain scanners and gene sequencers. We want to believe we will understand nature if we find the exact right tool to cut its joints. But that approach is doomed to failure. We live in a universe not of clocks but of clouds."


I think, that if are to move forward as a people, be it in energy, poverty, healthcare or education, we have to remember that we are a universe of clouds: we cannot figure it all out in a theoretical equation, but without the theoretical equation we may not be able to progress.  I also think that if we all read more books, the world would be a better place. Just saying. 

Anyway. These are just thoughts. 

inspired.

Every time June rolls around, I think back to five years ago after my first year teaching when I had applications in at 10 different high schools in the great state of Ohio.  The plan was to go to New York for a year or two and then travel back to "normal" life in the midwest.  A handful of reasons were pulling me home, and yet I couldn't bring myself to make that decision final.  Then. I went to my first June planning meeting, where a team of teachers plans the next year's curriculum.  I realized then how lucky I am to have such inspired colleagues and a job that lets us re-envision what we're doing each year.

Last year the 8th grade team planned a new opening unit based around revisiting favorite books from childhood, with the intention of reigniting the kids' passion for reading by teaching how to dig deeply into books they long ago adored.  Today we re-imagined this unit and I walked away with a pretty sweet re-reading list and I am so antsy to start working on this pile and, like the nerd I am, annotating and writing about them in preparation:

Then my team took a walk to the bookstore and made a list of books to order for our classroom libraries...it was so fun thinking about what books my current rock-star 7th graders will want to read in the fall as 8th graders. And, let's be honest, I'm pumped to read them all, too.

And, let's be totally honest, I'm also counting down the days until June 28th.  Everyone needs a summer vacation to rest, relax and reinvigorate. Sigh. I love my job.

let the great world spin.

"There is no end. There is grief and there is love and they spin together in this human body, which is, in itself, also a book."

I started this book a few Sundays ago.  Once every few months I monitor the door during my church's uptown service.  All I really have to do is be at a desk in the front for about 3 and a half hours.  I usually bring papers to grade, but last Sunday I got so wrapped up in the beginning of Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann on the subway ride up, that I never even took student work out of my bag.  A week and a day later, I swore I was going to grade papers.  But it was the end of a delightfully long weekend and so lovely outside that I, once again,  left the papers inside my bag and finished the book.  I just had to. And now, a week after closing its pages, it hasn't left my thoughts.

The story is set in New York in the seventies and framed around the day that Philippe Petit tightrope walked across the Twin Towers.  The story isn't about Petit, per se, but rather he provides not only a historical context, but a metaphor for the book's multiple story lines: that all sorts of people are carefully walking a high wire in their own lives.

There are a lot of things to say about this book and a number of characters that I could spend time analyzing, but the overriding theme that sticks out to me is the title itself: Let the Great World Spin.  It seems as though I forget the world's grandeur sometimes and get lost in the mundane or my lists of things to do.  Or sometimes, I feel so burdened or heartbroken I can hardly bear it. But, I can almost picture an old school carnival barker announcing all that humans have the capacity to know and feel by shouting this title out loud and inviting us to actually start watching.  The Great World, though, isn't made up only of the best parts of existence--it is coupled with the knowledge and experience of the great pain and sorrows that accompany it, which is what the different characters come to learn:

"The comfort he got from the hard, cold truth--the filth, the war, the poverty--was that life could be capable of small beauties."

"The simple things come back to us.  They rest for a moment by our ribcages then suddenly reach in and twist our hearts a notch backward."

"The only thing worth grieving over, she said, was that sometimes there was more beauty in this life than the world could bear."

And so. I will continue thinking about the characters who broke my heart in the best and worst of ways. And, I hope that I will not be drowned by the sorrows because there is so much intangible good.

Yes! Time to start planning summer reading!!

www.akindoflibrary.blogspot.com

Though it's Memorial Day, summer officially doesn't start for me until Monday, June 28th at 3 pm. Until then, I will still have papers to grade and lessons to plan, therefore unable to completely devote my time to the greatness that is summer, obviously including summer reading.  And even though I will be avidly reading up until then, there is something I love about planning my summer reading. Each year, though, I seem to make big plans and then books fall in my lap and the plans change--which is probably good for me, even though I have this grand vision that my summer can look like a literature class. I found an old post about my summer reading self--and it was interesting to get a glimpse into myself as a reader from a few years ago...I may have to re-imagine it at the end of this summer and see how I've changed.

This is random, but did you used to do the summer reading programs with your local library? I just had a major flashback to the Candy Land-style boards that the Centerville Library used to provide for children and we'd get a stamp for each book we read, winding our way down the paper path and filled with a sense of accomplishment. My mom would take my brother and I to the library once a week to update our reading piles and our stamps.  I forgot all about that. I think i would like a poster with a stamp per book.

Anyway. Here's my brainstorming session of the books I'm thinking about adding to my list this summer:

The New Literary History of America. This anthology takes the reader through American history via literature.  I am so fascinated by history and the way that it is portrayed through books, that I have been thinking about this book ever since I first stumbled across it in the winter. $50 at most stores, it is an investment, but has such potential.  I could probably carry this one book around with me all summer. Well, I mean that this could be my daytime reading book and then I could read fiction before I go to sleep each night. Downside=I'm travelling for the entire summer, so do I really want to carry around this brick? Should I relegate it to fall reading?

Mystery.  I seriously love mystery stories. Much like R&B, I forgot my love in high school and college.  My love of crime procedurals like The Closer was what motivated me to pick up the literary genre, which was limited to Nancy Drew in elementary and Mary Higgins Clark in middle school. Mystery books might be the most engaging genre, and then when they are well written? Swoon. Recent loves: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson, Case Histories by Kate Atkinson.  Summer picks: Continuing with Steign Larsson's trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire.  Also, in true Brooklyn style, one of my neighbors had books for free in our lobby, one of which was The Likeness, the follow up to In The Woods by Tana French, which has been on my list for quite a while.


Other options:

Nonfiction: Sloane Crosby's newest book of essays, How Did You Get This Number.  I laughed out loud so much in her first book, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, and this one has come highly recommended as well.  Also, last summer The Shock Doctrine completely rocked my world.  I have another book by Naomi Klein, No Logo, sitting on my night stand (which is really a radiator. whatever.).

Rereads: Sometimes books just call to me and I need to pick them back up.  These two couldn't be more different: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (though I may cave and read this pre-summer) and The Waves by Virginia Woolf.  I read 8 of Woolf's books in a class in college and haven't picked her up since. The Waves completely floored me at the time and I am curious to see what I think of it now.

Fiction. I am pretty obsessed with Roberto Bolano (I fell in love with Amulet a few years ago and my book club read The Savage Detectives last summer).  A lot of his books have been recently translated and I've been looking at a few for months, The Skating Rink and The Last Evenings on Earth, especially.
Randoms include The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and Suite Francaise by Irene Namirovsky, along with 3 different books every time I walk into a bookshop.

So. I'm game for recommendations. I'll keep you posted on how it all goes.

Previous summer reading posts (for those of you who are extremely bored or just looking for ideas) can be found here and here and here.  And also here and here and here. It's interesting to see the books that have shown up multiple times because I want to reread them and the books that show up as perpetual sitters on my stack of books to read next.

3 Books. 1 Train of Thought.

www.akindoflibrary.blogspot.com

I am reading All the Broken Pieces, set in the United States just after the Vietnam War, to my seventh graders.  For context, I've been teaching lessons on the Vietnam War and its causes, the atmosphere in the United States afterwards and asking students to think about war in general. The main character is a Vietnamese boy, Matt Ping, who has been adopted by an American family. The book is in verse and one of the metaphors that Matt uses is that freedom is the color of his toddler brother's red shoes on the swing.  When I asked my students what they thought that meant, I was blown away by their understanding that demonstrated a (newfound) awareness of the world outside the safety of childhood. In response to the metaphor, a student said that freedom is the ability to live without the burden and weight of the knowledge of things like war.

This came after I realized that my reading life has been inundated lately with the question of how we are meant to live in light of what we know to be true and good. This question is never far from my mind, but I've found easy to hide from.

I am finally reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, which is the story of Chris McCandless: his disdain for modern American culture and his journey across the country and eventually to his death in the Alaskan wilderness, a place where he sought out true existence off of land, inspired by the trancendentalists and Tolstoy and Jack London, completely away from all that society has become and all the ways it burdened him.

Krakauer writes of Chris' love of London: "He was so enthralled by these tales, however, that he seemed to forget they were works of fiction, constructions of the imagination that had more to do with London’s romantic sensibilities than with the actualities of life in the subarctic wilderness."  I guess this is the struggle that exists between idealism and realism, which is incredibly frustrating.  The question always becomes how are we supposed to live in a world that is so broken and seems to worship all the things that don't have true value?

Krakauer includes the following quote before a chapter describing Chris' reasons for deserting the lifestyle he was raised in: "To the desert go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and rxiles. Here the leaders of the great religious have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality." (Paul Shepard) McCandless was seeking the same kind of exile.  A fiction character who embarked on a completely different kind of exile is John Andrew Corrigan of Let the Great World Spin: 

"Corrigan told me once that Christ was quite easy to understand. He went where he was supposed to go. He stayed where he was needed. He took little or nothing along. He never rejected the world. If He had rejected it, He would have been rejecting mystery...What Corrigan wanted was a fully believable God, one you could find in the grime of the everyday. The comfort he got from the hard, cold truth--the filth, the poverty--was that life could be capable of small beauties."  Corrigan was a secret man of faith--who left Ireland to live in the Bronx, bought coffee for the prostitutes he befriended and owned next to nothing. Like McCandless, he gave away almost everything he acquired. But unlike McCandless, he sought out beauty in the people the world forgets rather than in solitude and nature.

So. What all this translates into in my mind is how are we choosing to live?  It is far too easy to slip into patterns that try mimic glossy advertisements and mistake things for reasons for being.  When I read of people like McCandless and Corrigan (though fictional) I always wonder how they live out of such unselfish ideals.  Though, my favorite part of the book is how Corrigan poetically and painfullly grapples with his and humanity's fallenness...and I suppose that it will always be just that: each day making choices for the things that really matter.  Stepping out of the conditioned false securities that we cling to.  Having the courage to be a bit unconventional. 

All that said, I highly recommend all of these books.