May 2020 Reads

Almost caught up!  Here are the books that I read in May:

• It's Kind Of A Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
• Don't Go Without Me by Rosemary Valero-O'Connell
• Happy Mum, Happy Baby by Giovanna Fletcher
• Teach Your Class Off by CJ Reynolds
• The Laramie Project by Moises Kaufman
• Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl
• Your Pregnancy Week by Week by Glade B. Curtis

I have linked the books that are rereads for me.  It was hard to choose which books from the above list to talk about, so I will talk about the ones I haven't written reviews for and/or read for the first time.  

Don't Go Without Me by Rosemary Valero-O'Connell

My dear friend has another book!  Rosemary also did the illustrations for Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me and when I went to look at how people were responding to this book, I came across this title.  It was a little hard to get my hands on, but I'm glad I have it!  It's quite different because it's a triptych of stories.  They're quite sad, but I genuinely enjoyed them.  It's one that I will definitely pick up again and I think is necessary to read multiple times.  It's hard to describe-- it's something you just need to experience for yourself.  I think the one that stood out to me the most was the first time when the main character was losing their memory and couldn't remember that they were in a relationship.  The illustrations are just gorgeous.  I love Rosemary's style, and I'm not just saying that because she's my friend, I promise!

Happy Mum, Happy Baby by Giovanna Fletcher

I think I finished this book maybe a week or so before my son was born.  Giovanna Fletcher is the mother of now three boys, but at the time of writing this, she was a mother of two.  Honestly, this was a really reassuring read as a soon to be new parent.  I loved reading her birth stories, especially since I hoped to labor unmedicated (didn't happen, but I can talk about that in a different post, perhaps).  But even the chapters where she was figuring out how to parent, it gave me an idea of just what I was getting myself into.  Parenthood is messy and if you're looking in places like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. it's really easy to just not talk about the harder parts of parenting.  People don't necessarily want to talk about how their child screamed for three hours for seemingly no reason because they think it paints them in a bad light.  They don't want to talk about being pooped on by their kid because... I mean, it's gross whether you're a parent and have been there or not.  But they're all realities that parents everywhere face.  It's nice to know that you can have a million moments of weakness and still be a great parent.  I thought Gi was optimistic but humble.  And it was interesting to read about how she was parenting while her husband was touring in his band and how they navigated that part of their lives.  Just an added bonus.

Teach Your Class Off: The Real Rap Guide To Teaching by CJ Reynolds

Oh look!  It's another one of my favorite YouTube people!  This time a teacher!  It's so exciting to me that he wrote a book and got to share more of his experiences from the classroom.  CJ teaches 9th grade English in Philadelphia as well as the History of Hip Hop class.  He approaches education in a creative and at times magical way.  I think that once you get into teaching, depending on the people around you, it can be really easy to feel beaten down and be cynical about what's going on around you.  But CJ's main advice is to always, always prioritize relationships.  Not that you'll connect with 100% of the students you have, but even attempting to make a connection can really go a long way.  I appreciated the stories that show how powerful relationships are and the little reminder that sometimes, in order to be the teacher you idealize, you have to take risks and step into that role and work towards it.  You can't wait for it to just happen to you because that's not how things work.  It's a very honest, thoughtful, and easy-to-read teaching book that I'd recommend to newbie teachers who are just trying to find their footing.

Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl

I got it in my head early on that I wanted to teach a different play next year and perform it with my 9th graders.  I first saw this play when I was in high school in the smaller of the two theaters and I just thought it was magic.  Funny but mostly sad all at the same time.  The only problem with teaching this book is that there aren't a lot of characters, so it would be hard to teach it with a class of 24 9th graders.  Not to mention it would be necessary, I think, to read Orpheus and I have zero confidence in teaching those stories.  

It's a story not just about Eurydice and Orpheus who are in love, but there is also a connection between Eurydice and her father too.  Somehow, interacting with her father just made the story that much more sad to read.  

If you're looking for a quick read (since it's a play) and a lovely one, this is a great one to check out.  

Your Pregnancy Week By Week by Glade B. Curtis

Maybe this is a really nerdy thing to say, but one of the things I was most excited about when I found out I was pregnant was to get a book that would tell me what's going on in my body and with my baby.  This one stood out to me because I liked that it was broken up week by week.  This made it really easy to split up the reading and I could read pieces that were relevant to my situation at any point in my pregnancy.  Whenever a new week turned over (Thursdays in my case), I would pick up the book to see what was going on in there.

One bone I have to pick with this book is that it does go into worst-case scenarios.  Arguably, it's good to be prepared and know as much as possible about your pregnancy, but some things are unlikely to happen in most pregnancies and because it's present in this book, it makes it seem like it happens more often than it actually does.  So on that note, read with this in mind if you're determined to read this book cover to cover like I was.  But the pictures were helpful and I loved knowing what was going on with my baby and what to expect when I would go in for clinic visits.

Thanks for Reading!  I'm looking forward to writing about my June reads soon!

--Jude

March + April 2020 Reads

Time for a reading catch-up!  In all of the weirdness and scariness that is our world right now, blogging definitely fell quite low on the list of priorities.  But I have plenty of thoughts to throw out into the internet void-- to begin with, some thoughts on what I've been reading lately.

In the months of March and April, I managed to read these books:

• Coraline by P. Craig Russell and Neil Gaiman (graphic novel, not the original)
• Kiss Number 8 by Colleen A.F. Venable and Ellen T. Crenshaw
• Solo by Kwame Alexander (reread, 2017)
• The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui
• Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott (reread, 2018)
• We Got This by Cornelius Minor
• The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (reread, 2018)
• Motherhood by Sheila Heti

I love that I got to revisit some great reads during this time.  There are a couple that I just today realized I have never written about on this blog before but I've documented as reading before on GoodReads.  Not sure what happened there... so I suppose I'll be writing about them now!

Side Note: I read Solo by Kwame Alexander with students in my spring elective class and they loved it.  They liked that it was poetry and the story and characters were really engaging for them.  If any educators out there are curious :)

The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

This was one that I got for either Christmas or my birthday.  It's a graphic novel and I was looking to get out of a bit of a reading slump and this one really did the trick.  It's not a light read, because it's the story of her parents coming to the U.S. from Vietnam and escaping danger.  Part of what makes it a heavy read is knowing that this is a true story and seeing how much her parents struggled to keep their life together and just keep pushing forward.  You can't help but admire their resiliency but then feel taken aback that they would have to show this much resiliency in the first place.

The other thing about this book that I appreciate is that it takes the time to give background to what was happening in Vietnam at the time from the perspective of someone who actually grew up there.  Thinking back, I think my only context on this war was from those who were drafted to fight in the war.  But that is only one side of the story and it's a rather distorted side with no sense of humanity.  Both of the people who went to fight and the people who actually lived there and frankly, who were killed.

I am looking to teach this book in the fall, so I will likely be reading this book again before the new school year starts.  I look forward to rereading and diving a little deeper.

Five Feet Apart by Rachel Lippincott

This book is actually a reread for me, but looking back, I realized that I didn't talk about any books that I read in 2018.  So I'm talking about it now!

I read this book with students in my YA Fiction class just before quarantine started.  Our focus was on death and celebrating life because the whole concept of this book is that Stella and Will both have a form of Cystic Fibrosis (CF), though Will's case is the much more advanced and dire form call B. Sepacia.  Before reading this book, I had watched videos created by Claire Wineland who was also a CFer, so I had a basic understanding of the disease and I had a perspective from someone who lived a life with CF.

One thing that was really interesting for me to think about was how one can have a condition that will ultimately be the end of you but how you can still create meaning in your life.  This was a process for Stella, who was very tied to her treatment regimen without fail, and a balancing act of sorts for Will, who just wants to live life since he knows there's likely no hope for a treatment for him.  For both of these people, they will never not have CF but can only do treatments to help make their life a little bit easier.   Yet, these two young people go on to find love and eventually adventure.  I think this is a beautiful book and both the book and the movie made me cry at the end (but not for the reason you might expect from a book revolving around CF).

The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo

I love this book and I love everything Elizabeth Acevedo writes.  She also wrote "With The Fire On High," which I adored and read in July 2019, but didn't actually review.  Perhaps in the future when I inevitably reread it.  But I digress.  I love that this book is written as narrative poetry with every poem being a conversation or a thought that Xiomara has or something like that.  It's wonderful and I have found that students respond well to stories like this.  It doesn't require a lot of attention and yet it grabs your full attention anyway.

This story revolves around Xiomara's experiences with double standards for men and women in her culture and her struggles with religion and her mother in particular.  The book doesn't shy away from these big topics or dance around them and partially cover them, but shows how these things can and do actually affect a person.  It's a really powerful read.  This is one of the books that I recommend the most to students.  I hope Elizabeth Acevedo writes a million more books.  I will read every single one of them.

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

This was such an interesting book to read while pregnant.  The whole premise is that the author is debating with herself if she would like to become a mother.  She's feeling a lot of pressure to make the jump but isn't sure if this is something that she genuinely wants or just thinks she's supposed to want.  And really, this is such a good question to ask yourself before attempting to become a parent.  Why do I want this?  It's a permanent choice and that's such a scary thing to decide.  I definitely felt that anxiety while waiting for my son to be born.  And I'm someone who discussed having a kid for a long time with my partner and worked with my doctor to make it happen.  Those doubts still came to mind about whether or not I was ready to take on this job and care for a whole new person for the rest of their life.  It's a really scary precipice to be standing on, so to speak.  And it's not something that I would just want to "follow the river" and do without putting thought into it.  But I guess not everyone does think about it the way more people probably should.  I guess this book made me feel a bit more secure about my choice to become a mother because some of the fears that she had I either didn't share or if I did share them, I had come to terms with them.  It's a really interesting read.  It gave me a lot to think about, which is really all I can ask from a semi-fictional book.

Thanks for Reading! 

--Jude