There is something to be said for close, careful reading. I must have read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar with the rest of my tenth grade class, but I honestly didn’t remember any of it. I decided to read it this month as a part of the Martel-Harper Challenge, for which Yann Martel chooses “book[s] that ha[ve]
I’ve got a winner to my contest! No one guessed the most popular book searched for on Rebecca Reads. The book that I get the most searches for is a children’s book. It is one that I think almost everybody has read at least once: Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. I wrote a post
I enjoyed The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman, a Newbery-winning novel. Cushman believably created a 1300s scene, and I liked learning about midwifery and superstition in the middle ages. While modern girls won’t face trials as extreme as the girl’s in the novel, they still must develop self-confidence and determine what their own dreams are.
Sailing Alone Around the Room by Billy Collins is a slim volume of poetry. I picked it up in honor of April being National Poetry Month. I limited myself to a few poems each week, and I’ve been enjoying it for the past few weeks. I’ve mentioned before that I really enjoyed Billy Collins’ style,
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley on the 101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers list, and I know I’ve seen it on many other “must-read” lists. I never read it in high school when many people apparently did, so I thought I should give it a go now. But I just cannot. I’ve listened
Poetry for Young People: William Shakespeare (edited by David Scott Kastan and Marina Kastan and illustrated by Glenn Harrington) goes beyond Shakespeare’s sonnets. In just 50 pages, the editors have also included some of the key speeches from Shakespeare’s repertoire. As with other volumes in the series, each page has a bit of explanation about
Green Knowe is a medieval castle in the English countryside, and it is full of enchantment and ghosts. L.M. Boston’s chronicles about the manor house are full of child-like delight. And yet, describing the series as a whole is challenging. They all, but one, involved magic of some kind. They all, but one, focus on
When I was in eighth grade, I had a reading class in school each day. My teacher often assigned the entire class the same book to read, and we read during each class period. Then we’d discuss it. One particular time, I think we were reading a children’s novel, like My Brother Sam is Dead
Bhutto’s autobiography, Daughter of Destiny (published in 1988 as Daughter of the East), tells a completely unique story. Bhutto was the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country (Pakistan), and she first went through years of struggle, including years of solitary confinement, before she could be an example of democracy. Much of her autobiography
It was diverting to read, but Utopia by Thomas More was not a delightful, engaging read. It has essentially no plot: a world-traveler tells a man named Thomas More about a land called Utopia as they discuss various social problems. And yet, Utopia was interesting to me as a commentary on “utopias” and “dystopias” in
Sometimes I read nonfiction to get a general idea about something I don’t know anything about or a person who intrigues me. Other times I read nonfiction to learn something specific in depth; such books may be hard to read cover to cover, but they still merit a careful reading. The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin
I owe Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness the credit for my new favorite poet: Billy Collins. After she shared some of his poems this month, I found a copy of Sailing Alone Around the Room. I have been enjoying reading his poetry this month. I’ll have more thoughts about that book later. In the mean time,
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