making space for creativity
1997 Newbery winner, The View from Saturday by E. L. Konigsburg stars four unlikely sixth grade academic quiz bowl team members. Exploring the backstory of each character’s specific talents and knowledge, the book is told in a series of five narrators: the four competitors and their teacher and coach Mrs. Olinski. The stories are told…
I’m 75% through the Newbery Award winning books! Here’s a quick look at # 1-25 and 26-50. For this batch (#51-75) from 1972 to 1996, some of my very favorite books of all time I got to re-read (again!). These are books I have returned to and re-read over and over: Mrs. Frisby and the…
1996 Newbery winner, The Midwife’s Apprentice, by Karen Cushman has long been a favorite of mine by one of my long-time favorite authors. I think that reading Karen Cushman’s first novel Catherine Called Birdy (1994) was one of the reasons I wanted to study early modern English history in college and graduate school. I love…
1995 Newbery winner, Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech is part road trip tale of a girl and her grandparents, part mystery story told along the way. In both, main character Sal goes looking for answers about why her mother left and comes to terms with what happened the year before. Since this book has…
This is my fourth year doing that fun social media challenge #onedayhh where you take a picture of your ordinary life every hour and post it on social media. (Two years ago I made the pictures in a blog post as well.) Except that this year our Thursday wasn’t particularly ordinary with my husband Evan…
1994 Newbery winner, The Giver, by Lois Lowry is a book that is often cited as an all time favorite. It is a hard book too, but one that you are so glad you read. Young Jonas lives in a future world without pain or suffering, but when he is chosen to become the keeper…
For eight weeks now, I have been able to get up and write before 5 am. It’s been a longtime coming. Over the summer, we embarked on moving our newly two-year-old out of our room and into the room she shares with her big brother. My husband was absolutely key in this working, and now…
1993 Newbery winner, Missing May, by Cynthia Rylant is about 12 year old Summer and her remaining guardian, Uncle Ob, who are mourning the recent death of his beloved wife, Aunt May. I first read this book in fourth grade (when evidently I was reading a lot of Newberies like Shiloh and A Bridge to…
When I feel sick or sad or overwhelmed, I instinctively reach for either my well-worn paperback copy of CS Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawn Treader or the comforting sounds of Jim Dale reading JK Rowling’s Harry Potter. Those are my very favorite books, and the ones I’ve re-read the most. When I read the sentence…
1992 Newbery winner, Shiloh, by Phyllis Renolds Naylor is about a 11 year-old-boy named Marty Preston who discovers an abused beagle in the woods near the old Shiloh schoolhouse. Marty names the beagle Shiloh, although he knows his poor West Virginia family can’t afford to keep and feed a dog. When Shiloh escapes a second…
“Do you mind if we open this bottle of red wine for our anniversary?” Evan asks me as I set the kids’ soup bowls on their trays. I think he is asking me in part since I’ve been going on and on about how I read that alcohol suppresses the immune system and increases the…
Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli (1991 Newbery winner) follows the crazy fast, incredibly athletic, kind, and lonely Jeffrey Lionel Magee. Magee runs into town, and outruns, out-catches, out-reads, and out-unentangles everyone in Two Mills. He was orphaned at a young age, taken in by two quarreling relatives and is in search of a family. He’s…
Most years, Holy Week means going to many, many church services. To be forced to miss all those service this year because of COVID-19 was so sad and hard. But it was also a special opportunity. The sheer amount of energy and work to bring toddlers to Holy Week services (not even all of the…
Lois Lowry’s 1990 Newbery winning book, Number the Stars, centers on ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her Jewish friend Ellen Rosen in 1943 Copenhagen, after the Nazis have taken over Denmark. It’s a beautiful book that manages to be suspenseful and authentic for such an intense topic, while still being a good first book gentle enough…
A few weeks ago, when my husband Evan, a middle school social studies teacher, was getting ready to start e-learning, I mentioned that I’d seen a couple compelling suggestions by people I admire online to keep a journal of this time. I thought it’d be great to have his students write down their experiences. He…