It's Monday-All Kinds of Reading

           On Mondays, I share books read for children and teens and link up with Jen at TeachMentorTexts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders.  Others link to share adult books with Sheila at Book Journeys who started the meme a long time ago. 

        Come visit, and tweet at #IMWAYR. Thanks to Jen, Kellee, and Ricki for hosting!

Behind The Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope In A Mumbai Undercity - written by Katherine Boo

          This book won the National Book Award for 2012, among others, and meets the criteria for the award challenge at Gathering Books.  Click on the badge on the right for more information.

           I really wish I could just give link after link of the glowing reviews of this book, long on my list of books to read, and I finally did take time to read slowly, savor the beauty that Katherine Boo shared of these people in circumstances hard to imagine. And I find it hard to see how they did/do survive. While there may be better circumstances here in the U.S., there are equally terrible places for children who are trapped in them with few ways to change. Boo follows several families, especially the children of those families, the way they start work early, at seven sometimes, the way they learn to scavenge and steal, then sell the goods for what seems like nothing, but to them, IS something. They live and survive in cobbled-together shacks in a slum named Annawadi, in sight, but fenced off, from the wealthy and beautiful Mumbai airport and its hotels. It is humbling to read this, trying not to judge my own life and others, wondering if I do enough to help. There is such need here and in other countries.  Here are some words that made me pause, among many others: “In America and in Europe, it was said, people know what is going to happen when they turn on the water tap or flick the light switch. In India, a land of few safe assumptions, chronic uncertainty was said to have helped produce a nation of quick-witted, creative problem-solvers.”

           Among the poor, there was no doubt that instability fostered ingenuity, but over time the lack of a link between effort and result could become debilitating. “We try so many things,” as one Annawadi girl put it, ‘but the world doesn’t move in our favor.’”

Celebrating Family Time

              I celebrate each Saturday with Ruth Ayres at Discover Play Build - Week number 96! There are many others who celebrate, too. Come join us!          Tweet at #CelebrateLu

        This time I'm also sharing with Margaret Simon for Digilit Sunday at Reflections On The Teche.

         I hope you who are on Facebook with me will not tire of my ocean vacation pictures. I traveled home yesterday, glad to be here, will savor these past two weeks for a long while! It's a time to celebrate when we can all pull away from our busy lives to be together, loving the ocean, the favorite restaurants, Ingrid seeing her first manatee, Carter's birthday gift parasailing, nature's gifts everywhere, and those sunsets. I created this slideshow on Picasa, a favorite of mine for collages, this time a little movie, and then uploaded to YouTube. 

Poetry Friday - Slowly By The Sea

           Catherine at Reading To The Core hosts today on Poetry Friday. Be sure to visit to find many links to others sharing their gifts of poetry this week.

         Thanks to Penny Parker Klostermann's invitation to participate in her series, “A Great Nephew and a Great Aunt”, I had the pleasure of working with my granddaughter, Ingrid, writing and drawing. We’re visiting Penny this Poetry Friday! You can read about our time here!

       I am spending a second week on Captiva Island, reading, writing and just being. My family spent this last week together, and it was a wonderful time, but this week it’s just me. I am not returning to school for the first time in many years, and this week is staff week.

        But I am not there. I hope to have a great year: different and new, exciting and quiet, scary and fun.  Today, I’m sharing some new words about the ocean. I’m fortunate to be able to experience this mesmerizing sea a bit closer than usual, and I’ve written three haiku to mirror one day this week. Next month I know it will change again, and next season, too. But this is what I’ve noticed one specific daytime, among so many other wonders!

A Slicing Vacation

          Slicing with the Two Writing Teachers community is a pleasure every week.  Thanks to ALL the writing teachers!

          I've been messing about with words in my head all morning, wondering if I could possibly write about my "slicing" vacation without it seeming like one of those "come over to view the slides of our awesome trip" invitations. Then I read Cathy Mere's post today at Merely Day by Day, and her advice was great. I started!  
         This is the third year my family has traveled to Captiva Island, same house, by the beach, with a pool, heavenly. I am in love with this place, and also love what the tradition of it encompasses: exciting ocean creatures seen and discovered, wonderful new experiences in and out of the water, and eating at favorite restaurants. I gave Carter a para-sailing time for his birthday. He turns fourteen on Friday. Ingrid's swimming abilities after spending hours each day in the ocean or the pool increased tenfold (obviously practice does mean perfecting). And Imogene's swimming became stronger too, and she was able to swim in the ocean without feeling overwhelmed. 

Reading On Vacation

           On Mondays, it's time to link up to share books I've read that are for children and teens with Jen at TeachMentorTexts and Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders.  Others link to share adult books with Sheila at Book Journeys who started the meme a long time ago. 

        Come visit, and tweet at #IMWAYR. Thanks to Jen, Kellee, and Ricki for hosting!

          I'm lucky enough to still be on vacation, but all the family is gone. Now it's time to catch up on reading and writing before I return home. I hope all of you are enjoying your school starts, with only staff so far, or with students!

         Here are some books I read before I left, and a few I read just today, hanging out at the local library! 

       This first book is another one that I've read from my #MustReadIn2015 list! The list is on the 'pages' at the top.

The Red Pencil - a verse novel written by Andrea Davis Pinkney and illustrated by Shane W. Evans

            I'm sorry I put this off so long. It is never easy to read about a war, and the victims of it, still in it. Reading the story in the strong voice of a young girl was harder to me, but it will reach other children in its honesty, but without too much detail of the horrors that people are living through still today. Young Amira Bright loses nearly everything, her father, her home, her beloved sheep. And then she must live in the squalid conditions of a refugee camp. Poorly fed and housed, somehow there is sparkle in the tiniest of things: an orange Fanta, such a taste; the letter A, learning in secret; a tiny hedgehog moving through the camp. One of the sweetest lines is early in the book, when Amira's sister is born, and is crippled. Her father says: "This baby will keep us all strong. That is the way of a child who comes with so much specialness. We will stretch to meet her." One thread, also from the father, is a game that he teaches Amira. They play "What else is possible?" The only rule is that the answer to this can only be good. I hope you can see that this "mindset" is a beautiful example of a growth mindset. It helps Amira keep going. It's a rich story, sad to imagine, good for older children to read about the harsh realities happening today in war, not just in the past. Shane W. Evans illustrates throughout as if he is Amira. The drawings are poignant.