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Essays, honest reviews, and short stories, plus real help for teachers and parents raising readers. Written by an English teacher who cannot read a book without a pen in her hand.
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MarginaliaEssays and longer thoughts.0 posts
Checked OutHonest book reviews.4 posts
Writing LifeShort stories, drafts, and the long road to publishing.9 posts
Teacher’s EditionLessons, close reading, and literary know-how.0 posts
Dinner Table LiteracyReading, writing, and talking with kids at home.3 postsFresh off the cart
Checked Out
Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl's short story about a perfect housewife, a frozen leg of lamb, and the most satisfying dinner party in literature. My students loved it. I can see why.
4 min read
Checked Out
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Shakespeare's famous love story is a cover of an Ovid myth from 1,600 years earlier. Both are about love. Both are mostly about not waiting five minutes.
5 min read
Writing Life
A little girl hiding in a closet, the woman she became, and the day she finally opened the door.
3 min read
Checked Out
The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe's shortest masterpiece is about a painter so busy capturing his wife that he never actually looks at her. It takes ten minutes to read and stays with you much longer.
4 min read
Checked Out
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
A man spends two years building the perfect partner, then ghosts him on day one. Mary Shelley wrote the original situationship, and it still holds up.
3 min read
Writing Life
Five lines about the kind of love the world doesn’t get to see.
1 min read
a reminder, scribbled inside the front cover:
Read slowly. Argue with the author. Leave evidence that you were here.
