I’ve been writing about my YA lit class at Rutgers here, but I also teach a Materials for Children class there. This week they are reading Kakapo Rescue; Marching for Freedom, and Almost Astronauts. One student commented, to her surprise, on how each of the books immersed her in the experience the author took on. [...]

This week is war week in my Rutgers class. We aer redding some of the Harry Mazer WWII books; Walter’s Sunrise Over Falujah; Trent Reedy’s Words in the Dust; Ryan Smithson’s Ghosts of War, and the collection Patty Campbell and I put together, War Is. As I’ve been reading the books, I remembered back to [...]

Last post I mentioned that my Rutgers students read An American Plague and Fever, 1793 this week. They loved An American Plague. I asked them to read the first paragraph of each book outloud — try it. Jim’s first paragraph is like the opening of a horror film — it ominous, you feel the miasma, [...]