It’s National Reading Month and a time when Kalamazoo Public Schools hosts literacy activities throughout the schools. We prepare ourselves by engaging in the annual ritual of asking: What are you reading? Here’s what some Communities In Schools (CIS) staff are reading…
I just finished Perfect Peace by Daniel Black which was an amazing story reflecting a mother’s desperate decision to acquire something she’d always wanted through methods that the rest of the world would see as imponderable. When the truth is revealed, a story of unconditional love, family, and sexuality is born. I am currently reading Evicted by Matthew Desmond, Second House from the Corner by Sadeqa Johnson, and Discerning the Voice of God by Priscilla Shirer.
-Stacy S. Jackson, CIS After School Coordinator, Edison Environmental Science Academy
[Note: As part of Reading Together, you can meet Pulitzer Prize winning author Matthew Desmond on Friday, March 16 at 7pm at Chenery. It’s free, but KPL would like you to first register here. ]
The last book I read was Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo. This book inspired CIS volunteer, Dr. Zhu, to help with tutoring. (See the blog post by clicking here.)
-Emily Kobza, Director of Development & Business Engagement
I am reading The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin. I just finished Reading with Patrick by Michelle Kuo – recommended by Dr. Jim Zhu. Very good reads!
-Missy Best, Senior CIS Site Coordinator, Milwood Magnet School
With my four-year-old, I’m reading Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. With my seven-year-old, I’m reading Kate DiCamillo’s Flora and Ulysses. With my (38-year-old) spouse, I’m reading a collection of poetry with authors that include Mary Oliver, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, and Clare of Assisi, among others.
Thanks for asking one of my favorite questions!
-Angela Van Heest, CIS Site Coordinator, Parkwood Upjohn Elementary School
I’m reading Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff.
-Shannon Jones, CIS After School Coordinator Milwood Magnet School
I am currently reading Wonder by R.J. Palacio. I took my students to see the movie. They had such good discussions comparing and contrasting the book from the movie they encouraged me to read it.
-Phillip Hegwood, CIS After School Coordinator, Maple Street Magnet School for the Arts
I’m always reading several…
- Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
- The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
-Maggie Walters, CIS Success Coach, Loy Norrix High School
I’ve just started reading The Shack by Canadian author William P. Young. This was a favorite of my Mother’s. She had me buy extra copies a few years back, before she passed, so she could share them with others who also lived at her nursing home. I saw the movie when it came out and loved it.
-Kelly Cedarquist, CIS Site Coordinator, King-Westwood Elementary
I just finished The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. It’s the kind of book you can’t stop thinking about. I’m now reading Ordinary Light: A Memoir by poet Tracey K. Smith. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. I also love reading work by local writers, so each night I’m reading one poem by Elizabeth Kerlikowske in Off the Wall: How Art Speaks and studying the accompanying painting by Mary Hatch. A stunning and fun book!
-Jennifer Clark, Special Projects & Initiatives
I have been reading books in the King Killer Chronicle series by Patrick Rothfuss. I am currently on the second book in the series, The Wise Man’s Fear. A couple books ago I read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie which probably is the best book I have read in the last year. I highly recommend it.
-Jenna Cooperrider, CIS Success Coach, Kalamazoo Central High School
Our Native Bees: North America’s Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them by Paige Embry. Honey bees are frequently in the spotlight. I’m fascinated by them. I’m a beekeeper. Looming as an even larger concern are our native pollinators and native bees. Complex topic and simple steps that everyone can engage in.
Also reading The Bee: A Natural History by Noah Wilson-Rich. It’s that time of year to continue to educate myself, prepare, and network with other beekeepers before the first nectar becomes available. Great information.
-Maureen Cartmill, CIS Site Coordinator, Woods Lake Elementary: A Magnet Center for the Arts
My book club (The Lovely Ladies of Literature) is reading The Patternist series by Octavia Butler. We are on Book 1, Wild Seed. The interesting thing about the series is that she wrote them in the opposite order that you read them in. So, the last book that she wrote is the first book that you read. Also, there was a fifth book, but she shelved it because it didn’t really flow the way she had hoped for.
-Artrella Cohn, Senior Director of Community Engagement & Student Investment
I recently finished a fascinating, but tragic story called Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. It is a fictional story but is based on a little known historical event that took place between 1854 and 1929, where over 200,000 orphan children were sent across the Midwest by train to be placed with families, often to be used as free labor. It was excellent. I am presently reading The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. I learned of this author at Cara’s SEL [Social Emotional Learning] training and so far am really enjoying it!
–Joan Coopes, CIS Site Coordinator, Arcadia Elementary
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. It’s historical fiction. And this, from the NYT’s book review: A finalist for this year’s Man Booker Prize, The Narrow Road to the Deeper North portrays a singular episode of manic brutality: imperial Japan’s construction of the Thailand-Burma Death Railway in the early 1940s. The British had long investigated this route, but they deemed the jungle impenetrable. Once the Japanese captured Burma, though, its army needed a more efficient resupply route, and so the impossible became possible in just over a year by using some 300,000 people as disposable labor. Flanagan’s late father was a survivor of that atrocity, which took the lives of more than 12,000 Allied prisoners.
–Keely Novotny, CIS Site Coordinator, Edison Environmental Science Academy
I am usually reading three to four books at a time. I always have one book I listen to in the car, one I can pick up and put down easily, one I read before I go to sleep, and one I can’t put down. The car book at present is The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald. It is the story of a young woman from Sweden who loses her job in a bookstore and decides to visit her elderly pen pal in a dying town in Iowa, and what happens next.
The pick up/put down book is often short stories or essays. Currently it is Spoiled Brats, a book of short stories by Simon Rich. The summary on the back of the book starts out with “Twenty years ago, Barney the Dinosaur told the nation’s children they were special. We’re still paying the price. From “one of the funniest writers working today (review from Rolling Stone) comes a collection of stories culled from the front lines of the millennial culture wars.” I have only read the first story in which the narrator is a guinea pig living in a second grade classroom.
My bedtime book is from the Flavia de Luce series by Alan Bradley, The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place. Flavia is an eleven-year-old girl growing up in England in the 1950s. She is fascinated with chemistry and uses her extensive knowledge of poisons and decay to help the local inspector solve murders. This is the ninth book in the series.
And, finally, the book I can’t put down is Need to Know by Karen Cleveland. The protagonist is Vivian who works for the CIA who, while trying to find out more about a Russian handler and the agents he handles, finds information that threatens everything that matters to her. I read the first chapter of this book online in an email I get about books. The sender takes the first chapter of a book and breaks it into five segments and sends each segment daily for a week. At the end of the week, this one got me….
-Barbara Worgess, Project Manager of School Based Health Initiative
Keep up with us at Ask Me About My 12,000+ Kids and you’ll soon find out what our volunteers have been reading!
Tags: Angela Van Heest, Artrella Cohn, Barbara Worgess, book recommendations, Emily Kobza, Jenna Cooperrider, Jennifer Clark, Joan Coopes, Keely Novotny, Kelly Cedarquist, Maggie Walters, Maureen Cartmill, Missy Best, National Reading Month, Phillip Hegwood, Shannon Jones, Stacy Jackson
