Quick random here, as I am off in a bit. Stay tuned to Instagram for some photos if they are taken.
- Ann Engelhart has some lovely hand-painted ceramic eggs (and other items) for sale at her Etsy shop.
By middle school, not only is there even less time for activities such as class read-alouds, but instruction also continues to center heavily on passage analysis, said LaGarde, who taught that age group. A friend recently told me that her child’s middle-school teacher had introduced To Kill a Mockingbird to the class, explaining that they would read it over a number of months—and might not have time to finish it. “How can they not get to the end of To Kill a Mockingbird?” she wondered. I’m right there with her. You can’t teach kids to love reading if you don’t even prioritize making it to a book’s end. The reward comes from the emotional payoff of the story’s climax; kids miss out on this essential feeling if they don’t reach Atticus Finch’s powerful defense of Tom Robinson in the courtroom or never get to solve the mystery of Boo Radley….
….We need to meet kids where they are; for the time being, I am writing stories that are shorter and less complex. At the same time, we need to get to the root of the problem, which is not about book lengths but the larger educational system. We can’t let tests control how teachers teach: Close reading may be easy to measure, but it’s not the way to get kids to fall in love with storytelling. Teachers need to be given the freedom to teach in developmentally appropriate ways, using books they know will excite and challenge kids. (Today, with more diverse titles and protagonists available than ever before, there’s also a major opportunity to spark joy in a wider range of readers.) Kids should be required to read more books, and instead of just analyzing passages, they should be encouraged to engage with these books the way they connect with “fun” series, video games, and TV shows.
Young people should experience the intrinsic pleasure of taking a narrative journey, making an emotional connection with a character (including ones different from themselves), and wondering what will happen next—then finding out. This is the spell that reading casts. And, like with any magician’s trick, picking a story apart and learning how it’s done before you have experienced its wonder risks destroying the magic.
- I’ve followed JRR Jokien on Twitter for a while – he’s witty. He has a Substack, and this post on grief is free to all:
And though the Scouring of the Shire throws a major wrench in those plans initially, once Saruman is ousted from the Shire a return to normalcy is indeed what happens for Sam, Merry, and Pippin. Not only do they return to their former lives: they live out an idealized version of their former lives that their adventure made possible. Sam marries Rosie and they move into Bag End with Frodo. Continuing to dress in their mail and finery, Merry and Pippin hold the rest of the Shire spellbound with their songs and tales of their journeys.
But the same does not occur for Frodo, who after acting as Deputy Mayor for a time slowly begins to fade from public life in the Shire. In his struggle with wounding, his eventual fate, and Sam’s sudden experience of the grief of Frodo’s departure, I believe we can find some truths about loss and healing to take with us for help and encouragement.
Charlotte was Both 
I read the substack article and it is good to know that LotR helped his grief. I find his reading of Frodo’s loss somewhat shallow, though. The intensity of Frodo’s loss is closer to the loss experienced in the recovery from addiction–the loss of the thrill that comes from surrendering to the addiction and the loss of the innocence suffered from surrendering to evil that is part of the addiction process. There is no return to the pre-addiction world.
Thank you for the Substack link. I found his reflection on grief very moving, indeed.