October 2025 M T W T F S S « Aug 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Pages
Archives
Categories
Meta
YA Fest Affiliate Blogger
Guess who’s coming to YA Fest 2018
Tag Archives: YA Lit
Restriction or Release
I cringe every time I see the “joke” what three things do teachers love best about teaching? June, July, August.
In reality, at least for teachers in the Northeast, June is a nightmare. It’s rush, rush, rush to finish up: cram in one more lesson, complete the unit, administer the final, get everything graded, pack up the classroom, sign yearbooks, and by the last week in June, we look like we’ve been run over by a school bus.
Posted in Independent Reading/SSR/Reader's Workshop
Tagged as: Independent Reading, Reading Workshop, ssr, YA Lit, YA Literature
Preparing faces
“Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don’t know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right.”
–This Song Will Save Your Life, Leila Sales
Full disclosure: I haven’t read This Song Will Save Your Life. I was merely looking for a quote about YA books, and of course, google gave me quotes from YA books, and a blog post from Barnes and Noble titled “12 YA Quotes that Perfectly Express the Teen Condition.” Now, I don’t know if the quotes do or not. It’s been a really long time since I was a teen. And while the biology of adolescence hasn’t changed, adolescent life today seems far more complicated than it was in the 80s.
Posted in Coming of Age, Mystery/Thriller
Tagged as: Before I Let Go, Identity, Nijkamp, YA Lit, YA Literature, young adult lit, young adult literature
Dagaz: New Beginnings
The dagaz rune is the rune given to Magnus on his room key at the Hotel Valhalla. It symbolizes new beginnings. I think this is a fitting way to start this post since this is the follow up to “My Reading Journey” post.
In August of 2007, I started a new beginning. This August I will also start a new beginning, as I add graduate instructor to my titles. 10 years after I first started classes at UPenn, I’ll return to teach a secondary ELA methods class at GSE. I’ve been back on campus since graduation, but when I returned for the instructor institute in late June, it was like returning home. It truly is a new beginning for me. From being told I wouldn’t get be accepted into the doctoral program to now being a teacher at America’s oldest university, it has been a road I only dreamed of.
Posted in Independent Reading/SSR/Reader's Workshop, Teacher Tips, Window or Mirror
Tagged as: ", Beers, BHH, Book Love 2017, Disruptive Thinking, Probst, Rick Riordan, Window or Mirror, YA Lit, YA Literature
Desire to Understand
mys·ter·y1
ˈmist(ə)rē/
noun
1.
something that is difficult or impossible to understand or explain.
“the mysteries of outer space”
synonyms: puzzle, enigma, conundrum, riddle, secret, problem, unsolved problem
“his death remains a mystery”
2.
a novel, play, or movie dealing with a puzzling crime, especially a murder.
synonyms: thriller, murder mystery, detective story/novel, murder story, crime novel;
informalwhodunit
“reading a classic mystery”
Posted in Mystery/Thriller
Tagged as: agatha christie, al capone, alane ferguson, ally carter, april henry, body finder, carl hiaasen, edward blood, el konigsburg, embassy row, forensic mystery, gallagher girls, gennifer choldenko, John Feinstein, john green, john grishom, judy blunder, katherine howe, kimberly darting, lauren oliver, laurie faria stolarz, mystery, Series, silent to the bone, theodore boone, thriller, trenton lee stewart, YA Lit, YA Literature, young adult lit, young adult literature
Baked in a Beautiful Pie
“But people forgive each other. It’s like a dance.”
“I wish I knew how to do that dance,” Adri said.
“Oh,” Lily shook her head. “I don’t think it’s that you can’t do it. I think you’re thinking the whole thing is a lose-lose. Like, what if someone actually likes you? That causes all sorts of problems. Then each time you see them, you have to try and keep them. And then even if you manage that, you lose. You end up losing. Even if you go through all the work of accepting someone and occasionally looking like a fool in front of them and then figuring out if they can accept you and you can forgive each other for everything you screw up, you lose them eventually.”