The Plucky Reader

A boy, his books, and a blog

Replacing Required Reading – To Kill a Mockingbird

This week I’m attacking a much-beloved classic; a book that has been challenged many, many times in its history. It has had to go up against many a school board and pearl-clutching soccer moms who felt children should not be made to feel uncomfortable and exposure to adversity should be kept to a minimum. Gauntlets have been thrown, yet To Kill a Mockingbird has come out on top time and time again.

And for good reason. It’s a good book.

(After my Great Gatsby post a good friend of mine called me to verify that I didn’t, in fact, hate Gatsby. She was afraid our friendship had all been for naught and that this meant the end. So, I guess I’ll put up front that I love To Kill a Mockingbird. I have very fond memories of reading about it. In fact, I posted about it once during banned books week. You can find that post here.)

However, many of the reasons I want to replace Gatsby hold true for To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s antiquated, it’s from a perspective that doesn’t totally represent modern America, and while it still has a revered place in literature, it may not be the best pick for a 9th grade classroom anymore.

I will say, Mockingbird has some things going for it that Gatsby was totally lacking. For one, it was written by a woman, which is a rarity amongst books taught in public school English programs. In Louisiana–at least when it comes to the middle school curriculum–women comprise between 10-15% of the voices students are exposed to. According to The Ultimate AP English Reading List only 2 of the top 10 most frequently referenced books on AP Exams are books by women (neither of these books are To Kill a Mocking Bird, of course.)

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To Stop for Rainbows

Last weekend, for the first time in weeks, it rained here in Louisiana. It was glorious. I am definitely a cliche when it comes to rain; I find it beautiful and calming and relaxing and wonderful. Especially when I don’t have to drive in it or leave my house and be incovenienced by it.

What I’m saying is I love rain when it rains on my terms.

But this rain was on my terms. The raindrops were cold–a needed refreshment in this scorching heat–and it was exactly the right amount, not too heavy and not too light. It also stopped me from having to go outside and melt my skin off to water my garden, which is only a problem because I’m inordinately lazy, and not because it’s actually a bother in any real, significant way.

My son, however, has a very different relationship with rain. When rain is on the horizon, he gets nervous and I have to spend a long time calming him down and preparing him for oncoming rain. And as he develops more language to express his feelings and his reservations, he is more vocal about his displeasure with impending rain. So I knew that this weekend would be no different. Friday when the sky darkened and the air was fragrant with that beautiful, indescribable smell of rain on the horizon, I knew that we would have to have our familiar rain prep conversation.

To his credit, my son took it much more in stride that in rainstorms past. Maybe because we only experienced gentle summer showers, or maybe because he’s maturing, or maybe because three is a really complicated age and next time he will be an absolute mess–but for whatever reason, he was more contented than usual.

When the rain had finished on Friday, we were treated to true, beautiful magic, and I got to experience the world through the eyes of a toddler.

My son loves rainbows. To this point, we had only seen rainbows as illustrations in books and represented in various media together. But when this rainbow arced down seemingly across the street from us as we waited outside the restaurant we had just left, the world stilled and my son open-mouth stared at the gift that had been placed in the air for him and him alone. That was nobody else’s rainbow. It was for him.

Who was I to argue with that?

Normally, my son is a blur–energy personified–bouncing from place to place, and comes with his own tailwind. But for just a moment, time stood still around him as he saw this beautiful view. (Seriously, the picture doesn’t do it justice.) His eyes filled with genuine glee and his mouth curved into a big, goofy grin. And if this picture inspires anything in you, then you can’t imagine how moved you could be by that look. (Surely I say this from a place of unbiased observation.)

Within a few moments, it disappeared, and with it, so did the magic. My son was back to life in fast-forward and the the stillness of the world dissipated into the cacophony of traffic and wind and outdoor sound systems. We went to Barnes & Noble, bought more books than I intended to, and went home for the night.

But there was still magic to come.

Sunday evening while we were driving, we were on the highway. There were no cars around us, we were listening The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on audiobook as a family, and overhead the most vibrant and beautiful rainbow I’ve seen in my entire life appeared. I didn’t have my phone (I know–who leaves home without their phones?) so I didn’t get the catch the moment, with that soaring beautiful, Technicolor, double rainbow. It arced all the way across the sky and stopped me in my tracks.

My wife snapped this photo from her phone later

So I did what any responsible parent would do. I pulled over on the side of the highway, held my son in my arms, and let him stare up at the rainbow for as long as he wanted.

“It’s so pretty,” he uttered over and over, as if every time he looked at it was the first time. “It’s so pretty, daddy.”

We stood there in the cool, damp air, the wind blowing around us, staring at the sky for possibly seconds and possibly years as we both appreciated the beauty and the wonder above us. It’s not everyday you get to see something quite so beautiful. We chased that rainbow all the way home, with the radio off and sitting in contented silence as the ribbon of colors stretched out infinitely before us.

I will never regret pulling over to look at that rainbow; I will never regret the minutes we stood staring up at the sky on the side of the road in knee-high grass getting eaten up by mosquitos. I will never look back on these two photos with anything but fondness in my heart.

Because life is too short not to stop for rainbows.

Replacing Required Reading – The Great Gatsby

A couple of months ago, one of my friend texted me. She’s a high school English teacher in Texas, and though she is every bit as qualified as (if not more qualified than) I am when it comes to the pedagogy of teaching English and literature, she often comes to me when she needs help solving a problem with literature or connecting with her students. I appreciate that she values my opinion, and I’ve always valued the conversations we have about books and teaching and life in general.

The theme of this conversation was her displeasure with teaching The Great Gatsby. I personally have never taught Gatsby; I’ve only taught English at the middle school level, but I can imagine what drudgery it could be from year to year. The students she teaches are not very different from the students I have been teaching for the past ten years. The nouveau riche lifestyle of the New York elite described by F. Scott Fitzgerald is not something many of my students could even begin to connect with without a lot of scaffolding. It would take a lot of front loading and relevantizing (I’m positive this is a word) in a way that many students would lose interest before they even cracked the cover.

And then working through the language, explaining the ideaology of the spoiled elite, and making sure you harp over the symbolism of that green light so that when those students are 36 years old and remember nothing else about the book, they remember the green light (trust me, it happens. It’s a tale as old as time. Most of the people who where in my AP English class only remember the green light and that there was a character named Daisy. I’ve now exhausted the list of things remembered from Gatsby.) And while I’m confident my friend teaches this book very well and addresses the important themes, and works very hard to make this book something more than just some fleeting book in the lives of her students that only crops up as a recovered memory when they think of the color green, she felt it was time for a change.

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Review – Strange Love by Fred Waitzkin

I get some of my best reading done on an airplane. I don’t know what it is about it. Maybe it’s the weird stasis of being in the air. There’s not much else you can do. There are no pressing concerns; there are no deadlines. Time has no meaning in air. It passes as slowly and as quickly as it chooses—not to mention the pesky changing of time zones as you go. You never quite know where you are. I’m sure there’s some kind of existential metaphor there, but I’m not getting into all that today.

This weekend, my wife and I stole away for a weekend trip to Charlotte to celebrate our 10th anniversary. It was an unexpectedly wonderful trip; we were surprised by just how much we found to do on this surprise trip. (COVID travel restrictions cancelled our original plans and we chose Charlotte by essentially throwing darts at a map.) But we had more fun that we could have imagined. We will definitely be returning.

And as the plane was transporting me to North Carolina, a brilliant author was transporting me elsewhere.

We were seated at a weathered picnic table on the beach behind the Fragata Lounge with a view of old fishing boats tossing on their moorings in the wide bay. The high tide was practically touching our feet. Rachel was across from me talking in Spanish with her aunt, a few cousins, and some others. She had wanted me to meet her family.

Strange Love (3)

One of the things I love most about Fred Waitzkin’s writing is his ability to transport me to other places. He paints a scene in his opening paragraph that, even with an economy of words, plops me in the middle of a story. His stories are immersive and masterfully woven.

A few years ago, I reviewed Waitzkin’s Deep Water Blues, and enjoyed every second of it, so I was excited at the opportunity to read Strange Love when it was presented to me. In fact, I didn’t even read the description when the email came through, I just remembered the incredible experience I had with Deep Water Blues and knew that I wanted to read whatever Mr. Waitzkin had to offer me.

Strange Love is a complex, quiet story. A narrator who remains unnamed, two sisters who are opposites sides of one coin, and complicated stories of love and loss are spun together in such an intriguing way that when the book ends, you’ll both feel satisfied and want so much more.

One of the things that sticks out to me as brilliant about Strange Love is the dual storylines that weave throughout this story. While Rachel is telling her own story of her sister, her mother, her nephew, and her own life, the narrator weaves his own tale in, dropping the life of a former writer, a has-been who has lost more than he could ever hope to regain. He’s lived his own tragedies that could never amount to Rachel’s, but preoccupy his own mind.

As a reader, I was invested in both stories equally. I wanted to know about the narrator’s story just as ,ICG as I wanted to know about Rachel’s. I was intrigued by both, the story of potential that felt tied to a failing lounge and family obligation, as well as potential fully met quickly fizzled out.

For readers who are more sensitive, I will caution you. There is nothing explicit, but Rachel’s story is heartbreaking. It will take its toll on you. It will find the deep places of your heart and rip at them, just a little bit. And—if you’re like me—you’ll love it for that exact thing.

Take a moment, allow yourself to be plopped into the middle of a story, stay a while with some characters who need some love. Enjoy a new culture, and enjoy Waitzkin’s description of island life. He clearly has a love for it; he shows it so beautifully both here and in Deep Water Blues. And allow yourself to become immersed and invested in Rachel’s story. I recommend it.

Plucky’s rating?
4.5/5 stars

Yours,
The Plucky Reader

Identity Crisis

Today, the sky is gray; the clouds hang low and rain is threatening to pour again, for the 19th day in a row. The air smells damp and somebody nearby is smoking a cigarette that makes my head hurt. Despite all of that, today is beautiful. Today I am filled with hope and joy and some emotion I can’t identify. For you see, today I have begun the final countdown to summer break.

This summer is not just any summer break, mind you. This summer, I am a father—to a rambunctious 3-year-old, no less. This is the summer after my tenth year of teaching. This is a summer to celebrate.

It is also the first summer of the rest of my life as I take a step out of the classroom—out of education entirely—and move into a new career. My path has taken a new trajectory, and honestly, I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it.

That’s not to say I’m not excited. I am excited. This was a choice I made, a chance I willingly took, but it’s still terrifying. I have spent 10 years perfecting my craft. I’ve gone to hundreds of hours of workshops to improve my classroom management, my students’ engagement, my content knowledge. I’ve presented at workshops and mentored and coached newer teachers. I was on the path to educational greatness—or at least tremendous success.

So what changed?

In short? Nothing. And everything.

I still love teaching; I can’t even imagine what next year is going to look like when August rolls around and I’m not filling our house with school supplies to be used up by the grubby hands of teenagers hellbent on eating every Dixon Ticonderoga I own. (Seriously, where do all those pencils go? Every one of them goes through an entire pack of 84 pencils by October.)

I can’t imagine not sitting in in-service training while somebody—who is not as knowledgeable in my content as I am—tells me how to deliver the same content I’ve been teaching for the past three years. What will I do when I can go to the bathroom whenever I want? What happens when I’m no longer a Pavlovian slave to the bells that dismiss students and dictate when I eat, when I pee, when I go home?

These are all questions I have asked myself hundreds of thousands of times on end. And the honest answer is: I have no idea. I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s going to be like or how I’m going to feel, or what I’m going to do, or who I’m going to see. All of my friends are teachers, for crying out loud, they’re not going to be able to meet me for lunch (another thing I’m really looking forward to.)

But I’m still taking this leap and trying something new. Exciting and terrifying as it may be.

So what am I doing now that I’m not teaching next year?

Technically, I’m making soap. Shameless plug: you can find my book and pop culture-inspired soaps at www.epiloguesoaps.com.

And I’m really excited for that! I have so enjoyed experimenting with my designs, combining my love of art and reading with soap making. This summer’s release is going to be a lot of fun; I’m excited for the big reveal that’s coming.

I’m also going to be reviving this blog is a real way. I know I’ve said in the past that I’m going to be more structured about posting, only for that promise to be broken. Multiple times. Because I’m the literal worst.

But I’ve actually scheduled writing time. I’ve started planning themes. I’ve started prepping for my summer reading. I’ve made habit trackers in my bullet journal and everything. Writing is going to be a main focus of mine, again, not just something I do whenever I’ve got 13 seconds between work and picking up my son from preschool.

As writing goes, it actually has made it’s way back to my priorities, where it belongs. I’ve been working on a new book; I’m 20,000 words in and always moving forward. It’s been so long since I’ve been this inspired to write.

I’m also going to be shopping my completed manuscripts back out to agents or publishers. I’m going to be considering self-publishing. I’m going to be editing one of my manuscripts so I can fix some plot holes that hindsight revealed to me.

And I am so excited for this opportunity!

Never in 100 years did I dream that I’d have the chance to quit my job to become a full-time creative. Writing, soap making, designing shirts for my mom’s company. So many things that are right in my wheelhouse, but that I never would have pursued before.

Because it took me until I was 33 years old to realize that security may not actually be the most important thing after all. Maybe limiting myself, pushing myself into this box, fitting into the space that I knew I could fit into because it provided a steady paycheck and benefits and standard hours, maybe that was more damaging than it was helpful.

Maybe what I need is to just go for it. Maybe this is my turning point. This is the point in the biopic of my life during which Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” plays in the background, the colors change from muted to bright, and I’m running up a staircase (for some reason?) with a big grin on my face and my proverbial trophy held high above my head. Maybe this is the moment things change.

And maybe I fail miserably, and I’ll be thankful that I have a teaching degree to fall back on, that I have a career I am passionate about that I can still return to. Maybe it’s nice to have a safety net.

So while I may not know who I am when you strip away my title as teacher, and pull me out of the classroom, and take away my curriculum, I do know that I’m excited. And this is not a crisis of identity; this is a chance for reinvention.

I’m exciting to meet the person I’m going to be a year from now. I can’t wait to meet him.

Yours,
The Plucky Reader

Some Books By Black Authors You Need To Read

I do not claim to be the authority on black authors. Far from it, in fact. I know that my exposure to black authors is not as wide as it should be. And as much as I’d love to blame the gatekeepers of publishing for that (it is, in part, their fault) I also have to blame myself. Books by black authors are out there; I have to do a better job of being intentional in selecting more books by diverse voices.

However, I do want to linger for a moment on my comment about the gatekeepers of publishing. For the past several years this has been an ongoing conversation amongst bookish people. The people over at Book Riot talk about it often, bloggers mention it often. It’s not a secret that publishing is almost exclusively white. In a 2019 study published to The Open Book Blog 76% of the publishing industry as a whole was white. To be fair, this includes publishing staff, review journal staff, and literary agents. But it’s still more than an overwhelming majority. That means (and I know you are capable of understanding this without my help, but humor me) that less than a quarter of the publishing industry is comprised of people of color.

So as part of my pledge to be more intentional in picking books by diverse authors, and in celebration of Black History Month, I’m dropping a list of my favorite books by black authors. This list is in no way comprehensive, definitive, or even all that Earth-shattering. But it is a list of books that I love by authors who are incredible. If you’re struggling to find new voices, maybe this list can provide a jumping off point for you.

And maybe you can leave me some suggestions in the comments to help me grow my list, as well. This year I’m expanding my horizons as much as possible and I am open to any suggestions I get.

But here, in no particular order, are books by black authors that I highly recommend.

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Love you. Mean it. Make Good Choices: Lessons My Students Taught Me

(content warning: adult language)

“Love you. Mean it. Make good choices.”

I tell my students this every day as they leave my class. I am actively and acutely aware that I may be the only person who tells them that they’re loved, so I make sure to say it every day. And it makes a difference. Even I didn’t know just how much of a difference it made in the beginning. Not until one day when a group of my students lingered after dismissal.

“Did y’all need something?” I asked as I packed my stuff and prepared to leave for the day.

“You didn’t tell us you love us,” one of them said, expectantly. “We can’t go until you do.”

I could feel a broad smile spread across my face. I honestly had never realized just how much it meant to them. It was just something I started saying–and very recently at that. I meant it, of course. Every single time, I meant it. I did love my students. I still love all of my students. Every single day, I say a prayer for all of my students, past and present. But I never realized my saying it made such a difference to them. Not until Gabby spoke up.

She didn’t know it then, but she changed my life that day. She made me realize just how much power my simple words have. She made me see what a difference I was able to make in somebody’s life. Gabby helped me see how small gestures can add up to great things.

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Closing the Cover on 2020 and Opening a Brand New Book

Hello, dear readers! (If there are any of you left, of course.) I have been rather hit or miss for quite some time. I’d love to promise that that’s all going to change, but I’m not making a promise I can’t keep. So instead, what I will promise is I’m going to try to make a concerted effort to not disappear for long periods of time again.

As is the case for most of the world, 2020 hit me hard. I was already in a depressed state when 2020 began. I wrote about it at the start of the year. I was coming out of a depressive episode that spanned for most of 2019 when the year came in. I was feeling optimistic when the year began. And by March, every shred of optimism was gone. I have grappled with how much to tell here; this isn’t my personal diary after all. I don’t want to come across as if I’m some kind of complaining millennial who can’t get his life together, even if that is how it feels sometimes. But to breeze past the things that happened to me in 2020 would also feel like sweeping them under the rug and pretending as if they didn’t happen. They did, and I’m still dealing with the fallout from much of the things that happened to me. And as a result, the person I am today is not the person who wrote that reinvigorated Triumphant Return post last January.

I started 2021 by working my way into more positive reading habits. Keeping myself account with the MMD reading journal.

So a brief synopsis (feel free to skip):

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Review – Here She Is by Hilary Levey Friedman

Do you know what I love more than almost anything else on this planet? Knowing obscure information that the people around me don’t know. I know, I know. It’s completely inane. It’s like I perpetually want to be that guy at the party who keeps people entertained.

(Okay, to be fair, that’s exactly what I want to be. I miss parties. I miss entertaining. I miss knowing things that the people around me don’t know because my wife is brilliant and knows everything before I have the chance to know it.)

I once wrote a book called 1000 Paper Cranes (you can read it over at Wattpad, typos and all). The protagonist, Jordan, memorized tons and tons and tons of facts so that he could make conversation with people. Jordan is a gross exaggeration of myself. I’m not quite as socially awkward as Jordan (I’m also not a smart driven, but that’s beside the point), but I do love to know things that make people stop and say “hmmm.”

And I feel like my most recent read has contributed greatly to my ability to make people stop, scratch their chins, and say “hmmmm” as they consider the things I just told them. This weekend, I had the pleasure of reading Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America.

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Review – The Polygamist’s Daughter by Anna LeBaron and Leslie Wilson

If you know anything about me, you probably know about my weird obsession with cults. I know it’s ridiculous and macabre, but I find cults to be extremely fascinating. It could have something to do with the fact that I grew up in close proximity with a cult. (And by close proximity, I mean that I had many friends involved in a cult and I visited often. Maybe I’ll talk more about that later.)

But for whatever reason, I’ve always been fascinated by them. You may remember I reviewed The Burn Zone some time ago. Written by Renee Linnell, a cult survivor, this book captivated me and is, to date, one of my favorite books I’ve reviewed. It was fascinating, and Renee’s story was one of strength and redemption and something in that was empowering to me, and I haven’t even lived through anything like that.

A few weeks ago, I was on one of my regular I-can’t-sleep scrolls through TikTok, when the algorithm matched me with Anna LeBaron (@annaklebaron on TikTok if you’re wondering). Anna was doing one of those trends when you answer questions about your life. Your name, your age, etc… and when it got to her siblings, she answered “50 siblings (Not a typo)”.

Immediately I was intrigued. And apparently I wasn’t the only one. The comments were loaded with people questioning her having 50 siblings. They all wanted to know more (and so did I!). So Anna graciously answered the questions as they came in. And through the course of the next hour, I scrolled and learned and scrolled and learned about her life growing up as the daughter of the leader of a polygamist cult. In one of those Q&A videos, she mentioned that she’d written a memoir, The Polygamist’s Daughter.

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