Discussing The Giver

I raced to beat the movie release of The Giver, starting a book club with students as soon as school took up last August. Ten chose to participate. Discussing the book previously with upper elementary students had convinced me of its relevance to them.  I was further inspired listening to Lois Lowry talk about the Giver books at the Tucson Book Fair last spring. She characterized The Giver as the struggle between conformity and resistance, a theme that some of the students articulated as they began to understand the book.  Others often sketched how… Continue reading →

Enjoyed only by the leisure class?  Reports suggest that time spent reading books increases with wealth. Do only rich people have time to read and think?

In a recent NY Times piece (Sunday Review, 6/15/2014), Maria Konnikova admits that, like most of us, she often feels she is working against the clock, her time squeezed between obligations and responsibilities. She admits this state of mind is an unpleasant inconvenience but suggests comparing our experience with the lives of the poor.  We know they lack financial resources. They are also short on time because they are always trying to… Continue reading →

Remember?  Nestled among cushions on the window seat or lolling in the hammock under the big tree in the back or hidden in the closet for perfect privacy, we relished long summer afternoons of uninterrupted reading time. We were 8 or 9 or 10 when we became serious serial readers—Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Cherry Ames, or in Kentucky, the Little Colonel series. If we were lucky to live near the library or trade with friends, we could avoid the dreaded “end” of a book and move seamlessly to the next one in the series.… Continue reading →