Language and Magic

Some (perhaps slightly out-of-context) thoughts on language and magic: 

"If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart— reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life. Little children don’t know that. Magical thinking: that’s what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded. But somewhere in the heat of magic that boundary between word and thing ruptures. It cracks, and the one flows back into the other, and the two melt together and fuse. Language gets tangled up with the world it describes... Can a man who can cast a spell ever really grow up?" 

from The Magicians by Lev Grossman

Adventures in Educational Crowdfunding!

I know it's been literally months since I posted, sorry, sorry.

I just wanted to pop out of my teaching/planning/grading hole to promote my DonorsChoose.org project. You can support our classroom by clicking HERE!

Help me put quality literature into the hands of my 11th graders!

Mindy Kaling (my favorite Hollywood person) supports Donors Choose! 

(as if I needed more reasons to love her!)

YA Lit Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Another old book review from Goodreads. Does posting three times in one day make up for not posting for months? Maybe?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Divergent by Veronica Roth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Not wildly original or remarkably well-crafted, but this book totally sucked me into its orbit for the four days it took me to read it. Already bought the sequel on Amazon! (Two day shipping suddenly seems horribly slow...) Tris Prior makes for a tough-yet-sympathetic and engaging heroine, but I'm having a hard time with Four. Maybe I'm too old (or cynical?) to have patience for boys who run hot and cold, even if they are super dreamy. Impatiently waiting for book 2 to get to my house...

View all my reviews

YA Lit Review: The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

This is a bit old, sorry... 
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Smart, beautiful, and heart-breaking. I teared up while reading this during SSR time, hoping my 3rd period students wouldn't notice me sniffle. This book has such smart, insightful things to say about the nature of living and dying, the way we treat people with cancer and other terminal illnesses, the purpose of literature, and the beauty of first love and all the other kinds of love, too. I can see now why my students are obsessed with John Green. Bravo, sir.

View all my reviews

YA Lit Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was fantastic! I LOVE the kooky/creepy vintage photos, and Riggs pulls together a pretty fascinating story. Sometimes the mythology he created gets a little confusing (and I still haven't figured out how to pronounce "ymbryne"), but the crazy-fun cast of characters he put together more than makes up for it. I didn't really care for Jacob's family much (which I guess is sort of the point), so I'm hoping the sequel fully dives into the relationship Jacob is developing with the rest of the peculiar children. I also have to confess that I totally didn't see that twist at the end--should I have?

I have so many spoiler-ific questions now... (view spoiler)[ What happens to them now that they're out of the time-loop in a WWII-stricken world? Will there be any fun man-out-of-his-own-time hijinks in story for Jacob now that he's in the 1940s? Will there be any potential timeline-changing issues since Jacob is a man-out-of-time? (hide spoiler)]

I'm so glad there's a sequel already!

View all my reviews

YA Lit Review: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In 1943, during the dark days World War II, a British spy plane is forced to make an emergency landing in Nazi-occupied France, its pilot and single passenger stranded on enemy soil with little hope for rescue. That these two managed to survive such a dangerous foray into enemy territory is enough to call them brave men indeed, but to do so might be inaccurate: the two agents conducting this critical spy mission into hostile territory were, in fact, women. Code Name Verity tells the story of how these two best friends became players in a covert operation that could turn the tide of the entire war and what happens when they find themselves in a situation that will test their honor, their courage, and their friendship.


Code Name Verity is a twisty mind-bending book that sucks you in and then proceeds to surprise you again and again, a gorgeous soul-grabber of a novel. Reading this wrecked my brain and my heart. The history-lover in me cheers, the feminist in me dances, and the part of me that adores a piece of well-crafted writing is just astounded. I simply love clever, intelligent writing like this that doesn't lose its beating heart underneath the brain. I found myself flipping back and forth between the pages feverishly to find clues that I had missed

Anyone who likes exciting, action-packed stories will like this book, but especially people who love historical fiction or stories about war, airplanes and their pilots, or espionage.

View all my reviews

POEM: Untitled Quote Poem

Today we wrote "quote poems," which basically means that students choose a famous-ish quote to repurpose as the first and last line of their own original poem. We recently read "So We'll Go No More A-Roving" by Lord Byron, so we talked a little bit then about why/how Bryon would borrow the lines of a Scottish folk song about a wandering, maidenhead-stealing "jolly beggar" to start of his own poem about how aging eventually forces all hard-partiers to slow down. (Bryon was 29 when we wrote this poem, so I am REALLY looking forward to this exciting stage in my life...)

In honor of Valentine's Day, the topic of the day was love, in its many forms (romantic, familial, disappointed, unrequited, joyous, even taco-based).

Mine is based off an Emily Dickinson line: "For love is immortality."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

For love is immortality--
A chance to be greater than
Our frail, weak bodies
An opportunity to make
A mark, a stain, a fingerprint
On the glass globe of universe.
We live in the memories of
    those we loved and
    those who loved us
And that love is passed from life to life--
A precious candle flame, cupped in trembling hands,
A blazing inferno whose skin-searing heat singes even from a distance
A glowing ember hidden under dusty, cold ashes, stubbornly refusing to go out--
For love is immortality.