Did you know there were reading brain labs that study how kids learn to read? “The theory of the fourth-grade shift had been based on behavioral data,” says the lead author of the study, Donna Coch. She heads the Reading Brains Lab at Dartmouth College. We actually ran a reading lab in the summer at …
On Saturday morning, we went to our library branch for the puppet show and found that they were telling Elephant and Piggie stories. As we listened, I basked in the way there were so many different types of people for us to share the reading quilts with including Arabic-speaking families as well as Hindi-speaking …
One of the aspects of my congregation that I love the most is that we are constantly exchange things: food, coupons, clothes, and books. There’s nothing better for a reader like me to walk into church and be handed a new book with a great recommendation. Which is how I ended up with One Child. …
I’ve always viewed reading as a chance to learn something new, explore new places, and time to discover the unknown. It’s a way for me to escape the reality of the world that surrounds me, so when I encounter myself in the pages of a book, it really throws me off. I don’t want to …
I don’t really believe. Shadow thought. I don’t believe any of this. Maybe I’m still fifteen. Mom’s still alive and I haven’t even met Laura yet. Everything that’s happened so far has been some kind of especially vivid dream. And yet he could not believe that either. All we have to believe with is our …
Now, as all of you will have had reason aplenty to discover for yourselves, there are new gods growing in America, clinging to growing knots of belief: gods fo credit card and freeways, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon. Proud gods, fat …
Sometimes, like today, I just need to immerse myself in a book. I need to escape from my reality, from my conflicts, from my tensions and walk around in someone else’s for awhile. As I walk with these characters and I help them figure out their conflicts, challenges and problems by reading on, I feel …
I know this isn’t normal, but when I draw near to the last chapter of a book, I get a kind of panic in my stomach. I know that there are more books to read than I could ever possibly read, but what if I end up not having another book to start once I …
In reading Madeline L’engle’s Walking on Water, I was impressed by her honesty: One of the things that I learned on the road back is that I do not have to be right. I have to try to do what is right, but when it turns out, as happens with all of us to be wrong, to …
Maybe it’s the things we struggle through the hardest, that shape and form us. Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating and even gruesome, may make …
