Books: February 2008 Archive Page

Christian Science Monitor:

During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.

The effort, he says, was inspired after reading "Nickel and Dimed," in which author Barbara Ehrenreich takes on a series of low-paying jobs. Unlike Ms. Ehrenreich, who chronicled the difficulty of advancing beyond the ranks of the working poor, Shepard found he was able to successfully climb out of his self-imposed poverty.

Ehrenreich's book was Seton Hill's summer reading selection, so I'm teaching the book later this term. And I'm particularly interested in this item. Shepard's youth and strength (and probably gender) gave him access to a moving job that the middle-aged Ehrenreich wouldn't likely have landed.

A great series hosted by Heidi Ruby Miller, a recent graduate of Seton Hill's Writing Popular Fiction program. She has asked writers of genre fiction (fantasy, crime, etc.) to tell the story of their first publication. I'm just starting a career track unit in Introduction to Literary Study, and several of the students want to be professional writers.

Every writer follows her own path within the publishing industry, which makes for entertaining and inspiring stories off the page. Paths to Publication offers some of those unique perspectives. I hope it also gives us all comfort knowing that our journey as writers is not just the breaks we get, but also the opportunities we take.

Good literacy news from the Washington Post:

The share of kindergarten students in the county who can read simple books has risen from 39 to 93 percent in six years, according to school system data culled from reading assessments given each spring. Achievement is so high, and across so many demographic groups, that school officials plan to test future kindergartners on more challenging text.

The article credits the change from half-day kindergarten to full-day kindergarten. One of the main reasons we started homeschooling is that we weren't really ready to send our son away for a full day, and there wasn't an option to send him for a half-day -- the teachers assured us that he would miss out on far too much. We thought that we would miss our son far too much.