SOTAREADING 2021-2024

  Monday, Dec. 21    3:30 Moderator: Dolly Parker What does it mean for a family to lose a child they never really knew?   One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son’s body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family’s struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the worldly, high-spirited cousin whose teasing confidence masks a guarded private life. As their relationship deepens—and Osita struggles to understand Vivek’s escalating crisis—the mystery gives way t

 From Nija: Hello All -  If you did not make it to our meeting today and you would like the two hours of PD credit, please respond on the blog by Wednesday. Attendance will be submitted on Thursday (12/3) morning.  Below are the readings for the next few months.  December  -  The Death of Vivich  Oji by Akwaeke Emezi\ January  - What is Not Yours Is Not Yours  by Helen Oyeyemi and "Here for It" by R. Eric Thomas - (choose one) February -  Born a Crime  - Trevor Noah (link below) https://aderie.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/born-a-crime-trevor-noah.pdf\

  3:45 pm Moderator: Susan Woodhams It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.   The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined — every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute . . . and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

  Hello PD group! Our next Literature for Adolescents meeting is Monday, October 26th from 3:45-5:45 (we will meet the last Monday of each month working around the holidays). From this date forward you can earn 18 hours of PD credit. Heidi Breidenstein will be facilitating our October read which is  Clap When You Land  by Elizabeth Acevedo. Make sure to pick out your favorite poem from the text. That will be part of the discussion.  Elizabeth Acevedo's new Clap When You Land is a novel, in verse, about two sisters losing their father, their hero, and finding each other along the way. Camino Rios lives with her aunt in the Dominican Republic, and waits all year for her dad to visit her for the summer. Below are the books we will read into 2021: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes – Suzanne Collins --- November The Death of Vivich Oji by  Akwaeke Emezi-December What is Not Yours Is Not Yours  by Helen Oyeyemi  and "Here for It"  by R. Eric Thomas - January (choose one) We wi

 Monday, Sept. 29 SUMMER CHOICE Just got the news we have been approved for 20 hours – 2 hours per meeting.  Plan on meeting next Monday to discuss the books and share our summer reading.  The Zoom meeting link is below.    The Nickel Boys bu Colson Whitehead Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern See Nija's email for Zoom link I’ve attached a link to a piece in Vanity Fair by Jesmyn Ward. Marcy chose one of her books as a read for this year.  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/culture/2020/08/jesmyn-ward-on-husbands-death-and-grief-during-covid/amp More links from npr: The Starless Sea: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/03/775436518/youll-float-away-on-the-warm-waters-of-the-starless-sea The Nickel Boys: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/16/742129946/rooted-in-history-the-nickel-boys-is-a-great-american-novel Sing, Unburied, Song: https://www.npr.org/books/titles/547855239/sing-unburied-sing

Digital Texts Please post digital text links here. Even though the blog does not support PDFs you can post the URL. 

Please post in the comments any books you would recommend for our students to read.  If you can also provide a short summary of the book (cut and paste from Amazon) or your own thoughts from reading it, that would be great! Example: WINNER of the NATIONAL BOOK AWARD for FICTION Finalist for the Kirkus Prize Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal Publishers Weekly  Top 10 of 2017   "The heart of Jesmyn Ward's  Sing, Unburied, Sing  is story - the yearning for a narrative to help us understand ourselves, the pain of the gaps we'll never fill, the truths that are failed by words and must be translated through ritual and song...Ward's writing throbs with life, grief, and love, and this book is the kind that makes you ache to return to it." (Buzzfeed)  In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning  Salvage the Bones , this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural 21st-century America. An intimate portrait

Meeting:  March 30 2:45  A 238 Moderator: Marcy Gamzon A brilliant novel and instant New York Times bestseller from the author of  Where'd You Go, Bernadette , about a day in the life of Eleanor Flood, forced to abandon her small ambitions and awake to a strange, new future. Eleanor knows she's a mess. But today, she will tackle the little things. She will shower and get dressed. She will have her poetry and yoga lessons after dropping off her son, Timby. She won't swear. She will initiate sex with her husband, Joe. But before she can put her modest plan into action, life happens. Today, it turns out, is the day Timby has decided to fake sick to weasel his way into his mother's company. It's also the day Joe has chosen to tell his office -- but not Eleanor -- that he's on vacation. Just when it seems like things can't go more awry, an encounter with a former colleague produces a graphic memoir whose dramatic tale threatens to reveal a buried family

DATE: Monday, March 2, 2:45 Rm. 351 Moderator: Susan Woodhams Robyn Schneider's  The Beginning of Everything  is a witty and heart-wrenching teen novel that will appeal to fans of books by John Green and Ned Vizzini, novels such as  The Perks of Being a Wallflower , and classics like  The Great Gatsby  and  The Catcher in the Rye . Varsity tennis captain Ezra Faulkner was supposed to be homecoming king, but that was before—before his girlfriend cheated on him, before a car accident shattered his leg, and before he fell in love with unpredictable new girl Cassidy Thorpe. As  Kirkus Reviews  said in a starred review, "Schneider takes familiar stereotypes and infuses them with plenty of depth. Here are teens who could easily trade barbs and double entendres with the characters that fill John Green's novels." Funny, smart, and including everything from flash mobs to blanket forts to a poodle who just might be the reincarnation of Jay Gatsby,  The Beginning of

Monday, January 27, 2020 2:45 A238 Moderator: Michelle Davis An unforgettable memoir about a young girl who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home. “Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Tara Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to