June 05, 2021 at 7:42 AM

Here are the books, with Commentary, I’ve read and most admired in recent months,
June 2021–December 2021.

• Apeirogon by Colum McCann, fiction and nonfiction
• Letters to a Young Writer by Colum McCann (rereading), advice to aspiring writers
• A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America’s First All-Black High School Rowing Team by Ashley Cooper, nonfiction-memoir
• Vesper Flights by Helen McDonald, essays on birds, wildlife, and personal experiences
• Reading & Writing with English Learners: A Framework for K-5 by Valentina Gonzalez and Melinda Miller, professional
• Layers of Learning: Using Read-Alouds to Connect Literacy & Caring Conversations by JoEllen McCarthy, professional
• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, fiction
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama, memoir/autobiography
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (rereading), fiction
• Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of A Life in Poetry by Donald Hall, memoir
• One Life by Megan Rapinoe, autobiography
• The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson, nonfiction, history
• Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad, professional
• Why Do I Have to Read This? Literacy Strategies to Engage Our Most Reluctant Students by Cris Tovani, professional
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, on racism, call to action
• The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person by Frederick Joseph, on racism
• Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine Mary, personal narrative-memoir, autobiography
• Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin, history of four US Presidents, authentic leadership
• The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance by W. Timothy Gallewey, guide for improving performance (in any area)
• Lightbulb Moments: Unplanned Lessons for Teachers from Teachers by Gail Boushey and Allison Behne, 50 short stories to connect to teaching, professional
• Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, fiction
• The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by Sherry Turkle
• Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
• Every Kid a Writer: Strategies That Get Everyone Writing by Kelly Boswell, professional
• Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power by Brooke Baldwin, advice and stories
• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, fictin
• The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee, nonfiction, economic/social/ history of racism
• Persist by Elizabeth Warren, political memoir
• When You Wonder, You’re Learning: Mister Rogers’ Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids by Gregg Behr & Ryan Rydzewski, playful and practical advice, “tools for learning”
• Life, Literacy, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Supporting Our Immigrant and Refugee Children Through the Power of Reading, by Don Vu, professional

While I highly recommend all the books on the list, I want to highlight the fiction and nonfiction texts that most affected me as a reader, thinker, learner, and a citizen seeking to be more active and informed. Two books of fiction stand out for their originality, mesmerizing story, and beautiful writing: Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Two books of nonfiction that deeply impacted me are Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin, and The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee.

Let’s begin with Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart; this debut novel took my breath away. An early review inspired me to buy and read the book before the awards buzz began. More than 30 publishers rejected Stuart’s book before it was accepted by Grove Press and went on to win the 2020 Booker Prize for Fiction, one of the most prestigious literacy prizes in the world. Working 12-hour days as a fashion designer, Stuart spent ten years dedicating his nights to writing the story that ultimately became Shuggie Bain. While it took some time to get used to the Scottish brogue in the dialogue, the payoff for that patience was huge. As a reader, I was rewarded by a riveting story, main characters that will live with me forever, and the delight of encountering a magnificent, new author.

“You will never forget Shuggie Bain. Scene by scene, this book is a masterpiece.” The main characters, Hugh “Shuggie” Bain and his beloved and complicated mother Agnes Bain, are based, in large part on the author’s traumatic experiences growing up in public housing in 1980’s Glasgow. While the story centers on Shuggie, a sensitive and bullied boy who lives with his alcoholic mother, it is ultimately about enduring love amidst surviving a life of huge challenges and disappointments. Still, because the story is so beautifully written and heartfelt, it is an uplifting gift to the reader. (See full review, Kirkus Reviews.) For more about the book’s origin, the author, and the recognition, see “For a Novel, A Quiet Reception Turns Into a Celebration”.

Another unforgettable-book-for-life is Klara and the Sun by highly acclaimed fiction writer Kazuo Ishiguro, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize. As an enthusiastic reader of Ishiguro’s extraordinary books Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, I anticipated his latest book with excitement and trepidation and was not disappointed. I was thrilled, mesmerized, terrified, and saddened and am still thinking about the implications of this chilling, emotional novel.  Klara, the observant AI (Artificial Friend) and narrator tells a fantastical story that compels the reader to consider what it might mean to live, love, and care for others in a near-future world of advanced artificial intelligence, pervasive loneliness, and survival of the fittest. In this book, as in his previous books, “Ishiguro asks: What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to have a self? And how much of that self can and should we give to others?” (Quote: from excellent NPR book review by Annalisa Quinn) Spoiler alert: I am deliberately being sparing on details here in case you prefer not to know more before reading the book.

For perspective and insights on Klara and the Sun –before and/or after reading it--see other illuminating, excellent book reviews:

• “The Radiant Inner Life of a Robot” by Judith Shulevitz , The Atlantic, April 2021 issue
• “Kazuo Ishiguro Uses Artificial Intelligence to Reveal the Limits of Our Own” by James Wood, The New Yorker, March 8, 2021 issue
• “A Humanoid Who Cares for Humans, From the Mind of Kazuo Ishiguro” by Radhika Jones, The New York Times, March 1, 2021

Turning to nonfiction standouts, two books dealing with U.S. history captivated, informed, and enlightened me: Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin and, especially, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee. Beginning with Leadership in Turbulent Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin, a highly respected, prize-winning historian and author of many books, profiles and analyzes four Presidential leaders-- Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. While they possessed different backgrounds, dispositions, and abilities, each man became a transformational, visionary leader in a time of national crisis. The book is narrative nonfiction at its best. Goodwin is masterful at weaving historical facts into engaging stories that show how personal and historical events shaped these Presidents. Each of the four Presidents took office at a time of catastrophe; yet each rose to the challenge deftly, humanely, and courageously. As one who is not well versed in history, reading this book raised my hopes and expectations—and was an important reminder-- for what’s possible even in the darkest of historical and civic times. As Tim Kaine writes of these four Presidents in The Washington Post review:

“Each found ways to improve himself over time, and each learned from tragedy and mistakes. . .They were great because they possessed an outsize passion to do good for others and believed that American greatness was measured by our capacity to exceed simple self-interest.”

See also the notable book review on Leadership in Turbulent Times, “The True Grit of Four American Presidents” by David Greenberg, The New York Times, September 14, 2018

Next, I can’t rave enough about The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee. Like many others, I’ve been engaged during the pandemic in trying to learn and understand the brutal history of racism in our country and to work towards becoming an anti-racist. While I’ve now read many books on racism, The Sum of Us has been, to date, the most useful for understanding what has happened historically and how we might move forward as a nation in a positive and compassionate manner. While the topic is solemn, the author writes with empathy, a solid knowledge of facts, and faith that we can do better if we work together for the common good. The book is brilliant, beautifully and clearly written, brutally honest and, thankfully, hopeful. Heather McGhee, an expert in economic and social policy, has spent years researching and documenting how and why racism persists socially, politically, economically, and environmentally and how we might yet get to a better place as a multi-racial, equitable society, what she calls the “Solidarity Dividend”—the gains that occur for all when we give up the zero-sum concept that progress for some comes at the expense of others. She appeals to our self-interest and sense of fairness as the urges us—mostly whites—to liberate ourselves from the harmful, zero-sum paradigm and recognize the benefits of coming together as one nation, as “us” rather than “them.”

This book has stayed with me. For all my years as an educator, working almost entirely in high poverty schools where expectations for students—most often Black and brown—are typically low, I have never understood why we continue to fail as a country to see and act upon the fact that if we equitably educate everyone’s children well—with excellent teachers, adequate funding, and first-rate resources—everyone in society benefits and our incarceration rates would dramatically fall. The cost of our entrenched school segregation is disturbingly high; the benefits of diversity extend to everyone. One of McGhee’s most powerful stories and metaphors in the book are the stories of drained, public swimming pools. White Americans in the South, in the 1950s and beyond, took to closing public swimming pools and cementing them over, rather than integrating them. The end result was that neither whites nor Blacks could use or enjoy the pools—illustrating her point that racism hurts everyone.

The following book reviews are useful for deeper understanding of The Sum of Us:

• ”Tallies the Cost of Racism for Everyone” by Jennier Szalai, The New York Times, Feb. 23, 2021
• “Racism Targets Some but Works Against Everybody” The Washington Post by Paul C. Taylor, March 11, 2021
• “What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together" by Sheela Clary, The Berkshire Edge, March 19, 2021

Finally, a word about the professional books I’ve been reading. Almost one quarter of the books on the list are professional ones, and each one is excellent and practical in its own way. Having said that, I want to call out Cris Tovani’s Why Do I Have to Read This? Literacy Strategies to Engage Our Most Reluctant Students. (Stenhouse, 2021.) It is the book I keep coming back to in these unsettling times. Cris Tovani is masterful at cutting to the core of expert teaching in personal and unexpected ways that encourage, support, and guide us to teach all learners of all ages, in all disciplines. Specifically, she shows us how to connect with and teach “students who wear masks of disengagement”, such as the mask of anger, class clown, or invisibility, to name just a few. In elaborating on the masks students wear and how to get behind them and beyond them, Cris offers us sage advice, stories, plans, demonstrations, insights, and strategies that are wise, inspiring, and practical. This book will make you a better teacher.

Commentary: Some Thoughts on the Science of Reading

I had planned to avoid this topic—too contentious, too controversial, too consuming. I have a thick folder of research articles I’ve been collecting on this topic and planned to add my thoughts “later.” I don’t foresee any closure on this topic: the “science of reading”. And yet. I’ve been teaching too long not to add what I hope might be some useful perspective in a debate that has been going on my entire, multi-decades career. For the record, this commentary will be short, its purpose being for you the teacher, learner, and leader to question assumptions and apply relevant research, principled practices, and common sense to the actual readers you are teaching. Science is important but it is not a never-changing absolute, and it works best in tandem with the human side of reading—knowing and engaging the reader, building on the readers’ strengths, and interests, and embracing the “heart and mind” in teaching, learning, and living.

I was prompted to add in my thoughts here after recently reading the very helpful article, “The Science of Reading Progresses: Communicating Advances Beyond the Simple View of Reading” by Nell K. Duke and Kelly B. Cartwright, Reading Research Quarterly, International Literacy Association, April/May/June 2021, and after receiving an email from a troubled teacher who wrote: “I am seeing a disturbing shift in practice away from solid literacy teaching towards more time spent with skill based phonological awareness, phonics, and "decodable" text lessons.” So what to do.

I especially like the way Duke and Cartwright frame what the “science of reading” means and how it is not fixed but is rather always evolving, based on the latest research. I also was glad to see as part of that newer science research the importance and impact of self-regulation by the reader, which is something that those of us who expertly teach readers have long known and incorporated without a scientific seal of approval. Also, not considered often enough in the science of reading—or, at least, not yet-- is the text as a crucial factor in a reader’s engagement, efforts, and success. Factors such as student choice, equitable access to a wide range of books, texts, and genres (such as audio books, news articles, graphic texts); text features such as font size, amount of print on page, length of text, format, supportive illustrations; as well as background knowledge, vocabulary expertise, and language comprehension are some significant factors that impact the reader.

In spending this past year- during the pandemic - teaching an adult learner to read, it was not the explicit phonics and decoding which made him a reader, although we worked diligently on that, of course. It was listening to books, reading together, and reading independently - with my support - texts he chose that lit his imagination, inspired his interests and curiosity, and confirmed he was not alone in his life struggles. He drew inspiration and hope from the real-life characters we read about and talked about; their courageous actions gave him strength and the will to keep on reading and to strive to do better—in reading and in living. It was the overlap between the “science” part of reading and the “heart and mind” part of teaching and learning that turned him into a reader.

As in all things in life, common sense, perspective, and human considerations—including kindness, reasonableness, building on strengths and interests, and learner choice—greatly impact the enjoyment, motivation, and efforts a reader willingly makes, or not. It is up to us, as informed and knowledgeable educators, to ensure we are equitably teaching all students in a manner that respects the “science of reading” but that also dignifies and celebrates every learner’s language, culture, intelligence and efforts. Students need to know, see, and experience what reading success looks like and sounds like; the “science of reading” is a necessary but insufficient part of the meaningful whole.

I welcome your comments! Connect with me on Twitter or via email below.

Contact Regie