SUMMER READING ...
"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
Ernest Hemingway
School is out in six days and summer beckons. I look forward to doing things I never seem to have time for, like painting walls, digging in the dirt and reading some good books.
I use to read actual books but now days I buy the audio version and listen while I get something accomplished. Last summer I listened to, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn , To Kill a Mockingbird and Jack Gantos' Dead End in Norvelt. It's like filling my house or car with interesting people... there's never a dull moment and I'm never lonely.
A book can be a friend, a companion and very often a mirror. I remember the summer I read The Secret Life of Bees, and heard the voice in Lily's head say... "Your jar is open."
I dropped the book and began to cry. That was the year my mother passed away and I began to discover who I was. I felt such freedom.
I was in the third grade when I read Beverly Cleary's Otis Spofford I laughed right out loud at Stewy and Otis's antics as the "bull" That began my love of literature.
It is satisfying, as I close the library for the year, to watch our students come to pick up their "summer read" Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. I know they will be in good company!
Fall in love with a good book this summer!
