Blue Ribbon Writing

When Christmas break started I asked Sister Morgan for a list of books I should read. She said 1) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (which I'd already read a few months ago) and 2) All the Newberry Medal books. And so I began. So far, I've read the following (including a few Newberry Honor books too):

-Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata
-Crispin: The Cross of Lead by Avi
-The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman
-Holes by javascript:void(0)Louis Sachar
-Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
-The Giver by Lois Lowry
-Homesick: My Own Story by Jean Fritz
-The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
-Summer of the Swans by Betsy Byars
-A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
-A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle
-The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare
-The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong
-Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan
-Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
-Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field (just started this today)

It's been wonderful to just sit down and read for a few minutes or an hour in the evenings. And having the goal to read all those Newberry books makes me rush across the street to the library as soon as I finish the last one in the pile to get another stack. Luckily they're all marked in the library with a sticker on the spine. They are all very well-written. A few of them remind me of novel-length personal essays. Jean Fritz's Homesick was like that. She even wrote at the front of her story that she'd taken all of her experiences as a girl in China and used them to recreate the flow of her childhood. She said she made up the dialogue and reordered events, but she didn't apologize for it. That's creative non-fiction--a genre of its own rising in popularity, according to Sister Morgan. She liked my essay about Nana and Tata's house. That was easy to write. I'll write some more about that. I'll post the essay on here so you can read it.

Maybe if I spent half as much time writing as I have been reading, my writing would improve enough to create my own book someday. The problem with that is I don't know where to begin, so I don't. Third graders don't usually have that problem. Their imagination sweeps them across the page and creates stories I'd never dream up. Who would have ever put elbow pads and a skateboard on a newly hatched dragon, anyway? That image sure stayed in my mind. I just don't write. It's easier that way. I sure miss the Writing Center. On slow days I could sit at the computer and write for hours and not feel like it was a waste of time.

Anyway, I'm back to reading as much as I did when I was a kid. What's extra nice is that my husband sits right next to me with his nose in Louis L'amour books.