A Love Of Reading Starts Between Us

I teach at a tiny inner city school, located in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. The school is located in what some have described is the country’s poorest postal code. Looking at factors from census statistics like parents’ educational attainment and the number of families living below the poverty line, our school is described as vulnerable even amongst schools who also have inner city status.  So, like all teachers my mission is to teach children to read and hope that I can also make them passionate life long readers. But I know the statistics that link poverty to limited access to books and limited access to books to levels of school achievement. So I feel an urgency to create a community of readers in the classroom. And . . . I want that community to extend into children’s homes and futures.

We do a lot of fabulous things at my school to ensure that our children read and have access to fantastic books. What I am particularly passionate about this year is the buddy reading between my Grade 2/3 class and the K/1 class. (“Really? We’re the big buddies? Wow!” my students marveled when I revealed our buddy reading plan) We meet together Wednesday afternoons for forty minutes but my class spends time everyday making sure this weekly reading is as successful as possible.

My role is collecting books, modeling reading aloud, nurturing the joy and providing feedback. I have raided my home bookshelves for early picture books I read to my children. Beautiful alphabet books so letters can be chased all over the page, Thanks to Audrey Wood for the popular Alphabet Adventure.  I brought in lots of rhyme and repetition like Phoebe Gilman’s feisty Jillian Jiggs, Mem Fox’s Where is the Green Sheep? and all of the Five Little Monkeys books written by Eileen Christelow.

Recently I received some designated funds for my classroom book collections. I purchased board books for our buddy reading. My students will tell you that board books are great for little five year old hands and you don’t need to remind anybody to be gentle turning pages. Each morning I read a new book to my students with the intention of doing a few things. Of course, sparking excitement and interest in the new book is a priority. But I also model. “When you read to your little buddy you could ask them to guess which animal is on the next page,” I point out while sharing Monkey and Me by Emily Gravett. “Ask your little buddy to do the animal sounds with you,” I encourage as we read Alice Shertle’s Little Blue Truck. Now I have students coming to me with classroom books. “Look Ms. Gelson I could read this book to my little buddy and they could say the parts that repeat with me!” One girl found a Fairy Tale book told in rebus style. “This is a good one for little kids, you can ask them what the picture is.”  Thinking about our little buddies is hardly just a Wednesday afternoon event.

Now as I watch my students together with their little buddies, I am delighted to hear them trying out new things we’ve talked about. My eight year olds are encouraging choral reciting, asking little ones to guess, predict and turn the page to find out. There is reading, laughing, talking and much joy shared.

I have one student who won’t read to any adult who visits our class but he is a star in buddy reading. A little kindergarten girl who struggles a lot with managing her emotions in class and often needs breaks and extra supports makes a beeline for this boy every Wednesday afternoon. She sits engrossed in their book sharing for forty minutes. None of us can believe it. But of course we should. It is the magic of books doing their thing!

This boy in my class who shines as a buddy reader is reluctant to accept compliments. So I sneak them in casually but my feedback is specific. “Erich,” I say. “It is amazing to watch you read to Kayla. You involve her in the stories. You listen carefully to her questions. Reading with you is such a happy time for her.” Erich grins cautiously but his pride radiates. Now I am passing him books to take home and read to his younger siblings. “You are so great at this. It is such a wonderful thing to be able to share books.” He doesn’t tell me a lot about reading at home to his siblings but he brings the books back and he asks for more.

I know these Wednesday afternoons mean a lot to all of us. The little buddies and the big and the lucky teachers who witness it all. A love of reading starts between us and it spreads. Together my students and I are passing on the joy of reading. We are letting books work their magic. Books are the tickets to our future and we are loving every step of the journey!

Carrie Gelson is a Grade 2/3 teacher at Admiral Seymour Elementary in Vancouver, B.C. where she has taught for sixteen years. She loves to fill her classroom with books and make passion for reading contagious. Carrie runs a student book club with Grade 3-6 students with the goal of putting great literature in the hands of students. She is also the school coordinator of a BLG Reads to Kids program that brings staff from a large law firm into primary classrooms each week to read aloud and donate a new beautiful picture book. Read her classroom blog Seymour Division 5 (please hyperlink: http://jo-online.vsb.bc.ca/div5/) where she shares her passion for books and her students’ learning. Follow her on twitter: @CarrieGelson

Tags: @CarrieGelson, Carrie Gelson

Anne of Green Gables – Retro Review

I recently reread Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery.  I found it on my teenage daughter’s bookshelf hemmed in between some anime’ and classic literature from high school courses.  I’d forgotten that I’d given it to her with my best you’ve-got-to-read-this-book blessing.  I was in the mood for a precocious character and Anne Shirley was the perfect fit.  So I settled into my chair with a warm cup of coffee and allowed L.M. Montgomery to drift me away to Prince Edward Island where the most amazing characters live.

 

Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert are the odd couple.  Older in age, Matthew is quiet and Marilla will speak her mind and tell you you’re being irreverent.  Matthew is patient.  Marilla wants things in their place exactly as she expects them.  She is pragmatic.  That’s why she sent Matthew into town to get an orphan boy to help out with the chores around their property.  Matthew brings home an imaginative, clever, red-haired girl named Anne who chatters on and on about “divinely beautiful” sunsets.  Everything for the Cuthbert changes.

 

Also living in Avonlea is Rachel Lynde, the local busybody.  She’s the antagonist throughout much of the plot.  Marilla and Rachel interact a lot in the story.  Touché moments between the two of them are very entertaining.

 

Twirling around in a sea of romantic word choice is our young day dreamer, Anne.  Anne is eleven years old and has lived a rough orphan’s life.  “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes”, she tells Marilla.  She hopes to find a kindred spirit in Avonlea.  She hopes to find a bosom friend.  Marilla hopes Anne will be seen and not heard.  Good luck with that, Marilla!

 

As I reread Anne of Green Gables I couldn’t help but remember back to when I first read the book.  I was 16 and had just moved from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Winamac, Indiana.  Tulsa you’ve heard of…Winamac?  Winamac is a very small town nestled in a grid of corn fields and county roads.  Nice people in Winamac, but pluck an angsty teen from her friends and plop her down in a corn maze…those are ingredients to a bitter recipe.  I was grinding a terrible grudge against my parents.  At some point during the first few months after the move I found Anne of Green Gables.  Anne Shirley made me smile.  Anne Shirley gave me permission to use my best vocabulary.  Anne Shirley gave me hope that there might be a kindred spirit for me too!  Figuratively speaking, ANNE was my kindred spirit.  But I really did begin to think that I could find a friend in that little small town.  The book brought me back.  Amazing how a book can change your life, isn’t it?

 

Anne of Green Gables is a “royally beautiful” book with characters that will be your kindred spirits.   The character, Anne, has kindred spirits in more contemporary books, as well.  She reminds me of KateDiCamillo’s character, Despereaux, and also Katherine Hannigan’s character, Ida B.  If you haven’t read Anne of Green Gables…you need to add it to your TBR stack immediately!

Amy Bright

@brightteacher

Amy Bright teaches Fifth Graders at Cibolo Green Elementary in San Antonio, Texas.  And hasn’t held a grudge against her parents since 1986.

Tags: @brightteacher, Amy Bright

(Be)Holden: Everything Happens Today

“People said that writers were driven by the need to create a world over which they could exert total control, but Wes knew…that in writing you often ended up making something that was very different from what you intended to make when you started out.” (195)

 

I started out intending to write a review of Jesse Browner’s Everything Happens Today. I intended to discuss the book’s debt to The Catcher in the Rye (teenage prep school protagonist Wes, anxious about sex and worried about his little sister growing up and being corrupted, struggles to overcome the sadness he sees all around him in New York City, crying literally and figuratively about the phonies while being one himself). I meant to create a clever calculus like “Holden Caulfield as interpreted by filmmakers Whit Stillman and Wes Anderson,” and then stress how I meant that as a compliment, and that Browner’s novel was thoughtful and often beautifully written. I intended to mention how some books (like my two most recent reads, The Fault in Our Stars and Everybody Sees the Ants) I talk about with all my students, while others, like Everything Happens Today, I save for a targeted few, in this case those who will appreciate a main character who decries how André in War and Peace was “choking on his own philosophical boner,” and then proceeds to fill page-length paragraphs doing the same thing. (And those who will not be offended by a book that makes liberal use of a word that has a phonetically similar opening to Holden’s “phony.”) I intended to discuss how a teenage protagonist does not a young adult novel make (despite the claims made by the publisher on the flap).

 

But I could not escape this line from early in the book: “His father had told him once, with his usual wistful bitterness, that you never again read books with the passion and intensity you bring to them as a teenager, and that was easy to believe” (27).  I should not claim to speak for the entire Nerdy Book Club, but I think Browner just gave us another operational definition of a Nerdy Book Club member: If you still read books, all kinds of books, with the passion and intensity you brought to them in your youth, then you are a Nerdy Book Club member. For this insight I am beholden to Browner and his adult young adult novel.

 

I sense Browner himself should be an honorary member, as he fills Everything Happens Today with references to Borges and the Library of Babel, Granta, Mary Poppins, Brave New World, The Great Gatsby, The Master and Margarita, and even Twilight–in addition to the aforementioned War and Peace, which plays a major role in Everything Happens Today (It is Saturday and Wes has until Monday to rewrite an English paper analyzing it, what with his English teacher feeling that Wes’ initial draft, an exegesis of the US Army’s M16 Operator’s Manual, was “an unfit subject for an honor’s class in European literature”). This is a bookish novel, and your connotation of “bookish” may well determine how much you enjoy it.

 

Lucy, one of the causes of Wes’ sexual anxiety, calls him out on his interiority. “I mean, you seem to have a lot of these preconceived notions about people, like you don’t know how real people think, like everything you’ve ever learned is from books. Bookish” (163). If, like me, you are often wistful about how much certain books meant to you, but you are never bitter, even though you may, like Wes does by the end, recognize that being “bookish” not only provides you with paths into other worlds but also a path into loneliness, then Everything Happens Today may resonate in ways both pleasurable and painful.

William Polking

Teaches reading to high school freshmen and dual-credit college composition to high school seniors. From November to February, the head coach of a high school large group speech team. From March to the beginning of June, the head coach of a girls high school soccer team. Reads like it’s his job (which thankfully it is). Found on Twitter @Polking. Has no friends so only plays Words.

Nerdy Newbery (honor)

C.S. Lewis once said, “We read to know we’re not alone.” That certainly describes one of the reasons I read as a kid. Growing up, I attended five grade schools, two junior highs and two high schools. And this was in a time when people tended to stay put. I also wore glasses and had a weird name (Kirby Miltenberger) so new schools weren’t much fun. I quickly learned that, no matter where I went, I could always find a friend between the covers of a book.

I spent so much time with my nose buried in books that one grade school teacher wrote on my report card that I needed “to spend less time with stories and more time with schoolwork.” After that, I worked harder in school, but kept right on reading. Third grade brought a program called SRA – and it ruined me as a reader. You had to start at the lowest level (was it orange?) and pass a test before you could move on to the next color level, and so on. I quickly figured out that the best stories were in the top section (turquoise?) so I rushed through all the other colors to get there. That turned me into a reader who devours, rather than savors.

What did I read outside of school? At my grandpa’s house, I’d disappear into the basement where my dad’s old comics (sadly, long gone) were stored: Batman, Green Lantern, even Little Lulu and Richie Rich. The story line that most fascinated me was the Bizarro world in Superman. The characters looked like they were drawn by Picasso’s slightly demented younger cousin. I vacillated between secretly hoping such an alternate world existed and being terrified that it did.

After trips to the public library, I’d settle in with books like Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, and National Velvet, and those fake biographies of famous people like Florence Nightingale (anyone else old enough to remember those?), and the wonderful Mushroom Planet books by Eleanor Cameron, and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. I idolized Encyclopedia Brown’s ability to solve mysteries, and dreamed of becoming a detective just like him (a dream I’ve achieved, in a way, as a writer of historical fiction). Somehow, I totally overlooked classics like Charlotte’s Web or Anne of Green Gables, though I read them later.

At home, I’d get lost in a lovely collection we had put out by Doubleday, called Junior Deluxe Editions. They had colorful bindings and inviting covers and I read and re-read them, especially the fairy tales.

As much as I loved reading as a kid, I did have this one funny quirk: I HATED writing book reports or making dioramas or talking about the books I’d read. I wanted to keep “my” stories and my feelings about them all to myself. Now, I love talking books with anyone who will listen. And even people who might not want to listen. In fact, stop reading this post right now and go read Tom Angleberger’s Horton Halfpott, Linda Urban’s Hound Dog True, or anything by Karen Cushman or Barbara O’Connor!

Bio: Kirby Larson is the author of ten books for young readers,including the 2007 Newbery Honor book, HattieBig Sky. In addition to her historical fiction (The Fences Between Us; TheFriendship Doll), Kirby has partnered with Mary Nethery to write twoaward-winning nonfiction picture books, TwoBobbies: A True Story of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship and Survival, and Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine anda Miracle. She also owns a tiara.

Tags: Kirby Larson

LEGACY

I can’t remember a time I wasn’t a member of the #nerdybookclub. I went to kindergarten already a reader. To this day I have my whole collection of Nancy Drew books and sitting on my shelf is the first book I remember receiving as a gift from my parents (although I know there were others!). I cherish the memories of walking to the library every Sunday after church to the army base library and walking out with the maximum number of books you could check out.  And my career choice, as an English teacher and literacy specialist, was guided by my membership in this group of awesome people.

I married a math guy who thought reading was reserved for statistics problems. Today he is an active, avid member of the club. So, when we became parents, it was a no-brainer that there would be books as a part of our 4 boys’ lives.

Every night in our house is reading time. The deal since our boys were younger has been if you get in bed “on time” you can stay up 15 minutes “late” to read in bed. There have been many nights where there have been tears shed as the beloved reading time was lost because the bedtime deadline was missed. I can remember my youngest just a few months ago exclaiming “But, Mom, I NEED to read!!!!”

When the boys were young, we started a Christmas tradition . Everyone receives a book and snuggly pajamas. This past Christmas the tradition continued. Colin was elated to find an autographed copy of Chris Crutcher’s Deadline. Devin loved that his autographed ARC of Eye of the Storm was written by one of Mommy’s “Twitter friends.” Nathaniel, our cross country runner, exclaimed as he opened the biography Pre, the life story of Steve Prefontaine. Ian, our future trauma surgeon, thinks we spent a fortune on the embossed, illustrated edition of Gray’s Anatomy.

As I watched my boys’ true, unadultered joy at receiving books, I realized the gift, the legacy we are leaving them.  We may not have fancy cars or vacation homes or oodles of money to leave them, but we have endowed them with lifelong membership in the #nerdybookclub. And I can think of no better company to share with them.

Teresa Bunner is mom to four awesome boys, wife of one cool husband, teacher of many amazing students. You can find her on Twitter as @RdngTeach.

Tags: @RdngTeach, Teresa Bunner

Choice Literacy Podcast

Franki Sibberson interviewed Nerdy Book Club facilitators Cindy, Donalyn, and Colby for a Choice Literacy podcast. Be sure to listen, especially if you are new to Nerdy Book Club.

Check out the Podcast on the Choice Literacy site at  http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/1802.cfm or download from iTunes at http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/choice-literacy-podcasts/id488875239

Choice Literacy has a great site for educators. Be sure to check it out. We think you’ll be excited with what you will find.

www.choiceliteracy.com

Tags: Choice Literacy, Cindy Minnich, Colby Sharp, Donalyn Miller, Franki Sibberson, podcast

Solace and Joy

Due to some unforeseen circumstances our Nerdy post today was unable to run. We’ve decided to rerun Kathy Burnette’s wonderful post from December. Enjoy!

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I know the power of books. They can change your life.

Oft times I look out over my library and smile. This is my job. I get to go to work and read, and talk about reading, and convince others to read. And they pay me. Not much, but still. They.Pay.Me! This is not the life I imagined for myself. But it is the life necessary to be me. You see, I’m a member of the nerdy book club because I was born that way. I grew up in small apartment, one of 15 children. That’s right; 15. Now, don’t freak, we weren’t always in the house together. But there were always too many people, too much noise, too little room. I could not wait to leave. But, people didn’t leave my neighborhood. Unless they left in the back of a squad car. Or an ambulance. We lived on the south side of Chicago, in the ghetto. A place that no longer exists. That’s how bad it was. The thing that saved my life, that helped me get out, that made me who am I am today, was a book. Books kept me out of trouble, mostly. Off the street. Books showed me that a better life existed, and I could have it. I owe it to the book and the bookmobile.

Now, really it wasn’t just one book. There were many. I read everything I could get my hands on: Barbara Cartland, Harlequin Romances, Nancy Drew, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Jules Verne, CS Lewis. The list is long and varied. Books are where I went to get away from my life. The yelling, the screaming, the hunger, the cold, the crowding. When I was reading, I was gone. I was living in the book. I was barely aware of the world around me. At least for a few hours. I found a solace and a joy in books.

Now, look at me. I’m in the perfect postion. I get to give back what was given to me. And they pay me for it. I don’t know how I ended up here. But I know it’s where I should be. A proud, loud, card-carrying shirt wearing, mug drinking member, of the nerdy book club. Life is sweet. Books made it so.

Kathy Burnette– Mom, Reader, Middle School Librarian.
www.thebrainlair.com
@thebrainlair

Tags: @thebrainlair, Kathy Burnette

Top Ten Reasons We Love YA Literature

We at Girls in the Stacks love reading Young Adult literature!  While we may be more on the “A” side of YA (*ahem*), these books take us back to our wonder years and remind us of our lives before careers, kids and mortgages.  For us, YA is about adventure, discovery, first romances and coming of age – can you blame us for wanting more?

So, in fitting #nerdybookclub style we give you our TOP TEN REASONS WE LOVE YA – using some great YA titles.
10. YA is CATCHING FIRE and we want to tell all our PEEPS, and THE OUTSIDERS, their many virtues.   

9. We never feel like LITTLE WOMEN when we read YA, instead they make us feel like BEAUTIFUL CREATURES.

8. They’re quick reads so we don’t have to LINGER on one book too long, we can read them STUPID FAST.
7. YA books SHINE like no other, their plots and characters make us SHIVER with delight, FOREVER.
6. We feel like REBEL ANGELS when we read them.
5. They are a HOOT and we love to go ALONG FOR THE RIDE.
4. Each and every time we pick up a book it’s like a CHAMBER OF SECRETS  waiting to be explored.
3. They ILLUMINATE us, AWAKEN us and SPEAK to us, and sometimes leave us LOST FOR WORDS.
2. The RUMORS are true, we HUNGER for YA because they light our PANTS ON FIRE.
1. Really, there is no question about it; THE FUTURE OF US depends upon reading YA.
Thank you, thank you very much! We offer our comedic services for weddings, birthday parties and book clubs. One-liners are free with every like on Facebook.

The Girls in the STACKS are a dedicated  group of book lovers comprised of librarians, writers and an extrovert. They like to think they bring their “A” game when it comes to YA literature with their spot-on reviews, witty commentary on their weekly podcast and their hilarious video interviews with authors they stalk, er, adore.

You can check them out here, at girlsinthestacks.com

Tags: Girls in the Stacks

The Value of Listening

I serve 740 6^th-12^th graders as the sole campus librarian at one of those schools Alan Sitomer referenced in his nerdybookclub post a few weeks back: high poverty, high crime rate, entirely minority population. Most of my kids live just a few blocks from school, in either the Mayfair or Paradise housing projects, which, along with the rest of DC’s Wards 7 and 8, experience some of the country’s highest rates of poverty, teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, violent juvenile deaths, illiteracy, unemployment, substance abuse, high school dropouts and poor school performance. In the coming years, things will hopefully start to look up around here, thanks in part to a large government grant, but for the time being it’s still pretty grim.

You might think my job is depressing. It’s not.

Three years ago, in my second week on the job, a 7^th grader approached me asking if I could help her find the book, “Is You There Lord, It’s Me Maggie.” Of course, I told her, and we walked over to my shelf of Judy Blume.

A lack of background knowledge and a limited vocabulary prevents some of my students from fully engaging with texts that take place in a setting other than the inner city, or with characters that don’t look, or more importantly, sound like them.  The wit of Frankie Landau-Banks is sometimes lost, at least on first read, and the clever banter Alaska, Pudge, and the Colonel volley about might just as easily be delivered in rapid-fire Klingon. Likewise, descriptions of a Connecticut beach town or the suburban Midwest are as unfamiliar as Narnia.

All the same, most contemporary realistic fiction transcends race, class, and geography. Even if you get the title a little wrong, the universal themes of identity formation, friendships, family, love, and all the rest of the day-to-day goings-on of tween and teen-dom ring true.  My readers enjoy realistic fiction because it affirms that teens are teens, experiencing the same struggles they are, no matter where they live or how much money they have.

Here’s why: middle school is awkward, and high school’s not much easier. Bodies are changing, social hierarchies are being forged. First crushes are painful, first kisses magical.  Siblings are either your best friend or your worst enemy. Regardless of whether you’re taking them in an inner city Title I school, or an elite New England boarding school, pop quizzes are stressful. Whether your mom is incarcerated or 50’s sitcom perfect, chances are, if you’re between the ages of 10-18, your relationship with her is at times strained.  How wonderful, then, how fortuitous, that there are so many books featuring characters navigating these very perils of adolescence.

Let’s get something straight: I’m a librarian, not a social worker.  I have two masters degrees, but neither of them is in adolescent psychology. The concept of biblio-therapy freaks me out a little. But when a pregnant 14 year old girl who’s just starting to show comes into the library and asks for “that swings book,” and I hand her Jo Knowles’ “Jumping Off Swings,” I don’t worry that I’m doing irreparable damage to her psyche. She asked for it by name, sort of, just like that 7^th grader searching out her Judy Blume book. Same goes for the kid whose sibling is fresh from rehab who, after a few minutes of walking the stacks, leaves with Last Night I Sang to the Monster. Often, kids know the title, the author, or at least what the cover looks like, and just need help locating the book that a friend, classmate or sibling recommended.

Another reason I don’t worry about damaging kids by suggesting the wrong title because I “think it’s what they need to read right now” is that I trust them to know what they need, what title will help them process or escape whatever’s driven them to seek out a book dealing with that topic. Case in point: a 6^th grader I’ll call Jane, who had one of those stories that’d break your heart in 17 pieces. Her mom was in jail, serving out a lengthy sentence for brutally attacking her exboyfriend, who had abused Jane when she was much younger. Jane’d been bounced from foster home to foster home and had just learned that she’d be moving again soon. She had an older brother who’d dropped out and was deeply involved in gang life, and a foster sister in her third trimester, that she was devastated to be leaving.

Jane had come into the library one day afterschool, tearstained and with her chin set in a way that made me wish I had half as much pluck. She’d asked for help finding a book “about gangs and drugs” and I’d begun walking the stacks with her, tipping down titles for her to come back to. After a minute, she said that she’d rather read something about teen pregnancy, so I tipped down a few more and kept walking with her. Her next request, 30 seconds later, was for books dealing with rape. Check. At this point, I’d tipped out close to a dozen titles for her to peruse, so I gave her some space and went back to checking in books, telling her to just ask if she needed any more help.

A few minutes later, she came back to my desk empty handed. “Actually, Mrs. Shaffer,” she began, and I braced myself, wondering what this eleven year old with mosquito bitten knees and crooked pigtails would ask me for next, “Actually, I think today I’d like to read something about puppies or kittens, or maybe another kind of baby animal.”

Kids know what they want to read, need to read, on any given day. I don’t tell them what they need to read, they tell me. And then we find the perfect book together.

Sylvie Shaffer is the Parkside Campus Librarian at the Cesar Chavez PCS for Public Policy in Northeast DC, where she’s had the privilege, since 2009, of learning alongside 740 6^th-12^th graders. She holds a dual masters in Library Science and Children’s Literature from Simmons College.

She’s a board member of the Friends of the Takoma Park Maryland library, and a 10-14 reading group member with Capitol Choices, a group of DC metro area librarians, teachers, booksellers and children’s literature professionals who meet monthly and put together a yearly list of notable books for children and young adults. She is also on the ALS Ccommittee “Liaison with National Orgs Serving Youth” and is on the ballot  for the 2014 Sibert Committee. You can find her on Twitter at @Sylvie_Shaffer

Tags: @Sylvie_Shaffer, Sylvie Shaffer

HENRY REED, INC. BY KEITH ROBERTSON

I have loved Henry Reed for almost thirty-two years.

When I was eight I discovered the series on the shelves of my elementary school library. I seemed to be the only one who cared about them, and I checked them out over and over and over. (I may or may not have “lost” HENRY REED’S BABYSITTING SERVICE right before we moved from Virginia to New Jersey. It may or may not be on my bookshelf right now. I will neither confirm nor deny!) Almost no one seems to have read these and it is such a shame, because they are SO GOOD!

HENRY REED, INC. is the first book in the series and was first published in 1958. Henry is the son of an American consul stationed in Naples, and his parents send him to Grover’s Corner, New Jersey to spend the summer with his aunt and uncle. His Italian teacher has asked him to keep a journal of his experiences and, if possible, “do something that can be used to illustrate free enterprise.” So Henry decides to start a business – he cleans up an old barn and paints HENRY REED, RESEARCH on the outside. Midge Glass, the outspoken girl next door who will become his best friend, points out that the sign should say PURE AND APPLIED RESEARCH, and he (correctly) realizes that she might just make a good business partner. And thus is REED & GLASS, INC. born.

The research firm lasts for about five minutes. Soon Henry and Midge are selling worms and painted turtles and pigeons; dousing their backyards for water; feuding with the next door neighbor; getting in tractor accidents; digging up ancient pottery; and cleaning up after a hapless stray dog named Agony. The adventures they have are the kind that might best be called “scrapes,” and each one is funnier than the last. Henry and Midge are one of my favorite best friend pairings ever – both are lightning smart and quick with a quip, steadfastly loyal, and nerdy in all of the very best ways. HENRY REED, INC. would make a fantabulous read-aloud – it’s got short chapters and awesome characters and an instantly absorbing, fast-paced, ever-changing plot.

Their adventures continue in HENRY REED’S BABYSITTING SERVICE and two other books. HRBS is my favorite of the series. Henry returns to Grover’s Corner and he and Midge start what is basically a summer camp in the barn, and hijinks – actual hijinks – ensue. Sadly, HRBS and the other two books in the series are out of print.

The best words to describe this series: funny; charming; delightful. They’re illustrated by Robert McCloskey, so you KNOW how good the art is. Dear Penguin: they deserve to be dusted off, re-jacketed (the 80’s cover HENRY REED, INC is currently sporting is awful) and sent out into the world to be loved all over again. If you don’t know Henry and Midge, you are seriously missing out.

Melissa Posten has been a member of the Nerdy Book Club since she started reading at 2 ½. Her mother can vouch for the fact that she’s barely had her nose out of a book since – the family finally stopped forcing her to go camping when she was 12 and brought a duffel bag full of books and never left the tent. Melissa is the book buyer for the Classroom Library Company and reviews books at Kidliterate.com. You can also follow her on Twitter: @mposten.

Tags: @mposten, Melissa Posten