When my son was in kindergarten, he and his classmates regularly read and talked about poetry. They shared poems in their morning meetings, they illustrated poems as they were learning to recognize sight words, they made paper pockets to carry the poems they wanted to share on Poem In Your Pocket Day. They ingested poems […]
Tag Archives: Emily Meixner
June
23
“Eight reasons we’re ready: Human Rights, Social Justice, and LGBTQ Book Clubs” by Emily Meixner, Rachel Scupp, and Rachel’s 8th grade students at Grover Middle School
posted by CBethM
Last fall, I had the good fortune of being welcomed into Rachel Scupp’s 8th grade IRLA (Integrated Reading Language Arts) classes. Earlier in the summer, I had mentioned to Rachel that I wanted to develop LGBTQ middle grade curriculum — to which she immediately replied, “Why not my classes? We teach a social justice curriculum!” […]
November
06
Fear Not The Adaptation by Emily Meixner
posted by CBethM
This summer my son finished reading all thirteen books in Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events series. He’d wandered uninterested past the first few books on our bookshelves for several years, even though he knew my husband had read and enjoyed them. Then, this spring, as we desperately waited for sunshine and warmer weather, we […]
July
07
Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley: A Retro-Review by Emily Meixner
posted by CBethM
There is only one thing in this world right now that I want. I want to get out of here. I want to get up, go find my sister and drag her out the front door. I don’t want either of us to ever set foot in this place again. I’m starting to think things […]
December
11
Nerdy Book Club: The Threads that Connect Us by Jennifer Shettel and Emily Meixner
posted by CBethM
This is the story of how two complete strangers became friends, all because of the Nerdy Book Club. Jen: “For the past ten years, I have been teaching college courses on children’s and young adult literature.” As soon as I read the opening line of Emily Meixner’s April 12, 2014 Nerdy Book Club post, […]
May
29
Girls and Graphic Novels by Emily Meixner
posted by CBethM
My eight-year-old niece loves graphic novels. She ingests them voraciously, and when I saw her during the winter holidays, ninety percent of that time she was reading. Truth be told, I didn’t actually see her all that much – I just saw her fingers and the top of her head. That’s her in the photo […]
March
12
Retro Review: Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien by Emily Meixner
posted by CBethM
At some point last year, a colleague popped by my office and handed me a large plastic bag of children’s books his teenage daughter had decided she no longer needed. Knowing that I often take these discarded books and distribute them among my English education students who are beginning to build their classroom libraries, he […]
May
23
We’re All In This Together by Emily Meixner
posted by CBethM
Most of the people in my life have rich reading lives. As an English professor, this isn’t surprising. I’m surrounded all day every day by colleagues who love to read and read voraciously. But this passion for reading isn’t exclusive to members of my particular department. Virtually everyone I know from every department on campus […]
April
12
The Top 10 Reasons Why I Can’t Stop Reading Children’s & Young Adult Literature by Emily Meixner
posted by CBethM
For the past ten years, I have been teaching college courses on children’s and young adult literature. Even after a decade, it’s still a thrill, and every semester I look forward to new books and new students. Occasionally, usually around mid-semester, a student will ask why I love these texts so much: “Don’t you want […]
