Can you actually remember learning to read? Can you remember the sheer magic of decoding the strange marks on a piece of paper or a page of a book? I don’t exactly remember it either, but I have been fortunate enough to experience it through the eyes of others. As a former middle school English […]
Tag Archives: Michelle Blanchard Ardillo
May
21
How Will Kwame Alexander Change Children’s Literature? by Michelle Ardillo
posted by CBethM
In 2000, I bought a copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (as it was titled in the UK) in a bookstore in Glasgow, Scotland, as a souvenir for my eight-year-old daughter, an avid reader just like her mom. And, thus began our journey into the Harry Potter world of madness, going to Border’s […]
Make New Friends, but Keep the Old by Michelle Blanchard Ardillo
posted by CBethM
Over Christmas break, I gave my 7th and 8th grade students a one-sentence homework assignment: read a good book. I told them it didn’t matter if it was long or short, above or below grade level, fiction or non-fiction. Just read a good book. Upon their return to school, I asked them to write on […]
December
22
My Kingdom for a Lamp by Michelle Blanchard Ardillo
posted by CBethM
It’s my mother’s fault that I can’t go to sleep without reading. My father worked nights in the oil fields of Louisiana when I was a toddler; I was the firstborn, and for four years, the only child. My mother was lonely so she would read to me, one Little Golden Book after another. Then, […]
Nerdy Book Club 