This past week I made several interesting observations about the reading and writing habits of kids, which I’ve been reflecting on a lot as a middle-grade author (and also, not going to lie, as a parent and a teacher). Here are a few:

1. Kids don’t read (usually). My own kids read. But the high school students I teach – these really smart honors kids – don’t read for fun. I learned this the hard way when we came across the word “infirmity” in one of our class readings and not only did they not know what it meant, but they couldn’t decode it from context or breaking the word down. This prompted me to ask, “Don’t you guys read books?” They answered with a resounding No, every single class period.
2. Read Across America Week is awesome for elementary schools, and they should have it in high school, too. I told the “infirmity” students that the day before, C. Wolf, the very Seawolf, (mascot of the minor league baseball team Erie Seawolves) visited my kids’ elementary school and told them he would give them a free ticket to a game if they read eight books this month, and my kids immediately began reading and tracking their progress. My #2 son even made a pile of the eight he’s going to read. (I know they’re not normal. They have me for a parent. But I hope the Seawolf incentive inspired other kids to read, too.) I told my students we need the Seawolf to come here and they smiled. Maybe that inspired some of them to read.
3. Kids can write, too. My oldest is enrolled in a writing workshop at his school that meets once a week for six weeks. Yesterday was week 5 and he came home with a literary magazine that included two of his poems and a picture of him holding a sculpture he made. And they were good. I’m not just saying that because I’m his mom. I’m not really a lover of poetry, and these poems weren’t bad. The literary magazine also included the first two chapters of a serial story written by other kids, and they were pretty good, too. The teacher informed me that my son’s chapter will appear in the next issue. I can’t wait to read it!
4. We all need to learn vocabulary words, not just kids. Yesterday I learned the phrase “crash out.” And then I used it in a sentence. I said to my kids (who taught me the phrase), “Last week I found out a bunch of my students didn’t know what ‘infirmity’ meant, and I almost crashed out.” This week I’m going to tell my students that I just learned what “crash out” meant and invite them to learn “infirmity.”

I don’t have any profound conclusions to offer from these observations, but they are good to think with. Reading, vocabulary acquisition, and writing should all start young. But they shouldn’t stop in elementary school. Read Across America Week should happen in high schools. And adults should make an effort to learn the new vocabulary words of the young, even if only to use the cringe factor as a surety for them to learn old vocabulary words.

What I’m Reading

My spouse got me The Fragile Threads of Power by V. E. Schwab for my birthday and I’ve been reading it for the past month. I love it. It’s not as dark as the Darker Shades of Magic series and I love reading about those same characters and that same world in a more relaxing narrative that isn’t so tense and stressful. (I fully realize as I write this that I’m only on Part 4 and that could all change, but right now I’m really enjoying the ride.)

I’m also reading the third book in the Lost Years of Merlin pentalogy by T. A. Barron, The Fires of Merlin (which has since its original publication been retitled and redistributed within a 12-book saga of Merlin). Anyway, this book belonged to my little brother way back in the early 2000s, and it was this and other fantasy series that he read but I did not at the time that inspired Breaking the Silence. I only read the first few chapters of the first book, The Lost Years of Merlin (now Merlin: The Lost Years), but it stuck with me and I always wanted to read it. I finally did read the first two last year while revising Breaking the Silence and they helped me refine the voice of the novel to appeal to an advanced middle-grade reader.

Finally, I’m reading several different academic monographs both for my research and for fun. I’m giving a paper on the virgin Mary in sixth-century theology in a little over a week, and as part of my research for that I just finished Birthing Romans by Anna Bonnell Freidin and am currently reading Virgin Territory by Julia Kelto Lillis.

Unrelated to my research, but related to my teaching and also a little personal interest, is How Catholics Encounter the Bible by Michael Peppard. The short answer is, “not by reading it,” but Peppard’s analysis shows the various was that modern Catholics, as well as Catholics throughout time, do encounter the bible in various other ways. The historian in me is interested to read about how many of these non-textual encounters evolved during the middle ages and early modern period where the text of the bible just wasn’t available to ordinary people.

None of these are affiliate links, by the way — I’m just linking for convenience.

What I’m Writing

Over the winter I quietly started a sequel to Breaking the Silence. It’s at the bottom of my to-do list right now, after my academic writing, trying to publish Breaking, and, oh yeah, my actual job. But it’s there. Running in the background. Writing a first draft in 10 minutes a day (most days).

I’ve spent most of my writing time this week working on a conference paper for Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, a biennial conference that brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines working on the same time period. The paper is titled “Motherhood and the Making of the Virgin Mary in the Sixth Century.” I’ll write a little bit about how that goes in my next newsletter.