Sometimes you just need a book that leaves you feeling good. A book that leaves you smiling. A book that doesn’t try to solve the world’s problems or make heavy handed bold statements. The Disasters by M.K. England is just that book.

Even though The Disasters is a humo...

I have a story to tell. A blind confession of sorts. Not so long ago I railed against tropes done poorly, especially love triangles. At the time, I mentioned I’d witnessed an epic one, but that’s not my story to tell. What I didn’t say is that my college self was invol...

What If It’s Me? I’ve asked myself that question over and over during the Great Reading Apocalypse of 2018. I’ve even considered that maybe I just didn’t love reading anymore, but I quickly squashed that thought. It isn’t possible for me to not love reading. Books are...

Rooney Harris is doing her best to juggle family responsibility and her senior year of high school, but it’s a battle. Rooney’s mother, a dedicated member of the Next World Society, believes they will soon depart the Earth for a new world, a world free of Earth’s pollu...

It’s been awhile. Almost October

Summer has ended, and a new school year has begun. It was a great summer. Outstanding even. I miss not the season but the lifestyle more than in previous years. Most school years start and I’m firing on all cylinders, but this year I’m j...

If Richard Peck holds a special place on the reading list of my life, then Aretha Franklin holds a place of prominence on the soundtrack of my heart. If you’ve never read the story of her life, I encourage you to do just that. You’ll see why her voice seemed to know it...

I’m cutting it close.

I want to take a minute to applaud Rick Riordan for knowing what he doesn’t know. I want to thank him for knowing that perhaps his voice isn’t the voice that should bring to the masses all of the mythologies of the world. Yesterday, I finished the...

Let’s talk about “Cancel Culture.” Let’s talk about it in relation to my reading habits, not society as a whole because that would be several dissertations and a docuseries. Cancel Culture is a parting of the ways or a dismissal of a person, place, or idea because he o...

Have you ever started writing without knowing what you were going to say? I usually have a topic in mind, but today I don’t have any ideas. I should say that I don’t have any ideas that I can quickly express, and I don’t want to linger for too long today.

When I starte...

I recently ran into a fellow English teacher. We started talking about the upcoming school year and she happened to mention that she’d decided not to teach Shakespeare to her 9th and 10th graders. Her reasons involve being culturally competent and the Western Canon not...