RAE’S READS

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This year (2025) finds me with 53 years of teaching “under my belt.” I have taught all levels from pre-K “(library lady” or “book lady”–volunteer) to juniors, seniors, and graduate students enrolled in my Advanced Writing class at the university where I have just completed 34 years. My first paying teaching job was junior high, and I spent 13 years with ages 12-13, the “difficult years.” I had some of the “funnest” experiences with this age group. When I was no longer the “young, fun teacher,” I taught in an elementary school setting before sixth graders went on to junior high, teaching language arts blocs, an assignment that was a “dream-fit” for me. After completing graduate school in my 40s, I went on to community college, then university teaching. This past fall I accepted a part-time teaching job at Apogee Gulf Coast Schools in its first year at the Alvin campus. After my Better Half died n 2022, I achieved a lifelong dream: opening a bookstore of my own, Rae’s Reads. A year later, I sold the house we had lived in for 47 years and moved into the bookstore. My goal is to circulate and repurpose books. Just as teaching is “in my blood,” so is a passion for reading, writing, libraries, and everything bookish. This blog will be open to anyone who loves books, promotes literacy and wants to “come out and play.”

  • SATURDAY MORNINGS FOR KIDS

    Here it is, Saturday morning, and here are a few recommendations for books targeted at 5th through 8th graders:

    Jess Keating has set her series, “Elements of Genius” within the Genius Academy, a school for masterminds. Her latest offering, Nikki Tesla and the Ferret–Proof Death Ray (2019) finds the academy in an uproar. The death ray has been stolen. Enter Nikki and her genius crew, and they travel around the world, seeking to find the death ray and save the world from sure extinction. Very humorous.

    Our Castle by the Sea by Lucy Strange strikes a note of mystery as the reader meets Pet, and eleven year old girl, obsessed with the legend of The Daughters of the Stone. All the elements of a good, suspense read are there: an old lighthouse, a castle, and a humongous storm.

    Finding the only kid around a roller-skating girl who wears a cape and is searching out a secret leaves Gideon reeling and repulsed after a move from the east coast to Nevada. In this novel by Shaunta Grimes, The Astonishing Maybe,our hearts are with Gideon as the two new “friends/enemies” search for Rona’s long-lost father and the truth.

    Parents divorcing is a theme often dealt with in middle grades fiction today. Dear Sweet Pea, Julia Murphy’s novel does just this. Patricia, “Sweet Pea” deals with the tension at home at the same time as the tension between her and her ex-best friend, Kiera. How this is resolved is not necessarily “happily ever after” but realistic and satisfying at the same time.

    All of these are good reads for tweens and teens looking for characters that share their concerns and who are dealing with the same day-to-day issues as themselves.

  • FOR-NO-REASON READ-A-THON: JOIN IN

    Usually I do my personal readathons on a holiday; once Christmas Eve Day and once on Labor Day Weekend.  I missed D.E.A.R.(Drop Everything and Read) day; it fell on Easter. I have decided to get some serious reading done in the middle of on-line teaching, staying at home and feeling slightly anxious about the coming “new normal” by dropping everything and staging a readathon. It will begin at 8:00 CST tomorrow, Saturday, March 18th, and run until sometime Saturday night. I will begin by posting Saturday Morning For Kids, my usual Saturday practice and see where it goes from there. I’m not setting specific goals, just reading, reading, and reading.

    Who would like to join me? My Better Half has said he would participate, and I’d love to IMG_0720have my blogging friends along for the day’s journey.

    Don’t forget the preparation we must do today: cooking ahead and having plenty of snacks on hand. LOL

    See you early tomorrow.

    Rae

  • 15 – Quit Giving Me Gray Hair

    15 – Quit Giving Me Gray Hair

    Today’s Poem

    Jen Payne's avatar

    If it was last year here,

    I’d be so this year, dear —

    young women dyed for this

    a trend not to miss

    they thought gray was dope

    pushed that envelope

    went silver, ash, smoke and ice

    totally willing to pay the price

    but mine came free, oh yes it did

    my stylist and I, we blame COVID

    since this year gray is not so big,

    I went and bought myself a wig.

    Image: Pink Twin, Purple Twin, Walasse Ting. Poem ©2020, Jen Payne. National #NaPoWriMo. National Poetry Writing Month. If you like this poem, you can read similar in my books, available from Three Chairs Publishing on my ETSY SHOP. They come autographed, with gratitude and a small gift.

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  • WWW WEDNESDAYS

    img_1384-0The Three Ws are WHAT are you currently reading? WHAT have you just finished? and WHAT are you looking forward to reading soon? Let’s start with books finished:

    shopping.pngshopping.jpegUnknown.jpeg

    Flow was a book chosen last year (and set aside )aimed at the 2019 goal of reading more non-fiction. It turned out to be much more of a study than a “read,” and the pandemic gave me enough time to complete it. Although it was published in 1990, it deals with the current obsession of “living in the moment” and “making every moment count”, or as the subtitle calls it,”Steps Toward Enhancing the Quality of Life.” This book refers to them as “optimal experiences.”

    A goal set for obtaining “sometime during my lifetime” is to read all seven of Susan Vreeland’s novels. Clara and Mr. Tiffany.  Like Vreeland’s other books, it is art-related, telling the story of Clara Driscoll, the true creator of the famous Tiffany lamps. Another novel, Gilbert’s City of Girls, satisfies the letter “G” in Dollycas’s 2020 Alphabet Soup (author edition) Challenge. I had so much fun doing the title challenge in 2019, I had to participate in this one.

    Currently I am reading Old Dogs and Children by Robert Inman to satisfy the “I” part of the challenge, the “H” being satisfied out of order by 61lkiZmMBvL-1  a book also selected for National Autism Awareness Month by Naoki Higashida, reviewed elsewhere on this blog and on Literacy and Me, my other blog on WordPress.

    I have also been savoring and slowly reading the “notes” in Mark Nepo’s Things That Join the Earth and the Sky, using it similarly to a devotional. I rarely read more than a page or two a day.

    I was fortunate to have just received Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile (” A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz,” which is an enormous, non-fiction book just before the libraries closed, so my due date has been extended until the libraries reopen, something I count as an unexpected blessing.

    I have begun (mainly because it was in Large Print) a “novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, titled Garment of Shadows by Laurie R. King. I haven’t read far enough to determine whether I will finish it or place it on my DNF (Did Not Finish) shelf.

    I Am Looking Forward to Reading two whole shelves of my TBRs and a book that came in the mail yesterday. More on those another day.

  • 13 – Storm in a Pandemic

    13 – Storm in a Pandemic

    Jen Payne's avatar

    Spring storm arrives with wind and rain
    that rattles windows and pushes against doors,
    huffing and puffing I’ll blow your house down it growls,
    but we know how this goes, we’ve done this before,
    so we set out candles, search for matches, batteries,
    hope the giant maple in the yard can persevere again —
    check to make sure the basement doesn’t flood too badly,
    that the roof in the kitchen doesn’t leak,
    that I remembered to close the bedroom window —
    it was warm last night…or was I?…
    I wake often now, press palm against my forehead
    relax when it’s only a flash and not a fever,
    breathe deeply and pray when I still can
    because we don’t know how that goes —
    that other storm that’s still raging
    that doesn’t show on the radar map
    and won’t blow out to sea anytime soon,
    that will still be here when…

    View original post 95 more words

  • TUESDAY TEASER

    Today’s Tuesday Teaser is from Robert Inman’s Old Dogs and Children, my selection for the “I” of the author’s version of the 2020 Alphabet Soup Challenge.ALPHABET-SOUP-2020-AUTHOR-EDITION-BE-820.jpg

    “Suds flew. Bright sat on a stool next to the counter by the sink while Hosannah washed the dinner dishes. It was her second-favorite place in the house, next to the big green overstuffed chair in the music room where she snuggled with her father.”
    This story which opens with Bright as a sixty-year-old woman greeting the morning sun from her front porch, flashes back frequently  to her childhood and upbringing in the Deep South from the storytelling author of Deep Fires Burning.

    What are you currently reading? List the author, title, and a few lines from where you left off last. Maybe you will “tease” me into adding your book to my TBR list.

  • NATIONAL AUTISM AWARENESS MONTH

    Rae Longest's avatarLiteracy and Me

    During April, my goal was to immerse myself in a study of autism, reading novels where the protagonist was autistic in order to get a peek into the workings of the autistic mind, as well as to read articles on autism. Teaching on line and National Poetry Month got in the way of that, but I

    have read one fantastic non-fiction book by an autistic, thirteen-year-old author.

    The Reason I Jump by Naomi Higashida is an easy-to-read, fascinating accounting of how the autistic mind of this young man works. It is formatted in questions and answers similar to this page:

    “Q: Why do you enjoy going out for walks so much? A: “…to people of special needs, nature is as important as out own lives. The reason is that when we look at nature, we recognize a sort of permission to be alive in this world, and our entire bodies…

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  • SATURDAY MORNINGS FOR KIDS

    Just like the Saturday mornings during the 50s and 60s when cartoons were the only thing on TV, this post is aimed at kids.

    Here are a few more books I read aimed at 5th-8th graders during my 2019 stint as a Cybil’s first round reader:

    Jada Sly Artist and Spy by Sherri Winston presents a ten year old frequently involved in adventure and hilarity. The author/illustrator is best known as the first African American cartoonist, but here she aims her talents directly at 10 year olds.

    Laurel Snyder’s My Jasper June , recommended by the author of Wonder, deals with a homeless girl, Jasper, living in Atlanta, who makes a friend at school, an unusual event for her. The friend, Leah, and she construct a “hideaway” in an an abandoned house, something that begins as a lark, but puts them in real danger. A secondary plot of Leah’s guilt over her brother’s death and the result of it, which has Leah’s parents “just going through the motions” is abruptly interrupted by the scary conclusion, a nail biter, for sure.

    In the What Happened series by Verity Weaver, a new offering, Math Test Mischief, looks into  a serious accusation of a group of eighth graders, disguised as an April Fool’s prank. It is a true Who dun it, and I am sure the conclusion will surprise you as much as it did me.

    Another series, Survivor Diaries, written by Terry Lynn Johnson, offers another great story, Dust Storm (which may be based on an online game), and teaches kids the mantra, “Stay calm. Stay Smart. Survive.” This particular series reminds me of an older-kid’s version of the Treehouse books.

    And for older readers, Where the Heart Is by Jo Knowles opens with the statement that Rachel and Micha, the protagonists were engaged at the age of six. They are boyfriend and girlfriend as well as best friends until Rachel begins to have feelings for another girl. This conflict in Rachel’s heart exacerbates the conflict at home for Rachel and her family when she loses her family home, a farm, and has to move to an apartment in the city.

    I hope some of these will appeal to your middle grades readers, and that they will enjoy them as much as I did!

  • APRIL SHOWERS

    I worked in my flowerbeds all afternoon and ended up watering many of the plants up close to the back entrance. We need the rain. North of us, there were terrible thunderstorms and mini-tornadoes as close as Huntsville, Texas last night. A student replied when I had told her I was “reading up a storm,” that my reading must have caused the rainstorms they had at her house, northwest of Houston in the night. Narry’ a drop 30 miles south of Houston where I live. We are scheduled to have thunderstorms around midnight, so we shall see.

    In hopes of hinting to April that there should be showers, here for National Poetry Month are a few Rain poems: The first is simply titled “Rain” by Myra Cohn Livingston

    “Rain”

    “Summer rain

    is soft and cool,

    so I go barefoot in a pool.

     

    But winter rain

    is cold, and pours,

    so I must watch it

    from indoors.”

    If you listen closely as you read the poem’s rhythm, you can hear the falling of the raindrops.

     

    A famous rain poem by Emily Dickinson reads as follows:

    “A drop fell on the apple tree

    Another on the roof;

    A half a dozen kissed the eaves,

    And made the gables laugh.

     

    A few went out to help the brook,

    That went to help the sea.

    Myself conjectured, Were they pearls,

    What necklaces could be!

     

    The dust replaced in hoisted roads,

    The birds jocoser sung;

    The sunshine threw his hat away,

    The orchards spangles hung.

     

    The breezes brought dejected lutes,

    And bathed them in the glee;

    The East put out a single flag,

    And signed the fete away.”

    This poem demonstrates to students Dickinson’s unique use of slant rhyme, later taken up by other poets and even later accepted by readers of poetry.

     

    This rain poem by Elizabeth Coatsworth is easy for children to understand and a great tool for teaching older children similes and personification.

    “Rain Poem”

    “The rain was like a little mouse,

    Quiet, small and gray,

    It pattered all around the house

    And then it went away.

    It did not come, I understand,

    Indoors at all, until

    It found an open window and

    Left tracks across the sill.”

     

     

     

  • WWW WEDNESDAY

    The three W Wednesday is a meme originated by Miz B of Daily Rhythm and continued by Sam at Taking on a World of Words. It asks three questions: WHAT are you currently reading? WHAT have you recently finished? and WHAT will you read next?

    Currently I am reading Clara and Mr. Tiffanyshopping.jpeg by Susan Vreeland, which I checked out (in large print) before the library closed.

    I just finished todayUnknown.jpeg Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls. This was in the top five novels I’ve read in 2020.

    I have a book, Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, that was started as a Continuation of a 2019 goal–to read more non-fiction.shopping.pngIt has been a long, slow haul, but the end is in sight, and I would like to finish it up soon.

    Let me add WHAT I am watching. I am binge watching The Grand Hotel, a historical romance/mystery in Italian  with subtitles (on Netflix.)  The actors are all beautiful, and the scenery and costumes are magnificent. It is my “guilty pleasure.”