Books I Read and Other Assorted Oddities

 I am finally off hiatus... Sorry that was such a long gap! Like I said, 2021 was really tough as far as teaching, and 2022 started off with a student teacher. Because of that, I've been able to read a pretty substantial amount and will be posting hopefully for the next two months consistently. The first book I was able to finish was Out of the Dust  by Karen Hess. This novel is written entirely in verse and follows 14 year old Billie Jo through the trials of living in rural Oklahoma during the dust bowl. Their young family is thrilled because Mama is expecting a baby boy, but that thrill soon turns to despair after an oil accident fatally injures Mama, and eventually the baby as well. As the dust storms get worse, Billie Jo finds herself desperate to leave Oklahoma and start over somewhere else, but realizes that her father is her life, and she ultimately decides to stay. This book was riveting and gut-wrenching. I'm not typically into books written in verse - I've tried s...

For those who have not studied much Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses is a collection of poems.  Here is one from this collection, that I found particularly cute.  It reminded me of Peter Pan. My Shadow (Robert Louis Stevenson) I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed. The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow- Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow; For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all. He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. He stays so close beside me, he's a coward you can see; I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me! one morning, very early, before the su...