In a few months, I’ll be sixty-five years old. There are some days I feel it more than others. Those days are becoming more common. Among some of the old-age changes in me I’ve notice are I’m slower and less energetic than I once was. I’m also less bothered or concerned about things of little or no consequence. I wouldn’t call it apathy but more like ambivalence. Or maybe it’s more readily recognizing what’s consequential and what is not. The list of what is not grows larger.

While the...

I got through high school reading what was assigned with little thought of why. Not that I read much before then. Middle school is a blank. I don’t remember anything I read. Elementary? I remember Ms. Illyes, my sixth grade teacher reading Tom Sawyer to the class. She read a chapter or two a day. We listened. I loved it. It was better than television… and I loved television more than anything. By high school, reading was done to get by....

I’ve used Francesca Lia Block’s Witch Baby in my English methods course for many years. I’ve taught it in my own ELA classrooms (Here are some ideas I’ve used introducing the book to students). As a teacher educator, I use it to model and provide guided practice in curriculum development. As we talk about lesson plannings, students and I also talk about the novel. I lead demonstration lessons, and students workshop group lesson plans. Invariably students home in on the novel’s magic realism...