From: Beverly V. Hock <bevvhock>
Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 11:07:14 -0700

I have so enjoyed reading these posts on "Life-Changing-Books." At Whittier School in Wheaton, Illinois, my third grade teacher, Mrs. Rose read the "Little House" books out loud to us. She read us all the Marguerite Henry books, King of the Wind, Misty ,etc. Marguerite Henry lived in Wayne at the time and came to our library with Misty. We all got a hoof print, which sadly has been lost.

We also were given time to read on our own in that class. Mrs. Rose rushed to my side thinking something was terribly wrong with me, but I was sobbing away, caught up in the story of Black Beauty.

I remember murmurs that Mrs. Rose was wasting time on all that reading - not doing the academic regimen, but non of us who had that opportunity to hear her voice and read for ourselves will ever forget how lucky we were to be in her class.

Both of my parents read to me a lot, but I especially remember my father reading the Sunday comics to me as he lay on the sofa and I sat in my little red rocking chair. Even though I had learned to read, my father used the opportunity to read all the "boys" book he ad loved aloud to me - Penrod, Treasue Island, Tom Sawyer, etc. He also read all the Alcott books to me, save Little Women, which I read on my own numerous times and had an entire section of the bedroom given over to the March's house. I had the Madame Alexander dolls and made paintings for Amy, music for Beth, and wrote little stories for Jo. My grandfather make furniture for the dolls and I spent much of my childhood acting out the stories with my best friend Penny.

Soon I was reading Gone with the Wind and other adult things, but never got over my love of fairy tales - or my love of children's literature for that matter. Thank you all for bringing back some very haunting memories of a childhood full of books.

Beverly Vaughn Hock, Ed. D.. Director, Reading the World University of San Francisco. School of Education International and Multicultural Education 2130 Fulton Street San Francisco, CA 94117-1071

www.soe.usfca.edu/departments/ime/rtwconf/director.html


On 5/29/06 10:00 AM, "ccbc-net-request at ccbc.education.wisc.edu"
<ccbc-net-request at ccbc.education.wisc.edu> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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> 1. Life Changing Books (Jane Hertenstein)
> 2. Re: books that changed us (Bonnie Withers)
> 3. life-changing books--rereading (maggie_bo at comcast.net)
> 4. Re: books that changed us (MShuttleworth at slv.vic.gov.au)
> 5. ATT Bev Hock (Apologies, OT) (Judith Ridge)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 28 May 2006 13:11:35 -0500
> From: "Jane Hertenstein" <janeh at jpusa.org>
> Subject: [CCBC-Net] Life Changing Books
> To: <CCBC-Net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu>
> Message-ID: <010b01c68282$28226560$1c0aa8c0 at HERTENSTEIN>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> I am absolutely convinced that had I been a child growing up today I'd be
> medicated. I was hyper and anxious, always thinking and never got along with
> my classmates. A perpetual outsider and loner--yet I WANTED FRIENDS.
>
> So for me reading became a safe place, just about the only place I felt
> settled and secure. And what did I like to read--REAL stories (that is before
> they slipped into genre and "problem" books).
>
> The book that changed my life, THE OUTSIDERS. The memory of discovering this
> book is crystal clear--and like with all crystal clear memories it involves
> all the senses--not just hearing, but smell, taste--I remember where I was
> standing and what the weather was like. It was the last day of 6th grade and I
> found a copy abandoned in a locker. I took it (trying to decide if it was
> stealing or not) and read it that evening. What a way to start the summer. I
> had never read anything like it and it made me hungry for more. It gave me
> hope.
>
> Still, today, it is a book that connects with me. My daughter was filling out
> an application for an extra curricular activity a few months back and one of
> the questions was to list your favorite book. OMG--she wrote THE OUTSIDERS.
>
> Jane Hertenstein
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 28 May 2006 18:36:58 -0500
> From: Bonnie Withers <bon2626wit at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] books that changed us
> To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
> Message-ID: <DAC289BA-EEA2-11DA-B462-000A9587EF12 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
> Hi Everyone,
> This has been a wonderful thread, tugging me back and forth through
> time and themes. I've wanted to post but it has been, as many of you
> have noted, very difficult to pick one or two titles. In the one-room
> schoolhouse in northern Wisconsin I attended for my first six grades,
> the "library" consisted of one bookcase about 3 feet wide by 5 feet
> tall. Although the bookmobile came every two weeks, that in-house
> bookcase was my mainstay. Two items stand out. One was a collection of
> children's poetry entitled Silver Pennies with an unforgettable poem
> "Vinegar Man".
>
> I believe the most influential book on that shelf was one of a series
> of biographies. They had orange covers and the illustrations were black
> silhouettes. (I think they were an early version of the Landmark
> series.) I read them all, but the one that made the greatest impact was
> the biography of George Washington Carver. This was my introduction to
> blacks, to slavery, to the Klan, to the unbelievable struggle of those
> times for African-Americans and to the will to overcome a degree of
> adversity and prejudice I couldn't imagine. I read it several times and
> can still recall staring in disbelief at the simple and powerful
> illustrations. This story was not anywhere in the school curriculum and
> I don't remember talking to the teacher or anyone else about it, but
> it gave birth to a concern for social justice that never left me.
>
> Bonnie Withers
> School Library Media Program Coordinator
> School of Information Studies
> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 00:02:52 +0000
> From: maggie_bo at comcast.net
> Subject: [CCBC-Net] life-changing books--rereading
> To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu
> Message-ID:
> <052920060002.15657.447A3A2C0004003300003D292200748184010DA10A0709090E03 at comca
> st.net>
>
> Content-Type: text/plain
>
> I have enjoyed this discussion so much. It's given me a lot to think about.
> I've shared some of it with my 13-year-old, and she decided to try rereading.
> She chose (no prompting from me) A Wrinkle In Time, although earlier when we
> talked she said the only book she'd really consider life-changing is The
> Phantom Tollbooth, because it made her learn to think in a new way. She read
> Wrinkle in one sitting, said she enjoyed it again, but also said she had
> remembered the whole thing clearly (she last read it 3 years ago) and that is
> why she is not a big fan of rereading--no surprises. It strikes me that she
> is more of a thinker than a feeler (an assessment she would heartily agree
> too); she connects, I think, more with ideas than characters. Maybe this
> makes a difference, I don't know. Maybe she just has a better memory than I
> do. My other daughter, who is 10, and likes to read but goes through nothing
> near the quantity of books as her sister (she's a science/math/nature gi
> rl to
> the core), chose the Heartland books (for those who don't know, these are a
> series of horse book that are usually bittersweet) and Black Beauty as
> life-changing books because she said they help her imagine how animals feel.
> She does reread occasionally (has read B.B. several times) and she is
> definitely a "feeler", not a "thinker". Just some food for thought.
>
> Maggie Bokelman
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 10:34:41 +1000
> From: MShuttleworth at slv.vic.gov.au
> Subject: Re: [CCBC-Net] books that changed us
> To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu, Bonnie Withers
> <bon2626wit at earthlink.net>
> Message-ID:
> <OFF1C7A40C.95C51054-ONCA25717D.000164B1-CA25717D.00032C74 at slv.vic.gov.au>
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Like Bonnie, my first 'library' also came in a small steel box, delivered
> fortnightly (or more likely monthly) to my two-room school. The sense of
> anticipation on opening that box remains a vivid memory, an almost physical
> memory in fact.
>
> In high school, things got pretty interesting when I picked up a book that
> I wonder if the library itself knew it even had. The book is Rogue Male, a
> World War 2 thriller by English writer Geoffrey Household. While it was
> never going to make the curriculum (tho' perhaps it should) the book did
> that magical thing of taking me into another world. In this case, a small,
> damp, dark foxhole where the British spy lay in hiding from a German
> gunman. Tension? Excitement? For me, Rogue Male had in spades. A copy of
> the book is still on my bedside shelf. When I see books today like the Alex
> Rider series, or the chunky novels of Matthew Riley in the hands of teenage
> boys, I have a pretty good idea of why they are turning to these kinds of
> books. "Good books" they may not be, but they can give the developing
> reader an unforgettable experience. After the heart-thumping anxiety of
> hiding out from Hitler's henchmen in a cold and lonely foxhole, I 'became'
> a reader. I wanted the otherness that only a book provided.
>
> I wonder why the school put that book there. It was unheralded on the
> shelf, I don't think it even had a dust-jacket and the title was, to use a
> good British phrase, 'a bit naff'. And no one said 'try this, you might
> like it'. Perhaps it was the sense that there was something a little
> rebellious about that choice fed my own approval. It didn't, oddly enough,
> turn me into a great thriller reader, but it did hurtle me down a path of
> wanting to experience whatever else books had to offer.
>
> Mike
>
> Mike Shuttleworth
> Program Co-ordinator
> Centre for Youth Literature
> 328 Swanston Street
> Melbourne VIC 3000
> PH: 03 8664 7262
> FAX: 03 9639 4143
> http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/youthlit/
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 14:49:42 +1000
> From: Judith Ridge <Judith.Ridge at det.nsw.edu.au>
> Subject: [CCBC-Net] ATT Bev Hock (Apologies, OT)
> To: ccbc_net <ccbc-net at ccbc.ad.education.wisc.edu>
> Message-ID: <C0A0BA86.4EE0%Judith.Ridge at det.nsw.edu.au>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
>
> Excuse me, ccbc_net!
>
> Bev, I have replied to your email but can?t register with your spam filter
> as it will not load fully on any browser.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Judith
>
>
Received on Mon 29 May 2006 01:07:14 PM CDT