From: sarah at roggio.net <sarah>
Date: Tue, 30 May 2006 13:23:52 -0400

I have to agree with Maggie Bokelman's daughter that The Phantom Tollbooth would be my pick for life-changing book. This is always the first title that comes to mind when people ask me what my favorite children's book is.

Author Norton Juster's view of the world is so different from anything I'd ever encountered before or since, and he has such fun with the language. One of my favorite lines is when the main character, Milo, asks the "Whether Man" whether it will rain, and the Whether Man tells him it's more important to know whether there will be weather.

I love the message that using one's imagination is an important -- and practically mandatory -- part of being alive. I think this book is partly why I later picked this line from poet Mary Oliver as my senior yearbook quote: "Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world lends itself to your imagination."

I could definitely identify with lonely, bored Milo as a child -- and still can at times today! When I get interested in the little things again and start feeding my imagination, I find the world as exciting as Milo eventually does ... and rereading The Phantom Tollbooth every few years has helped, too!

Sarah Roggio

P.S. Hi to Jane ... I never read The Outsiders, but you've inspired me to add it to my summer reading list!


 

---- Original Message ---- From: ccbc-net-request at ccbc.education.wisc.edu To: ccbc-net at ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: RE: CCBC-Net Digest, Vol 10, Issue 45 Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 12:00:02 -0500

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>Today's Topics:
>
> 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:
> <052920060002.15657.447A3A2C0004003300003D292200748184010DA10A070909
>0E03 at comcast.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.g
>ov.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
>
>
>
>--
>Judith Ridge
>Assistant Editor (Acting)
>The School Magazine
>Celebrating 90 Years?1916-2006
>Curriculum K-12 Directorate
>NSW Department of Education and Training
>
>PO Box 1928
>Macquarie Centre NSW 2113
>AUSTRALIA
>
>+61 2 9889 0044
>+61 2 9889 0040 (fax)
>
>
>
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>End of CCBC-Net Digest, Vol 10, Issue 45
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Received on Tue 30 May 2006 12:23:52 PM CDT