Stories First

This is a piece I wrote for the Ypsilanti Community School newsletter the librarians put together once a month. 

The week before summer vacation ended, I was sitting in Zingerman’s Coffeehouse, one hand around a mug of freshly poured coffee, and another on a cover of a book called June Sparrow and the Million Dollar Penny by Rebecca Chase. My daughters, Hadley and Harper, were with me with books of their own, happily devouring the chocolate milk I’d purchased for them.
This has been a ritual for the three of us since before the girls could read. We’d go to a coffeehouse, I’d buy us all fun drinks, and we’d spend some time looking at, and eventually reading books. It’s a nice habit, if I do say so myself, but on this day, I was in a funk, and couldn’t get into Miss Sparrow’s plight to find a million dollar penny so she and her pet pig could get back to New York City.

I could blame it on it being the end of summer. That’s always something to be annoyed about. What was bothering me though, was an email I’d received earlier from my editor regarding a manuscript I’d turned in recently. “It’s close,” she said, “but it’s not there yet. Maybe it’ll be out by the end of the year.”

I’ve been writing seriously for a while now. I know it takes work. I know it takes time. I know failing, and then failing better is the name of the game. Still, my inner five-year-old slammed herself down on the floor, crossed her arms, and threw a tantrum.

“It’s not fair!” she screamed.

Since I’m being honest, I’ll also explain that I took this position in YCS so I could have more time to write. I used to be a middle school teacher, and I love teaching, but the more writing projects I took on, the more difficult it became for me to manage all that came with teaching: meetings, grading, more meetings, lesson planning. Working in the libraries at Perry and YIES gives me a chance to keep my hand in education, but also allows me to pursue this other dream.

Sitting in Zingerman’s though, I began to second guess this decision. What if I never publish a book? How much time and money have I wasted? How would I have improved as a teacher had I stayed? What’s the point of storytelling anyway?

I checked my phone, as I do when I’m uncomfortable and looking to get distracted. A message from a colleague titled, “Math Books,” was in my inbox, and I clicked on it. She wanted to know if I could recommend stories with math concepts in them. “They have to be stories first,” she said. Math had to part of the plot – nothing textbook – y.

“Round as a Mooncake by Roseanne Thong,” I typed back. “It’s a great story about a little girl finding shapes in her neighborhood.” I took a sip of my coffee and noticed the perfect circle left on my napkin from the mug’s weight. I traced it with my finger, then typed, “Kids will read it and find it impossible not to notice how many triangles, circles, squares, and rectangles there are in the things they see everyday.”

I continued. “Pinkalicious and the Pink Drink by Victoria Kahn is another story with math in it.” Not only does Pinkalicious have to figure out how to make pink lemonade (no, pink frosting will not work), but she has to figure out how many gumballs she can buy with her earnings.

I looked at Hadley, almost eleven, now. She had that story memorized when she was three years old. She’s interested in babysitting these days. I’ll have to remember to suggest this story to her when she lands her first gig. They can make pink lemonade, and sort gumballs, as Hadley and I did yeas ago.

“The Lemonade War by Jacquelne Davies is great for kids who are reading chapter books, or it’d be great for a read aloud in math class,” I typed. There’s lots of math in the story, but I love the way Davies weaves those concepts into the plot. Math mixes with sibling rivalry, kids learning about making friends, hot, summer days and the beginning of school edging closer, and closer.

I know about all these stories because I read them to my girls. Since Hadley and Harper were babies, I’ve read to them every night before bed, and I still do this today. I do it because I believe stories make a difference. They teach us empathy, and give us an opportunity to use our imaginations. Stories open our world; they help us see.

At our in-service this year, Dr. Edmondson spoke in a Guided Reading meeting. “Take ten minutes to read to your classes. Ask questions. See what happens.” His words have become my manifesto of sorts, for what I do in the libraries at YIES and Perry.

I don’t know if I’ll ever publish a book. I know that right now, it’s a story I can’t turn away from, so I’ll keep looking at it, and working it out. And I’ll keep reading. To myself, to my girls, to the students who walk through the library doors at Perry and YIES. So far this year, we’ve met a rambunctious moose in Z is for Moose, a skeleton named Mr. Calavera, and a sly Grandma in Just A Minute, and my 4th and 5th graders are stuck in Camp Green Lake digging holes and keeping away from yellow-spotted lizards.

Each week, my classes file in, sit down, and ask, “What’s that story about?” Each week, I open up the book, and do exactly what Dr. Edmondson suggested.

“Let’s see what happens,” I say.

And we begin.