Dear YIES Students, Putting stories away is a mess. First, you have to make sure they’re in the system. If they’re not, there’s cataloguing, there’s labeling, and then the final step, you shelve them. Making sure stories find their proper homes is a long process. I’ve done this work before. I lived next door to a library growing up, and… View Post

I was in an elementary school today with a classroom the teachers turned into a “Reading Oasis.” There was a kiddie pool filled with books, and lawn chairs spread around it. Another corner was set up like a front porch; rockers and fake grass, and books in wooden crates for sitting a spell. There were bean bags and strung lights… View Post

I’m not sure what’s growing is in fact a hydrangea bush. It could be that this plant that was dying last fall is in fact something different. The four homes that surround us all have ladies with green thumbs in them, and they have the same flowers in front of their homes, and they tell us they’re hydrangeas. However, a… View Post

  {read}: “By now Henri is used to the nasty critics. He knows his shapes are simpler and flatter than everyone else’s, but he thinks that makes them lovely…every morning he wakes up and smiles at his pictures.” – The Fantastic Jungles of Henri Rousseau, by Michelle Markel {wrote}: I’m telling Jesse about Annie* and the fairies* when I spot a… View Post

At the grocery store, I’m looking at flowers, and Harper gets her arm stuck in the part of the cart between the handle and where a toddler would sit. The flowers are the $3.99 bunch at Trader Joe’s. I usually buy two, and lately, I’ve been washing pasta sauce jars and using those as vases. I was thinking I’d put… View Post