I’ve probably blogged about this at some point before, but I was a late reader. Not in the sense that I didn’t pick up reading at age three or four, like some precocious kids. Like I went through five, six, seven, and eight with very little ability to read. I met with specialists and tutors. My mother spent hours upon hours working on exercises, sounding out words, and writing letters in trays of salt. She read to me every night, which engendered a love of books that I can’t imagine having otherwise – especially given our rough start. It’s not that I wasn’t trying. I would have given anything to be able to do it. When teachers asked me to “just try” reading in front of the class, they might as well have asked me to translate the text into Latin or fly. I was trying. And it felt like all day every day I was continually being asked to do something, that I just wasn’t able to do. Continue reading “Good Can Be Hard, Hard Can Be Good”
I’ve been wanting to read a Caela Carter book for a while now. Not only is she also an alum from The New School’s Writing for Children MFA program. But she wrote out a really great l list of advice for new students in the program that one of my professors circulated last year. It was so positive, straight-forward, and inspiring to read (and reread and readread), that I knew her books would be amazing. When I got the chance to read Tumbling, I was extra excited. As a kid, I was a big gymnastics fan. One of my earliest memories is staying up late to watch the Magnificent Seven win the gold medal in the 1996 Olympics (who could forget Kari Strug vaulting on her injured ankle). So I expected good writing. And I expected to be interested in the story. But I didn’t expect such a unique and ambitious story – in terms of structure and format, as much as anything else.
Alison Doherty 