Mitali Perkins Interview!

Join me as I interview Mitali Perkins!

Chocolate Covered Anything!

Here is a poorly produced cooking video that I made theoretically for my students, but mostly to amuse myself! Please enjoy the evidence that I have no boundaries when it comes to chocolate. 

Seeber and Quinlan Storytime!

I met up with Ms Quinlan and Ms Seeber to talk about cooking videos and curriculum and instead we ended up laughing our heads off. Join us and listen to Ms Quinlan's story of danger and suspense!

BHS Rises

I'm not crying, you're crying!!
I didn't make this one, Mr. Fitzpatrick did, but it got me right in the feels.
And I managed to wedge some Harry Potter in there, too so it is a double win!

Broccoli and Onion Salad

Watch me make broccoli and onion salad for the second time REALLY FAST! It isn't really learning something but it was fun. I even put it in a historical context!

Ms Wolf's Story!

I interviewed Ms Wolf for my first "Every Single One's Got a Story to Tell"* feature! Learn about her adorable dog, her fearless daughters and even see me understand a science concept!

* that line is taken from The White Stripe's  - thanks White Stripes for allowing me to rip off your famous riff...

Beehive Fails and Beverly Cleary

Here is my first beauty tutorial! The first thing I learned is that I am about 40 years too old for a beauty tutorial. But hey...I am learning new things!

Focaccia Bread - just like Not Your Average Joe's used to make!

In my quest to learn new things, or more precisely, eat more carbs, I bring you a delicious focaccia bread recipe. I tried a handful of failed recipes before I came across this one, but I have made it about 10 more times since I filmed this. Trust me when I say - it is amazing!

The recipe I used is from The Smitten Kitchen blog. Her pictures are far prettier than mine, but she doesn't give you the recipe for dipping sauce! Or have a random water bottle that keeps inexplicably disappearing and reappearing.

Beverly (FINALLY) Keeps Reading!

I feel like Ms Woznick, Meghan at the public library, and I have been working on this forever! And now you can all take part in the program.
https://beverlypubliclibrary.org/remote/ - if you're interested in taking a look!
So here is my first video with the actual program named it in - even though I made it last week. Shhhh...tell no one. Through the magic of movie making no one will ever know!

A Quarto about Quartos

Here is a little something for Ms Collins' classes - or anyone else interested in Romeo and Juliet!

BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID!!!

I haven't posted in a week, but I am still making videos, I just can't post them until Friday for reasons that will be made clear later! In the meantime, I got to go back to the library to pick up some items left behind and have documented my visit here.

To be clear, no mice were harmed in the filming of this movie trailer and none were even spotted. It's just a theory. A scary, scary theory...

How To

I finally got a video under 5 minutes! (Don't get used to it...) It centers around "how-to" books, gender issues and very lame stop motion filmmaking. 

Here is the info for BHS Juniors. 

How-To books - 

Learning how to get stuff done!

Watch the Video - https://youtu.be/i-HRCL2f1Zg

Take the Survey - https://forms.gle/mWz2bmpTWbNDGkVVA

Explore the resources - I have no resources today - go watch Stop Motion Cooking or You Suck at Cooking to see just how good a video can be!

Beverly Public Library Free Stuff Tour~

This is my favorite so far.
First off, it is a screencast so I don't have to obsess about my general lack of grooming.
Secondly, I did it in pretty much one take so not a lot of choppy editing - the only kind I do!
Thirdly, I get to roast some colleagues a we bit, which is always fun.
And it is USEFUL. If you watch it, you will find treasures!

Short Attention Span

This video has spectacular special effects! (Not really, but some. And my hair looks better than usual...)
These books are essays and short stories - books where you don't have to retain a bunch of previous information. Pick them up and put them down at will.

Here is the info for BHS Juniors -

...short attention span…

Just read a little at a time.

Watch the Video - https://youtu.be/5-yggpypmjo

Take the Survey -https://forms.gle/w85jowkmX3BzZzDN6

Explore the resources - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c1rvnbZ4-1jM9CYCfNhDNmScnQe2BcBFc3BHNapOIW0/edit?usp=sharing

Here is Where the Wild Things Are - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKNaYlzssbc

Graphic Novels

Okay, the audio is very uneven, but the books are GREAT. And I created opening credits. Well, not credits, really, but a theme song. Thanks to Alexis Colpoys for the Beverly coloring book excerpts!

Here is the info for BHS Juniors. 

Graphic Novels - 

More visuals for deeper understanding.

Watch the Video - https://youtu.be/LK2wvyDT3vI

Take the Survey -https://forms.gle/vAQ83MHAYnjV523a6

Explore the resources - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YuGbHIqvyjyAibGyWu71Krn_vUwkCZubAGMabXoC1ns/edit?usp=sharing

Here are the Beverly Coloring pages - https://drive.google.com/file/d/14iKsvn8IjZwHMZ0ZAshZdNAQ_NeD4TtJ/view?usp=sharing

Personal Growth

This time it is books that help us with self care. I hadn't read these books at the time, but they have come in handy since! My "skill" was supposed to be clear diction and precise word choice, but I tanked at that. I did add video footage from When Harry Met Sally, so it all evens out.

Here is the information for BHS Juniors. 

Personal Growth

Just take care of yourself...

Watch the video- https://youtu.be/U9LoHiFIDgI

Take the survey - https://forms.gle/FwCu7ersXDnp5tmd6

Explore the resources - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1na2EmYcL0grZfU9d8EkEp0JlakHTI9Vq7wRg_JM6l0Y/edit?usp=sharing

Here’s the full text of A LITTLE PRINCESS - enjoy!! - https://www.gutenberg.org/files/146/146-h/146-h.htm

Here’s an audiobook of A LITTLE PRINCESS - enjoy!! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RYvI9gOu5I

Realistic Fiction Where Nobody Gets Hurt

I have read most of the books in this one! And I worked on the new skill of adding pictures.

Here is the info for BHS Juniors.

Realistic Fiction Where Nobody Gets Hurt!

A little something lighter…

Watch the video - https://youtu.be/qktO3VG50qs

Take the survey - https://forms.gle/PAdWDZA21HYmMqaXA

Explore the resources - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1r6ZeuFyWKIsjdTh8yo5wz0dIBCEEjDW8rbhztS22VBU/edit?usp=sharing

Here’s the full text of DADDY LONG LEGS - enjoy!! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wsE1ErxseA9VOJcPKqACyOFBG5umcIW_/view?usp=sharing

Horror and Sports...

Wherein I try to entice students to fill out the form by offering to read my ninth grade diary. The is me talking about books that I haven't read in an effort to narrow the number of scary or sports books I need to read...

Here is the information for BHS Juniors-

OH THE HORROR!

Scary books and books about sports.

Watch the video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnUYUqdfeZU&feature=youtu.be

Take the survey - https://forms.gle/UE7WqNpc4sPboe2F6

Explore the resources - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aocSi0p0ITzGBAZfiV9DKDKVea461ge7Ps0qNjo6S2k/edit

Summer Reading VIdeos for the class of 2021

Since I have been working from home, I have made a series of videos about possible summer reading books for Beverly High School. My usual format was to go into the junior classes, do a really quick introduction to about 50 different books and ask the students to give me their opinions.
Since we don't have classrooms, I put the information online.
As I created the videos, I tried to add some kind of new skill to each one.
Here is the first, an introduction that is both not well edited and factually inaccurate.
We haven't been doing any "attendance" - so I didn't bother asking who the students' English teacher is. And most of the videos are my face. Sorry...

2018 - Barb's Best of the Year

Once a year I manage to get it together enough to go over everything I read and pull out the special ones. If you want to see the list of everything I read and my statistics - and perhaps some justifications - feel free to take a look here. 

Now on to my favorites!

BEST NONFICTION
Since I don't read a ton of it, it was pretty easy to find a favorite. Armistead Maupin's LOGICAL FAMILY: A MEMOIR was my hands down winner. I love his TALES OF THE CITY books which I plan to reread this year, and this is that same funny, insightful voice telling his own story. My friend Sue and I went to hear him read and we were lucky enough to get to chat with him at the dinner beforehand but the fact that I get to post this adorable picture of us practically hugging in no way influenced my best-of choice. I also really liked THE BUTCHERING ART by Lindsey Fitzharris which is basically the story of how people started washing their hands before performing surgery. But I don't have a picture of me and the author. So there you go.

BEST PICTURE BOOK, CHILDREN'S OR MIDDLE GRADE
Most of my younger reads this year were re-reads which means they don't qualify for this award. When I was trying to decide which I loved best the three that I settled on were WOLF HOLLOW by Lauren Wolk -  which already had the honor of being on the BHS summer reading list and THE BIRCHBARK HOUSE by Louise Erdrich which I just this minute learned is the first in a series. So clearly I did not love it quite as much as ONCE WAS A TIME by Leila Sales. This is a time travel story, set in WWII in part and I read it in one giant gulp. I love reading WWII and time travel books in one giant gulp! Okay, moving along, I have a lot of Birchbark House books to catch up on apparently...)


BEST PAIRS OF ADULT BOOKS IN SEVERAL CATEGORIES

BOOKS ABOUT ART
Artists are so tortured! In THE CLOCKMAKER'S DAUGHTER by Kate Morton someone gets shot and there is a stolen jewel and a ghost and all the wonderful moody English-ness that Kate Morton does so well. New York City is the setting of Fiona Davis' THE MASTERPIECE, specifically Grand Central Terminal and the art school that was located there. Both of these books feature mysterious women who are not necessarily what they appear to be.

BOOKS ABOUT WOMEN WHO AREN'T ALLOWED TO TALK
It isn't that Eleanor Roosevelt wasn't allowed to talk, she was one of the most vocal women of the 20th century. But she wasn't allowed to talk about her years-long relationship with journalist Lorena Hickok which appears to the modern reader to have been quite the love story. Amy Bloom's WHITE HOUSES is a fictionalized version that brings these two women to life on the page. If you feel like THE HANDMAID'S TALE is just too light and fluffy for you - you might like VOX by Christina Dalcher. In this dystopian future women are only allowed 100 words a day before they become subjected to increasingly more painful electric shocks via a bracelet all women are required to wear. Jean, our heroine, is a former cognitive linguist is given the opportunity to fight the power.

LET'S LIGHTEN THE MOOD THE ENGLISH WAY!
This August I read MY OXFORD YEAR by Julia Whelan - a delightful book about a romance that nearly doesn't happen at Oxford. This December I read ONE DAY IN DECEMBER by Josie Silver - a delightful book about a romance that nearly doesn't happen in London. They both had that will-they-or-won't-they vibe that you know is completely useless, because of course they will! They also have a slightly dry humor that owes a debt to Bridget Jones that light British romances continue to pay. They are a step up from fluff - tasty and easily digestible.

[Okay, at this point if I continue to put in cute pictures, I will never get this written! If you really need to see covers, you can google the author and title and voila - the internet will do all the work for you.]

MYSTERY SOLVING BROADS
I was lucky enough to attend the Betsy Tacy Convention in Minneapolis this summer and before I went, I read BALTIMORE BLUES by Laura Lippman since she was one of the speakers. The book was a nice twisty mystery that treated Baltimore the way my beloved Robert Parker treated Boston - with an insider's view of the city's workings. Amy Stewart's GIRL WAITS WITH GUN also has a Betsy Tacy connection in that it is set in the early 20th century just prior to WWI. Based on a true-life sheriff's deputy from New Jersey, this clever mystery was less a whodunit and more a who-gonna-listen-to-a-woman-in-this-era. Both of these books have plenty of sequels that kept me reading all summer.

WHAT YOU WILL DO FOR YOUR KIDS
Two books that made me cry like a spigot this year were about the lengths parents will go to to help their children, particularly those who don't fit the mold. HARMONY by Carolyn Parkhurst (my favorite SLOW WRITING author. Please, for the love of God, Carolyn, write more more more...) is the story of a family who follows a borderline cult-leader to an abandoned camp ground in an attempt to help their brilliant but tortured daughter find a place to belong. In Laurie Frankel's THIS IS HOW IT ALWAYS IS, an unconventional but loving couple decide to add a fifth child to their family of four boys in the hopes that it might be the daughter they have always hoped for. When Claude is born, they don't expect that he will begin a journey that will completely change their idea of gender and their entire lives. 

WHO WANTS TO LIVE FOREVER?
THE IMMORTALISTS by Chloe Benjamin is a little rich for my blood. There are truths in this book that you have to go digging for. And there is a character who works with primates which is often a dealbreaker for me in books. They are too close to us, but big and hairy, I don't like it! But this book was spectacular. It was on a lot of "best of" lists and I can see why. It tells the story of four siblings who learn the day of their death when they are children and live with that knowledge. I didn't know anything about Dara Horn's ETERNAL LIFE before I started it and it completely captured me! It is the story of a woman who has lived for 2000 year and every time she ends it all, she comes back as her 18 year old self and has to start all over again. Trust me, you don't want to live forever!

BEST PAIRS OR GROUPS OF YA BOOKS IN SEVERAL CATEGORIES

QUEENS OF TEENAGE FANTASY
It took me awhile to get into STRANGE THE DREAMER but once I did I was hooked. Imagine my surprise when I backed up and read Lanai Taylors DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE which I had poohpoohed when it came out only to find I loved it even more than STRANGE! The series is about angels and demons, but not in the conventional or Biblical way you might expect. And not in an irritating way. I have no patience for fantasy, but I adored the entire series. SIX OF CROWS was another book that I had to start several times after being nagged by students which I ended up loving. SHADOW AND BONE by Leigh Bardugo actually showed up on my best of list last year, but it was the very end of the year and I had no time to read the sequals so we are going to count the Grisha trilogy for this year because it is wonderful. It's a different world, there is a lot of different stuff and a girl saves everyone. You've read that kind of story before, I am sure, but this world just keeps growing and growing and horrible as things are - I don't ever want to leave!

THINGS ARE GETTING TERRIBLE
In ALL RIGHTS RESERVED by Gregory Scott Katsoulis everything is copyrighted - I mean EVERYTHING! Words, gestures, any form or communication must be paid for and the only way to buck the system is to keep your mouth shut. (Hmmm... this is not the first book I have reviewed here that involves forced silence - perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something...) Justina Ireland's DREAD NATION follows Jane, a young woman training to be an attendant in the years following the Civil War, which in this book ended when the dead began walking the battlefields of Gettysburg. Zombies are a problem, of course, but the way the power structure responds is just as horrifying.  Both of these books are quite likely to be on the summer reading list for BHS. You heard it here first!

BIG GIRLS ROCK
I love a fat girl book. Last year DUMPLIN' was a favorite and when I was road tripping this summer I listened to the follow up PUDDIN' by Julie Murphy and I liked it even better! Murphy takes two secondary characters from DUMPLIN' - beautiful, popular Callie and guileless, hard-working Millie and throws them together in the believable and enjoyable setting that I loved the first time around. I heard about Rae Carson's GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS from a student who also loves protagonists of girth. I loved Carson's WALK THE EARTH A STRANGER last year and gave GoFaT a try. It is a tight journey/quest other world book that kept me hooked all the way through. I should admit that I dropped the narrative thread afterwards and haven't hit the sequels yet. Someday...

TAKING CARE OF THE KING IS NOT EASY
I love when YA writers write short stories. In FATAL THRONE: THE WIVES OF HENRY VIII TELL ALL seven great writers tell the tale in 7 different voices - Henry and his six wives. It is beautifully done and as it progresses from viewpoint to viewpoint the shading changes. In GRACE AND FURY by Tracy Banghart two sisters - one a beauty who is supposed to catch the eye of the heir and one a rebel who is bound for trouble - swap destinies. Part THE SELECTION and part SHAWSHANK, it is a great ride!

SWEET, SWEET, SWEET, SWEET LOVE
WHAT IF IT'S US by Becky Albertalli and Adam Silvera is a splendid, splashy will-they-or-won't-they New York romance between two boys where none of the conflict is about the characters' sexuality but rather the capriciousness of love. Jaye Robin Brown's GEORGIA PEACHES AND OTHER FORBIDDEN FRUIT is a little more old school in that there is a big old closet and someone has to come out of it. But there is a twist in that our protagonist was out when she lived in the big city, but when she moves to a small town with her radio-preacher dad, he asks her as a favor to act straight. Yep, it is completely messed up, and yet it works. ROYALS by Rachel Hawkins seems to have had it's name changed to PRINCE CHARMING (yuck) when it comes out in paperback. Nonetheless, it is an adorable quick read about a Florida geek-girl who's big sister just got engaged to the Prince of Scotland. Hilarity ensues. Finally Elizabeth Eulberg's BETTER OFF FRIENDS was forced upon me by a student. The protagonist is named Macallan which, I'm sorry, is horrible. and she has a male best friend she would never think of being interested in romantically, until she does. I felt like this was going to be horrible, but it was adorable - more WHEN HARRY MET SALLY than MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING for sure.

BEING A TEENAGER ISN'T EASY
YOU BRING THE DISTANT NEAR by Mitali Perkins was the first book I read in 2018! It is half the story of two sisters who emigrate to the US with their parents and the other half is the story of the sisters' daughters. It is an intergenerational miracle. N. Griffin's JUST WRECK IT ALL is about Bette trying to come back from a tragedy that has her wracked with guilt and unable to let herself enjoy anything. The story is good, but the emotional arc of Bette is what makes it amazing.  HEY KIDDO by Jarrett Krosoczka is a graphic memoir about growing up with an addict for a parent that is gritty, funny and heartbreaking. 

And that is it! I'll see you next year...