Read All About It!

Once again, we had the amazing fortune of filling two rooms with excited field trippers ready to slam some poetry this past Tuesday. Both groups came from St. Barbara Elementary School, and were a compilation of 4th/5th graders and 8th graders. Per usual, each kid rocked in his and her own literary manner. The 4th/5th graders used some beautiful imagery to describe the ways they used to be, while the 8th graders told the tales of who they are today. While hesitant at first, the latter crowd was inspired by the quirks of a science teacher to get over their teenage selves and write with conviction (hey, weren’t we all that way once? . Here are a couple samples of the awesome work done by both groups on the 26th of January:

Boredom
8th grade Class Poem

Boredom is science class
It tastes like gum that has lost all its flavor.
It sounds like the clicking of your teacher’s heels.
It smells like coffee breath.
It looks like a clock without batteries.
It feels like you’re stuck in slow motion.

I Used to Be…
By Isabella (5th grader)

I used to be a puppy
Energetic and full of life
Bur now I am ignored, thrown away with no one to comfort me
I used to have one family with joy in my heart
But now I am heart-broken and miserable without a thought
I used to be a rich young girl with all the toys in the world
Someone with toys to play with
But now I am a young teenager with no toys to enjoy
Having a dull time and bored with no toys to play with
I used to be a caveman without a channel to enjoy
I didn’t have cable or a channel to enjoy
But now I am full of imagination with channels from here to there

J. D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, died on Tuesday at 91 years old.  He was famous, in the first half of his life, for his writing.  He was famous, in the second half of his life, for not wanting to be famous.  His stories about teenage angst and rebellion were required reading across American high schools, where so many students shuddered at the thought of ever becoming phonies in adulthood themselves.

There are a great many beautiful and detailed obituaries about Salinger, but I think The Onion catches the tone of his writing and his life perfectly.  Salinger will be missed, but Holden will live on.

Here are some selected quotes from Salinger.  His characters swear a lot, so this is a self-selective list.  What are your favorites?  Feel free to share!:

“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

“It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.”

“I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.”

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.”

Once upon a time, a small nonprofit had a big dream – opening a used book store which would fund its many literacy programs.  For three years they toiled and labored until their dream came true last November.  Finally, Open Books was able to open the doors to its new store in River North and host a Grand Opening celebration!

A special thanks goes to former intern Max Barry, who captured the telling of the Open Books story (complete with a knight, magical castle, and pencil-dress-wearing princess) and published it as a podcast.  Click here to listen to the Open Books fairy tale come to life!

Max Barry records Anna Piepmeyer as she narrates the Open Books fairy tale

The Open Books store is located in River North near the corner of Chicago and Franklin.  The store hours are Monday -Saturday 10 a.m.-7 p.m.  For more information please click here.  We hope to see you there!

You know the feeling… standing in an aisle at the library, finding a book that your parents told you not to read, or that has been on every “banned book” list that you can remember, slowly sliding it off the shelf, shuffling to a darker corner and cracking open the cover so that you can see the forbidden fruit.

It’s fun to do at any age!  What’s more fun, though, than reading as an adult books that were deemed inappropriate for you as a child?

This website, the Curious Pages, is all about books that could in some ways be deemed “inappropriate” for children.  It is full of pictures and hilarious explanations of inappropriate behavior, and is very tongue-in-cheek.  It’s great fun!  So next time you stop by the Open Books store, you can check out our children’s section for one of these books and feel a little frisson of excitement when you pull one out.  Who knows what will happen when you enjoy all sorts of crazy, frowned-upon things like rabbits playing brass instruments, ducks carrying books and wonderful books for read-aloud that we can’t actually read (as they are in a different language).  Just take the books to a relatively dark corner of the store (if you can find one) and settle in for a juicy tale.  Don’t worry- if I see you there, I won’t call you out.

The Slam Studio was further broken in on Thursday by an intelligent and energetic bunch of 4th graders from Erie Charter Elementary School!  This group, with the help of their fearless leader Mr. Montalvan, practiced speaking with confidence and conviction as they wrote and performed poems about the changes in their lives. We also worked on using the five senses to create strong images in our poetry. Below, read Erie’s class poem, Life. We know it will leave you inspired!