Favorite books

[Chris Finer <cfiner@NEWFOUND.K12.NH.US>]

I have thoroughly enjoyed following this thread.  Mrs. Pignatelli, if
you're still out there somewhere:  you were right about all those books
you got me to read.  Right about every one of them.  I never said thank
you, and now I bet it's too late.  I'll make it up to you by  recommending
great books to great kids myself.  You've heard, of course,  that Imitation
is the Sincerest Form of Flattery.  I became a children's  librarian, Mrs.
Pignatelli.

The first really indepenent reading I did was Hardy Boys books, which I
could NOT borrow from my elementary school librarian because she did not
have any;  something about lack of literary worth -- wish I could  remember
her exact words.

So I had to buy and trade to read _The Hardy Boys_.  By the time I could
read an entire one on a Saturday morning, I began to see what Mrs.
Pignatelli meant.  I could predict -- usually to the page -- just what  was
happening.  When I told Mrs. Pignatelli of my discovery, she smiled and
handed  me my first Landmark biography.

                 I read so many!  The one I remember most was Thomas
Edison's -- his  teachers called him "addled" and told him he would never
amount to  anything.  My teachers weren't saying that to me, of course (not
to my  face, anyway), but somehow it hit home with me and I clung to
Edison's  early "failures" (as measured by those who surely don't count).

                 My fifth grade teacher -- hello, Mr. Reiger -- read us
_Johnny Tremain_.   It took him weeks, reading every day, but American
History truly came  alive for me that year.  When he was finished with
_Johnny_, I ran to  the library to borrow it.  I read it through twice
then, and many, many  times since.  It marked a turning point in my
reading.

                 When I became a third grade teacher, I read to my students
every day.   Their favorites included Beezus and Ramona and all those
wonderful  Beverly Cleary titles/characters.  They loved Betty Ren Wright's
_The  Dollhouse Murders_ which still sends a shiver up my spine when I
think  about it.  And, of course, they love _Johnny Tremain_.  People who
arrived  in my class as nonreaders left -- many, not all of them -- as
readers.

                 Now I'm in a 9-12, and a librarian.  To celebrate National
Library Week, teachers and  students have been invited to read aloud. Maybe
I should read from  _Johnny Tremain_.  They'll get a kick out of it.


Chris Finer, LMG
Library Media Program
Newfound Regional High School
Bristol, NH
cfiner@newfound.k12.nh.us

"There's no use going to school unless your final destination is
the LIBRARY."
                                                                -- after
Ray Bradbury

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