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Creating this reading autobiography was not a simple task for me. It was hard for me to select around ten books that I would consider touchstones for me as a reader versus books that I have just immensely enjoyed. Not all of the books on this list are books that I took great pleasure in reading. Some, like Robin Diangelo's and Ibram X Kendi's books were challenges. However, like the rest of the titles on this Padlet, each book changed me as a reader. They either opened my eyes to looking at the world in a new way or they opened me up to a new genre that I continue to love today.

One thing that I noticed in this exercise is how much my reading has fluctuated throughout life. As a child, I remember my parents reading to me before going to bed.  I also have fond memories of going to the library with my mom, my dad, or my stepmom and being able to pick out a couple books to check out. At that time books were a source of pleasure and fun. A lot of this changed during my middle school, high school and college years when reading for my classes took precedence and I no longer wanted to spend my free time with a book. It was also the time that I was inculcated into believing that certain books were worth reading while others were not. It is not a surprise to me that the books which I consider to be touchstones for me during the period of my adolescence were books that I also had to read for English class. I am lucky that I connected with them and they helped to propel me as a reader. Despite my experiences as a reader, It will be very important for me as a high school librarian to remember how challenging academic life can be at that time. Providing easy, simple and fun reads to students in a school library setting could be the catalyst to get those students reading again.

Reflecting on myself as an adult reader, I noticed a push and pull between what I wanted to read and what I thought I should read. Beliefs about what is literature and what one should spend their time with are hard to shake. Harry Potter very much helped me shake the notion that every book I read needed to be considered "great literature", whatever that really means. It also helped me see how much I love Young Adult literature, my favorite category up to today.

As a person who works in a school library and intends to for the long future, I see it as a vital part of our work to accept all reading as valid and all students as readers even if they and others may not see them this way. Additionally, in reflecting upon my reading choices and my work in a school library, I can attest to the great importance that libraries and librarians can have in putting books that are often missing from the general curricula into students hands. Not all learning takes place in the classroom, libraries are also important places to help teach students and community members.

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (U.S Version). Written by J.K Rowling. Published in 1997.

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Harry Potter made me love young adult fiction as an adult. 

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Harry Potter made me love young adult fiction as an adult. 

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Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? Written by Frans de Waal. Published in 2016. 

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Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? sparked my interest in reading about nature. 

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Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? sparked my interest in reading about nature. 

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Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are 

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Dissolving Classroom. Written and illustrated by Junji Ito. Original Run: March 18, 2013-October 1, 2014. 1 Volume. 

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Dissolving Classroom opened me to the world of manga. 

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Dissolving Classroom opened me to the world of manga. 

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There was a period of my life from high school through college where I thought and was taught by teachers and parents that the books I read should either be informative nonfiction or books that have been established as "great literature", not popular fiction. This all changed when I picked up the first book in the Harry Potter series in my early 20s after graduating from college. It is a touchstone book for me because it was the first book in a long time that I didn't want to put down. It was the book that told me that reading popular fiction is fun and worthwhile. It also put me on the path to loving YA fiction as an adult, my preferred reading category to this day and the reason that I decided to become a high school librarian.

Click on the link below to read Kirkus's review of Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone.

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KIRKUS REVIEW

In a rousing first novel, already an award-winner in England, Harry is just a baby when his magical parents are done in by Voldemort, a wizard so dastardly other wizards are scared to mention his name.

So Harry is brought up by his mean Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia Dursley, and picked on by his horrid cousin Dudley. He knows nothing about his magical birthright until ten years later, when he learns he's to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Hogwarts is a lot like English boarding school, except that instead of classes in math and grammar, the curriculum features courses in Transfiguration, Herbology, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Harry becomes the star player of Quidditch, a sort of mid-air ball game. With the help of his new friends Ron and Hermione, Harry solves a mystery involving a sorcerer's stone that ultimately takes him to the evil Voldemort. This hugely enjoyable fantasy is filled with imaginative details, from oddly flavored jelly beans to dragons' eggs hatched on the hearth.

It's slanted toward action-oriented readers, who will find that Briticisms meld with all the other wonders of magic school. (Fiction. 10-14)

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HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE by J.K. Rowling | Kirkus Reviews

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In a rousing first novel, already an award-winner in England, Harry is just a baby when his magical parents are done in by Voldemort, a wizard so dastardly other wizards are scared to mention his name. So Harry is brought up by his mean Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia Dursley, and picked on by his horrid cousin Dudley.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Written by Mark Haddon. Published in 2003. 

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time sparked my love of mystery novels. 

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time sparked my love of mystery novels. 

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime

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The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou. Written by Maya Angelou. Published in 1994. 

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Maya Angelou's poetry showed me how powerful poetry can be to express your truth. 

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Maya Angelou's poetry showed me how powerful poetry can be to express your truth. 

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The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou

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I love animals and always have, ever since I was child. However, it was not until my 30s when I decided that I wanted to have four-legged "children" instead of two-legged children that I became very interested in the minds and behaviors of animals. I remember picking up Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? at Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena, California and deciding to buy it. I loved reading about the emotions and behaviors of animals from a knowledgeable scientist and it is one of my touchstones because it started me on the path to reading more books about nature and animals such as, the Hidden Life of Trees and the Genius of Birds. Learning about nature makes me feel connected to the world around me. Nonfiction books can sometimes be overlooked during readers advisory in a high school setting, but I think they can be great touchstone books for the right reader. They can help us to be less lonely.

Click on the link below to watch a Ted Talk by Primatologist  Frans de Waal.

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Shel Silverstein's Where The Sidewalk Ends may have started my love of poetry but Maya Angelou taught me that poetry was one of the best vehicles to expressing one's truth and one's experiences as a person in society. I remember reading her poetry in middle school and seeing how powerful it was to have a Black woman take control over her life by telling her story through poetry. I put her poetry as one of my touchstones because I was so moved by her work that it led me to start writing and reciting my own poetry at a local bookstore, which I did for a period of my life during childhood and adolescents. I have noticed in my current work in a school library that poetry can often be overlooked by students. However, I hope in the future to be able to put more books like Maya Angelou's in the hands of students because much it is accessible to young students and can be so vital in helping them navigate their emotions and life experiences.

Click on the link below to learn more about the life and work of Maya Angelou.

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Moral behavior in animals | Frans de Waal

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When I was living in London for graduate school, I had a now ex-boyfriend who loved to read. We loved to watch police procedural dramas and mystery shows on television, so he was surprised to learn that I had never read mystery novels. He suggested that I read The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, which had just been published that year. I remember loving the mystery in the story. This book is one of my touchstones because after reading The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, mystery novels became one of my favorite genres to read.

Click on the links below to read reviews of The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-Time.

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White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Written by Robin Diangelo. Published in 2018. 

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White Fragility made me reflect on my role as a White person in the world. 

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White Fragility made me reflect on my role as a White person in the world. 

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I picked up White Fragility in my late 30's when my husband's school asked the faculty and staff to read it over the Summer. He read it first and thought that I would be interested in it as well.  It was not the first book that I read about racism and its history in the United States. However, it was the first to put White People who consider themselves to be liberal and not racist at the center of racism. The book is one of my touchstones as it forced me to reflect on my inherent beliefs and behaviors and reactions to uncomfortable conversations. It taught me that books like White Fragility and the next book on my reading autobiography are so important to have in school libraries since for me these are spaces that should not only reflect a school's academic philosophy but also fill in the gaps to what is missing in the curricula.

Click on the link below to read a review on Robin Diangelo's book White Fragility.

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In more than twenty years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops for American companies, the academic and educator Robin DiAngelo has noticed that white people are sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism. Like waves on sand, their reactions form predictable patterns: they will insist that they "were taught to treat everyone the same," that they are "color-blind," that they "don't care if you are pink, purple, or polka-dotted." They will point to friends and family members of color, a history of civil-rights activism, or a more "salient" issue, such as class or gender. They will shout and bluster. They will cry. In 2011, DiAngelo coined the term "white fragility" to describe the disbelieving defensiveness that white people exhibit when their ideas about race and racism are challenged-and particularly when they feel implicated in white supremacy. Why, she wondered, did her feedback prompt such resistance, as if the mention of racism were more offensive than the fact or practice of it?

In a new book, " White Fragility," DiAngelo attempts to explicate the phenomenon of white people's paper-thin skin. She argues that our largely segregated society is set up to insulate whites from racial discomfort, so that they fall to pieces at the first application of stress-such as, for instance, when someone suggests that "flesh-toned" may not be an appropriate name for a beige crayon. Unused to unpleasantness (more than unused to it-racial hierarchies tell white people that they are entitled to peace and deference), they lack the "racial stamina" to engage in difficult conversations. This leads them to respond to "racial triggers"-the show "Dear White People," the term "wypipo"-with "emotions such as anger, fear and guilt," DiAngelo writes, "and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation."

DiAngelo, who is white, emphasizes that the stances that make up white fragility are not merely irrational. (Or even comical, though some of her anecdotes-participants in a voluntary anti-racism workshop dissolving with umbrage at any talk of racism-simmer with perverse humor. "I have found that the only way to give feedback without triggering white fragility is not to give it at all," she remarks wryly.) These splutterings "work," DiAngelo explains, "to reinstate white equilibrium as they repel the challenge, return our racial comfort, and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy." She finds that the social costs for a black person in awakening the sleeping dragon of white fragility often prove so high that many black people don't risk pointing out discrimination when they see it. And the expectation of "white solidarity"-white people will forbear from correcting each other's racial missteps, to preserve the peace-makes genuine allyship elusive. White fragility holds racism in place.

DiAngelo addresses her book mostly to white people, and she reserves her harshest criticism for white liberals like herself (and like me), whom she sees as refusing to acknowledge their own participation in racist systems. "I believe," she writes, "that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color." Not only do these people fail to see their complicity, but they take a self-serving approach to ongoing anti-racism efforts: "To the degree that white progressives think we have arrived, we will put our energy into making sure that others see us as having arrived." Even the racial beliefs and responses that feel authentic or well-intentioned have likely been programmed by white supremacy, to perpetuate white supremacy. Whites profit off of an American political and economic system that showers advantages on racial "winners" and oppresses racial "losers." Yet, DiAngelo writes, white people cling to the notion of racial innocence, a form of weaponized denial that positions black people as the "havers" of race and the guardians of racial knowledge. Whiteness, on the other hand, scans as invisible, default, a form of racelessness. "Color blindness," the argument that race shouldn't matter, prevents us from grappling with how it does.

Much of "White Fragility" is dedicated to pulling back the veil on these so-called pillars of whiteness: assumptions that prop up racist beliefs without our realizing it. Such ideologies include individualism, or the distinctly white-American dream that one writes one's own destiny, and objectivity, the confidence that one can free oneself entirely from bias. As a sociologist trained in mapping group patterns, DiAngelo can't help but regard both precepts as naïve (at best) and arrogant (at worst). To be perceived as an individual, to not be associated with anything negative because of your skin color, she notes, is a privilege largely afforded to white people; although most school shooters, domestic terrorists, and rapists in the United States are white, it is rare to see a white man on the street reduced to a stereotype. Likewise, people of color often endure having their views attributed to their racial identities; the luxury of impartiality is denied them. (In outlining these discrepancies, DiAngelo draws heavily on the words of black writers and scholars-Ta-Nehisi Coates, Toni Morrison, Ijeoma Oluo, Cheryl Harris-although, perhaps surprisingly, she incorporates few present-day interviews with people of color.)

In DiAngelo's almost epidemiological vision of white racism, our minds and bodies play host to a pathogen that seeks to replicate itself, sickening us in the process. Like a mutating virus, racism shape-shifts in order to stay alive; when its explicit expression becomes taboo, it hides in coded language. Nor does prejudice disappear when people decide that they will no longer tolerate it. It just looks for ways to avoid detection. "The most effective adaptation of racism over time," DiAngelo claims, "is the idea that racism is conscious bias held by mean people." This "good/bad binary," positing a world of evil racists and compassionate non-racists, is itself a racist construct, eliding systemic injustice and imbuing racism with such shattering moral meaning that white people, especially progressives, cannot bear to face their collusion in it. (Pause on that, white reader. You may have subconsciously developed your strong negative feelings about racism in order to escape having to help dismantle it.) As an ethical thinker, DiAngelo belongs to the utilitarian school, which places less importance on attitudes than on the ways in which attitudes cause harm. Unpacking the fantasy of black men as dangerous and violent, she does not simply fact-check it; she shows the myth's usefulness to white people-to obscure the historical brutality against African-Americans, and to justify continued abuse.

DiAngelo sometimes adopts a soothing, conciliatory tone toward white readers, as if she were appeasing a child on the verge of a tantrum. "If your definition of a racist is someone who holds conscious dislike of people because of race, then I agree that it is offensive for me to suggest that you are racist when I don't know you," she writes. "I also agree that if this is your definition of racism, and you are against racism, then you are not racist. Now breathe. I am not using this definition of racism, and I am not saying that you are immoral. If you can remain open as I lay out my argument, it should soon begin to make sense." One has the grim hunch that such an approach has been honed over years of placating red-faced white people, workshop participants leaping at any excuse to discount their instructor. DiAngelo, for all the outrageousness she documents, never comes across as anything other than preternaturally calm, patient, and lucid, issuing prescriptions for a better world as if from beneath a blanket of Ativan. Her almost motorized equipoise clarifies the book's stakes: she cannot afford to lose us, who are so easily lost.

Self-righteousness becomes a seductive complement to "White Fragility," as gin is to a mystery novel. ("I would never," I thought, when DiAngelo described the conversation in which her friend dismissed a predominantly black neighborhood as "bad," unsafe.) Yet the point of the book is that each white person believes herself the exception, one of very few souls magically exempt from a lifetime of racist conditioning. DiAngelo sets aside a whole chapter for the self-indulgent tears of white women, so distraught at the country's legacy of racist terrorism that they force people of color to drink from the firehose of their feelings about it.

The book is more diagnostic than solutions-oriented, and the guidelines it offers toward the end-listen, don't center yourself, get educated, think about your responses and what role they play-won't shock any nervous systems. The value in "White Fragility" lies in its methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action, and its call for humility and vigilance. Combatting one's inner voices of racial prejudice, sneaky and, at times, irresistibly persuasive, is a life's work. For all the paranoid American theories of being "red-pilled," of awakening into a many-tentacled liberal/feminist/Jewish conspiracy, the most corrosive force, the ectoplasm infusing itself invisibly through media and culture and politics, is white supremacy.

That's from a white progressive perspective, of course. The conspiracy of racism is hardly invisible to people of color, many of whom, I suspect, could have written this book in their sleep.

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A Sociologist Examines the "White Fragility" That Prevents White Americans from Confronting Racism

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In more than twenty years of running diversity-training and cultural-competency workshops for American companies, the academic and educator Robin DiAngelo has noticed that white people are sensationally, histrionically bad at discussing racism. Like waves on sand, their reactions form predictable patterns: they will insist that they "were taught to treat everyone the same," that they are "color-blind," that they "don't care if you are pink, purple, or polka-dotted."

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Jay McInerney reviews book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon; drawing (M)

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How To Be An Antiracist. Written by Ibram X. Kendi. Published in 2019.

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How To Be An Antiracist taught me what it means to fight for racial justice. 

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How To Be An Antiracist taught me what it means to fight for racial justice. 

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After reading White Fragility, I picked up How To Be An Antiracist and it was another book about racism that changed my perspective and helped me grow as a person. I had already subscribed to the idea of systemic racism, but Ibram X. Kendi's argument that you either posit yourself as a racist by support of laws and policies that hurt people of color or an antiracist by supporting laws and policies that work to dismantle systemic racism helped me to see that it was not good enough for me to live as a person who considered herself as a not racist person. It is one of my touchstone books because in this day and age when Critical Race Theory, which has existed since at least the 1970s is being banned in schools throughout the country,  it is vital that those who can put books like these on our library shelves and into the hands of students.  In the library that I work for, we often put books like How to be an Antiracist  on display to attract students. As school librarians, I think it's important for us to remember that we also have a role to educate students.

Click on the link below to listen to an interview with author of How To Be An Antiracist, Ibram X Kendi.

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When I started the Rutgers University Master of Information program, I also started working as the Assistant Librarian at an all boys Catholic School in New Jersey. Our library has a significant collection of graphic novels, comics and manga since these have proven to be the most popular with our high school aged boys. After working for a few months,  I noticed that a large percentage of the students who came to talk to us at the library circulation desk were manga fans and wanted to talk to us about the books they were reading. I had never read any manga so I felt somewhat out of place. My supervisor, the head librarian, also a graduate of Rutgers MI  program talked to me and suggested that I read Junji Ito's Dissolving Classroom. This book takes its place as one of my touchstones because not only did this book make me a manga fan, it also made me a huge fan of Junji Ito's work. I promptly read all the books we had of his and even bought more of my own for my home collection. His books also taught me to appreciate the artistry and visual literacy of graphic novels and connect more to my students. I have learned that being able to connect to the students is very helpful in developing relationships with them and recommending future books to them.

Click on the link below to watch an interview with the horror manga artist Junji Ito.

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An Autism Spectrum View of The Curious Incident Of the Dog In The Night-Time.

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Caged Bird Legacy | The Legacy of Dr. Maya Angelou

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We are celebrating Maya Angelou's 95th year, which started on her Birthday on April 4th, 2023. Join the celebration here and on social media, and watch as others honor Dr. Angelou's courage, life, and legacy.

Maya Angelou becomes 1st Black woman featured on US quarters

The legendary author and poet, who died in 2014, is the first featured in a series of new quarters issued by the U.S. Mint.

The United States Mint recently began shipping quarters featuring the image of poet Maya Angelou, the first coins in its American Women Quarters Program.

Angelou, an American author, poet and civil rights activist, rose to prominence with the publication of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" in 1969. Angelou, who died in 2014 at the age of 86, was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010 by President Barack Obama.

The quarter design depicts Angelou with outstretched arms. Behind her are a bird in flight and a rising sun, images inspired by her poetry.

The mint's program will issue 20 quarters over the next four years honoring women and their achievements in shaping the nation's history.

Honoring the legacy of world-renowned poet, author and civil rights leader, Dr. Maya Angelou.

The Dr. Maya Angelou Foundation is dedicated to improving the quality of life for all human beings. Our vision is to support educational excellence and healthcare equity initiatives for all.

Alone Together - an intimate portrait of a world in lockdown. With voiceover by Dr.Maya Angelou's son, Guy Johnson.

Maya Angelou's Alone is a poem about loneliness and togetherness, a 'thinking out loud' reflection on vulnerability and community 'Nobody, but nobody, can make it out here alone.' Though written in 1975, it clearly resonates with the alone/together experiences we've all lived through during the pandemic.

We mourn the loss of Robert Loomis, Maya Angelou's friend and editor of her books including "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

Celebrating Dr. Maya Angelou's 95th Birthday

This April 4th, we are excited to celebrate 95 years of the life and legacy of Dr. Maya Angelou! We will celebrate her entire 95th year with different in-person and virtual events and will share special stories and Angelou facts online from now until March 2024. Follow Dr. Maya Angelou on Facebook , Instagram , Twitter , and YouTube , and sign up to receive upcoming newsletters for more.

Today's #GoogleDoodle celebrates Dr. Maya Angelou's 90th birthday! Set to her poem #StillIRise, the video Doodle includes her own voice along with the voices of other individuals whose lives she has inspired.

Stay up-to-date with the latest news & updates from us...

Stay up-to-date with the latest news & updates from us...

Stay up-to-date with the latest news & updates from us...

We celebrate the re-release of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, with a foreword by "daughter-friend" Oprah Winfrey. We celebrate a book that changed the nation and eventually the world by giving a young black girl a voice, once lost then freed to sing the song of all people.
PURCHASE THIS BOOK TODAY "

MESSAGE FROM THE FAMILY

Developing a love of truth, standing for civil rights, enjoying life itself and recording the experience, our matriarch became an inspiration. Maya Angelou's words, spoken, on the printed page or reflected here, continue to promote self-examination, equality and friendship. Believing that "we are more alike than unalike", Maya Angelou would be the first to say that as a child of God it was her duty to recognize that everyone else was also a child of God, "Everybody born comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory."

Join us as we celebrate a life well lived! Take time to read, listen, view and be inspired. Trail your wisps of glory and once you've clicked every page, make sure you return as we continue to expand the experience. Together, let's celebrate life and joy!

The Angelou Johnson Family

CMG Worldwide

CMG pioneered representation for deceased celebrities through our legal expertise and created an opportunity for a deceased celebrity's heirs to retain rights. With over 200 celebrities, it has the largest portfolio of legends to this day. There can be no substitute for experience and skill in the licensing world. CMG's position as the industry leader gives an advantage that other agencies are simply not able to match.

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Maya Angelou | Maya Angelou - Caged Bird Legacy

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Maya Angelou, an American author, poet and civil rights activist, rose to prominence with the publication of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" in 1969...

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The Catcher in the Rye. Written by J.D. Salinger. Cover artist E. Michael Mitchell. Published in 1951. 

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The Catcher In The Rye brought me back to pleasure reading. 

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The Catcher In The Rye brought me back to pleasure reading. 

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There was a period of time in my life, let us call it late middle school through some of high school when I stopped wanting to read. Reading became a chore and synonymous with academia. I also disliked all of the analysis that I had to do in reading for school, instead of just reading for pure enjoyment. This all changed when my Sophomore or Junior (I cannot exactly recall) English class read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger. Although, I wasn't crazy about the work I had to with it for my class, I really connected to the main character of Holden Caulfield and his thoughts of life and existence as well as, to J.D Salinger's direct first-person style of writing. I consider this book to be a touchstone because after reading it I decided to read as many books of J.D. Salinger that I possibly could. The Catcher In The Rye broke my long drought of pleasure reading.

Click on the link below to read the first reviews of The Catcher In The Rye.

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"I was surrounded by phonies...They were coming in the goddam window."
70 years ago today, The Catcher in the Rye first hit bookshelves across the US, and people still have some pretty strong opinions about J. D. Salinger's groundbreaking debut. Die-hard fans and rabid haters are legion. Indeed, of all the mid-century American novels to stand the test of time, perhaps only On the Road provokes a comparably polarizing response among contemporary readers. Many argue that Catcher remains the quintessential story of teenage angst and alienation, as resonant and formative a text for today's youth as it was in the 1950s; while no small amount of others, still pissed at being forced to write 11th grade English papers on the motivations of its, em, singular protagonist, resent the book's exalted status as a foundation text in the modern American canon and staple of high school syllabi countrywide.

Love it or hate it, though, The Catcher in the Rye has endured (it still sells about a million copies a year, bringing its grand total to somewhere in the region of 73 million), and we felt that this auspicious publication anniversary merited some manner of retrospective. So here it is: a load of phonies from The New York Times, TIME, The New Yorker, and elsewhere writing about their impressions of Holden Caulfield and his New York odyssey way back in 1951.

*

"This girl Helga, she kills me. She reads just about everything I bring into the house, and a lot of crumby stuff besides. She's crazy about kids. I mean stories about kids. But Hel, she says there's hardly a writer alive can write about children. Only these English guys Richard Hughes and Walter de la Mare, she says. The rest is all corny. It depresses her. That's another thing. She can sniff a corny guy or a phony book quick as a dog smells a rat. This phoniness, it gives old Hel a pain if you want to know the truth. That's why she came hollering to me one day, her hair falling over her face and all, and said I had to read some damn story in The New Yorker. Who's the author? I said. Salinger, She told me, J. D. Salinger. Who's he? I asked. How should I know, she said, just you read it.

...

"That's the way it sounds to me, Hel said, and away she went with this crazy book. The Catcher in the Rye. What did I tell ya, she said next day. This Salinger, he's a short story guy. And he knows how to write about kids. This book though, it's too long. Gets kind of monotonous. And he should've cut out a lot about these jerks and all at that crumby school. They depress me. They really do. Salinger, he's best with real children. I mean young ones like old Phoebe, his kid sister. She's a personality. Holden and little old Phoeb, Hel said, they kill me. This last part about her and Holden and this Mr. Antolini, the only guy Holden ever thought he could trust, who ever took any interest in him, and who turned out queer-that's terrific. I swear it is.

You needn't swear, Hel, I said. Know what? This Holden, he's just like you. He finds the whole world's full of people say one thing and mean another and he doesn't like it; and he hates movies and phony slobs and snobs and crumby books and war. Boy, how he hates war. Just like you, Hel, I said. But old Hel, she was already reading this crazy Catcher book all over again. That's always a good sign with Hel."

- James Stern, The New York Times, July 15, 1951

" 'Some of my best friends are children,' says Jerome David Salinger, 32. 'In fact, all of my best friends are children.' And Salinger has written short stories about his best friends with love, brilliance and 20-20 vision. In his tough-tender first novel, The Catcher in the Rye (a Book-of-the-Month Club midsummer choice), he charts the miseries and ecstasies of an adolescent rebel, and deals out some of the most acidly humorous deadpan satire since the late great Ring Lardner.

...

"For U.S. readers, the prize catch in The Catcher in the Rye may well be Novelist Salinger himself. He can understand an adolescent mind without displaying one."

- TIME, July 16, 1951

"Holden's story is told in Holden's own strange, wonderful language by J. D. Salinger in an unusually brilliant novel ... Holden is bewildered, lonely, ludicrous and pitiful. His troubles, his failings are not of his own making but of a world that is out of joint. There is nothing wrong with him that a little understanding and affection, preferably from his parents, couldn't have set right. Though confused and unsure of himself, like most 16-year-olds, he is observant and perceptive and filled with a certain wisdom. His minor delinquencies seem minor indeed when contrasted with adult delinquencies with which he is confronted.

Mr. Salinger, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere, tells a story well, in this case under the special difficulties of casting it in the form of Holden's first-person narrative. This was a perilous undertaking, but one that has been successfully achieved. Mr. Salinger's rendering of teen-age speech is wonderful: the unconscious humor, the repetitions, the slang and profanity, the emphasis, all are just right. Holden's mercurial changes of mood, his stubborn refusal to admit his own sensitiveness and emotions, his cheerful disregard of what is sometimes known as reality are typically and heart breakingly adolescent."

- Nash K. Burger, The New York Times, July 16, 1951

"The book as a whole is disappointing, and not merely because it is a reworking of a theme that one begins to suspect must obsess the author. Holden Caulfield, the main character who tells his own story, is an extraordinary portrait, but there is too much of him...

In the course of 277 pages, the reader wearies of [his] explicitness, repetition and adolesence, exactly as one would weary of Holden himself. And this reader at least suffered from an irritated feeling that Holden was not quite so sensitive and perceptive as he, and his creator, thought he was. In any case he is so completely self-centered that the other characters who wander through the book-with the notable exception of his sister Phoebe-have nothing like his authenticity ... In a writer of Salinger's undeniable talent, one expects something more."

- Anne L. Goodman, The New Republic, 1951

"A young man possessed of a young man's vigor and callowness and an old man's jaundiced eye rip-snorts his way through this raucous novel and by turns delights, frightens, shocks you and leaves you close to the tears into which he himself bursts as the climax to his mad escapade.

...

"He tells the story himself; tough and tender, frown and smile, bitter and sweet. It's a sort of lost week end; it's a boy who can't go home again; he belongs to a lost generation and lives in a world he never made. It reminds us of significant conclusions reached by other writers in our time. But besides that, and despite your hoots of laughter at Holden's indomitable speech, this is in essence the tragic story of a problem child, unless indeed it's an indictment of a problem world. Month in, month out, novels don't come much better."

-The Associated Press, July 29, 1951

"Mr. Salinger's brilliant, funny, meaningful novel is written in the first person. Holden Caulfield is made to tell his own story, in his own strange idiom. Holden is not a normal boy. He is hypersensitive and hyper-imaginative (perhaps these are synonymous). He is double-minded. He is inexorably self-critical; at various times, he refers to himself as yellow, as a terrible liar, a madman, a moron.

...

"The literalness and innocence of Holden's point of view in the face of the tremendously complicated and often depraved facts of life make for the humor of this novel: serious haggles with belligerent taxi-drivers; abortive conversational attempts with a laconic prostitute in a hurry; an 'intellectual' discussion with a pompous and phony intellectual only a few years older than himself; an expedition with Sally Hayes, which is one of the funniest expeditions, surely, in the history of juvenilia. Holden's contacts with the outside world are generally extremely funny. It is his self-communings that are tragic and touching-a dark whirlpool churning fiercely below the unflagging hilarity of his surface activities."

- S. N. Behrman, The New Yorker, August 11, 1951

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Check out the very first reviews of The Catcher in the Rye.

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"I was surrounded by phonies...They were coming in the goddam window." 70 years ago today, The Catcher in the Rye first hit bookshelves across the US, and people still have some pretty strong opinions about J. D. Salinger's groundbreaking debut. Die-hard fans and rabid haters are legion.

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L'Etranger. Written in French by Albert Camus. Published in French in 1942 and then in English in 1946.

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The Stranger helped me explore my questions about existence. 

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The Stranger helped me explore my questions about existence. 

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Where the Sidewalk Ends. Written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein. Published in 1974. 

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Where the Sidewalk Ends sparked my life-long love of poetry. 

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Where the Sidewalk Ends sparked my life-long love of poetry. 

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Where The Sidewalk Ends was one of the first books that I remember really loving as a child. My mom and I would often read the poems over and over again; they always stirred different emotions in me. My favorite of them all had to be Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take The Garbage Out.  I loved the way Shel Silverstein used rhymes to tell funny and poignant stories through his poetry. I consider this book one of my touchstones because it opened up my imagination and started me on the path to having a life-long love of poetry.  Even though this is a children's book,  I still read it from time and time as an adult. It reminds me that no matter what category or age group a book falls under, it can be good reading for a person of any age. This is something that I hope to always remember in my work as a librarian.

Click on the link below to read a 1974 review of Shel Silverstein's book Where The Sidewalk Ends.

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Credit... The New York Times Archives

One of the things that annoys me is the way publishers have of labeling children's books with age categories: "4 to 6," "8 to 14," that sort of thing. Here's a volume of verse for children labeled "all ages." It's either the ultimate in silliness or the ultimate in good sense. Quite possibly the latter.
By Shel Silverstein. illustrated. 166 pp. New York: Harper & Row. $7.95. (All Ages)
Take it from the top age group. There are a number of rollicking patter songs that a parent could well enjoy tripping off for a child audience. Consider:
Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would not take the garbage out! She'd scour the pots and scrape the pans. Candy the yams and spice the hams, And though her daddy would scream and shout, She simply would not take the garbage out. And so it piled up to the ceilings: Coffee grounds, potato peelings, Brown bananas, rotten peas. Chunks of sour cottage cheese.
And so on. A magnificent catalogue of garbage that's fun to read aloud and that should delight any youngster who's been collecting those unofficial camp and kindergarten chants on the side. In fact, for the younger members of "all ages" there's, quite a bit of flouting of traditional niceties scattered throughout. Probably a good thing. For the middle members, things tend to go squishy. Take the opening stanza of the title poem:
There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white. And there the sun burns crimson bright. And there the moon‐bird rests from his flight. To cool in the peppermint wind. Echo of the Beatles.
Shel Silverstein is, in fact, a song writer himself (he wrote Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue," and several of the poems in this book are adapted from sotiglyrics). He's even a recording artist in his own right ("Freakin at the Freakers Ball"). And a cartoonist (he used to do hairy prisoners in medieval dungeons for Playboy, and he's done 84 black‐and‐white drawings for this book). And a philosopher (author of a goopy morality lesson called "The Giving Tree" that has become a sort of second‐string "Jonathan Livingston Seagull"). In short, what his press releases call a Renaissance Man.

The trouble is he isn't. Not even 19th‐century eccentric. He's a very facile 20th‐century man with a sense of where the market is. The result is sense of derivativeness. Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout, for example, despite the different nature of her problem, seems a descendant of A.A. Milne's James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree, who took great care of his mother, though he was only 3. A poem called "Dreadful" (an outspoken working‐off of sibling rivalries) is straight out of the "Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes" ("Billy, in one of his nice new sashes,/Fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes") of Harry Graham:
Someone ate the baby. It's rather sad to say someone ate the baby So she won't be out to Play. It was a heartless thing to do. The policemen haven't got 'a clue. I simply can't imagine who Would go and (burp) eat the baby.
The nonsense rhymes are reminiscent of Dr. Seuss (with perhaps touch of Edward Lear, though give points to the drawings of either Seuss or Lear):
Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too Went for a ride in a flying shoe. "Hooray!" "What fun!" "It's time we flew!" Said Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me too.
One last carping comment: Light verse - especially light verse that slides over into logical nonsense-has to be impeccable. And Shel Silverstein is very sloppy about false rhymes. Here's a sequence from "The Crocodile's Toothache": "guess/ West/ address/ less." And one from "No Difference" (I've reversed the order): "mite/ light/ white/ light/ right/ light/ giant/ light." Ira Gershwin could do better than that without half trying.

But all that aside, there's some nice, lively stuff in here, good for reading aloud on a sleety weekend afternoon. Just don't make it the only book of verse on the children's shelves.

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Where the Sidewalk Ends (Published 1974)

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One of the things that annoys me is the way publishers have of labeling children's books with age categories: "4 to 6," "8 to 14," that sort of thing. Here's a volume of verse for children labeled "all ages." It's either the ultimate in silliness or the ultimate in good sense.

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A Wrinkle in Time. Written by Madeleine L'Engle and Illustrated by Ellen Raskin. Published in 1962. 

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A Wrinkle In Time started my interest in fantasy and science fiction. 

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A Wrinkle In Time started my interest in fantasy and science fiction. 

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I loved reading A Wrinkle in Time in late elementary school or early middle school. I apologize that I cannot quite remember when I actually first read it;  I am in my early 40s and that was a long time ago. What I do remember is how much this book excited me and opened up my imagination. For me it is a touchstone book as it was the first book that started my life-long love of fantasy and science fiction novels. Like many others, I had struggles and issues as a child and sometimes real life was difficult to experience. The plot of A Wrinkle in Time gave me the strength to believe that I could overcome my issues while at that same time, it also gave me the chance to escape into a different and exciting world. It taught me that books could help me confront my troubles and/or leave my troubles behind.

Click on the link below to hear a 1975 talk by Madeleine L'Engle regarding her thoughts on writing.

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The Stranger was another book that I had to read for one of my high school English class's but actually enjoyed. Although the book was not intended for adolescents, the style was extremely accessible and it really resonated with me as a person that was questioning my role in the world and the meaning of life; questions that I would grapple with through much of my 20's. I place it as a touchstone book since it was also the catalyst to me becoming interested in existentialist philosophy and French films, especially those of the 1960s and 1970s.

Click on the link below to watch a short BBC documentary about Albert Camus and The Stranger.

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A Talk with Junji Ito | Creator Interview | VIZ

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At a time when white nationalism and hate crimes are all too common, historian Ibram X. Kendi takes a critical look at how racist ideology operates in American society and what can be done to stop it in its tracks.

Reset checked in with Kendi about his new book, How To Be An Antiracist.

On exploring racism through the lens of personal experience

Ibram X. Kendi: I think when people think about race and racism, it's a deeply personal affair. ... Many people are very, in many ways, closed-minded or even defensive, especially when they're charged with being racist. In many ways, we're taught to close up and to feel as if we're being attacked and to sort of not confess and not admit when we're being racist. I knew that the heartbeat of anti-racism itself is confession, and so I wanted to model that in sharing my own personal story.

On the connection between racism and capitalism

Kendi: Historically, when you look at the emergence of capitalism itself, it emerged in the same place at the same time as what became known as the transatlantic slave trade. And it grew through colonialism. It grew through chattel slavery, particularly in the Americas. And so when you talk about its origin and its growth, it originated and grew side by side with racism itself. ... When you look at it empirically, particularly in our time, you can't really separate wealth from race in the United States and across the world, and you can't really separate poverty from race. And the reason being is because racist and capitalist policies have long intersected to essentially make it such that let's say black people were disproportionately poor and white people were disproportionately wealthy.

On reparations and the racial wealth gap

Kendi: White people have about 10 times more wealth in this country than black people, and then when you actually forecast forward, one forecast fact is finding that ... between now and 2053, white wealth will grow. Median black wealth is forecasted the red line at zero dollars. ... In other words, you have a racial wealth gap in this country that's growing. ... One of the things that I've sort of encouraged people who are for or even against reparations who also classify themselves as someone who's for equity, racial equity and economic justice and racial justice, is how do you reverse and potentially even eliminate the racial wealth gap, which is a function of past and present racist policies, without reparations? And I've never really been able to hear a policy program that essentially can do that other than something as wide-ranging as reparations.

On how to live as an antiracist

Kendi: I think the first thing is an antiracist is looking out upon their society, in their everyday life, and seeing the racial groups as equal. Someone who is not denigrating or lifting up any particular racial group. Someone who as they see racial inequity, they're not stating that's the result of a particular racial group's inferiorities, but that's the result of racist policies. And then that person is seeking to say, "OK, you know what area am I most passionate about? Or what place am I most passionate about reforming?" And then they follow that passion or that area. They become part of that struggle to challenge racist policies, and they either become part of that struggle through donating their time ... [or] they donate and finance those campaigns and movements and organizations. ... Fundamentally, an antiracist is a part of the struggle that is challenging racism on an everyday basis.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Click the "play" button to hear the entire conversation.

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Historian Ibram X. Kendi On 'How To Be An Antiracist'

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At a time when white nationalism and hate crimes are all too common, historian Ibram X. Kendi takes a critical look at how racist ideology operates in American society and what can be done to stop it in its tracks. Reset checked in with Kendi about his new book, How To Be An Antiracist.

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Camus and The Stranger (Rare BBC Documentary)

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(ORIGINAL. Music by Satie) Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in Dréan (then known as Mondovi) in French Algeria to a Pied-Noir family. His mother was of Spanish descent and was half-deaf. His father Lucien, a poor agricultural worker, died in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during World War I, while serving as a member of the Zouave infantry regiment.