The Weekly Books: books I discovered while subbing

Okay, so we all know that subbing is not always the most stimulating of jobs.  Oh sure we must manage and pay attention and try to keep kids on task, but lessons (especially in middle and high school classrooms) are just not the most riveting. So I learned to make the most of it. And sometimes I borrowed books.  And each of these books has left a profound impact on me.

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech: I owned this book as a child but never read it. So I picked it up out of name recognition on a day I subbed in a seventh grade classroom where the lesson was silent reading for 55 minutes.  At first I threw together a lesson, because who expects seventh graders to sustain silent reading that long.  But the kids doth protested.  It was silent reading day! Fine by me, because that meant I got silent reading myself All. Day. Long.  Walk Two Moons is a middle grade novel that follows Sal, a girl telling a story to her grandparents while on a road trip.  Her story is about Phoebe, but as Phoebe’s story unfolds, so does Sal’s.  It’s heartbreaking, heartwarming, and suspenseful till the end.

Code Orange by Caroline B. Cooney: I picked this up while subbing in a science classroom for a former high school classmate of mine.  And I might have taken it home and finished it in 24 hours and returned it later.  Cooney knows how to write suspense (uh, Face on the Milk Carton, anyone from the 90s?)  Code Orange opens with our protagonist procrastinating on a science paper.  He ends up finding some old medical books in his basement, and as he opens one, out falls an envelope with scabs from the flu epidemic in the early twentieth century.  And suddenly he is thrust into a life-and-death journey to prevent biological apocalypse.

The Giver by Lois Lowry:  Again, not sure how this one slipped by my own childhood reading, but one day early in my subbing career I was asked to read aloud from somewhere in the middle of this book.  That’s always the worst haha. I was hooked.  Went to the library after school and promptly read the whole thing.  Absolutely mind-blowing and heartrending.  I can see why it has been banned on occasion.  And I can see why it absolutely needs to be available in every middle grade classroom.

It’s therapy.  It’s escape.  It’s story. Keep reading, friends!