Seven short stories with Amazon Rapids Reading App.

NUTS, Cayden's Car and Superstition, all MG manuscripts in various  stages of  completion.

BURIED (Formerly called Aunt Agnes), Brandon Inn Ghost Story

Ruth and I visited hundreds of schools over the last decade. We'd love to visit yours.

As a member of the MRA, I promote literacy and reading throughout our great state.

A member since 2009, I've worked on the Advisory Committee to chair conferences, worked as a Shop Talk group leader, and write for The Mitten blog.

With published authors, storytellers, teachers and writers of all stripes, this collection of creators is invaluable.

*It's our opinion, and we're sticking to it.

While attending a national writer's conference in Los Angeles in 2015, chance united me with these four writers. 

We continue to meet periodically to this day on Google Hangouts.

A local writing conference and a short-lived online critique group led me to work with Editor Teresa Crumpton of Author Spark.

She's been amazing at punching up my writing.

Because even though some of it is embarrassing, that's how one grows.

Parody newspapers, literary magazines, local magazines and newspapers and much more.

Coming soon, after I dig it up.

Well, at least it rhymes. Mostly.

Good to have these all together in one place, for someone's amusement.

“Maybe,” I said to the lady cop, “it’s all misdirection.”

“I asked you where your grandparents went. Which direction is misdirection?”

Grandpa always said you had to figure out your audience, and I knew my audience was cranky. She might’ve been naturally that way, or maybe she didn’t want to be stuck on this old person missing person’s case.

I knew she was mad about the rope ladder being the only way to climb to the scene of the crime. Mom and I had to lug the creaky extension ladder from the garage. And she could’ve been angry about that, too, since it wasn’t much better.

And she’d really be really aggravated to find out I hadn’t changed my story since the last time I saw her. Because all I could remember when Gtrandpa and Grandma Arbour disappeared was a bright flash of light.

“Misdirection is for magic tricks,” I said. I looked at my close-fisted left hand while I reached for her head with my right hand.

She grabbed my wrist, and the quarter I was sliding up my fingers to pull from her ear squirted from under my thumb and popped her in the eye. At least I knew for sure why she was pissed now.

“Ow,” said the lady cop, squeezing my wrist. “You assaulting a police officer?”

“I was showing you misdirection. You’re supposed to look where I’m looking, at my balled-up hand,” which was turning pale as the blood stopped running to it. She let go of my wrist so she could rub her eye. I flexed my fingers and shook my hand to get the circulation going again. “Good reflexes.”

“Chase,” Mom said. “This is no time for fool’s play. Just answer the question.”

{Insert new Chapter One. Policewoman is in treehouse with Chase and his Mom, asking about the disappearance of Grandpa and Grandma Arbour. Chase can’t remember anything other than a white flash. Cop is skeptical about Chase’s version, irritated that it was so hard to get into the treehouse, and generally ticked she gets these kinds of rinky-dink missing person cases. The official stance seems to be that Grandpa ran off with his deteriorating wife. In fact, a pair of overalls were stolen from a clothesline. Theory is he disguised the two of them.}

Chase tries to pull a coin out of ear, but fails. As she leaves, she pulls her business card out of his brillo mop of hair.}

Shelley was nuts. Trust me, I knew nuts. It kind of ran like a squirrely grandpa through my family.

Sixth grade girls were inscrutable, sure. Gathering in giggling gaggles to whisper and cast furtive glances, they were just hard to figure. And they oozed sarcasm. I had to look that word up to be sure, but there was no mistaking that knife-edged tone of snark. Not that they whispered, cast or oozed at me: they ignored me like I wasn’t there.

But that was normal-girl stuff. Shelley was not a normal girl. And what was definitely not normal was that she was attracted to me.

No, not like boyfriend-girlfriend. Sorry, I threw up a little in my mouth. More like she was a pile of metal shavings, and I was a big old magnet. And no matter how hard I tried not to attract crazy, I could not turn off that incessant pull.

It’s not politically correct to call mentally and socially differently-abled people crazy or nuts or loco or any other name. I figured I had a good excuse, because I was one of them.

I was about halfway up that twelve foot ladder when I remembered I was afraid of heights. It might have been the bouncy bend that creaky metal made with every one of my husky steps. Maybe the sharp-edged leaves, green with just a touch of yellow, that slapped at me like they really meant to see me fall.

Definitely it was the nasty gray squirrel, a notch missing from the top of its left ear, chattering and charging, then retreating, as I approached the tree house. Pretty much my tree house, now that Grandpa had disappeared, but as I swayed in the wind, gripping the metal rungs at eye level, I decided the squirrel could have it.

It wasn’t my favorite place anyway, not anymore. I helped Grandpa build it, and kind of forgot that I didn’t like to stick my tongue out at gravity, way up where one clumsy move and the hard ground reaches up to break your face. These were not the thoughts to keep me climbing, and yet the next thing I knew I’d grabbed hold of the railing of the tree house deck.

The ladder groaned and slipped, and in terror I grabbed hold of the wooden spindles and hauled my shoulders up onto the floor, my belly scraping along the boards as I dragged my top half onto the relatively solid planks. My legs scrambled after, almost knocking the ladder away from the trunk. It swung out, and then slammed back with a clunk.

I crawled toward the doorway and its promise of interior stability 

Grandma’s calloused hand had softened, like the gooey edges of her mind, but she still had a grip. She crunched my fingers together as we approached the tree with our tree house in it. I’m pretty sure she was excited. I felt like adding the soggy cereal sloshing around in my stomach to the thin mat of party-colored leaves under the base of the tree.

Grandpa called it our tree house, as in, it belonged to me and Mom and Grandma and him. But Mom was too busy working to climb up, even if she wanted to, which she didn’t. She had no time for childish pleasures, she said.

 Grandma wanted to, but we didn’t let her. That’s all she had time for now, childish pleasures, because her Grandma-brain had melted to a point where she was like the toddler sister I never had.

I didn’t want to climb up, ever, because my feet preferred solid ground, and so did the rest of me. I was terrified of heights, and I reminded Grandpa of that from the day he decided to build that monstrosity to this very morning.

No, the tree house was all Grandpa’s.

But the crumpled-up note in my jeans pocket had instructions that made me wonder whether Grandpa had caught Grandma’s dementia. Most eleven year old boys didn’t even know the word, but I lived it, left home, changed schools, lost every friend except my grandparents when we moved in with them. 

I knew you couldn’t catch it like a cold, but the way Grandpa had been acting lately, muttering all night in his basement workshop, scuttling around behind haunted eyes, maybe he had the seeds of it in him, too. If so, what did that mean for me and my already forgetful brain?

I didn’t have to read Grandpa’s crunched-up handwriting to know what I had to do 

        I shouldn’t have opened the window. That was my first mistake.

No, my first mistake was right after school, when I slipped through the cornfield path that wandered to my grandparent’s house, and this loony girl with a big ratty nightgown tied up over her shoulder grabbed me. I mean, like pinched my elbow with two dirty fingernails until I had no feeling in my fingers, grabbed me.

Maybe I couldn’t have run away then, but I sure could’ve called the cops, especially when Shelley, that was the loony girls name, threatened to come get me that night. Except I’d end up talking to Officer Mikayla. I’m pretty sure the police officer was still pissed she’d had to climb that wiggly ladder to the tree house and then find out I couldn’t remember anything except a bright light explosion when 

my grandparents disappeared.

Maybe my very first mistake was being born into this nutty family, my folks divorced, my Mom’s parents acting more like my parents. Until Grandma Marshalla started losing pieces of her memory, with Grandpa experimenting feverishly in his basement workshop on something to bring her back.

But can I call it a mistake when I don’t remember it? I mean, if I don’t remember making a decision, to be born,or to help my grandparents disappear, can it be my fault?

Still, I owned this particular mistake. The decision was, open the window with Shelley’s crazed face on the other side, or run and hide, wake my exhausted Mom up or call 911 and try to explain that a crazy girl had somehow crawled up the side of the house to scratch at the glass.

I burst into the house, forgot to shut the door. Forgot to hang up my coat and my backpack, forgot to wipe off my muddy shoes, fresh from the corn field.

I forgot to shout out hello, and when I got to Grandma and Grandpa’s bedroom door, I forgot to knock. I just blasted my way in, like an autumn wind before a storm.

It wasn’t normal not-doing-stuff, which everyone doesn’t do. I went back later, because I had an itch in my brain, and found all those undone things. I remembered that I forgot. And that was the problem.

Grandpa had his pipe between his teeth, his lips popping like a fish breathing the oxygen out of water. Grandpa startled, dropped the pipe, caught it at belly level.

“Hey, Chase. I wasn’t smoking it, just thinking.”

“Thinking about smoking?” I asked. My brain was off course already. “You promised Mom.” 

“No, no. Just thinking about choices, and promises kept and not. Smoking’s a filthy habit, don’t you ever get started.” He wagged his pipe at me. It still smelled a little like apples and burnt leaves. “But it helps me think sometimes, with a really tough problem, to have this pipe in my mouth. Say hello to your grandmother.”

Grandma sat on the edge of the bed, rocking a little, back and forth, staring at her slippers. They were fuzzy green. She wore her favorite bathrobe, bright colored stripes of red, green and orange. 

CAYDEN’S CAR

                                                         CHAPTER ONE (Trouble seeing)

I breathed some moist mist on the lens, then wiped my smudged glasses on the chest protector.  I squinted into the deepening dusk, just barely making out the shape of the Breath Car and Dad.

Most of the lights in the parking lot were dead or broken, but my poor eyesight was the main culprit. I fitted the thick frames back over my nose, and found my sight blurred even worse than before.

Then a scene establishing the relationship between the narrator and his Dad. Cayden is a worry-wart. He knows he’s not a good mechanic. His accident in making the gizmo and the car function was pure luck, and he mostly has evidence, despite the monkey wrench from his Mom, that he sucks as a McAnnix. Yet he is willing to sacrifice his life to bring his family back together. He thinks he can fix that.

The Dad, Matt, is an optimist. He’s a good mechanic, a great inventor, but a little too free with his signature before signing documents. That’s helped to cause his current situation, broke, nearly homeless, unemployed (or self-employed). But through it all he is blithely cheerful and hopeful.

 This scene establishes their situation, desperate, creating a little version of the car because they can’t afford to build anything bigger. That they called in a favor to get the car into the Auto Show, where Matt knows Mayor Harry Hizzonner. That it is a revolutionary invention that runs on spent breath. 

                                                     CAYDEN’S CAR

                                                          CHAPTER ONE

                                                      TROUBLE SEEING

I grabbed the door knob, and it popped off in my hands. Dad had his head stuck under the washing machine lid, adjusting the engine, so I hurried up and snatched the monkey wrench from my back pocket. I replaced the knob, tightening the screw with the slotted blade attached to the bottom of the wrench.

I thought of Mom as I slid the wrench back into my pocket. Then I thought of some bad words when the knob came off in my gloved hand again. I gritted my teeth and gave the screw an extra quarter twist this time. My Dad was still puttering under the hood of the Breath Car.

A drop of sweat streaked the inside of my glasses lens. It was freezing out, but I perspired. That’s me all over. I breathed some moist air on the lens, then wiped my smudged glasses on the chest protector I wore. I fitted the thick frames back over my nose, and found my sight blurred even worse than before. That’s me all over, too.  

We used a doorknob to open the car because we stole it off my bedroom door. That’s okay, because if this scheme of ours didn’t work out, I wouldn’t have a bedroom anyway. Besides, this wasn’t a normal car. 

It was, instead, a little bitty go kart assembled from scrap, barely big enough for a kid to squeeze his short but wide body into. It was a rolling deathtrap.

CAYDEN’S CAR

"Call the police," said Dad. "Our invention's been stolen."

The mayor looked at Elle, who nodded curtly. "The police it is," he said. He cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled, "Oh police man!"

A burly fat man in a blue uniform with big gold buttons that strained at his bulging belly muscled through the door. He wore a tall hat shaped like a bullet and held a short club in his hand. He seemed to be a bad combination of a Keystone Cop and an English Bobby. This guy was just a thug in a cop get-up, no stretch for a mayor who wore nothing but costumes.

Illustration: fat man in a bizarre cop uniform

"What seems to be the problem here?" he rumbled, looking from my Dad to me with beady eyes in chubby cheeks.

"Someone stole our car," said Dad and I in unison.

"Serious charge," said the cop. "Describe this alleged vehicle."

"It's a little thing, only big enough for my son to drive."

"You let the kid drive? What is he, eight?"

"Eleven," said Dad.

"Almost twelve," I said. "The car's got mountain bike wheels on the front and a lawn roller on the back axle. Made out of spare parts, and it runs on breath. The Breath Car."  

Illustration: The Breath Car in a voice bubble as Cayden describes it. 

  CAYDEN’S CAR: A chapter book mystery

                              CAYDEN’S CAR CAPER

CHAPTER ONE

  I strapped on the too-tight bike helmet. Like everything else I wore, it didn’t fit. I had already velcroed on the goalie shin pads, buckled up the catcher’s chest protector and shrugged into the shoulder pads. I looked like a bunch of sports threw up on me.*

  “Come on, Dad.” I pounded on my chest with muffled thuds. “This has got to be good enough.”

   “Your back is unprotected.” Dad held up a puffy, striped pillow case. “I made this into a cape full of packing peanuts.”

  “Just what are you worried about?” He and I had built this car from the mountain bike wheels in front to the lawn roller in back. What’d be safer than something built with our own hands? I have the Dad as a worry wart, and Cayden as the genius inventor in this version. Later, I have Cayden as a klutz, and not trusting his own work. Need to find each character their proclivities.

 “Oh, I don’t know. I could  be concerned because I’m trusting my twelve year old kid, my only kid, to drive a car, made out of scrap, which until yesterday didn’t even move?” I touched the doorknob on the car door, and it came off in my hand.

  I reached into my back pocket for my customized monkey wrench. It had started out a regular adjustable wrench. I had added fold-out screwdriver blades, a full set of allen wrenches and a pry bar. I could buy an all-purpose tool, but it wouldn’t be a gift from my Mom five years ago. It wouldn’t have the monkey’s face she had drawn on the head of 

I despaired when my "Superstition" folder came up empty, but I found a hard copy. Now I just have to copy it or type from scratch.

SUPERSTITION CHAPTER ONE

The ball was launched right at my face at about a hundred miles an hour because Wil didn’t do anything halfway. We were about 90 feet apart, but Holy Moses that ball gobbled up the distance fast. I had my glove up, but knowing Wil, there was a twist and sure enough, right at the last moment it dipped and veered outside. I don’t think baseball even had a name for that pitch, so I called it “Wilpower.”

Maybe I’d write it in my will, so at least Wil’d have something from me.

I rifled the ball back, though my aim was short and it took a bounce before hitting the glove. Who could throw right, with the kind of stuff swirling around in my brain?

“So, my birthday’s tomorrow,” I said. I took another high, hard one in the palm of my glove. There wasn’t much padding left there.

“What is that?” said Wil. “A hint? I never get you anything anyway.” Wil leaped into the air to spear my errant overthrow before it busted a neighbor’s window.

‘You know I was born on Friday the 13th,” I said. Wil changed the pace, floated a knuckleball at me that took an hour to snuggle into my glove. And then I dropped it.

“Yeah, I got it. Unlucky day,” Wil ranged far to the left to corral another of my tosses. I should just give up this game of catch. Though, to be honest, it wasn’t much worse from the way I normally played.

“Way worse than that, “ I said, as I snared another hard-thrown ball. Sheesh, that stung. “It’s like a devil’s curse, like the person is bound to be unlucky their whole lives. Like a black mark on my soul.”

Sweat dripped down the hair pasted on my forehead. I shoulda taken the old bag up on her offer to buzz cut me, but fuck her if I’d give her the satisfaction of being right, which she always was. It burned my eyeballs like some sort of ingenious torture device.

I stomped down on the shovel and it pierced the dirt and hit something hard, like a rock. There are about a hundred thousand of those bastards planted in this weed-infested garden, so why not?

The shovel handle slipped through my moist and blistered hands, and speared me right in the adam’s apple. I rolled around among the prickly weeds and freshly turned stony soil, gagging. Just another day of recreation at Aunt Agnes’ Boarding House and Forced Labor Summer Camp.

I blamed it on my dick.

Ever since I grew hair down there, my brains puddled and flowed straight to my groin. Not that I was ever the smartest kid, but once puberty ambushed me, whatever intelligence I owned shifted from whatever useless class to finding opportunities to stroke my boner.

I’m embarrassed to write this down, but hell, every teenage boy beats his meat. I bet all the nonexistent wages I earned for my twelve hours of “ daily rehabilitation”every single guy does, gay, straight, black, Asian, Canadian. Even Carlos, claims he’s going to the seminary to be a priest, acts like he’s holier than Jesus. I just know he slaps the salami, probably while saying the rosary.

I stomped down on the shovel, and it sliced through the weed roots, until it collided with a rock. No surprise there, I’d personally encountered about a hundred thousand of those bastards in the two weeks I’d been digging up Aunt Agnes’ defunct garden.

No, the big surprise was the shovel handle sliding through my gloved hands and punching me in the throat, shoving my adam’s apple just about out the back of my neck..

I dropped like a fifty pound bag of cow manure, grunting like a rutting moose, thrashing around in the prickly evil weeds and the dirt clods and the freaking rocks. I’d finally found a comfortable spot, fewer sharp edges and less throbbing on my bruised windpipe, when that rusty, creaky voice popped my eyes open.

“Is it nap time, boy?” Aunt Agnes said. As usual, she was silent as an Iroquois warrior. She was as proud of her Native American heritage as she was of being the daughter of a big city fire chief.

I struggled to stand, wiping a crust of mud from my cheek. “Gaa,” I said, my voice gravelly with the poke, “Rocks.”

“You can curse the rocks, Mitchell. Or you can build a house with them. Makes no never mind to the rocks,” Aunt Agnes said. “It’s all in your attitude.”

My attitude was crappy, no question. Mom had dropped me off in this urban jungle with this pseudo- “Aunt” who I’d never met. Hell, she wasn’t even a real relative.. She said this summer expedition was to teach this fifteen year old boy self-reliance and inflict me with fresh air and exercise, and keep me from whacking off to porn all the time.

But the real reason, the reason why Mom didn’t want me anywhere near our house, was because we didn’t have one anymore. 

I stomped down on my ancient shovel, and it sliced through the weed’s robust roots.   Until it clanged against a rock. No surprise there, I’d encountered a hundred thousand of those immovable bastards in the two weeks I’d been digging up Aunt Agnes’ decrepit garden.

The shovel handle slid through my gloved hands and punched me in the throat, shoving my adam’s apple just about out the back of my neck..

I dropped like a fifty-pound bag of cow manure.

Grunting like a rutting moose, I thrashed around in the prickly weeds and the dirt clods and the murderous rocks. I sank into the craggy rubble. My bruised windpipe throbbed.

“Is it nap time, boy?” Aunt Agnes said. That sharp jab of a voice popped my eyes open. She’d snuck up on me as silent as an Iroquois warrior. She was as proud of her Native American heritage as she was of being the daughter of a big-city fire chief. Never mind the city was Detroit, more famous for its Devil’s Night mass combustion than the dusty legend of her dad.

I struggled to stand and wiped a crust of mud from my cheek. “Gaa,” I said, my voice gravelly from the poke, “Rocks.”

“You can curse the rocks, Mitchell. Or you can build a house with them. Makes no never mind to the rocks,” Aunt Agnes said. 

Aunt Agnes wasn’t wrong about much, damn her, but she didn’t understand the malevolence of each stone in the soil. In three weeks I’d unearthed a six foot pile of them, bigger around than my arms could reach. And they sat gloating, smug, as their brethren maneuvered under my shovel blade. Those rocks were actively evil. 

It was all about me, but it wasn’t. Which made it so fascinating watching Mom and Aunt Agnes duke it out. Not that it mattered who won, because, fuck both of them, I wasn’t sticking around in this inner city haunted house. Not one day.

Our drive to this urban wilderness was its own kind of awkward sparring. I sulked and steamed and shrunk inside my shell, because that’s what you do when Life takes a big dump on you, your mom catches you red-handed, red-faced and stiff-dicked in the act of jerking off like any 15 year old boy, and sentences you to exile to an urban hell-hole with a relative of dubious relationship.

Mom fidgeted and fumed and twitched her way through unfamiliar streets, pretending to know the way when we both knew her ties with this “aunt” were just as fake as her reason for shipping me there. 

Her real reason was because she was losing the house. Her not-quite full-time job not enough to feed us and pay the mortgage. Maybe she thought she could shuffle all the mail stamped in ALL CAPS to the bottom of the pile, and ignore the constant barrage of phone calls from creditors she let go to voice mail until we had no phone service at all, and I would be too stupid to notice.

But I got it, Mom. Even if I was bringing home shitty grades, I was smarter than that. And I knew when you hooked up with that greasy narcissist of a dickhead, that he’d make you choose between him and me.

Only I didn’t think you’d choose him. Not so quick. Not after what we’d been through together. Not when he was so obviously a walking, talking tube of semen wrapped up in a cheap suit with a bulging button, not enough cologne and mints in the world to cover up his inner decay. Over your own kid.

Aunt Agnes stood firm in front of the screen door, like the last stubborn guard holding off the barbarian hordes storming the nursery. Or the nunnery. Or the nunnery nursery. Who gives a shit? She wasn’t letting us in over her ancient but very much alive decrepit body.

“I don’t hear from you for decades,” said the crab-faced old woman. “And then you show up with this surprise gift?” She cut her eyes briefly to me. They screamed disapproval. I was getting used to it.

The old wood of the porch stared me down, worn but hardened by decades of weather into stone. Not unlike the face of this crypto-relative, this “Aunt Agnes” I had never met. This was a house, and a face, that I would gladly escape from.

Which made it so fascinating watching Mom and Aunt Agnes duke it out. Not that it mattered who won, because, fuck both of them, I wasn’t sticking around in this inner city haunted house. Not one day.

Our drive to this urban wilderness was its own kind of awkward sparring. I sulked and steamed and shrunk inside my shell, because that’s what you do when Life takes a big dump on you, your mom catches you red-handed, red-faced and stiff-dicked in the act of jerking off like any 15 year old boy, and sentences you to exile to an urban hell-hole with a relative of dubious relationship.

Mom fidgeted and fumed and twitched her way through unfamiliar streets, pretending to know the way, when we both knew her ties with this “aunt” were just as fake as her reason for shipping me there. 

Her real reason was because she was losing the house. Her not-quite full-time job not enough to feed us and pay the mortgage. Maybe she thought she could shuffle all the mail stamped in ALL CAPS to the bottom of the pile, and ignore the constant barrage of phone calls from creditors she let go to voice mail until we had no phone service at all, and I would be too stupid to notice.

But I got it, Mom. Even if I was bringing home shitty grades, I was smarter than that. And I knew when you hooked up with that greasy narcissist of a dickhead, that he’d make you choose between him and me.

The car rocked to a stop, and I finally had my answer. Mom was taking me to a haunted house. I pushed my way out, and the neighborhood smelled old, like the first whiff of a thrift shop. Even if I didn’t believe in ghosts, the place looked like it had held its breath years ago and had forgotten to let go.

Three stories of dead gray which might have been green in a past life. A covered porch with a swing and a rocking chair that bobbed empty in the hot July breeze. The steps groaned when Mom used them, so I jumped to the deck from the cracked sidewalk, just because I could.

“Mitch,” my Mom growled. “Don’t be such a boy.” I ignored her, my go-to.

She tried the doorbell, which didn’t move under her thumb and didn’t make a sound. I wondered what the doorbell used to sound like when it had juice, maybe spooky organ music, or a death-rattle scream? I kept my grin inside my head though; no one was getting a smile from me.

So she pounded on the wooden screen door frame. It rattled. Mom’s shoulders bunched-up and her fist tightened. I pitied the door for sponging up her blows; she hated being thwarted. She pounded like a punch-drunk woodpecker, settling for length over loudness. Whack whack whack whack whack whack whack thunk whack whack whack. She could be as annoying as me. Genetics.

The main door was open, so no air conditioning. Above Mom’s raised arm, the dim outline of two spirits studied her, until I focused--just a shawl and a suit coat draped on a rickety coat rack. 

Finally, a shadowy figure hobbled out of the depths. It was long and thin, bent over like it was counting steps, and it used a cane to keep time. It turned out to be an old guy, startled gray hair over a brown face. The pounding continued as he slowly pulled the jacket off the rack and shrugged into it. 

He made for the door, stood behind the screen.“Hold up, young lady,” he said. Either he was blind, or trying to be kind. Mom wore her mid-30’s like a funeral shawl.

Through the rusty screen it was hard to make out his dark face, but a look of amusement danced across his eyes, like whatever this was would be the start of a grand adventure, at least for him.

He broke into a huge smile and creaked open the door. Then he wasn’t a ghost at all, but he was old enough to start rehearsing.

Extend your weekend of enrichment with a Monday morning keynote and breakout session with author and educator Jennifer Seravallo. She opens the final day of the Michigan Reading Association’s 2020 annual conference, Monday March 16, with a general session from 8:30-10:00 am.

Jen began her career in education as a NYC public school teacher and later joined the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University. Through TCRWP, and now as an independent consultant, she has spent over a decade helping teachers across the country to create literacy classrooms where students are joyfully engaged and the instruction is meaningfully individualized to students’ goals.

Jennifer Serravallo is the author of New York Times’ bestseller The Reading Strategies Book as well as other popular Heinemann professional books, The Writing Strategies Book; Teaching Reading in Small Groups; and The Literacy Teacher’s Playbook, Grades K–2 and Grades 3–6. Her newest books are Understanding Texts & Readers, and A Teacher’s Guide to Reading Conferences.

In Spring 2019, Jen’s new Complete Comprehension: Fiction and Complete Comprehension: Nonfiction was released. This assessment and teaching resource expands upon the comprehension skill progressions from Understanding Texts & Readers and offers hundreds more strategies like those in The Reading Strategies Book.

Additionally, Jen is the author of the On-Demand Courses Strategies in Action: Reading and Writing Methods and Content and Teaching Reading in Small Groups: Matching Methods to Purposes, where you can watch dozens of videos of Jen teaching in real classrooms and engage with other educators in a self-guided course.

Jen holds a BA from Vassar College and an MA from Teachers College, where she has also taught graduate and undergraduate classes.

Below, MRA Conference Chair Colby Sharp review’s Jen’s book, Reading Conferences.

Register now (through Eventbrite) to experience General Session Speakers including Ernest Morrell, Sara K. Ahmed, Cornelius Minor and Jennifer Serravallo. Also, choose to attend sessions with Featured Speakers such as Chad Everrett, “Gholdy” Muhammad and John Schu, or Featured Authors including  Donalyn Miller, Tara Michener and Carrie Pearson.

For more on the conference, visit our 2020 Annual Conference page.

Posted in: 2020 Conference, Conference News 

Cornelius Minor closes the first day of the Michigan Reading Association’s 2020 annual conference in Detroit with a general session from 4-5:30 pm on Saturday, March 14.

He is a Brooklyn-based educator. He works with teachers, school leaders, and leaders of community-based organizations to support equitable literacy reform in cities (and sometimes villages) across the globe. This blog post from ILA highlights 5 reasons why educators love Cornelius Minor. His latest book, We Got This, explores how the work of creating more equitable school spaces is embedded in our everyday choices—specifically in the choice to really listen to kids.

He has been featured in Education Week, Brooklyn Magazine, and Teaching Tolerance Magazine. He has partnered with The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, The New York City Department of Education, The International Literacy Association, and Lesley University’s Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative. Out of Print, a documentary featuring Cornelius made its way around the film festival circuit, and he has been a featured speaker at conferences all over the world.

Most recently, along with his partner and wife, Kass Minor, he has established The Minor Collective, a community-based movement designed to foster sustainable change in schools.

Follow him on Twitter @MisterMinor

Register now (through Eventbrite) to experience General Session Speakers including Ernest Morrell, Sara K. Ahmed, Cornelius Minor and Jennifer Serravallo. Also, choose to attend sessions with Featured Speakers such as Chad Everrett, “Gholdy” Muhammad and John Schu, or Featured Authors including  Donalyn Miller, Tara Michener and Carrie Pearson.

For more on the conference, visit our 2020 Annual Conference page.

Posted in: 2020 Conference, Conference News 

Sara K. Ahmed opens the 2020 Michigan Reading Association annual conference in Detroit, speaking Saturday, March 14, from 8:30-10:00.

She is the author of Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension. In her book, she identifies and unpacks the skills of social comprehension. She also co-authored Upstanders: How to Engage Middle School Hearts and Minds with Inquiry. You can hear more of her recent thinking in this Heinemann blog post/podcast.

I am convinced that every class of kids I work with is filled with change agents who will make this world the one we teach toward. I believe that my students will carry the work of doing right by this world into their own lives.
I’ll bet you believe this about your kids, too.

—Sara K. Ahmed

Sara is a literacy coach at NIST International School in Bangkok, Thailand. She has taught in urban, suburban, public, independent, and international schools, where her classrooms were designed to help students consider their own identities and see the humanity in others. In the interview below, MRA conference coordinator Colby Sharp reviews Ahmed’s book, Be the Change.

You can follow her on Twitter at @SaraKAhmed.

Register now (through Eventbrite) to experience General Session Speakers including Ernest Morrell, Sara K. Ahmed, Cornelius Minor and Jennifer Serravallo. Also, choose to attend sessions with Featured Speakers such as Chad Everrett, “Gholdy” Muhammad and John Schu, or Featured Authors including  Donalyn Miller, Tara Michener and Carrie Pearson.

For more on the conference, visit our 2020 Annual Conference page.

Posted in: 2020 Conference, Conference News 

Dr. Ernest Morrell opens the Sunday morning general session of the Michigan Reading Association’s annual conference on March 15, 2020.

Currently the Director of the Center for Literacy Education at the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Morrell has written more than 80 articles and has authored eight books. Among those titles, Critical Literacy and Urban Youth, Becoming Critical Researchers, and Linking Literacy and Popular Culture are among his most popular books.

Dr. Morrell is chair of the Planning and Advisory Committee for the African Diaspora Consortium and sits on the Executive Boards of LitWorld and the Education Democracy Institute. He has won numerous awards and held many prestigious educational positions, including service as a past-president of NCTE.

Register now (through Eventbrite) to experience General Session Speakers including Ernest Morrell, Sara K. Ahmed, Cornelius Minor and Jennifer Serravallo. Also, choose to attend sessions with Featured Speakers such as Chad Everrett, “Gholdy” Muhammad and John Schu, or Featured Authors including  Donalyn Miller, Tara Michener and Carrie Pearson.

For more on the conference, visit our 2020 Annual Conference page.

Posted in: 2020 Conference, Conference News 

SCHOOL VISIT SESSION MARCH 2020

How to conduct a school visit

How WE do ours

How to give your students the most benefit 

Before

During 

After

MONEY 

Unfortunately for most kid’s book creators, school visits help to pay the mortgage.

Some authors may not charge, but instead require a certain number of books sold.

Some beginning authors may use your classroom or school to work out their presentation.

Some publishers may schedule school visits on book tours. The visits may be free for the schools. But publishers have cut waaay back on those kinds of expensive promotions.

Proven that there is less appreciation on both sides of the presentation if the event is free. 

PTOs

Good parent-teacher organizations can bankroll school visits.Some fortunate schools with robust PTOs can schedule more than one visit per year, or bring in separate presenters for different grade levels. 

GRANTS

A grant writer is worth more to your school than quality coffee in the break room. You can learn to write grants yourself, or find an eager young staff member who 

SOME WAYS TO MESS WITH A PERFECTLY GOOD FAIRY TALE

Change the Time Period        

l Present day         

l Distant future

l Dinosaur-time

l Middle ages

l Back when there was magic

l Horses and buggies

l When animals could talk

Change the Setting

l Haunted house or graveyard

l Jungle

l Outer space

l Under the sea

l North or South Pole

l Uninhabited island

l Your school or backyard

Add Props

l Magic wand

l Picnic basket

l Flying carpet

l Fairy wand

l Winged shoes

l Talking cat

l Peanut butter sandwich

Use a New Point of View (POV)

l Exchange the hero and villain

l From a secondary character

l From a bemused narrator

l From an insect, bird or animal

l From a tourist or visitor

l From a judge or police officer

l From someone who has to clean up, repair or undo the mess

l From a visitor from another galaxy

Superpowers

l Flying

l Shooting bolts of lightning from eyes

l Invisible

l Super fast

l Reads minds

l Shape-shifter

l Extra smart or strong

Limits to those Superpowers

l Water

l Smelly feet

1972

Brothers we, oh South Lake High

Until the end doth come.

Like wind and air together fly

Like fingers to a thumb.

So now I'll tell you true, my friend

How much I do adore you.

If noses were used to defend

Then I would blow mine for you.

Here I am, I'm in the street,
Cars are honking at my feet.
I could crush them with my toe,
But I'll be good and let them blow.

The buildings are so tall and spare,
I clamber to a point up there.
Airplanes buzz my ears like flies.
But I won't swat those strafing guys.

I leap and bound from peak to spire.
I reach the top and then soar higher.
The moon could be my basketball.
I'll leave it there, it's kinda small.

The fiercest beasts turn tail and flee
If they should sniff a whiff of me.
It's then the mythic monsters cry,
The T-Rex begs, the dragons fly.

The ocean is my swimming pool,
But I don't dive in as a rule.
I toy with boats on choppy seas.
Oh, I could sink them if I please.

I'd pull the plug, it's in my reach,
And make the waters one big beach.
I frolic in the dunes instead,
And make a sculpture of my head.

The weather is afraid of me.
I part the clouds so I can see.
I push the wind back with a fart.
The sun asks me if day can start.

I am a big and brawny brute:
Terror in a monkey suit.
My quickness is too fast to see,
I'm back before you're missing me.

I gulp with gusto, slake my thirst,
My etiquette might be the worst.
I could offend society.
I could, but that's not really me.

I can't sit still, I'm made to move.
Got lots to do, but not to prove.
I'm wild and strong and brave and free.
I don't believe in gravity.

I grapple mountains into dust.
I crumble bridges into rust.
I am a huge vindictive force,
Or could be, if I chose, of course.

No prison walls can capture me,
If that's not where I want to be.
No laws of science, God or man,
Apply unless I say they can.



There's just one thing keeps me in check,
To say my prayers and wash my neck.
I'd be destructive as a bomb,
Except I love, and fear, my Mom.


Charlie Barshaw
For Ruth, Cayden and Lisa, his mom. 

Posted by charlie b. at 8:15 AM 

Off-color  version  of an epic quest to drink more beer.

A parody of "Seven Old Ladies"