It’s time for back-to-school, and seeing posts about college move-in days and back-to-school shopping has us thinking about all of the incredible books we've read in school.
This week, we asked for your favorite books you read in school — but since education is a big part of WVIA’s mission, you’ll find a few more staff recommendations than usual.
Either way, we hope this week’s recommendations encourage you to read or re-read some school days classics.
Teresa Sabecky, WVIA Education Program Manager
Book: "The Pout-Pout Fish"
Author: Deborah Diesen
Illustrator: Dan Hanna
I love to read this book to kids because it has a lovely rhyme scheme. I often find myself reciting the reoccurring chorus of the book repeatedly throughout my day.
"The Pout-Pout Fish" is about a grumpy fish named Mr. Fish who swims throughout the sea, spreading his grumpiness until, in a twist of events, he meets a special sunfish that turns his frown upside down. The kids always have a giggle at the ending.
"The Pout-Pout Fish" serves as a reminder for kids and adults that spreading joy is always better than spreading negativity, so don't be a "pout-pout fish" with a "pout-pout" face. Be a "kiss-kiss fish" that spreads the cheery wearies all over the place.
Amie Yanac, science teacher, Hazleton Area High School
Book: "To Kill a Mockingbird"
Author: Harper Lee
I loved this book (in school) because it was told through the eyes of a child, and that made it relatable to me.
The topics of rape and racism are very difficult topics, but Scout takes us on her journey through the world as she sees it from her young eyes, and at the end, her realization that our similarities are much greater than our differences really ties it all together. Great book, I highly recommend.
Vicki Austin, WVIA Chief Development and Education Officer
Book: "A Ring of Endless Light"
Author: Madeline L'Engle
When I was in the sixth grade, my teacher Miss Raymond introduced me to Madeline L’Engle. Most people remember L’Engle for a "Wrinkle in Time." However, I was introduced to the world of the fictional Vicky Austen in her book "A Ring of Endless Light."
In this narrative, a teenage Vicky navigates young love, the challenges of family relationships amidst the impending loss of a loved one and, most importantly to my sixth-grade self, develops deep relationships with dolphins as part of a summer research study. Imagine my delight when I grew to marry an Austin who took me to Florida to learn about and swim with dolphins in the wild — a dream come true.
I recently re-read this book, and while it is certainly written for a much younger person, I greatly enjoyed revisiting that time in my life again through the experiences of much-loved and never forgotten Austen family members. I love that books have the ability to connect our past to our present.
Roger DuPuis, WVIA News Deputy Editor
Book: "A Separate Peace"
Author: John Knowles
I first read John Knowles’ 1959 coming of age novel “A Separate Peace” when it was assigned to my high school English class in the late 1980s.
It centers on the tragic friendship of Gene and Phineas, students at a prestigious New England boarding school during World War II. Gene, the narrator, is intellectual, somewhat introverted, brooding and mistrustful. Phineas is athletic, charismatic, daring, but also kind hearted and naive to the point of self-delusion.
These young men, on the verge of their senior year in the summer of 1942, live in a fragile, privileged bubble which they know is soon to burst with enlistment or being drafted into the military. Their lives take a darker turn before the war can intervene.
I didn’t understand this book at 14 or 15 because I had not yet come of age myself. Twenty years later an English teacher friend put it in a new perspective for me.
“You know they’re both gay,” she said of Gene and Phineas.
I picked up the book again at that time, but I couldn’t bring myself to finish it. The story was just too painful now that I was seeing it in that light.
Nearly 20 more years would pass. I finally read “A Separate Peace” again this month, in preparation for this column.
It broke me.
But an important caveat is required here. The author, in a 1987 interview, denied any gay aspect to the book.
“If there had been homoeroticism between Phineas and Gene I would have put it in the book, I assure you. It simply wasn’t there,” Knowles said.
No, this novel about high school seniors never describes or implies any physically intimate contact between the central characters -– or anyone else, for that matter, save for an unspecified student harboring a coveted lock of hair from a woman described as “the professional town belle.”
Knowles is strictly correct then. I also think he was being disingenuous, but not maliciously so. Maybe he was simply being cautious in an era when he couldn’t tell the story he truly wished to tell.
Still, generations of readers — now including me — have recognized something of ourselves and our emotional struggles in the tortured friendship between Gene and Phineas.
There are cheeky all-too-obvious moments, like the one when Phineas puts on a pink shirt and Gene says it makes him look “like a fairy,” which Phineas blithely shrugs off.
But the heart of their story is told in weightier moments – with words left unsaid, hints of lonely longing, and flashes of the destructive anger that burns in Gene’s soul.
There’s a memorable episode in which Phineas and Gene play hooky from school, riding bikes to the ocean. They swim, stroll the boardwalk, buy beers using forged draft cards, and eventually fall asleep on the beach.
In the last quiet moments of the day Phineas tells Gene he hoped he had a good time. “You can’t come to the shore with just anybody,” Phineas says, concluding “the proper person is your best pal.”
“He hesitated and then added, ‘which is what you are,’ and then there was silence on his dune.”
Gene does not respond.
“I started to; I nearly did. But something held me back,” Gene recalls. “Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than truth, which contains the truth.”
Readers are left to decide for themselves what Gene is referring to. I know what I think. But whatever it was, his toxic ambivalence toward Phineas defines the entire novel.
Most of us, in one way or another, spend our lives grappling with the consequences of our own character flaws and our youthful mistakes.
That is, perhaps, the universal message to be taken away from the book, regardless of how you see the relationship between its two central characters.
Sarah Scinto, WVIA Morning Edition Host and Reporter
Book: "Frankenstein"
Author: Mary Shelley
I had the pleasure of reading Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” twice for school — once for high school British Literature class, then again at King’s College for Dr. Wallace’s Romantic Age class — which was also the class I sat in on as a prospective student. The fact they were discussing this book I already knew and loved then wasn’t the entire reason I ended up going to King’s, but it definitely helped.
We all know the basics of “Frankenstein” — Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist, finds a new way to create life. He assembles a body from disparate parts and in an unorthodox experiment, gives the humanoid creature life.
But when it awakens, Dr. Frankenstein flees in terror of his own creation and the monster disappears. The creature is left alone to discover his origin, his identity and how to exist in a world of humans who fear and despise him.
I remember this being one of the books I was eager to read and discuss in class. From the moment Victor Frankenstein, rescued from death as he pursues the creature through the Arctic, begins his tale, the reader grapples alongside the creature with the consequences of existence.
“Frankenstein” has been adapted so many times into a myriad of versions, but if you’ve never read Mary Shelley’s revolutionary novel, I would highly recommend you add it to your list.
That’s all for this week’s edition of Bookmarks! Join us again on Sept. 5. I’ll be looking for your favorite books about animals.
