Reading for Treasure: Books for the Holidays!

Reading for Treasure is my list of articles that are worth your attention. Click here for an introduction!

I love books! For people like me, the best holiday gift is a book – or a book recommendation! One of the things I love about holiday travels is having the time to sit down and read, read, read. Of course, this is also one of the best things about being retired! 

Although I read all sorts of literature, my go-to genre is science fiction. However, I read just about everything. So here is a long list of book lists. A few of these are focused generally and most are of science fiction, fantasy, and genre fiction. 

Don’t know what that book lover in your life might want to read? Look at these lists and descriptions and then head to your nearest indy bookstore or library. Feel free to make some recommendations in the comments! 

Literary Hub presents “Our 38 Favorite Books of 2022”

I know it is a little old, but I don’t know the difference between a holiday read and a summer read? “WIRED’s Picks for the 15 Books You Need to Read This Summer”

Lifehacker focuses on  “10 of the Most Banned Books (and What We Can Learn From Them)”

“The Greatest Sci-Fi Authors Of All Time, According To Ranker” - Screenrant

“50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time - What Is The Best Science Fiction Book Ever Written?” - Esquire

“The Most Influential Sci-Fi Books Of All Time” - Book Riot

“100 Speculative Fiction Titles to Add to Your Reading List”-  tor.com

NPR did a really cool survey: “We Asked, You Answered: Your 50 Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Of The Past Decade” 

“2022 Locus Awards Top Ten Finalists”

“2021 Shirley Jackson Awards Winners” – Locus Online

“Here’s the shortlist for the first Ursula K. Le Guin Fiction Prize”  -  Literary Hub

“Nebula Award finalists and winners” Science Fiction Awards Database 

2022 Hugo finalists and winners

2022 World Fantasy Award nominees and winners- tor.com

I am reading Noor By Nnedi Okorafor  

A Rubric For Thank You Notes

Dear Hirschs, Thank you for the generous gift. It was nice to see you. From, X.

Is that a thank you note? What does that really communicate? That note has only a shred of gratitude. It says that we didn’t merit much energy or care. Its message is almost the opposite of the words. I don’t think that is what the writer intended. The writer didn’t intend anything, but the writer wasn’t that thankful and it shows.

There are two issues here: the first (and more important of the two) is that the idea that thanks are necessary. The second is that they are communicated sincerely. Children’s thank you notes are a learning opportunity. When children send thank you cards after receiving birthday, holiday, bar or bat mitzvah or other special gifts, they are getting out of themselves. They are thinking about the feelings and point of view of another. This is a critical developmental task that, if not accomplished, will handicap their relationships for life. Perhaps if we had more thank you notes, we’d have fewer narcissistic people.

However, I must point out that many adults either neglect the thank you note or write them poorly. Therefore, here is the Hirsch family thank you note rubric. This is our thank you note measuring stick. Thank you notes tell a great deal about both the sender and the nature of the relationship.

A good thank you note is personal. If the wrong name came after the “Dear,” it would make no sense. If the name is misspelled, that has a message, too. The note speaks of the relationship between the sender and receiver. Even if that relationship is new or indirect, it addresses that. So notes may say, “It was so nice to see my parents’ good friends,” or  “It was wonderful to share our wedding with my new friends from work.” Sometimes, you are acting as an agent for another person. Your thank you note is no longer about you; it is about the giver’s connection to your parents, employers, or spouse. The specific relationship is the core of the note. It is more important than the item that generated it.

A good thank you note is specific. It says, very directly, why the writer is thankful, “Thank you for the beautiful vase,” or “ I love books and I will think of you as I use the gift card.” Even if the gift was money or intangible, it should still be mentioned, “I will put the check to good use,” or  “It was so kind of you to let me stay overnight.”

A good thank you note has some degree of detail. It is not generic. The typical formula says that you should mention how you will use the gift or why it is important to you. That is sound advice. There are other options too, “I loved playing with your dogs while I stayed with you,” or “The frame reminds me of one I always loved in Aunt Sadel’s apartment.”

Of course, a good thank you note is timely. People quote all sorts of rules about how long you have before a thank you note is too late. I have even heard that wedding couples have a year to send the notes. A year? Really? What would you think if you received a thank you note twelve months after the wedding? You probably sent the gift a month or more before the wedding anyway. I wouldn’t remember what I gave!

A late thank you note says that saying thanks wasn’t a priority to the writer. By extension, it feels like the relationship is also not that important. A good thank you note should reflect the care and effort put into the gift.

Which brings us to the question of how to send a thank you note for awful or thoughtless gifts. If it is really the thought that counts, then these gifts barely qualify. So what is wrong with sending, as my old college professor used to say, a  “thank you and %@#$ you” card? A lot. We answer kindness with kindness but I would want to give the other person the benefit of the doubt and answer thoughtlessness with thoughtfulness. The card need not be long, but it should be as sincere as possible. It should not be sarcastic or critical. If there are problems with the relationship, the thank you note is not the way to address them.   

My grandmother was the only person who ever wrote thank you notes for thank you notes. I remember asking my father, “Do I need to send her a thank you for the thank you for my thank you?” Of course, he told me to just call my grandmother. Always a good idea.  

But her intention captures the real importance of the thank you note – or even the thank you email: gratitude and connection. A thank you note should be a sincere expression, not only of thanks, but also of the connection between the person writing and the person receiving.  It says, “You showed that you care. I appreciate that and I value our relationship.”

The Gift of A Good Book!

I just spent almost an hour searching for my Team Banzai headband. I knew I still had it somewhere. I got the headband at Windycon as a promotional item for the movie Buckaroo Banzai Adventures Across the Eighth Dimension in 1983, almost a year before the movie was released! Fortunately, I loved the movie, and I still do. I highly recommend it. I should have been grading papers or doing something useful. 

Why was I looking for a strip of fabric related to a movie more than thirty years old? Because I just read a book that I completely enjoyed and it made reference not only to the movie but to the exact words on my old headband. And best of all, I was reading the books because my students had selected it!

The book is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and I recommend it as much as I recommend Buckaroo Banzai. It was a video game romp through 1980s pop culture and I joyfully ran through it in less than a week. It was a return to my adolescence, a celebration of my geekiness, and a gem of a story! It felt like it was written just for me!

Four of my current seniors had selected it to read for our current unit. My co-teacher and I offered our students a list of more than sixty titles. I have read most of them, but not all. So, after my students had gone shopping with our fantastic school librarians and selected the books that they wanted to read, I got my reading assignments  

Most of the books on the list are books I loved. It was my goal to help them find a book they would love, too. I wanted every student to have at least one book that they read during high school that they would willingly and happily recommend and even read again.

And they gave one to me!

Teachers who allow their students to select their own reading knows that kids cannot be limited to teachers’ reading choices. Some of my favorite books were assigned to me by my former students. One of my students would stop by once a week and insist that I read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It was a student who introduced me to graphic novels by bringing in a copy of Watchman, and I was introduced to both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett by a young man who insisted I read Good Omens.

I am the luckiest teacher in the world!

As I raced to finish Ready Player One, I felt so grateful that this was what my students had assigned me. They had provided me with the immersive and engaging read  - the same kind of reading that I am hoping they experience. 

And here is the best irony: the book is about virtual reality. It is set in a future America where things are so bad that everyone escapes to an online digital world called OASIS. We don’t need a digital world! We don’t even need a plug or a screen. The pages of the book work as well or better! Yes, I know that Steven Spielberg is making this book into a movie. I will go see it, but I don’t need it.

Yes, I want my students to master all those skills in the Common Core. I want them to be critical thinkers, effective and creative communicators, and self-directed learners. These are assessable and observable objectives. I also want to engender in them a love of story, an excitement for literature, and a desire to read. Science fiction was my entrée to this world. I read at an early age, as many children do. But they sometimes stop reading in high school. There isn’t enough time. There are too many enticing baubles competing for their attention. They only read what they are assigned and, even then, at a surface level.

It pains me to think that some have never (and some will never) experience what I just felt about Ready Player One.

I am optimistic. I will try to hook as many as I can. We read short stories and watch movies. We read together and read out loud. I am not giving up on them!

It is wonderful to know that I am never so far from the goal that I cannot re-experience it.

So this holiday season, I am grateful for gift of a great book and the remarkable and generous teachers and students who plugged me into it!

The Gift of You: My Deerprints Column

My grandmother was the only person I knew who sent a thank-you note for a thank-you note. I remember asking my father if I had to send a thank-you note for her thank-you note for my original thank-you note. But my grandmother knew what she was doing. She knew the importance of gratitude and courtesy, and she was skilled in the art of cultivating and maintaining relationships.

Many years ago, I was startled when a student said, “thank you” as she left our classroom. Usually, students were in the hall before the echo of the bell reverberated off the linoleum. “You’re welcome,” I replied, “and thank you, too!” It wasn’t the “thank you” that stuck with me. It was what it meant and the immediate effect it had on our relationship. It was only a little extra, but it was a special gift nonetheless.

Last spring, a colleague of mine and I spoke at the Shepard promotion ceremonies. Rather than give them lots of advice or brag about D.H.S., we decided to focus on one idea; we told the graduating eighth graders to say, “hi” in the halls. We advised them that building relationships, as much or more than building resumes, was what would make their high school careers meaningful and happy. The extra moment in the hall or classroom is a relationship changer.

In addition to planning for class, grading, going to meetings, and, of course, teaching, many educators spend hundreds of hours writing college recommendations. My wife writes about fifty to sixty letters a year! I write a handful. Of the hundreds of students whom we have helped with the college process, only a few ever acknowledge that effort. A few years ago, when I told parents, gathered at a fall parent meeting, that most students don’t even say the words, “thank you” to the teachers who have written their recommendations, there was an audible gasp.

Every May, I receive two or three emails from freshmen thanking me for my A Tale of Two Cities recordings. I save these emails. If you wrote one to me, I still have it. I have all of them. Want to see them? I have met some wonderful students because they took that little moment to send a note after finishing about eighteen hours of listening to me. I treasure these emails and the relationships they engender.

The theatre program at D.H.S. has a saying that expresses this idea well. They say, “The most important thing is the way we treat each other.” The smile or “hi” in the hall, the thank you at the end of class, the held door, or the quick acknowledgment are gifts we give each other. After all, we live together. We go to school together. We share this community. While we may not be family in the sense that I am not paying for your college tuition (well, I am paying for a select few), we work and learn together. We spend years together.

Our community is more than teachers and students. We build wonderful relationships with secretaries, custodians, teacher aides, security guards, technology staff, and many other people on our Deerfield journeys. They deserve thanks, too. We all have reason to sincerely thank each other. As my students know, I thank them at the end of every class period –and I mean it! When I say, “thank you for flying Freshman English,” (or whichever class it is), it is more than a dismissal. I treasure our time together and the relationships we form.

And I miss my students after they graduate. Many alumni become my friends on Facebook and I treasure each quick glimpse of their post-high school lives through pictures and comments. But my favorite gifts of the season are their visits before Thanksgiving and winter break. On my desk is a picture of my class of 2012 homeroom. I am hoping they stop by over the holidays. I just want to see them. I just want to know that everything is okay. I want to say, “thank you.”

Recently, I have been able to say, “thank you” to one of my teachers. We have been exchanging emails, and we are going to see each other when he comes to town in the summer.  My experience learning with him is one of the reasons I am in education. I am so grateful that I got to study with him and that we have renewed our relationship, a relationship that began in a classroom just like those at D.H.S.

Thanksgiving and the winter holidays are a good time to renew our relationships. This season is an opportunity to look at each other and affirm what we share. I like the holiday gifts that a few students drop off before winter break. Coffee cards and notepads are nice, but the real presents are the relationships.

Long after we have forgotten thesis or theme, formula or fact, we will remember the time we spent together. That is the real reason to celebrate this season. That is why it is so important to treat each other well. That is why “thank you” means so much. 

Gifted Teachers

Why give your child’s teacher a gift? What message does a teacher gift (or lack of it) send? As a parent and a teacher, I have asked these questions from both sides of the desk. My family gives gifts as a way to say, thank you. As our children have grown older, these gifts have become an acknowledgement of the relationship between our child and a special teacher.

As a parent, I am so grateful to the many wonderful educators who work with my children. Over and over, I am delighted by how these fantastic teachers foster my kids’ growth. But it is more than just teachers. As a family, we create ways to thank camp counselors, bus drivers, coaches, music tutors, and others. Yet, no one deserves thanks more than our children’s schoolteachers.

Of course there have been some duds. There have been a few teachers who did not connect well with my children. Although, we sometimes sent gifts to them, as our kids got into middle and high school, we now focus on the teachers with whom our children have strong positive relationships.

The gift comes from our child and the family. Our child writes a card and we work together to choose the gift. We discuss which teachers they want to give gifts. Sometimes, the adults and the children see things differently and our kids need help to see their own growth. More often, we see it the same way.

I could write a book about selecting teacher gifts and gifts that I have found meaningful as a teacher. However, the gift itself is not as important as the giving, the thanking, and the thought.

Which leads me to decoding the gifts I receive (or don’t). This year, I received more gifts than in the past. I’ve had years when I received very few gifts. This year, one gift was from the family of a student with whom I have been spending a significant amount of extra time. The card was signed from the family and only wished me a happy holiday. I have lost count of how many cards are signed from the child an adult’s handwriting. This year, one was signed “love.” How sweet! I wish the kid wrote it.

I am comforted by the fact that, in my building and department, most teachers get about the same number of gifts. There are a few people who always seem to get more – but that is a subject for another entry. My wife is a counselor and she gets many more gifts than I do. She sees more students and has them for a longer period of time.

I think that my family’s decision to be highly deliberate about teacher gifts is unusual. Kids rarely thank teachers for writing their college letters of recommendation. In high school, families rarely acknowledge the extra time and care that teachers give their children. Saying, “thank you” is unusual. Saying nothing is the norm.

My holiday gifts could be demoralizing, but I choose to think about them another way. If nothing is the norm, then when nothing arrives, that is what it means: nothing.

I treasure each gift. Each one is special and each one gets a handwritten thank you note as soon as I get home. The size, expense, or cleverness of the gift is far less important than the sentiment. I have kept cards that accompanied gifts from long ago. Most of the time, I no longer remember the gift; I remember the student and the relationship. Those are the real gifts and I am rich in those!