Margo Bartlett
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Honkin' plunger!
Years ago, I read Another Brother to my grandchildren for the first time. Matthew Cordell’s story about Davy, the oldest of thirteen brothers, amused us in part because Davy and his family are sheep. Each of the twelve younger lambs copies everything Davy does, from eating Toot Loops for breakfast...
Thank you, Mac Barnett
I read Mac Barnett’s remarks when he was named the 2025–2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. “I started writing books for children because I love reading picture books out loud to kids,” he told his audience. Oh, Mac. May I call you Mac? We seem to be on the...
Reading in the family
When they were learning to read, my grandsons brought home decodable books: readers the size of a playing card with simple stories featuring Bob, Dot, and Pat who did things with bats and pots and cats. The plots were slender, but they were more compelling than my grade-school readers about Alice...
Summer stretch
I wanted to write about my eleven-year-old grandson’s decision to read To Kill a Mockingbird as an independent reading assignment. The book was on a “stretch” list his fifth-grade teacher had distributed, so his choice wasn’t like deciding to read Ulysses or worse, Infinite Jest, out of nowhere. Still, even voracious eleven-year-old readers...
Still Reading Together
Some grandparents remember their grandchildren’s early years as a kaleidoscope of blocks, plastic stacking rings, sticky highchair trays, and cars named Doc Hudson, Lightning McQueen and Flo. What I remember are book characters: Davy the sheep from Matthew Cordell’s Another Brother, the doleful rodent in Robert Kraus’s Whose Mouse Are...
More thoughts about virtues
I’m back again with further thoughts about the virtues my grandsons’ school district assigns each month, and that grandparents (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) discuss in classroom sessions. I’ve described the fun of reading to a group of first graders who are invariably thrilled to see me. While they're putting away their...
First-grade character traits
Once a month just before lunch, I turn up at my six-year-old grandson’s first-grade classroom with two books for an event called “Circle of Grandparents.” COG is a program offered in my grandsons’ school district, where nine times a school year, grandparents — or anyone who wants to claim the...
Reading what they're reading
My nine-year-old grandson recently made a list of his favorite things. Number one was math. (He’s kind of a phenom.) Number two was reading. First, I’m glad this boy loves math. I’m glad his parents toss him math questions at every whipstitch, and I’m glad he considers answering them fun....
Everywhere Babies 2022
I was surprised and also not surprised to learn the book Everywhere Babies has been the focus of conservative outrage in Walton County, Florida. I was surprised because I hadn’t realized this book, written by Susan Meyers and illustrated by Marla Frazee, was well known. I have an embarrassing tendency...
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