Summertime and the Reading is Easy…Spend the Summer Season with a Good BookThe National Institute for Literacy has invited some familiar names in and outside of the literacy community to give us a glimpse of their summer reads, from tomes to paperbacks and everything in between. Learn what page-turners are on tap for the beach, the night table, the front porch, or the commute to work during these lazy, hazy days. In this first round up, Susan L. Taylor, Essence magazine icon turned founder of a mentoring movement, and Barbara Van Horn, adult and family literacy leader at Penn State University, share their top picks for summer reading. Visit us throughout the summer for more summer reading picks! 
Susan L. TaylorFor nearly 40 years, Taylor served as the editor and editorial director of Essence, the nation's premiere lifestyle magazine for African-American women. Taylor is now founder of the National CARES Mentoring Movement. Today, the National Institute for Literacy serves as an expert resource to this mentoring coalition.
This summer I am embarking on a journey that will take me down paths I've been longing to travel. It's a time of great transition for me. Only motherhood and divorce have been greater. After 37 years at Essence, I have left the publication to do what for me today is a larger work - helping to secure the millions of Black youngsters in crisis. What I founded as Essence Cares is today the National Cares Mentoring Movement (www.caresmentoring.com), a fast-growing coalition of some of the most trusted organizations and concerned African Americans working together in communities to recruit mentors. Mentoring doesn't require a lot of time and doesn't cost any money. Yet, it saves and secures lives. Much of what I'm reading this summer is to encourage and inform me to operate at the top-tier in this arena that is totally new for me. My favs are:
Barbara Van HornShe is co-director of the Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy and the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy at The Pennsylvania State University. These institutes engage in research, professional development, and advocacy intended to improve and advance the fields of adult and family literacy education.
Work reading tends towards heavy lifting, so I spend summer reading splashing around in the shallow end with my favorite mystery writers, like Lippman (perfect for a Baltimore native) and Grafton (fun on CD). Occasionally, however, I float around in slightly deeper water. I offer one author and two books that I recommend. Lee Smith is one of my all time favorite authors. If you enjoy stories about families and Appalachia and the South, in general, you should love her novels. I started with Family Linen, went back for Oral History, and gorged on everything since from Fair and Tender Ladies (I've given this one to SO many friends.) to On Agate Hill. Waiting anxiously for her next… Other People's Words: The Cycle of Low Literacy Published in 1995, this book provides insight into an urban Appalachian family in which neither parent is literate, and their school-age child is struggling in school. Meet Jenny and Big Donny, and their sons, Donny and Timmy. Through their story, Purcell-Gates offers a complex socio-cultural view of adult and emergent literacy. This case study reads like a novel but includes all of the notes and references one might want in a comprehensive appendix. Water for Elephants I'm not enamored with circuses, so I avoided this book even as others raved about it. Finally, I gave in and started it-and couldn't stop. This is Jacob Jankowski's story, a fascinating reflection on his life with the circus from the vantage point of his current situation in a nursing home at 90 or so years old. I learned a lot about traveling circuses during the Depression and enjoyed reading about Jacob's life in the circus and beyond, from living a raucous life on the road to his life in the nursing home, and wishing for more. Ah, what a story-and a surprise ending! |
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