Kimberly Hirsh

Hi there! It’s been a few days since my birthday, but if you want to give me a belated present and you’re in the US, you could contact your legislators and ask them to oppose H.R. 7661.

This bill ties federal funding to excluding material from schools that “includes sexually oriented material.” It provides no exceptions for education outside of standard science classes, meaning classes about human growth and development would not be able to include this material. Further, it defines “sexually oriented material” to include any material that addresses “gender dysphoria or transgenderism,” which will broadly limit both some young people’s ability to see themselves reflected in materials and others’ ability to learn about experiences different from their own.

This bill, if passed, will likely lead to self-censorship, with librarians and educators complying in advance on works that may not even fall under this definition.

The organization EveryLibrary has made it incredibly easy to contact your legislators. You can use their tools to:

• sign a petition.
• send a postcard.
• write an email.

Thank you for taking the time to contact your legislators about this. Standing up for my public school colleagues and the students they serve is the best gift you could give me.

Thanks for the kind birthday wishes, everybody!

I was born 45 years ago today. I’m still here. I’m doing a pretty good job sticking around.

Finished reading: Paradise by Judith McNaught 📚

McNaught is so good at the job.

Finished reading: Her Night with the Duke by Diana Quincy 📚

There’s so much to love here. Leela is an amazing heroine fighting to build a writing career in a society that tries to block her at every turn. Her interactions with her Arab family made me curious about my own Levantine relatives, who came to the US in 1902.

🔖📚💬 Read Why “Book-Shaming” Won’t Solve the Children’s Literacy Crisis by Jessica Winter (The New Yorker).

It’s impossible to quantify all that is lost when schools lose librarians. But one place where their guidance and expertise can be pivotal relates to the phenomenon often called the “fourth-grade slump” or “decline by nine,” which refers to the steep drop-off in both reading interest and reading frequency that many children, especially boys, exhibit around age nine. Avoiding this cliff is more likely with the help of a librarian who understands her students’ likes and dislikes, who respects their autonomy and individuality, and who can use this knowledge to guide kids toward the texts they will love, regardless of whether or not they meet a subjective threshold of literary excellence.

🔖📝 Read Will Doing “Morning Pages” for 30 Days Make Me More Creative? by Grace Abbott (The Good Trade).

I love Abbott’s recommendation to follow your energy rather than holding to a rigid externally-imposed structure.

Hanging onto this roundup of the best recent poetry from The Guardian in anticipation of participating in the sealey challenge in August. 📚

💬📚 “The examples of alba amicorum, zibaldoni, Stammbücher and today’s bullet journals show that sometimes we just start writing in notebooks because it’s something the neighbors do.” Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

My son went to a Dungeons and Dragons camp last week where he painted miniatures. He loved painting them so much that we ended up doing a family mini painting day yesterday. I painted these three.