🔖📚💬 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.

🔖📚 Read A Bookstore Boom in a Time of Literacy Decline by Ellen O’Connell Whittet (Literary Hub).

…the line at a well-stocked bookstore in a prosperous coastal city is not the same thing as a reading culture, and we should be careful not to mistake one for the other.

🔖📚 Read In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility You Can Be “Demure and Brat All at Once” by Samantha Silva (Literary Hub)

In the Dashwood family and in my family, it sometimes feels like the older sister feels like she has to be Sense so she can hold space for the younger sister to be Sensibility.

🔖📚📝 Read A Deaf Manifesto on Motherhood (Electric Literature).

A great interview with Sara Nović about her book Mother Tongue, parenting, and writing.

🔖 Read My Undiagnosed Chronic Illness Taught Me to Love Sci-Fi by Carli Cutchin (Electric Literature).

I love this essay.

🔖 Read You Can’t Uncast a Spell by Holli Flanagan (Electric Literature).

I haven’t seen Wicked: For Good. This is an interesting and poignant analysis of the changes it makes from the ending of the stage show.

🔖 Read Attempting to Garden My Way Out of Sadness by Geetha Iyer (Electric Literature).

This is a gorgeous essay.

🔖🧶Read How Crocheting Is Bringing Me Back To Myself by Emily McGowan (The Good Trade).

This is a beautiful article about crafting not just beloved items, but our very lives.

🔖 Read The Trump administration is illegally gutting NASA’s largest research library. by Brittany Allen (Literary Hub).

Read the article. Stand up for science every day, but especially March 7.