🔖📚💬 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.

💬📚 “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

📚💬 “Ancient history… shines a troubling spotlight onto the here and now, too, asking us to face what the judgement of the future on us will be.” Mary Beard, Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old

💬📚 “I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.” Arthur Conan Doyle, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes

📚💬 “Sickness wasn’t sexy. And her disability was invisible—she wasn’t missing a limb or in a full-body cast. Her level of suffering seemed impossible for others to fathom. After all, everyone got headaches sometimes, like during coffee withdrawal or the flu. So she hid it.” Tia Williams, Seven Days in June

📚💬 “What was it like, the luxury of not hurting?… she’d never stop fantasizing about being unsick.” Tia Williams, Seven Days in June

💬📚 “As a double major in creative writing and advanced melancholia, Eva had accidentally stumbled upon this life.” Tia Williams, Seven Days in June

So relatable.

💬📚 “It’s easy to take one’s own enthusiasms for granted; it’s much harder to explain them.” Mary Beard, Talking Classics

💬📚 “I love the days when my body cooperates.” Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing

💬📚📝 “I offer up the idea of the safety of a sentence for you right now, the possibility of a place to put yourself, to put your heart. A place to rest for a while from these feverish days.” Jami Attenberg, 1000 Words