Diane Laney Fitzpatrick

writer, blogger, crafty woman

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summer reading projects

Summer Reading Crashes Party; 2 Injured

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If this book is on your child’s summer reading list, you need to run for school board.

 

Gah! I almost forgot about summer reading!

I’ve been planning my summer with the precision of a CIA operation. My calendar is color-coded now, despite 14 years I spent making fun of a woman I knew in DC who used to color-code her refrigerator calendar. I am her, now.

We have a super busy summer, including but not limited to out-of-town visitors, a big vacation, some college visits, a summer institute in New York, a wisdom tooth operation, driver’s ed, summer school, audition preparations, and more, much more. I began to run out of the main colors and had to go to “light brown” and “rose” to keep things straight.

Most of these things are for my daughter, my last child at home. If your kids are still small and you think that as children get older your parenting duties will gradually reduce in number and importance, you are dead wrong. Parenting builds to a bulging, bloated mess as your children get to 9th, 10th and 11th grades. And then from what I can foresee, around senior year, the abscess bursts and spews a geyser of unsigned paperwork, frantic deadlines, inexperienced-driver-fender-benders, tears and moans, yelling, threats, calls to the guidance office, papers that require a notary’s stamp, I-wish-you-weren’t-my-mothers, and Why-can’t-you-be-more-like-I-was-when-I-was-in-high-schools. Makes you want to trade it all in and go back to stomach-flu diapers and baby food meat in a jar.

So I was on it, I was so on it, with my color-coded calendar, which I can share with my husband electronically. I’m telling you I was On. It.

And then this morning I remembered: (cue scary music – duhnt duhnt duhhhhhh) Summer Reading. My daughter has a couple of AP classes next year, so it’s likely that she’ll have more summer reading than just a handful of books for English. And even though the summer hasn’t officially started yet, I think we might be already behind in getting the books.  Some years, I’ve gone to the book store and found that the only summer reading books left are the ones that are not the same books as the ones they’re supposed to read. Book store employees don’t understand that you can’t substitute Crime and Punishment with a James Patterson novel.

I am all for summer reading. As long as it’s worth going to all the trouble. I am for summer reading that is The Scarlet Letter, Anna Karenina, or even The Canterbury Tales (even though it’s full of sex. I read it in high school and I can still remember looking up from the book in Mr. Hurst’s study hall and going, What the hell? I later concluded I was interpreting it wrong and my mind was in the gutter.).

I am not in favor of summer reading that doesn’t accomplish what summer reading is supposed to do: Get teenagers to read the good stuff. One year, my son brought home the summer reading list and there was a list of books from which they got to choose. One of the choices was a John Grisham book. I called the school to complain and was told by an English teacher, “Well, it’s not great literature but at least they’re reading.”

No, ma’am. See, with summer reading you get to make them read literature. You don’t ever want to let a high school kid choose which book he’s going to read. Summer reading is one of the few times when you don’t have to let them decide, you get to hand them a list and say, “Read this. Now. Or else.” It’s worked fine for generations, why start coddling them and catering to their lazy teenage ways now?

I have some vague memories of summer reading when I was in high school. The Greek Way and The Roman Way are the only ones I can remember, maybe because the others I frantically raced through days before the first day of school. Mrs. Gray was very into projects and acting things out, so we often had to dress in costumes and write little playlets about the books we had read, instead of taking tests and writing reports. I have a fuzzy memory of Barb Ruby, Gene Hazy and myself playing the roles of semi-precious stones. I was beryl. I’m sure there was an explanation for this.

I am happy to report that my daughter will be reading Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby this summer. The teacher also is encouraging them to read nine books that they’ll be studying during the school year. None are John Grisham books.

Now added to my calendar: Buy Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby. In turquoise.

The Only Clubbing I Do on Friday Nights

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I’m in a book club! I’m 50 and this is only the second book club I’ve belonged to, so you get some idea of what a trend-follower I am. It also tells you something about my social life that we meet on Friday nights and that will now be my most thrilling thing to do on Friday nights.

My new book club is for smart people who like to read books worth reading. We vary in age and everything else, but we all have busy lives that are too filled with things that have the words “pre-soak” and “ASAP” in them. We can’t waste our precious time reading something that doesn’t knock our socks off and make us better people.

The only other book club I’ve belonged to is the Mother Daughter Book Club in New Jersey. It was a select group, invitation only, and we read the best fifth grade reading level books on the market. I use “we” super loosely. The girls and most of the moms read the best fifth grade reading level books on the market. I scanned and sped-read the best fifth grade reading level books on the market at red lights on the way to the book club meetings and in the driveway while the other moms were organizing the craft and setting out theme-related refreshments. I wasn’t always sure what the theme was, especially if there was a price tag covering the description on the back cover.

“You had a whole month to read the book,” my daughter would lecture me, as she tied my shoes and reached over to turn on the car ignition while I flipped pages. “Didn’t you say last month that you were never going to wait until the last minute again? You’d think that incident where you didn’t know the main character’s name in The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle would have taught you a lesson, missy. Now just go in there and fake it the best you can and promise yourself you’ll do better next time.”

It wasn’t my finest hour as a mom.

I’m hoping to do better with this new book club. I’d like to model it after my friend and literature advisor Rick’s book club in Chicago. They read classics and anything that doesn’t bring out the sarcastic criticism in Rick, who can melt cheese with his opinions.

Back at the turn of the century (I love saying that), I was talking to Rick about the new list that had just come out – The 100 Best Books of the 20th Century. We each got a copy and began going over it. Some of them weren’t good enough for him, so we decided to make up our own list. Our summer reading project that year was to make a new list and read as many as we could.

We had a pool back in the late 1900s (love saying that, too), so I spent most of my summer lifeguarding my kids and half the neighborhood children 15 and under, so I checked out a stack of books from the library and spent 2 1/2 months reading The Man in the Iron Mask while blowing up floaties, A Light in the Forest while scooping bugs out of the pool filter, Sons and Lovers while giving fake CPR to the 7-year-old drama queen from across the street (“You’re fine. Now get back in there and yell ‘Marco’ louder!”), and a series of 1930s detective stories (I have no idea how these slipped through Rick’s filter) while applying sunscreen to the non-Italian kids. It was a very confusing summer, what with the variety of genres and the kids realizing that they could do almost anything without me caring, except splash on my book.

Since then, my summer reading projects have been not nearly as focused. One summer I vowed to read Ulysses. It turned out the summer lasted 17 months and, yes, I know it normally doesn’t snow in the summer, but that year it did. I went through an Indian summer once and got so depressed with stories about handicapped urchins begging in the streets of Bombay that to this day, I can’t eat curry with the same zeal. Another summer I got all into the French Revolution and the Elizabethan England era and I read too fast and still have a hard time remembering who was burned at the stake and who was beheaded. (Is it ‘French guillotine and Brits burn’? Or ‘French burn and Brits guillotine’?)

I’m super psyched about my new book club. I will read the books on time. I will not wait until the last minute and cram. I will not buy or download CliffsNotes. I will leave enough time after finishing the book to brush my own teeth before leaving for book club. I will not allow my minor children to run to the liquor store to buy me a bottle of wine to take to the meeting.

I hope I’m successful enough to make it last longer than the summer. The last fall/winter reading project I did was skimming the DVD jacket of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle.