WEEKLY PICKS for reading & exploring

Calling all writers: Join the Why I Rise Poetry contest: deadline is May 8th
“Turn a bad experience into something good” Details here.

This is a short doc about the Why I Rise movement:

Along with ART, we celebrate the EARTH with the Staten Island Museum–April 25th at noon a whole playlist of How-to videos will drop….how to make ink with walnuts, how to make a hydroponics system using a recycled 5-gallon water bottle, how to infuse cooking oils with seeds and herbs, and much more!

NY Wild Film Festival – Watch films about our EARTH….check out the free streaming movies on darkness and endangered “language of light” of fireflies celebrating WILD NYC:

Brilliant Darkness: Hotaru in the Night from BonSci Films on Vimeo.

NYC’s 520 miles of waterfront!:

And, as always, find some time each day to immerse yourself in a book to de-stress, empathize with others and know you are not alone…..Here is a curated list of ebook & audiobooks for City-As-School students & staff. For access for those outside of our community, please send a request!

 

 

 

WEEKLY PICKS for reading & exploring

Poem of the week: “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye

ONE BRONX ONE BOOK CLUB goes online!

MIT Open Courseware – Check out their classes for high school students

Curated list of ebook & audiobooks for City-As-School

Request-a-book for City-As-School’s digital collection

 

 

“Locomotion” by Jacqueline Woodson

This is a window into one of JW’s most magical short novels, a novel in verse, written as a series of poems, but poems that tell the story of Lonnie:

Lonnie’s mom and dad died in a fire. His little sister now lives with a rich family far away. Lonnie is with Miss Edna. Still living in Brooklyn, still going to school, writing poetry in Ms. Marcus’s class, trying to make sense of what has happened.  This excerpt is Lonnie remembering his mother–her voice and her story about him being born premature and nearly not making it, as she is cooking up a chicken:

“Mama cut the wing off the chicken, rinsed

it under the faucet, patted it dry–real gentle

like she was deep remembering.

So I  hoped and prayed and sat by that tiny 

baby every hour of every day for weeks

and more weeks. Doctors said it’s his lungs,

they’re just not ready for the world yet. Can’t

take a breath in. Can’t let one out. So I breathed

for you, trying to show you how, I

prayed to those lungs, Mama said. Grow!

The chicken was cut up, spiced up, dipped

in flour and ready to fry. mama touched each piece

still real gentle before she slipped it into the hot

oil. Then you were four pounds, five pounds, six pounds

bigger than this chicken. My big little baby boy

not even two months old and already

a survivor.” (p. 74)