5 Books That Have Changed My Life
Created by: Dawn Johnson Mitchell
Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
It was this book that opened my eyes to the power of an author's words to transport their reader to wherever they wanted you to go. Like Charlotte, I fell in love with Wilbur, with language, and the power of words over their reader. There was nothing like the magic of reading Charlotte's woven words like "Radiant" and "Terrific" across the pages of this book. I learned a lot about friendship and sacrificial love through Charlotte's gift to Wilbur and his devotion later to her three daughters who stayed behind.
As a teacher this book has been a staple in my classroom library because it fosters a love of language, of words, and of friends.
Two of my favorite quotes from this text that still resonate with me are:
“You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web
“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte's WebTo Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
This novel was relevant when it was published, it is extremely relevant now, and I would argue that it will continue to be relevant through the ages because it focuses on social justice. As long as there is a group anywhere that is facing injustice or unfair persecution, there will be a need for social justice. There will be a need for Scout and Atticus, and for teachers who will bring literature like Lee's Mockingbird into their classrooms.
Along with Scout, through the pages of this book we grow to respect and admire her father, Atticus Finch as he fights for Tom Robinson and for all who are oppressed, or who have witnessed or experienced discrimination. Writing has the power to expose, to education, to enlighten. It has the power to change understandings, beliefs, responses.
A few of my favorite quotes from To Kill A Mockingbird are:
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
One Foot in Eden by Ron Rash
Set in the Jocassee Valley between North and South Carolina, Rash's first novel creates an unforgettable sense of place, describing the landscape in vivid detail, giving it an identity that was found in the characters: their dialogue, dress, determination, in the plot lines - what did and didn't happen, in every aspect of this book, place was powerful, pulsing us along to find out what would happen of the town when the Carolina Power Company flooded the valley and displaced its' people.
Through this book we came to know this place Rash and his Scotch-Irish ancestors had lived in and loved for generations. Meeting Rash when he was an adjunct at Tri County tech and a guest author in our Spartanburg Writing Project Summer Institute was validating to me because he lived a bi-vocational life as a teacher and as a writer as well and he believed they fed each other. Now as a critically acclaimed writer, the chair of Appalachian Studies at Western Carolina, whose novels, Serena and The World Made Straight were made into major motion pictures, Ron Rash still teaches and still spends his days writing of the places he knows best.
In that first author in residence he said he could write his whole life on Western North Carolina and never exhaust it. He quoted Eudora Welty, "One place understood helps us understand all places better." This text and Rash himself have convinced me that we need to own our places - tap into the places, people, and experiences that have formed who we are when we choose books for ourselves and when we choose to write.
One of my favorite genres to read is Appalachian literature because it is where I live, it is who I am. As teachers this knowledge has huge impacts in our classroom. We need to find out who are students are...where they come from. We need to allow them to choose what to read, to form their own identity as a reader, to choose their own people to read and to identify with.
Rash gave me permission to write about my places and to explore the genres I love most. Let's give this same permission to our students.
One of my favorite quotes in One Foot in Eden is..
“But nothing is solid and permanent. Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations. You don't need to read history books to know that. You only have to know the history of your own life.”
― Ron Rash, One Foot in Eden
The ESV Study Bible, Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
The Poisonwood Bible by Kingsolver took me on the journey of a lifetime from suburban Georgia to the jungles of the Congo with the Price family and their mission to bring a superior culture and faith to the people of the Congo. Through this work of fiction I learned a tremendous amount of biology, of craft, and most of all, of compassion and of understanding that to be understood we must first be willing to understand. I was convicted of my own unrealized moral superiority and unquestioned ideas and beliefs. This book changed me. It caused me to deeply question my beliefs and my faith, and it in turn, strengthened them. I left this book knowing that humility and service to others has no place with moral superiority.
This book led me to choose to read through my own Bible as an adult, to want to know what I believe and why, and to be able to communicate it in ways that do not alienate or judge. A like minded colleague led me to read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, which is a fascinating, funny, wildly endearing memoir of a woman's journey to understanding and living her life, becoming a writer, and understanding her faith.
What I learned as a reader from these three books is that great books lead you on a journey beyond the last page. Truly powerful literature leads you to question, to want to know more, to think, to consider, to change.
As a student I was assigned one work of beautiful literature. As a reader, I wanted to explore the Bible and Bird by Bird. Many times in public schools, we assign texts either from the canon or from our personal favorite book lists. It is important that we allow our students to continue to explore themes, ideas, possibilities of their own that may or may not match our own.
It's how we know who they are, what they are thinking, what they believe, what they aren't sure of. It's how we learn.
Quotes from all three that I love:
"To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
ESV Bible Quotes
“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."
― Mark 12: 30-31
Bird by Bird Quotes (showing 1-30 of 158)
“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
All Over But the Shoutin' by Rick Brag
In his memoir, one of the most beautifully written pieces of literature I have ever read, Bragg turns our attention to who he really is, how he grew up, and how it has shaped who he is, and most of all, how he is proud of it all.
Through the pages of this memoir he owns his impoverished upbringing in rural, backwoods Alabama. He admitted that he did not earn a formal, college degree but learned the craft of writing, of award winning journalism through living it, and through relying on the gifts of weaving a good story through the oral story telling traditions from his family.
This memoir was written in tribute to his mother who gave him the best start she could, in spite of being a single mother who raised her children in a shack with a single bare light bulb in the room and all she had. Bragg candidly shares how throughout his career, he was looked down upon by colleagues because of his Southern speak, his working class background, and his culture. Instead of shrinking from who he is, Bragg chose to really embrace it.
His writing drips with beautiful descriptions, dialect, and drawl. Bragg and his book taught me to not be ashamed of who you are and where you come from, but to use all of your experiences to better yourself. As a teacher I am reminded of how important it is for us to embrace our students' backgrounds and to help place books in their hands that help them view who they are, where they are from in the most positive light possible because it shapes them, whether they recognize it or whether we honor it or not.
Quotes from this book that I loved:
“Every life deserves a certain amount of dignity, no matter how poor or damaged the shell that carries it.”
― Rick Bragg, All Over But the Shoutin'
“This is a place where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven.”
― Rick Bragg
“It was a good moment, the kind you would like to press between the pages of a book, or hide in your sock drawer, so you could touch it again.”
― Rick Bragg, All Over But the Shoutin'
“It wasn't that I had gotten it right . . . but that I had gotten true.”
― Rick Bragg