Quetzalcoatl

So, the first week of September, 2019. The first week of school and the first week of my first Maternity Leave begins.  The below suggestions are all about the baby books that I have loved and ones that I'm yet to ponder over: 1. The post natal workshop with @beccyhands and @candidmidwife was the best thing I have been to all pregnancy. Made me realise how important it is to look after me after birth. Thank you ladies and thank you for the gift of your incredible book. 2. Gift from @lilyhitch89 by @theunmumsymum (currently reading) and I hope it’ll make me feel ok to be a weird mum. 3. Our hypnobirthing journey with @londonhypnobirthing and the book by @theyesmummum has changed the way I think and am informed about birth. All new mums need this. 4. My first book that Oscar got us when we were first pregnant. Very special times have led to this point and this very special book by @mother_of_daughters is honest, chronologically satisfying and really comforting.

Moonrise by Sarah Crossan This is my first verse novel. For someone who loves poetry, I leapt into this and whizzed through it. 24 hours and my first affair with the verse novel was over. It was wonderful. As we decided to teach it to our Year 9s this year, I’ve unfortunately been contemplating how I’d teach it as I read through it. Even though I’ll be on maternity leave and won’t be teaching it this year, I still can’t help but think about how I’d teach it. So...I’ve read it differently.  I’ve read it in the eyes of a teacher rather than me. It’s almost impossible to turn that off. I now can’t read any dystopian fiction as I’ll automatically compare it to Handmaid’s Tale or 1984 like we have to for the exam. It’s quite frustrating. Maybe that goes one day. I’ll even read a newspaper and think which articles I could use for certain classes. Text and words are everywhere and that’s what I like to bring into class - new writing to enhance previous study. Anyway, back to Moonri

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones This one is for you, Emma ( @Comment_Ed ). I can’t help but compare this to To Kill a Mockingbird . Rather than ending the book on an innocent black man being sentenced for a crime he didn’t commit, this novel starts with it (a rape in both cases). Rather than the novel being about how white people live in their southern town, it’s about how black people live in their southern town. Rather than the black man being shot and dying before he got a chance of parole, it is about a man black man being set free. Not only does it show how America still judges people, and how the justice system may still be unjust, but it does show how it’s changing (albeit gradually) due to freedom being given. Structurally, the mirroring of character narratives is clever where the dramatic irony is that the reader can create their own version of events by knowing all the points of view. It’s intimate through the epistolary section at the beginning. We feel li