Reading List, One Last Time

So this morning I had my meeting with the G&T coordinator for middle school. Really, really nice woman - I could easily see us becoming good friends. I arrived in her office at 7:45 AM and the very first thing she does is offer me chocolate. How can you not love the woman?

We chit-chatted about a lot of things - the weather (being good Minnesotans, don't-cha-know), how my boys are doing, the holidays, etc ... but eventually meandered to the topic at hand. She told me that the English teacher had OK'ed this list with the G&T department - at which point I interrupted her with an incredulous "REALLY? And you are OK with this list?!?" And she kind of stammered, and said, well, um ... and drifted off as I started off on how inappropriate I think it is. Oh, you guys would have been so proud of me! I remembered (without notes!) the powerful language of Carla and the empassioned opinions of Dawn, Shawn, Calandria and Larue. I spoke forcefully but calmly, passionately but evenly (usually when I get riled up I cry. Not a pretty site, and kind of weakens the message.) And she wrote down most of what I said!

After covering why this list was so wrong - starting with the old "since when is Entertainment Weekly the resource educators want to rely on?" and listing several books with inappropriate themes, I said something along the lines of "There are so many lists out there to choose from. There are gifted reader lists, college prep lists, librarian-created lists, award-winning book lists. It should be easy to find a good list to use. And if YOU can't find one, I can certainly find one for you."

Whoops. Got a little carried away there. No educator worth her salt is going to pass up THAT offer.

So yes, I am now on the hook to come up with an exceptional reading list for the 8th graders, to replace the EW one (and it's not "we'll consider switching lists" -- it's "We will switch lists" Yay!). But honestly, I know it's not going to be that hard. Besides, I have all you to help me!