A(nother) Year of Reading

Slice of Life-Books that Stay with Me

Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.

It is very common for me to finish a book and then forget the details (and sometimes even the main plot) a few weeks after I’ve finished. I enjoy these books but nothing about them is powerful enough to stay with me. Then there are the books whose characters stay with me forever.

Lately, I find myself thinking back to a few picture books as I watch the news. Books that were so powerful, they have stuck with me for years. Sadly, I did not learn much history in school and did not love it as a young adult. But then as I collected books for my classroom library as an elementary teacher and school librarian, I learned so much from the picture books I read. It is interesting the ways picture books can build background knowledge, even at my age. I could learn just enough to learn what I didn’t know that I needed to learn and then I can move beyond that and dig deeper. Two picture books have been taking up lots of my thinking lately because they were powerful learning for me and they are very timeline today.

I Am an American: The Wong Kim Ark Story by Martha Brockenbrough and Grace Lin is a story about the Supreme Court case that solidified birthright citizenship. This decision has guaranteed birthright citizenship since 1898.

All the Way to the Top: How One Girl’s Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything by Annette Bay Pimentel tells the story of Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins and her participation in the Capital Crawl when she was eight years old. This event was a critical step toward the American with Disabilities Act. Keelan-Chaffins has spent her life advocating for disability rights.

The third book that has been popping into my thoughts more often than usual is The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation by Anna Malaika Tubbs. It is not a picture book but it is one of the books that helped me understand so much history that I had not learned. I listened to the audio book and it was incredible. (I noticed that Anna Malaika Tubbs has a new book coming out in May–which I will sure preorder!)

So today, in the midst of all that is happening in our country, I am so grateful for these authors who write these important stories that have stuck with me over time. Each one helped me begin to understand history and how so many people have fought over centuries for things that we take for granted now.

Poetry Friday: Dilated

The email from The Academy of American Poets (poets.org) told me “Get Ready For National Poetry Month!”

They read my mind. I’ve been auditioning ideas for the past several days:

Revisit favorite poetry books from my classroom collection before I donate them? (No, I’d rather get the books in the hands of young readers BEFORE April begins.)

Wordle poems? (No, too unpredictable and often too goofy or trivial.)

Response to the news? (No. Just…no. No matter how important it is to witness the horrors, this would be way too depressing.)

Nature poems inspired by Mary Oliver’s “Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”? (That I could do.)

Devote the month to a form? (I’ve done haiku, cheritas, and golden shovels. This is a definite possibility. Maybe acrostics. Then I could respond to the news, AND “Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.” with or without a nature theme. Let’s give it a try…)

Yesterday, I had my yearly eye checkup, complete with the near-blindness of the drops that dilate your pupils.

DILATED

Devil’s in the details.
Ideally, anyway. But
Leave it to the Big Picture
Archetype to force us to
Try to see everything all at once
Even when we hardly
Dare to open our eyes.

(c) Mary Lee Hahn, 2025 draft

Janice has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Salt City Verse.

Getting More Involved

I committed to a bit more involvement in local, state and national issues this year. It is so overwhelming–so many things I care about that I feel I should get involved in. So, I tried to narrow things down and one area I want to focus my work in is women’s issues. So, this week, I attended an event by the Matriots of Ohio. The website describes this group as “a nonprofit, values-based organization dedicated to advancing women’s equal participation in all aspects of political life.” The event was part of a speaker series and the topic of this panel was “Her Money Talks”.

It was interesting content and I learned a lot. But I also realized that being part of things in person also matters. You meet people, and even if it’s for a minute, it’s worthwhile.

I read Sharon Brous’s The Amen Effect last year (highly recommend) and she talks about the importance of showing up for people. I have been thinking about that a lot. Who do I show up for? What causes do I show up for? What organizations do I support by showing up.

Part of being more involved for me is to educate myself, support organizations and people I care about and do things in community. I want to show up more for community organizations that I align with. This panel was educational and I also got to meet a few local people because the setting was set up for that to happen. It was a good way to spend the first hour or two of my morning. I will try to be intentional to showing up, not just for people but for issues and organizations I care about.

Slice of Life: Memories of My Parents

As I get ready to cook dinner, I chuckle to myself remembering what a struggle it was for mom to come up with meal ideas. We were absolutely no help when she asked what she should cook. The irony is that mom was a foodie. She loved the trips to Denver with her friends to go out to eat and see a show. She was always up for trying new foods, and she instilled the spirit of adventurous eating in my brother and me. We ate lima beans and Brussels sprouts, mangos and fresh coconut, and the best homemade Roquefort salad dressing I’ve ever had. Recipes from my childhood remain in rotation with new favorites: broccoli cheese soup (with bacon), cheesy beans and rice, chicken and wild rice, Lubbers Lounge LuLu, chili bean tostadas, and hamburger cobbler, to name a few. Thanks to mom, I never struggle to know what to cook for dinner.

Mom was a collector. She especially loved miniatures and antique glassware. But she also loved Boyd Bears, Hallmark ornaments, and apparently, scissors. I have her pinking shears and fabric shears, two smaller pairs of sewing scissors, the shears she used to cut hair, several pairs of our childhood scissors, multiple embroidery scissors, various manicure scissors including our baby fingernail scissors, and, naturally, a miniature pair of scissors.

Mom was an avid reader. She and a friend would go to the library sale every year and she’d come home with multiple grocery sacks full of books. She had a clever system for making sure she didn’t accidentally re-buy a book she’d already read. Inside the back cover of the myriad paperback mysteries she read, she’d pencil her initials. Then, when the sacks of library sale books had all been read, they were re-donated to the library. At the library sale, the back cover of each book was checked before the book was added to the sack of purchases.

Mom was an amazing seamstress, a devoted volunteer (Cub Scouts, swim meets, Bible School, reading buddy), and a creative gardener (she grew asparagus and tried her hand at breeding iris).

Most of all, mom was a great mom. She worked selflessly to make sure we had more and better than she did growing up. She died on March 11, 2017, just a few months before her 90th birthday.

Dad died on March 12, 1994. I still wonder if mom held on trying to make it to March 12, as if there were a special portal on that day that would take her straight to dad. She spent the final 23 years of her life without him. He was only 67 when he died and I had just started to get to know him adult-to-adult. As I now approach the age he was when he died (mom was the same age), I have a much greater empathy for her pain and her long years of loneliness.

My primary childhood memory of dad is that he was always working. He was the parts manager of the John Deere implement store and the needs of the local farmers, especially at harvest times, kept him behind the parts counter for long hours. I remember visiting him at work during Girl Scout cookie sales season and how special it was that he took time away from the parts counter to escort me to the “foreign” world of the tractor mechanics to sell my cookies.

When he wasn’t at work, dad was working in the yard. He was proud of the lawn and the trees he managed to grow in the arid high plains. When we wasn’t working in the yard, he was reading the paper, Popular Mechanics, or Smithsonian Magazine. While mom was the actively involved parent, dad was the rock of quiet strength.

There are more memories of each of them, of course. So many more. This slice barely skims the surface. If I could give them a message as I pause on March 11th and 12th, it would be a message of gratitude for my life, and to let them know that they remain an integral part of who I am and who I continue to become.

A Little Tattoo

I turned 60 last year and I have never been anti-tattoo but I’ve never had an idea for a tattoo that I liked well enough to do it. But with the state of the world as it is and my need to remind myself of my grounding, I got my first little tattoo this week.

Testa Tosta–a name I was called often by my grandfather and my father. For as long as I can remember. Testa Tosta is Calabrese (Italian from Calabria) term for “hard head” but I checked it out and there is some depth to it. Someone who sticks to what they believe, etc. I don’t remember Testa Tosta being in any way a negative word–it was just a statement, about who I was, said with love (and maybe a bit of frustration now and then:-).

So I got a very small tattoo on my arm. It reminds me of a lot–my dad, my grandfather, my Italian immigrant roots, that I can be a person who stands up for things and stays true to them and that stubbornness can be an asset when used right. I need this reminder these days when I miss all of the family members who have died over the decade, when immigrants are being treated horribly, when there is so much to fight for.

So, here it is:-)

Slice of Life: You’ve Got This!

You’ve Got This!
by Lindsay Bonilla
illustrated by Keisha Morris
Holiday House, 2024

We all need some encouragement at times. Life can be hard.

Whether it’s learning to ride a bike…

…or taking a test…

…it helps when there’s someone there who cheers us on with, “YOU’VE GOT THIS.”

Stepping out on stage? Getting a shot? Standing up to bullies? Admitting your mistakes? YOU’VE GOT THIS!

But the best part is

This book, with its catchy rhyming text, was made for the beginning of the school year (and frequent re-reads thereafter), the week before state tests, graduations (all ages and stages), and for anyone who needs a reminder that you’re there for them, believe in them, are rooting for them.

Slice of Life: Our More-Than-Human Neighbors

There was a hit-and-run vehicular homicide on the street in front of our house last week.

An SUV hit one of our neighbors and took off without checking to see if she was okay. She was not. The Division of Wildlife was called, who redirected the call to the police. Two squad cars came. A shot was fired. A body was removed. Her herd came back that evening to check on her, but she was gone.

A couple of weeks ago, it was The Squirrel With The Short Tail who I found murdered in the street in front of our house. She received a solemn trashcan funeral and a prayer for the forgiveness of humans in too big of a hurry to let little ones get across the street to the Burr Oak Buffet. With sassy Short Tail gone the squirrel crew who cleans up under our bird feeder was a little lost before they finally held auditions for Big Boss Squirrel.

In happier news, the hawks who sit on the power lines that run alongside the railroad tracks up the block are still helping to keep the population of rodents in check (cycle of life, not murder), and the mockingbird who flits from the woods at Bull Moose Run to those same power lines (further down the road) is still flitting. My nose tells me that our skunk friends are starting to wake up, and the chipmunks have come out from under our neighbor’s fence to hide in our woodpile between seed-grabbing forays under the bird feeder when the squirrels aren’t looking. The birds are getting loud — wrens, chickadees, cardinals, downies and hairies and flickers, robins, nuthatches, titmice, finches, and even still a few juncos. A couple of the turkey buzzards are back from their vacation down south. Most are waiting until it’s warmer. This week, friends. This week. Soon it will be time to take the two black swallowtail chrysalises out of the garage and welcome the first butterflies of the summer to fly free and help to hold off their Lepidoptiral decline.

We love our more-than-human* neighbors. Can you tell?

*The phrase “more than human” is borrowed from Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of BRAIDING SWEETGRASS and explained nicely here.

My Life as a Binge-Reader

I sat down to read a book I’d been excited about the other day but I couldn’t get into it and I didn’t have hours to read so I just quit. I do this often lately. I am not sure what’s happened but my reading habits have changed in a way that I don’t love. I have always loved being immersed in a book and living with the characters for a week or two. I’ve been reading books for as long as I can remember and I clearly remember living alongside Nancy Drew, Betsy, Harriet and others throughout my childhood. I loved reading a bit each night before bedtime so that the story lived with me until I could get back to it. And that continued until just a couple years ago.

Over the last few years, something has changed. I have become a kind of binge reader. I want to read for hours at a time–read a whole book on a weekend–or not start a book at all. And it makes no sense.

Over the last several years, I have read a lot-pretty much the same number of books as always-but I can’t say I am always reading something. It is something new I’ve just realized and I don’t like it. I like living my days in the midst of a story that I’ll get back to each day. I’m not sure what happened. It has been a slow process and I am just now realizing how much I miss always having a book and lingering with a book rather than rushing through.

I have started so many books over the last months, books I just didn’t have hours to read at one time. So, I just quit. That is not who I am (or who I want to be) as a reader. I am not sure when this speed-reading goal came about but I am going to work at getting back to it. It will probably mean putting down my phone at bedtime, finding different times during the day to read and being okay with reading a few pages at a time. I like a good binge read once in a while but I don’t want binge reading to be my whole reading life. We’ll see how it goes.

Poetry Friday: Grandma Hahn’s Bread

Grandma (Clara) Hahn’s Bread

4 cakes compressed yeast
	Almost a century separates us
	and yet time compresses –
	you are here with me
	in my kitchen.

1 cup lukewarm water
	I cup my hands around the story
	that you once held infant me.

6 tablespoons sugar
	It would have sweetened our lives
	had the car wreck not happened –
	my father anchored by family
	my mother loved as a daughter
	we children connected to ancestors

1 qt. skimmed milk
	but all those possibilities were skimmed away
	like the thick, rich cream
	that rises to the top of the morning milking
	brought straight to the kitchen from the barn.

4 tablespoons shortening
	I made your bread once for Dad,
	attempting to shorten the distance
	that had formed between us.
	It was good, he said, but

about 14 ¼ cups Mother’s Best
	not the same as yours.

7 ½ teaspoons salt
	It’s not the same as yours,
	but this three-rise half-day project
	is as close as I’ll ever get
	to the flavor of your love,
	Grandma Hahn.


© Mary Lee Hahn, 2025

Molly challenged the Inklings to write Hermit Crab poems this month. Think of the form as a poem that climbs into the shell of another kind of writing. A little bit mind-bending at first, but if you find the right “shell,” you’ll be off and writing.

As for the recipe, yes, this is bread I bake every few weeks. I can’t remember the last time we bought bread in a store. And no, I do not bake in that volume! I cut the recipe in half and make two loaves. I use granular yeast, Snowville Creamery whole milk to come close to “skimmed” milk, and I’ve never been able to find Mother’s Best flour, so I make do with King Arthur.

I can’t wait to see what the others came up with this month! Thanks for the great challenge, Molly! Yes, I do realize that this is the second Inkling challenge in a row that has resulted in a bread poem. No, I’m not going for a trifecta, though you just never know…

Here’s what the rest of the Inklings came up with, if life gave them the elbow room this month to write:

Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core

Margaret has the Poetry Friday roundup this week at Reflections on the Teche and this post does double-duty as a Slice of Life post.

An Alternative to Doomscrolling

I admit that I am spending far too much time reading the news these days. I haven’t figured out if it’s better to keep up all day or waiting to then get a huge shock with all that’s happened later in the day. Regardless, I am spending lots of time on social media where I have found many great independent reporters.

But I have also discovered a new account that I am in love with. Tocarra Elise (@tocarraelise) is a writer, comedian and “Certified Kid Lit Enthusiast”. I am not sure how I happened upon her but I am so glad I did. Her reels are a great break from the miserable news I read all day. A little break of sunshine and joy.

Tocarra reviews books with a uniqueness I have not seen anywhere else. Her reviews are brilliant and fun and truly capture the essence of each book. Even though I know so many of the books she reviews, I love her take on them. And I am in love with her presentation style. I am so happy every time I see a new book review in my feed. (One of my favorite reviews is Chrysanthemum but there are so many I love!)

Her reviews are happy to watch but they’d also be great mentors for our students.

Find her on Instagram and enjoy!