Reading: So Much Between Us, from Spring Street!

Click for the full poster!

Got this nice & whimsical & somewhat tongue-in-cheek note from Spring Street Middle School Humanities teacher Kate Small, who cordially invites you & me to what promises to be a wonderful event. Here’s the scoop, according to Kate:

Please join Spring Street’s “gripping, nuanced and startlingly incisive” fifth, sixth and seventh graders in celebrating the North American publication of their book, So Much Between Us, on December 17th, at Friday Harbor Presbyterian Church, right after school, at 3:30 p.m.

The authors will read selections from the book, and they will be dressed up and freshly washed.

Admission is free.

An extremely limited first edition of So Much Between Us will be available for purchase at the event, for ten dollars, check or cash only. Small attractive authors will silver pens will provide autographs at no cost. If they ask you for money, please notify Head of School.

Excerpt from So Much Between Us, by Ronan Rankin, Grade 6:

I watch my grandma’s hand as she bends to pet their terrier named Rose, her hand caressing the lush coat, groomed and strained by fingers, and all the dust removed. Her hand tells of a long history of touching millions of textures and shapes, smooth and rough, and of all the round and square things that make our world. The puppy and her hair complete the story of the hands, of the newborn and of the deep-rooted.

When I think of my grandparents I see redwood, oaks, pines and firs. I see a pond filled with frogs and lilies, fed by a spring tumbling and singing its song back to the peaks of the mountains. I see a small dash of grass with an old fountain in the middle that used to make the water murmur and flow. I see a weeping willow dropping its long spindly branches and leaves. I often think of how my grandfather hands me an ivory chess piece. I see the loving care with which he handles it, and the great trust in me, in placing it in my palm.

Advance praise for the North American First Edition of So Much Between Us:

“Herman Melville meets Shel Silverstein, with a soupcon of Tupac — this tour do force is impossibly inventive and will leave you electrocuted.”

Mt. Vernon Times Magazine

“One is tempted to say of this sweeping, visionary tome, representing as it does the collective voice of a generation, that it brilliantly defies categorization at the same time that it continues in the proud tradition of last year’s book. One would have thought this impossible, but this one too is butt kickingly awesome.”

Bellingham Post Intelligencer

“Brimming with artisanal sentences, toothsome and chocolaty…”

New York Gazette Newsletter Courier

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