Come Home, Books

In the middle of this week one of the ninth graders came into my classroom. I typically get a lot of ninth grade visitors, many of whom come to appreciate me in those early weeks of high school much more than they did when I was actually their teacher. It's always fun to see them and ask them about their new, more grown-up lives. This particular visitor had already talked to me since school started, and given me a notebook in which she had written a love story she wanted me to read, and then we had talked about it when I gave her story back. But this visit had a purpose; she had a pile of books in her hand. And one of them was my copy of Catching Fire. I was very happy to see this book again since I had been looking for it. I'm about to order the third book in the series, Mockingjay, which just came out, and I was thinking I'd have to order myself a new copy of the second one as well.




Lots of my books are returning this way, brought in by parents who say they found them in their kids' rooms, carried in student backpacks, unearthed in piles in the basement of our building.

Apparently this particular student, the one clutching my copy of Catching Fire, who stayed at school after the earthquake, had simply gone into my classroom and helped herself to some books. She was explaining that she had had nothing to read. She didn't have to explain. I completely understood.