If you Google it, It will come.

This morning I pondered what to write about since I had an urge to blog. That happens sometimes, I just want to write. I didnt have any idea what to write about so I Googled writing prompts and word of the day lists and help me get an idea sites. there are all sorts of things on the internet to get the creative juices flowing!! One of them said to write about something you loved as a child and still love today. Still another suggested writing about an appealing idea or dream you would like to see become a reality. Bingo. Here goes.

There is one activity in my life that has been a constant since I was first able to do it. Reading. I have always had a passion for reading, sometimes to a fault. I know when I was a pre-teen I could block out the world and lose myself in a good story. I hungered for more books. I ravaged the small local library and felt more at home there than at my elementary school. I can still see, in my minds eye, the low building jammed with books. The small wooden stools to help reach the higher shelves. I could walk there from school when it was a few blocks away and later on when it was right across the street from St. Augustine's I would gladly head there than home, sometimes.

In recent years I have enjoyed helping to produce plays either at school or in the community. The process of getting from a read-through to curtain up is exhilarating! Now I would like to combine the two.

This winter break I read a short story that I think could make a fabulous holiday play. It would be ideal for a Christmas pageant or church service in the weeks before Christmas day. The story keeps calling me back. It touches me because it centers around an 8th grade girl who is like most of the 8th graders I meet, not yet a grown-up but wanting desperately to be while clinging onto the girl inside. The short journey she makes on the night of the Christmas pageant at her church shows her that only one thing makes the day possible. The ending of the story is sweet and clear. I can see a production of this...I really can. I can even see certain folks I know cast in the show, the staging and the lighting. I can almost hear the backround music being sung by a choir...OK, that may be a little much!

So, maybe someday soon I will send a note to the author and feel this out. Would he be willing to give me permission to adapt the story? If so, could I do it? Would anyone be willing to help me bring life to those words on stage? How much money would that take?? Could I actually run with this? Have I totally lost my mind? Should I stop googling when I have a small writer's block? Those questions dont really require answers but go at it if you want to. I can take it. I think.

OK, so there it is. My writing urge has be met today. Happy New Year! oh yes -- What are your hopes and dreams leading you to do in 2012?

I chose the book because of the bridge, I got much more.

My summer reading is off to a great start!! So far in this first full week of summer vacation I have read 4 books. All of them are Young Adult novels chosen from the library I work in at the middle school and all of them so far have not disappointed. Today's book actually brought me to tears. That is rare that a book makes me cry. I feel the emotions often but real tears are not usual.

I chose the book because of the cover. I know, I know, don't judge a book by it's cover is something we all have heard and I say that over and over and over again during the school year as I talk to the kids about what they chose or why they didn't choose a book. This one was obvious to me. The cover is an amazing picture of the Brooklyn Bridge spanning the river. And it is by a great author; Patricia Reilly Giff.

all the way home (that is how it is written, no caps) is the story of 2 kids in 1941 who are very very different, very very determined and very very in need of each other. Without giving away too much, cause you may want to read it yourself, it is the story of Mariel, a polio victim living with her foster mother a few blocks from Ebbets Field and Brick, a boy moved to spend the year with them after the orchard his parents are attempting to farm is almost destroyed one summer.

Brick wants to go home to upstate NY to help his elderly and hurt neighbor Claude bring in the harvest. Mariel wants to find her biological mother who lived in the same area where Brick is from--her only memories of her being recollections of her from her time in the Iron Lung which kept Mariel alive. Laced in and out of this pair's tale are the positive influences of wonderful adults. The nurse, the cop, the mentor, and the Dodgers on their way to maybe winning their first pennant in 20 years!!

Now you may think this book made me cry because of the loving adults or the familiar names of places like Ebbets Field or Prospect Park or the descriptions of the borough of Brooklyn. You may think I was sad for the little polio stricken girl or the lonely but loved little boy. You would be wrong. I cried at the end of the story while reading about the conclusion of the baseball game that may make an entire state happy!! The emotions and the conclusions and the parallel of sport and life hit home. It is so subtle and so well done.

Doing the right thing, being real friends, never giving up, having courage and sharing the ups and downs of life with the people you love is the message I got. It is the message I need to hear sometimes and I get it in the most unlikely places- like the description of my Father's team making the state cheer! As LaVar Burton always said on Reading Rainbow, "of course, you don't have to take MY word for it."