Planned Parenthood has a huge book sale every October. It lasts several days, and during the last two hours of the last day, teachers are allowed to come in and "shop" for free. I've gone several times over the last few years (not last year because I was at Tornwordo's wedding in Canada), and made it to the last 1/2 hour this year. Last Sunday at 7:30 pm I got the phone message from another teacher, "It's today, not tomorrow like we thought! It's 6:15 right now, and I'm here. I hope you get this message."

I skee-daddled over there and picked up a few good things. My big thing is always teen books for my classroom library, and dictionaries for those kids who don't have them at home. Or those kids that say they don't have them at home.

Anyway, both sections had been picked over pretty well, with lots of those silly "left behind" books that I refuse to actually provide for my students. They can read whatever they want for outside reading, but I'm not encouraging that nonsense. I picked up 3-4 old, smelly dictionaries too.

However, I was able to find Stone Diaries, which had been recommended to me, and Be Sweet; both books I've been wanting to read. I also found a couple of writing books; my good find was one by Natalie Goldberg (of Writing Down the Bones fame). This one was written in 1990, called Wild Mind, Living the Writer's Life.

I've just started reading it, and it's got lots of ideas for warm-ups. I'm going to use some of them here, and some in my classroom. I forget, in my pursuit of the California Standards, that writing used to be fun in my classroom. I need to work very hard to bring that fun back.