I was disappointed when I only caught the end of Nancy Pearl the other day on NPR. She was reading poetry in celebration of Poetry month, at least that’s what I deduced after hearing only the last minute of the show. Deb Aronson also contributed a piece on her in March’s Council Chronicle titled “Nancy Pearl: Über Librarian” that I am just wild about. Her theory about how students (and people in general) enter a book is worth adding to my courses. Aronson writes, “Pearl pictures books as having four doors by which to enter: story, characters,...setting, and language” (p.25). Ever since I started writing with librarians and for them in books like Integrating Multicultural Literature in Libraries and Classrooms in Secondary Schools (with Gail K. Dickinson) and the upcoming Mathematics in Libraries & Classrooms (with Sueanne McKinney), I have tried to express what Pearl says so perfectly in my courses: English teachers and librarians “have a lot to say to each other.” I plan to check out the author interview videos she has on her site.
