Working with LONG WAY DOWN Tonight: The Literate Learner w/ Thanks to @JasonReynolds83

Live = Evil.

I didn't know that was an anagram, but it is what I used to repeat often to juniors when we spent a year discussing the philosophy of good and bad, trying to position our own truths in relation to Plato's allegories and caves. If you live, I'd say, and spell it backwards, you'll get evil.

Life can be evil.
Evil helps to give us life.

Medea, MacBeth, Cry The Beloved Country, Night, The Things They Carried, and a whole binder of poetry brought us a curriculum to discuss Greek Mythology, Elizabethean England, WWI, WWII, the age of imperialism and the Vietnam War. We read to find out a definition of what was good to us, in all the debates for what God intended. The reading, we learned, also brought us back to all that is bad.

Then comes the politics.

I was thinking about anagrams while reading Long Way Down for tonight's graduate course on content-area literacy. Because of the #UNLOAD: Guns in the Hands of Artists exhibit I chose Jason Reynold's poetic narrative as a touchtone text to discuss literacy with pre- and in-service teachers. This summer, we used it effectively with 26 young people in Project Citizen and, because we'll be honored with his presence during the Saugatuck Story Fest from Oct. 12-14, tonight I will bring it to the classroom conversations of my class.

Scares = Cares, Ocean = Canoes, Alive = A veil, Feel = Flee, Cool = Loco, Cinema = Iceman, 

Anagram No. 6: I wish I knew / an anagram / for Poser. I have one = ropes.

Truth Is = It Hurts. Live = Evil. The poser brings his or her own ropes.

In these times of what is real and named not real, I'm reminded of the importance of words. They mattered to Will as his character moves through poetic narration to make meaning of his young life and they matter to me, who works with teachers and youth to make sense of the words.

Here we go: Words = Sword.

And tonight, we are cutting through them to appreciate the power of what Reynold's writes. Long Way Down = Coretta Scott King Award Honoree, Newberry Medal, National Book Award Long List, Walter Dean Myers Award, Printz Award Honoree. Phew. A book that matters.