
Vanessa Stewart, Middle School English
Favorite adult book recommendation — Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Something about stories of families across generations mesmerizes me: they feel magical and yet powerfully close. This beautifully written story begins with two half sisters in eighteenth-century Ghana.
One sister is enslaved and taken to America; the other, married off to an Englishman involved in the very slave trade that has imprisoned her sister. Each successive chapter follows a new family member as these stories wind and weave an ocean away and yet ultimately find their way back to each other.
Favorite children’s book recommendation — Wayside School Series by Louis Sachar
My siblings and I loved reading together these zany stories from Wayside School, with all its quirky characters. They were a reliable source of laughter and the focus of many a dinner table conversation.