Hello Book Bums families!
This week we are celebrating graduates. We often think of endings when we hear the word graduation; but another word for the same ceremony is commencement, which means a beginning. You’ll see both words as you read this week’s newsletter, and together they indicate that someone is taking the next step into something new. Congratulations to all families celebrating a graduate, whatever the level!
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Word of the Week
ceremony (ser-uh-moh-nee) noun/person, place, or thing - a formal action or ritual to mark an occasion
The graduation ceremony includes having your name called and receiving a diploma.
Literary Calendar
• May 16 is National Biographer's Day
• A biography is a book written about the life of someone, and they have been around for a long time. The first known biography is from 44 BCE.
• Later in this newsletter we share a biography idea for Mother's Day.
From our Bookshelves
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret was written by Judy Blume back in 1970. It’s a coming-of-age story about a girl dealing with the challenges of becoming a preteen. If you’re a woman, I bet you’ve at least heard of this one. It was the book that addressed girls’ issues such as buying their first bra, having a period, and having crushes on boys. But did you know the book was banned? It was even challenged in Ohio, by Xenia school libraries in 1983, because the book’s “themes of sex and anti-Christian behavior” were deemed inappropriate. And yet Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret has been released with more covers than I could count, and it's been released, this year, as a feature film. When I asked around Book Bums, all the women spoke highly of the book, and some of them absolutely swooned.
In one online review of the book, a father said, “. . . my own daughter is about to graduate from the sixth grade (and elementary school). With the impending release of the film adaptation, I figured it was time I gave her a copy of the book, which she devoured in a single session.
Check out the movie trailer here.
Tips for Families
Whether kids are graduating from preschool, elementary school, high school, or college, it’s the time of year when many are experiencing important rites of passage. These ceremonies marking important stages in life are significant, and I wanted to share some thoughts.
Long ago, when I was a youth group leader at my church, I read the book Men of Honor, Women of Virtue: Raising Kids to Keep the Faith by Dr. Chuck Stecker. I was challenged when Stecker stated that American culture makes adulthood “an unreachable goal” for kids.
Think about it. When do we become adults? At the age of twelve, we can be tried as an adult for a crime. At about fourteen, we can be left home alone. At the age of sixteen, we’re permitted to begin driving. We can watch an R-rated movie at the age of seventeen. Eighteen-year-olds can vote and enter the military (where they can die for their country), but they can’t drink alcohol until the age of twenty-one.
When, exactly, do we become adults?
Stecker shared that in other societies there is a much clearer dividing line between being a child and being an adult and how the process of granting adulthood (It’s not earned…) impacts the self-esteem and confidence of young adults.
My husband, Mike, addressed our oldest son after his high school graduation and explained that his role of father had changed with commencement. Mike said that he would always be here, but now his role would be that of a trusted advisor. There would be no curfews. No imposed consequences for mistakes made (outside of natural consequences). No rules beyond simply being the respectful young man we raised him to be. With this proclamation, my husband “granted” adulthood to each of our boys after high school graduation, and it was one of the wisest dad moves I’ve ever witnessed.
We simply cannot wait for our kids to make all the wise decisions or land the just-right career before we consider them adults. Every adult I know still makes childish mistakes sometimes. Consider that, perhaps, when adulthood is granted, children rise into it.
Here are some tips for the HS graduates in your life:
1. Make one meal a week, for the family, for one month this summer. You will also set a proper table at least once.
2. Do your own laundry, fold it, and put it away each week.
3. Learn to sew on a button and make other minor sewing repairs.
4. Order something and/or make an appointment over the phone.
5. Look into the eyes of restaurant servers, greet them, and place your own order.
6. Practice engaging in conversations with people you don’t know well.
7. Learn how to figure an appropriate tip.
8. Open and maintain your own bank account and begin saving some money each month.
9. Learn how to change your own tire and how to jump a dead battery with jumper cables.
10. Get a credit card and practice using it. Be sure to pay it off each month.
11. Learn how to write a check and master your signature.
12. Make a binder to organize your important documents (birth certificate, copy of driver’s license, social security card, credit card information, bank information, etc.)
Enjoy your graduation celebrations (and impress your guests) by remembering to:
1. Greet your guests and make them all feel welcome.
2. Make introductions for guests who may not know one another.
3. Be present in conversations. (To be good at talking with others, you don’t have to be interesting. You simply must be interested.)
4. Show gratitude for those who prepared everything for your celebration.
5. Say thank you for gifts and for guests taking the time to come to your party.
6. Write handwritten thank you notes too.
Just for Fun
Sappy Graduation Songs for your playlist-
• “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” by Green Day
• “I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack
• “100 Years” by Five for Fighting
• “My Wish” by Rascal Flatts
• “In My Life” by Beatles
• “Seasons of Love” from Rent
• “You’re Gonna Miss This” by Trace Adkins
• “Don’t Blink” by Kenny Chesney
• “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac
• “Photograph” by Nickelback
• “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye” by Boyz II Men
• “Whenever You Remember” by Carrie Underwood
Speaking of music . . .
In just a few days, you’ll likely hear “Pomp and Circumstance” as you observe processions of graduates during their commencement ceremonies. This British marching song has been played in America at graduations of all kinds since the early 1900s. Composer Edward Elgar knew it was a good when he wrote it. He told his friends that it would “knock ‘em flat.” He wasn’t wrong. When the song first played in 1901, the audience demanded that it be played two more times! Elgar described the song as "a tune that comes once in a lifetime,” which makes it a rather perfect choice for graduation ceremonies.
Long before Elgar wrote “Pomp and Circumstance,” he was a piano tuner and a church organist. He had studied piano and violin and then taught himself to play every instrument he could get his hands on, but he hadn’t finished his education and simply worked with his father teaching music lessons and living in relative poverty. Then, Caroline Alice Roberts, a novelist and poet (who’d assumed she’d die a spinster) began taking violin lessons from young Elgar. Though Elgar was eight years younger than Roberts, the two married, and the money from her published works afforded Elgar the opportunity to pursue his dream of being a composer. After his work began to gain attention, a friend named Professor Samuel Sanford invited Elgar to Yale to receive an honorary degree. In that ceremony, several of Elgar’s works were played. “Pomp and Circumstance” was the grand finale. It wasn’t long until other Ivy League schools began playing the song, too. It’s funny. A boy who couldn’t scrape together enough money to attend conservatory was the one who composed the song for graduation ceremonies.
Tips for Readers and Writers
Happy Mother's Day
To celebrate Mother’s Day, you may want to invite your kids to turn your story into a book. Set aside some time for your kids to ask you questions about your childhood. Maybe you can think of a few stories or share some things that occurred when you were your child’s age. You can even share a few photos if you have them. Then, provide materials so your child can write a book about you. You can write a book about your child to model how it could be done, but allow your child to make his or her own decisions as s/he writes about you.
Wordology Workshop
• The Latin root gradus means step.
• It is the root of graduation, taking the next step.
• You can find it in many common words such as grade, gradient, gradual, and graduated (like a cylinder) all having to do with steps.
Practical Grammar
Is it past or passed?
First, you should know that the word passed can only ever function as verb.
We nearly passed our exit on our way to the commencement ceremony.
The word past can function as an adjective, adverb, noun, or preposition.
Adj: The past week has been busy, but I’ve treasured every moment.
Adv: We accidentally drove past the venue.
Noun: We’re looking forward to what awaits us and refuse to live in the past.
Prep: We live just past the stop sign.
Here’s a fun way to remember the Great Lakes! I prefer this one to HOMES because this mnemonic device moves from west to east and places the lakes in the correct order.
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