Mary is a graduate student at Arizona State studying Secondary Education to be an English teacher. She's been committed to English literature longer than to her husband and loves to share her passion with others. Email Mary here.
Jerry Spinelli's book Stargirl gives the teenager in all of us something to think about. Imagine growing up in a small town in Arizona, somewhere outside Phoenix, in the middle of the desert. Think about the isolation from the...
JD Salinger, noted author of The Catcher in the Rye, has died of natural causes. He was 91. Salinger, the man responsible for introducing Holden Caulfield to generations of readers, published other works after The Catcher in the Rye, though...
Jonathan Safran Foer's 2005 novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close did much more than I expected: it made me laugh and it made me cry.A story about a little boy whose father died in the Word Trade Center...
In response to a particularly annoying episode of a morning radio DJ misusing the word "broke", I'd like to clarify the proper usage of broke and broken.
Let's say a child's toy...
English grammar is far from intuitive. English is one of the most difficult foreign languages to pick up. Are you surprised? Few native speakers have a grasp of all the sticky nuances; it's tough to expect non-native speakers...
Do you remember your high school English teacher telling you to stop using passive voice? Do you remember all those papers returned, bloodied and battered by red pen streaks? Did you ever figure out why he/she despised passive voice...
Photo sequoits.comEver feel bad about your childhood? Ever feel like no one has had it worse than you? Pick up a copy of Jeannette Walls' "The Glass Castle". Her memoir will give you a chance...
Calling all writers!Do you have problems motivating yourself to write? Do you have trouble finishing a story or novel you've already started? There is a solution to your woes: NaNoWriMo!National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is the electric...
"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary...""I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.""Like a razor also, it seemed massy...
Washington Irving's most iconic story, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," is a classic story to help celebrate Halloween. Irving's story has become an iconic ghost story over the last 189 years. The story has even...