Tag: Catherine Called Birdy

• Book Review: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

  At the start of each new year, I look back over the books I read the previous year and some years, I make a top ten list, not necessarily ranking them but always coming up with my favorite book of the year. Oh, boy, I will be having lots of trouble in January due to…

  michardillo

  November 4, 2025

  books

  84 Charing Cross Road, Andrew Carnegie Medal, book-review, books, Bridget Jones Diary, Catherine Called Birdy, Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, debut novel, Elizabeth Strout, epistolary style, fiction, Goodreads, Karen Cushman, literature, Love and Saffron, novel, Olive Again, Olive Kitteridge, reading, teaching, The Correspondent, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Martian, Today Will Be Different, Virginia Evans, Where’d You Go Bernadette, writer, writing

• Book Review: The Killer Question by Janice Hallett

  The Killer Question by Janice Hallett (Atria Books, September 2025) is my third book by Hallett. All of her books, those I’ve read and those I’ve yet to read, are told in epistolary style, meaning the story is told through a series of letters, or in modern terms, a series of emails, interoffice communications, text…

  michardillo

  June 30, 2025

  books

  84 Charing Cross Road, Annie Barrows, Atria Books, book-review, books, British, Catherine Called Birdy, Chat GPT, Emily Blunt, England, epistolary novels, Ewan McGregor, fiction, food, Goodreads, Helene Hanff, Janice Hallett, Karen Cushman, Kim Fay, Kindle, library, literature, Love and Saffron, Mary Ann Shaffer, middle school, mystery, NetGalley, novel, Paul Torday, reading, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Scotland, teacher, teaching, The Appeal, The Examiner, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Killer Question, writer

• Girl Power

  It’s mid-third quarter of this school year and I am knee-deep teaching two novels set in England nearly six hundred years apart. The 7th grade is reading Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman, the diary of a girl in medieval times during the reign of Edward I, covering the span of one year of her…

  michardillo

  February 28, 2016

  Essay

  Britain, Catherine Called Birdy, Downton Abbey, Edward I, election year, England, girl power, Great Rebellion, Hillary Clinton, Karen Cushman, Lady Mary, law school, Lord Grantham, LSU, medieval times, middle ages, Newberry Honor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, teaching, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Victorian Era

• Read ‘Em or Weep: A Cautionary Tale

  All over the country grade school, middle school, and high school students are scrambling to finish their summer reading assignments and projects. Some have put off reading a 300-page book to the very last minute and now finishing it in time to complete the assignment seems a daunting task. In the coming week, which is…

  michardillo

  August 23, 2015

  Essay

  Agatha Christie, Aristotle, Catherine Called Birdy, Catholic, Cuba, England, foreign language, French, Gary Schmidt, Hemingway, Hercule Poirot, Karen Cushman, library, Louisiana, Mary Poppins, Maryland, Medieval era, Montgomery County, Murder on the Orient Express, Port Sulphur, procrastination, Shakespeare, Spanish, sports, sports camp, Steinbeck, summer reading, summer slump, terrazzo, The Old Man and the Sea, The Pearl, The Wednesday Wars, vacation