Reflections from Day 1 of Song of Solomon

1. I really like reading out loud with students, even with advanced 12th graders.

2. This novel has so many layers that I think it would be easy to over-teach it.

3. A good measure of how sharp a reader a kid is: how quickly they get that Ruth is breast-feeding the 5-year old Milkman. He's sucking, his legs are dangling to the ground in the first paragraph. It's a little unclear what he's sucking at that point, though. Some got it.

4. So many colors. Why so many colors, Toni? Beloved is colored in sepia, Song of Solomon with the rainbow.

5. The big motifs are obvious right away, all mentioned in the title and the epigraph - singing, flying, naming, and fathers. The north/south thing is also really evident, right from the first paragraph (North Carolina Life Insurance and Lake Superior mentioned in the first sentence alone).

I love this book so much.