Books & Ideas
The lessons at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High school last Friday were centered on 1960s diner sit-ins and dormitory riots. And the teacher was civil rights pioneer, author and journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault.
At a schoolwide multicultural assembly hosted by the Martha’s Vineyard Youth Leadership Initiative, Ms. Hunter-Gault told stories from her youth and read from her recent book, To the Mountaintop, written for high school-aged students.
Jacqueline Woodson, 49, stood in front of the seated crowd of Oak Bluffs School eighth graders last Friday morning, holding a copy of her 2005 young adult novel, Behind You. The book was a mere prop, though. Ms. Woodson never glanced at its pages as she pulled the book’s first vignette from memory.
Paul Karasik walked into the West Tisbury Free Public Library late last Saturday afternoon looking for a gong. At the same time library director Beth Kramer was busy helping someone fill out a passport application. Lisa Nivala and her daughter Karinne were looking for their favorite book in the children’s section.
If when walking out among the autumnal stylings of nature, the urge to utter in capital letters In Leaves No Step Had Trodden Black comes quite easily, then perhaps Featherstone’s Fall Festival of Poetry and Music is for you.
On Oct. 20 from 4 to 6 p.m. the festival will feature the words and music of Island poet laureate’s past and present including Lee H. McCormack, Steve Ewing, Dan Waters, Justen Ahren and Fan Ogilvie. William Waterway, the founder of the Martha’s Vineyard Poetry Society, will also take the stage.
Fans of both classic gumshoe detective novels and recent crime fiction will appreciate Jim Kohlberg’s new mystery novel The Golden Gate is Red. In this engaging book, the author gives readers a murder mystery set amid the atmospheric fog and steep hills of San Francisco. But unlike most crime fiction, Mr. Kohlberg focuses on the psychological toll paid by his main characters; the unraveling of whodunit takes a back seat to the emotional journeys.
As Laura Wainwright distinguishes in the titular essay of her new book Home Bird: Four Seasons on Martha’s Vineyard, a home bird is different from a homebody. Unlike a homebody, who does not like leaving home, a home bird very much enjoys going out and traveling, but simply finds “special delight in the comfort, nourishment and complexity of our lives at home.”
But Ms. Wainwright also views her home as not merely her house on Lambert’s Cove where she lives with her husband and dogs, but the entirety of Martha’s Vineyard.