Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid by Ralph Fletcher

This book is a nugget. Started and finished inside of 24 hours, I found this book in my mailbox at school. A Post-It on the cover read, "Hi Jill-Here is that book I was telling you about. {smiley face} Amy". Amy is the instructional coach at my school, which essentially means she helps teachers be better teachers and students be better learners. I've watched her single handedly do both for the last 3 years. She is phenomenal at her job. A majority of our conversations revolve around books, be it for students or for ourselves, and I respect her opinion immensely.

Marshfield Dreams is about Ralph Fletcher's first 13 years of life. This gem of a book includes little snippets of growing up as the oldest of nine in Massachusetts. As I grew up with some 40-odd cousins that I saw on the regular, this resonated with me. Ralph, his siblings and his friends ran and played on Acorn Street and through Ale's Woods just as we did on Maple Avenue and at Silas Willard. It was magical, however briefly, to travel with Fletcher to this place of childhood freedom.