Took an Evening Break to Cheer on Phoebe Yeh's Celebration of Somani Chainini's YOUNG WORLD @PossibleFutures in New Haven

I first read Somani Chainini's talents as a writer in his short story contributed to Ellen Oh's Flying Lessons and Other Stories (having the pleasure to dine with him at a Penguin Random House middle grade event at NCTE. His The School for Good & Evil was his claim to fame at the time and now he's debuting Young World this week. Thanks to Phoebe Yeh, I've had an advance reader copy for some time. I was delighted to get an invite from Lauren Anderson of Possible Futures Books in New Haven a few weeks ago when she was working with a few schools on the launch of the new book.

I love that his work here is trying to promote the agency of young people to get involved, to pay attention, to push their own storying in the storying of political nations, and to look for a way to make a better world where adults have set them up for the uglier side of...well, politics. Chainini's book is explosive and new, fusing multimodal textual communication within its narration (what he described as the self-(un)aware exploration of a teenage boy's notebooks. I was thrilled to get autographed copies for several of my student teachers completing their placements this Spring (we celebrate on Monday night).

It was an intimate, youth-engaged evening which easily became a great excuse to keep me from grading after a day of meetings which also distracted me from doing the work I should be prioritizing. 

Possible Futures is a one-of-a-kind bookstore and I'm so glad I have the New Haven connection (I wonder how the Harvard-educated writer felt about being in Yale-territory). Perhaps that might be another novel one day. 

The sun is returning to CT today, and although I planned yesterday's rainy day to be an indoor assessment event, I know I will be spending most of today catching up on what I didn't achieve yesterday.

Here's to teachers, the youth reading books in their care, and bookstore owners who make things happen.