Educator Book Club discussion

SONGS FOR A TEENAGE NOMAD by Kim Culbertson 5 stars - teensreadtoo.com. In the novel, Calle (my main character) keeps a song journal. She writes down the memories she gets from songs (some people keep photo books...she keeps songs). I've been touring in schools and working on the song journal with students and it's been really fun. I've also had people writing me and letting me know what songs make a memory for them and it's been really cool to hear different stories. Anyone care to share a song that always brings back the same memory? I"ll give an example: Whenever I hear "If You Leave" by OMD I am immediately back in middle school in a lime-green Bongo mini skirt, hoping, hoping that the boy with his locker above mine would ask me to dance. ;-)

That book sounds interesting! I have many songs that remind me of something. One that comes to mind is Sarah McLachlan's "I will remember you." I was in Florida on vacation with my family and best friend, Liza, at the time. We were sophomores in high school. She brought her tape player (tapes, remember those?) and we were switching back and forth using them to listen to the mix tape she'd made from the radio the week before in preparation.

We were obsessed with reading books by Lurlene McDaniel, which were usually sad books about kids with cancer and other sicknesses, but love was thrown in there somewhere also so it always caught our attention.

Anyway, that song reminds me of that vacation with my friend- reading those books, listening to that song for the first time on her tape player, and singing it out loud in the pool.

I LOVE your story, Angela. And boy do I remember tapes... :-) I actually love that song...have some of my own memories around it. Funny memory that came out of this...I was in the gym and her song "Building a mystery" came on over the gym speakers and I remember stopping to listen to it...I just stood there on the treadmill listening...the guy next to me was like "um, are you okay?" And I said "this is a great song..." I think I sort of scared him a little :-)

I can picture you doing that and I don't even know you! haha I like how songs can bring us back to that exact moment we never even realized we had remembered or held onto. It's power of words, I suppose, which is exactly why so many people are touched by so many books.

I agree...words and music...and all of our senses, I guess. I just taught a workshop on sensory detail in Marin County, CA last Friday for fourth graders and one of them asked me about why he can remember things when he smells things. It's the same sort of idea. I asked him for an example and he told me that at school he sometimes smells something that seems like cotton candy and now he always thinks about school when he smells that smell - gotta love the senses for rooting us in our memories!