February 2, Monday evening -- Reading Ishmael Beah

Reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah. She's been starting, but not finishing books lately, because they don't hold her interest -- Urban Shaman, by C.E. Murphy and The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards.

Her favorite book -- poems by Maya Angelou, like Phenomenal Woman and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Her mom read it to her in the fifth grade and it's the first book she really remembers loving to read.

I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
(from the middle of the poem)