Debbie Shults, the veteran teacher and literacy coach we interview in this week's "Teachers at Work" column, recommends these books for promoting literacy in science classrooms:

The Physics of Baseball by Robert Adair. "At first glance this book looks rather dry, but the illustrations are fascinating. This is a book that makes science and math relevant to many young athletes. This book is part of a series on the physics of different types of sports."

Invisible Enemies: Stories of Infectious Disease by Jeanette Farrell. "This book tells the history of small pox, malaria, tuberculosis, plague, leprosy, cholera, and AIDS. Fascinating photographs and other visuals and extremely interesting stories about these diseases make this book irresistible to many students."

The Isaac Newton School of Driving: Physics and Your Car by Barry Parker. "This is a fun book. Parker grounds all his science in pop culture and writes in a very casual, non-scientific sounding way. Books like these help make science and math relevant to all learners."

Debbie Shults, the veteran teacher, literacy coach -- and now blogger -- we interview in this week's "Teachers at Work" column, recommends these blogs written by and for teachers:

"Jess Timmons, my young blogging mentor, has a blog called Meaningful Fragments. Jess's website was my original inspiration, and reading her posts keeps me in touch with what our best young teachers are thinking."

"Zach Chase, another young teacher in the Sarasota County Public School system, has a fabulous blog called, Mr. Chase's Room. He is a definite guru in the world of educational blogs. His posts are always thought provoking and innovative."

"Darren Kuropatwa. I found his blog, A Difference, through a link on Zach Chase's blog. Darren is a math teacher who writes about all kinds of ideas, especially what's on the cutting edge in integrating technology into the classroom."

An offhand comment by a former professor tipped off New York Times reporter Margalit Fox to a remarkable linguistic quest: A group of researchers studying, firsthand, the birth of a language. The birth of a language? These scientists had been working secretly in a Bedouin village in the Israeli desert that, because of an unusually high population of deaf residents, had spontaneously created its own sign language, used by deaf and hearing villagers alike. What their experience teaches us about all languages, signed and spoken, is the subject of Margalit's amazing new book, Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind, and our conversation:  Continue reading...

This month we sweep away the cobwebs in the Poetry Corner to spend some time with a poem just over a hundred years old that still speaks loud and clear today.  Continue reading...

We've been digging into the terrific literary blog The Millions and found the writer C. Max Magee's entries on World War Two fiction. Why WW2 fiction? "I especially appreciate how the genre can illuminate elements of the conflict," he writes, "that history books cannot, for want of specificity and seriousness." Read his excellent posts here and here.