Hey, I’m Carlos Menendez, still chasing that magic moment when a kid who “hates reading” suddenly can’t stop turning pages. That moment almost always happens with a graphic novel. Early on, I discovered something wild: give a reluctant reader a great graphic novel, and they’ll often circle back and tackle Continue Reading

Posted by Carlos Menendez November 25, 2025   I still remember the smell: old popcorn, cracked vinyl seats, and the faint cigarette smoke that drifted in from the lobby of the Orpheum Theater on Seventh and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. It was a Saturday in the fall of 1961, and Continue Reading

Emotional Engagement & Real Empathy   Facts alone don’t make us feel. Stories do, and historical fiction is the key. When a twelve-year-old reads about a child their age hiding in an attic in Amsterdam or deciding whether to run north on the Underground Railroad, something shifts inside them. They don’t Continue Reading

Fifteen years in Title I classrooms later, here are the historical fiction novels that never once let me down—five from the Revolution, five from the Civil War. These are the ones that shut up a room full of 5th and 6th graders who swore “history is boring” faster than Superman Continue Reading