More than you really want to know about Wellesley, Mass.
If summer has to come to an end, the transition to Fall will be easier with some good reading material. Join the Friends of the Wellesley Free Library at the Fall Book Sale, where you surely will find some great reads from among the thousands of books available. If you can’t wait until September, visit the ongoing Friends book sale on the first floor of the main library.
Novelist Toni Morrison, who died at the age of 88 this week, visited Wellesley in 2004 to speak at Wellesley College’s commencement. You can read Morrison’s commencement address and view it below.
Wellesley resident Trond Undheim describes his most spectacular failure as an internet incubator he started as a Ph.D. student in Norway that was 20 years ahead of its time. The venture helped dozens of startups, but not enough went public or got bought to cover the incubator’s growth expenses.
“The entrepreneurship bug had not yet hit the region,” laments Undheim, whose new book Disruption Games offers insights into innovating based on personal examples of business failure and success as well as lessons learned from observing and analyzing others’ experiences.
Undheim’s career has been varied, including stints with the European Commission, Oracle and various start-ups. While not all of his ventures have been winners, he’s had his fair share of successes. Among them: helping startups become unicorns (private companies with valuations of at least $1B) through his work as director of MIT’s Startup Exchange.
“I’ve failed or changed course a number of times and I’m getting to some more of those in my book,” he says. “In fact, when I use the term failure, sometimes that’s what it means (and that’s of course not easy to handle). Other times it is more of a temporary setback that acts as a catalyst to even more significant and focused efforts that pay off more than the original pursuit you set off with.”
Writing about failures can be a challenge, Undheim acknowledges, as many are reluctant to discuss such painful parts of their past. I saw this myself for years as a tech business journalist, with potential interview subjects too worried about bad short-term PR or legal ramifications to be forthcoming. But there’s definitely an appetite for such stories (there’s even a locally-recorded podcast called Failure that focuses on this subject).
“It is not easy, and I’m still finalizing some interviews,” Undheim says. “What I’ve found is that founders who since have become successful are much more likely to share their story (no surprise).”
Undheim is marketing his pre-published new book to entrepreneurs and executives through a crowdfunding platform that will introduce Disruption Games to a bunch of publishers if enough people contribute. The book’s contents include lessons learned from startups that go bust, corporate innovation activities that fail, and missed opportunities and misunderstandings that happen when startups and corporations collaborate.
Undheim self-published an earlier book, Leadership From Below, back in 2008.
“That book took me a year to write, but I had to publish it on the one Saturday that I was not working for the European Commission (my boss said publishing a book was not allowed for EU bureaucrats) and not for Oracle (I was joining a job for them in London and did not want to start a conversation about permission to publish a book on day one of my employment). Hence, I went for an early self-publishing route.”
Hopefully, Undheim will have success with his new book. He took away these lessons from publishing his previous one:
“The experience with Leadership From Below was mostly positive. I got a ton of speaking requests in the years following the book (probably for 3-5 years). To know that the message resonated with a variety of people was very satisfying.”
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Not to be a summer buzzkill or anything, but Wednesday, August 28 is the the first day of school for all Wellesley Public School kids. Those summer reading books aren’t going turn their own pages, so it’s time for students to get down to it. Wellesley’s teachers and librarians have put long thought into what makes a riveting summer read, the type that will encourage students to cozy up and enjoy the pleasures of a good book. So whether your readers are at home, on summer vacation, or at camp, supply them with a pile of reading material, then stand back and let them do their thing.
Generally, elementary students are encouraged to read at least 30 minutes per day. At the middle school each student must read two books of their choice, and each grade has an assignment attached to those books. At the high school level the assigned book(s) depends on which class the student is taking.
Elementary school students are encouraged to keep a list of some of their summer reading titles and to read approximately 30 minutes per day. You can access the entire elementary schools summer reading list here. The titles on the extensive list was put together by a dream team of library teachers representing each of the seven elementary schools in town.
A new Summer Reading Challenge has been rolled out this year. Students are asked to keep track of books they’ve read such as “a Caldecott award winner” or “an audiobook I listened to.”
There’s also a “Book Buzz” form that asks six questions about their summer reading (examples: “The book that surprised me most was…” and “The most unusual place I read was…”).
More information on this will be announce by teachers in each individual elementary school.
There are three WMS summer reading lists, one for entering sixth graders, one for entering seventh graders, and one for entering eighth graders. Each list has an assignment on the final page. The list includes genres such as realistic, historical, graphic, action, adventure, non-fiction, and much more.
Wellesley High School students are required to read the text assigned for their specific English course plus one book of their choice. At the start of the year, their English teacher will explain how summer reading will be assessed. In the past, some examples of possible assessments are in-class essays, a Socratic seminar, a test, or a book review. See Guide to Success in English for general active reading strategies. Here’s a link to the Wellesley High School summer reading list.
WHS English Department Head John Finneron notes, “If a course has two texts listed as required, a student is not required to also read an additional choice text. This is particularly relevant this summer because we have two courses requiring two specific books. Our purpose with summer reading is to foster a sense of life-long learning and a love of reading, and we strive to make book choices to this end.”
9CP, 9ACP, and 10CP – The Poet X, Elizabeth Acevedo
9H – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley AND The Poet X, Elizabeth Acevedo
10ACP – The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
10H – Behold the Dreamers, Imbolo Mbue AND Cannery Row, John Steinbeck
11CP – American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang
11ACP – The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, Wes Moore
11H – 1984, George Orwell
12CP – The story “The Body” from the book Different Seasons, Stephen King
12ACP – On Writing, Stephen King
12H – The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
Beyond the Binary – The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
DAV – The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
Evolutions – The Evolutions Primer; (link on Evolutions website)
Senior Creative Writing – On Writing, by Stephen King
World Lit – Nervous Conditions, Tsitsi Dangarembga
Here are some of the titles the all-girls independent boarding and day school recommends for its upper grade students. You can see the whole list for grades 5 – 12 here.
Diary of a Tokyo Teen: A Japanese-American Girl Travels to the Land of Trendy Fashion, HighTech Toilets, and Maid Cafes, Christine Mari Inzer
Every Day, David Levithan
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
I Believe in a Thing Called Love, Maureen Goo
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
Hidden Figures, Margot Lee
How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, Sarah Glidden
If You Could Be Mine, Sara Farizan
Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
Jellicoe Road, Melina Marchetta
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery
Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng
The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin
Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
Wellesley’s three public libraries — the Wellesley’s Hills Branch (210 Washington St.), the Fells Branch (308 Weston Rd.), and the main library (530 Washington St.) — will take part in the 2019 cross-community Minuteman Library Crawl on Thursday, August 1, 10am – 5pm.
Start and end where you want on this self-guided tour of libraries in over 25 area towns. The challenge is to visit as many as you can and take a picture of yourself with a designated item in each library – it’s a 21st century scavenger hunt! Post your pics and tag the libraries #mlncrawl2019. Each library will have handouts and giveaways – show your pictures to a librarian (or if you don’t have a camera, just tell a librarian you’re on the crawl (they’re pretty trusting), and receive a prize.
The Fells Library is participating for the first time since its major renovation. If you haven’t been to Fells recently, you haven’t been to Fells. Enjoy a photo op at the Entering Wellesley sign that’s inside this magical early literacy library.
Chestnut Hill: Annenberg Library, Pine Manor College, 400 Heath St. Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 (10-4pm) will feature The Giving Tree (real tree, not the book!).
Framingham: Christa McAuliffe Branch, 746 Water Street, Framingham MA 01701 will have a popcorn machine.
Medfield Public Library: 468 Main Street, Medfield, MA 02052 has a sculpture made of recycled objects.
Questions? Send them along to [email protected]