The kids are wrapping up their spring break, the eggs have been successfully hunted, the matzah has been eaten, and I have to remind myself to stay away from the jellybeans and chocolate. In between “Harry Potter” sessions (we’re on “The Order of the Phoenix” these days), there’s been a few other great reads.

“Ms. Bixby’s Last Day,” John David Anderson: I’d been reading a lot about this book before I picked it up, and wow is it heartbreaking and amazing. Three sixth-graders give their favorite teacher the last day she deserves, revealing in the process why she’s so special to each of them. The sensitive topic is deftly handled, and the alternating chapters give each boy his own distinct, funny, sharp voice. This is the sort of book you read if you want to write middle grade. (I love that reading great books is considered research.) Reading it made me think about my own favorite teachers and what they meant to me, which I suspect is how everyone reacts to it. There’s a lot of wisdom in this book, from the boys as well as their teacher.

“Happy Dreamer,” Peter H. Reynolds: The original title of this book was “Amazing, Delightful, Happy Dreamer,” as Reynolds wrote in Nerdy Book Club, and the initials were intended to spell ADHD (the whole phrase does appear in the book). Reynolds said he dealt with ADHD symptoms while he was growing up, and wanted to reassure kids with creative, outside-the-box brains that they are special and needed, even if the grownups around them are just telling them to sit up straight, pay attention in class, and clean their rooms.

We deal with ADHD a fair amount in this household, and everything Reynolds describes in the book, from the daydreaminess down to the messy room, is spot on. I love having such a positive, supportive book around, as a reminder that the daydreamy people are entitled to feel valued, and success in life doesn’t necessarily equal sitting still in class. I love all of Reynolds’ books — “The Dot,” “Ish,” “Playing by Heart” — for what they say about the importance of creativity and individuality, but I might love this one the most.

Periodically I tweet #buyanewspaper at people, for whatever that’s worth. (Probably not much.) It’s on my mind these days, because I’ve been watching a lot of my colleagues lose jobs.

Specifically, about 130 of them in November. Another 141 of them this month.

I freelance these days. It suits me. Layoffs at the newspaper where I used to work don’t affect me personally, except for making my heart hurt, because I was there for 10 years. Putting that in perspective, these were the people who saw me through both my pregnancies, commiserated about parenting, confided in me, laughed with me. The people I gleefully analyzed episodes of “24” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” with. The people I survived working election night with. (It’s the worst. You have to wait for the polls to close and then you have to scramble to make deadline.) The people I secretly snuck up to the roof of the building with after deadline to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July.

These are good, talented people, and they did not deserve to lose their jobs.

More to the point: These are the people who helped make the newspaper an essential read for the community it covers, and with them gone, there’s less of a reason to read the paper. And that’s not just a loss for my colleagues, it’s a loss for the community.

I’ve long believed that if you want to know more about the town you’re in — what’s it like to live in, what’s important to its residents — you read the local paper, which is why I track down one whenever I travel somewhere. (My parents still bring me back newspapers from wherever they were when they travel.) I can tell a lot about a place even by how thick the paper is, what kind of ads are in it and how well written and edited it is. A newspaper with almost no staff? That says it’s a paper not properly serving its community, because it doesn’t have the resources or the will.

Or it’s a paper no one is buying anymore.

Newspapers need subscribers. They need people to care about the paper on a regular basis, not just when they’re annoyed about something and writing letters to the editor, not just when someone they know got interviewed. All the time, or else the paper slowly disappears.

I don’t know what’s going to happen to what’s left of my old paper. But I hope it survives. I hope they all survive, because they’re needed.

I’ve been waiting for ages to introduce the kids to “Coraline.” Because it’s fun when you can share your favorite authors with your kids. (I’ve already introduced them to C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling and Kate DiCamillo, among others.) They can be a little dubious about creepy or scary things, though, so I wasn’t too sure how this was going to go, since “creepy” is basically Neil Gaiman’s signature move. Luckily, they were decidedly un-creeped out and liked the book. They especially liked how clever Coraline was in outwitting the button-eyed other mother and saving her parents. And they liked that there was a cat. We’re cat fans around here.

As usual, once we’ve read the book, we can watch the movie.

I adored the movie when it first came out in 2009, because I adore everything Laika (if you haven’t seen “Kubo and the Two Strings,” do so now) and because I felt that — even despite the changes to the plot and the tossed-in character who wasn’t in the book — the movie had done the book justice. Funnily enough, I didn’t quite feel the same this time around. A little of Wybie goes a long way. Coraline isn’t quite as matter-of-fact self-sufficient as she is in the book, and she’s a lot more irritable. And changing the ending means Coraline doesn’t exactly save the day on her own, and needs Wybie to roar in and do it for her. (But child protagonists are supposed to solve their own problems.)

Still, the stop-motion animation is incredible, the musical sequences are fantastic and the visuals achieve the right mix of gorgeous and weird. So I still adore it.

The kids picked up on the differences between book and movie pretty quickly; I like to make sure they notice these things, so they learn to think critically about what they’re reading or watching. They were fans of the book, but their verdict on the movie was mixed. My daughter, who is scared by very little, thought the movie was too scary. My son, who dislikes scary things, thought the movie was awesome. Go figure.

We’re currently experiencing Snowpocalypse 2017, so we’ll either be inside reading or outside sledding. Stay warm, fellow Northeasterners.