It's Monday! What are you Reading?

Sheila over at Book Journey started  

This led Jen and Kellee over at Teach Mentor Texts to start 

 

We went back to school so I have not been reading as much this past week, but I am still hard at work on my reading goals for the year. 

This past week I read the very first Newbery Award winner - The Story of Mankind by Henrik Willem Van Loon. Whew that was a long book. It wasn't that there were so many pages, but it was a history book that was almost like a textbook.  I couldn't just zip through like with a novel. 

I have also been reading books from the Caldecott Award list.  Swimmy and Frederick are cute books by Leo Lionni and inspire me to make a collage.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Wanda Gag totally reminded me of my childhood when I had read it.  I have never noticed how much Snow White is like Goldilocks before though.  A Story, A Story by Haley was a fun Anansi story that also reminded me of another story - Tar Baby.  One Morning in Maine was wonderful and had the character Sal from Blueberries for Sal.  I didn't know McCloskey had written more about her.  I read a nursery rhyme book called Four and Twenty Blackbirds and it had some of the grimmest nursery rhymes I have ever seen.  The final Caldecott of my week was Barkis, an adorable dog book.  The story was just okay, but the dog was cute.

I also read one book from the Nerdies nominations - a historical fiction book called Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys.  This book is emotionally challenging as it shows the struggle and journey of several families from Lithuania as the Russians take over their country and send them off to work camps.  It was a part of history that I never knew and Sepetys did a fabulous job.

One of my favorites of the week was Dragon Castle by Joseph Bruchac.  This was a wonderful fantasy and I am not even sure when or where I heard about it, but I am glad I picked it up.  I felt like I could see the surroundings of this Slovakian story.  Bruchac drew me right into the midst of the story.

For the coming week, I will be quite busy at school so I am not sure what I will get done, but on deck I have The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle (for Newbery Challenge), Animals of the Bible, Madeline's Rescue,  and a few others (for Caldecott),  and Stars (for Nerdies). 

I wish you a fantastical week of reading!