It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Middle Grade Novels
These are the two chapter books I finished this week.  Both of them were wonderful.  I loved the people I met.  These were characters I wish I could meet for real.  Foster almost convinced me that cupcakes should be my favorite food.  Close to Famous reminded me that just because some things are easy for us, they can be very hard for others.  It made me really think hard about what might be going on inside some of my students.

Raine and the wonderful tumble of people she meets were real and quirky and inspiring. I appreciated that she had honest feelings dealing with her family and kept working at the relationships even when it got hard.  The personalities in Sparrow Road were very fun.

I took a break from Newbery, but will resume soon.  As for Caldecotts, I only read one - Alphabatics.  It was okay.  The crazy gyrations of the letters morphing into things were kind of fun, but it didn't really hold my attention.

I have had a super busy time the past week, so most of the rest of the books were what I read whenever I was stuck shopping and I stopped in at a bookstore for a few minutes waiting for other people.  My favorite of those was Extra Yarn by Mac Barnett and illustrated by Jon Kassen.  I really can't wait to read that one to my students.  They will love it.

I am in the middle of three books right now and so hopefully I will finish them up in the coming week.  I'm reading Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Seriously...I'm Kidding by Ellen Degeneres, and Kepler's Dream by Juliet Bell.  All are good in their own way and it is always hard to figure out which one to pick up.  I need to start my next Newbery and get a few more Caldecott's under my belt this week, but I  have no idea if I can carve out that much time.  Here's hoping!