It's Monday! What are you reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys. Jen Vincent over at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee Moye from Unleashing Readers decided to put a children's and YA spin on it and they invite anyone with an interest to join in. You can participate by creating your post then visit one of their sites to add your site. Finally, visit at least three participant blogs and comment to spread the love.

If you want to know more about what I am reading, visit me at my Goodreads shelf. Images via Goodreads unless otherwise noted.

The Past Week:

Picture Books

Lullaby was my favorite picture book this week. Langston Hughes chose just the right words and the illustrations were beautiful too. I thought the others were nice, but the illustrations in Can You Say Peace? were a bit odd. I didn't like the style I guess. I liked the idea of the book - the word peace in many languages, but the presentation didn't win me over.

Middle Grade

I reviewed From Norvelt to Nowhere here. The Sittin' Up comes out in January and I will review it later this week. It's historical fiction and had humor too. It was interesting to see how a community planned for and held a funeral. The fairy tales were nice retellings. The Blockworld book is a self-published book through Amazon that I got because I have so many students asking for Minecraft books. It was written by a principal here in Wisconsin and was fun to read though I know my students would probably like to have illustrations with it.

Two of these, Little Women & The Hobbit, were re-reads for me. My daughter and I had a Hobbit/LOTR movie marathon last weekend, so I felt compelled to do a re-read. The words, "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents" popped into my head when I saw the CD set at the library so I grabbed it and listened while I did some of my knitting. I reviewed it here. I am not as big a fan as I have been in the past. I had been looking forward to reading The Living since I have seen many great reviews. I was not disappointed. It's a great survival story with many layers. I will be reviewing it at Rich in Color in January so I won't say much here, but if was definitely a favorite.

Professional 

I loved this follow up to The Book Whisperer. Reading in the Wild reminded me that I need to help guide my students to independence in seeking out reading materials among other things. I am going to make that a focus of my instruction for the second half of the year. It's so easy to just hand them a book or booktalk a few, but I need to be showing them how to find great titles so they can do it on their own when I am not around.

Adult

This was another audio book. Since it is a short story, it was only one CD. I had heard about the movie, but had never seen it or read the book, but grabbed it when I was passing through the library. I wanted plenty of audio books to accompany my knitting escapades over break. Brokeback Mountain struck me as very raw. Annie Proulx packs quite a punch in a small amount of words.

The Coming Week: 

I am starting The Golden Boy next and a few picture books about fables. I am also going to start an ARC of the newest Zita the Spacegirl. I have some other ARCs that I need to get to also. It should be a fun week of reading.