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 Previous Week:

Young Adult

It was a great week for me with young adult novels. Heist Society was pure fun. Both Bronxwood and Angel de la Luna were pretty intense, but were also excellently written. As I was writing this I realized that in both of these books, the main character is struggling to support their family and acting in the role of a parent for a time. Later, they also have to step back out of that role and that is a tough situation - feeling grown up and responsible, but having to move back into the role of a child. I reviewed Angel de la Luna over at Rich in Color on Friday.

Middle Grade

I liked The Thing About Georgie. It is a nice middle grade realistic fiction book about family (new sibling coming), friendship and a little bit about the challenges of being a dwarf. Everything on a Waffle was just a lot of fun. I have used What Color is My World in class before, but I had only shared some of the non-fiction portions. I finally read the story part, but I didn't like that as much. It felt pretty contrived and the story is aimed at a younger audience than the non-fiction text. It didn't mesh well. I still appreciate the non-fiction sections though. The Last Airlift is basically a memoir written by a second person. It's the story of Tuyet, a young girl who was airlifted out of Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. I found it interesting and something that I may want to add to our library collection. I wanted it to have more detail and be a fuller story, but at least this way it is a quick read and readers do get the gist of what happened. I did just find out that there is a sequel though so I will have to see if that fills in some of the gaps I felt.

Picture Books

This was also a great week for picture books. I would recommend any of these. 

The Coming Week:

I am still listening to Landline on CD. I am really enjoying it. I am just starting Kendra and I will likely read the ARC of The Red Pencil too. I brought home a ton of books from my school library so I will be hitting those in no particular order. Our last day with students is Tuesday so my official summer #bookaday will begin though I have been posting books there all year long anyway. If you haven't heard, the hashtag has been in the news lately. I mostly dislike what the publisher is doing because typically we are posting about kid lit and ya lit, but some of the images now are definitely adult and don't have enough clothing for my taste. I am starting to see things that don't really match up with what the #bookaday community has been focused on in the past. I enjoy things that get people excited about reading, but teachers and librarians have been using that hashtag for a specific purpose and it is sad to see it compromised this way. It's made me read even more though so I can post to #bookaday in the way it was originally intended and do it a lot. :)

Happy reading!