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. Cover images via Goodreads unless otherwise noted.

Last Week on the Blog: 

Author Spotlight: Jacqueline Woodson at Rich in Color

Last Week in Books:

The big standouts this week were the two poetry books: Are You an Echo? The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko and Somos como las nubes/We Are Like the Clouds. The first is an amazing picture book biography that includes poetry. It's stunning and her life story is very moving. The poetry is fabulous too. The second is a collection of poems showing what it is like to be a child refugee. The author fled El Salvador when he was young and has also worked with children who have come to the U.S. from Central American countries. The poetry is very moving.

On the side of humor, We Found a Hat (loved!) and We Are Growing! really made me smile along with Dear Dragon. 

Ralph Tells a Story tempted me to do NaNoWriMo one more time. I am still not sure if I am doing it or not, but Ralph and his story made me see possibilities. I am a Story and How This Book Was Made were also rather convincing. I may finally do it as a rebel and work on picture book ideas instead of a novel. That would be a first.

Many of these books were excellent and I will have most of them in my library at school. I read Steeplejack for possible review over at Rich in Color. It was a cool steampunk mystery type and it was an exciting read. Altogether, it was an excellent week of reading.

The Coming Week:

I've ordered a few books from my #MustReadin2016 list (Beholding Bee and Branded by the Pink Triangle) because I am way behind on that. I am also starting to look at the Mock lists and am realizing that I need to catch up on some of the really good books from this year. I'm not sure exactly which titles I'll get to, but those are the plans.

Reading Challenge Updates:

Goodreads Challenge - 490/550
Diversity on the Shelf 2016 - 219/225 (goal = 50% of my books by and/or about POC)
LGBTQIA Challenge - 31/31
ReadPOC Challenge - 149/125
#MustReadin2016 - 28/54
Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge - 84/100
Around the World with Books 2016