It's Monday! What are you reading?

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. It's a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now...you just might discover your next “must-read” book!

Kellee Moye, of Unleashing Readers, and Jen Vincent, of Teach Mentor Texts decided to give It's Monday! What Are You Reading? a kidlit focus. If you read and review books in children's literature - picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, anything in the world of kidlit - join us! We love this meme and think you will, too. We encourage everyone who participates to visit at least three of the other kidlit book bloggers that link up and leave comments for them.

If you want to know more about what I've been reading, visit my Goodreads shelf.

Last Week in Books:

Keep a Pocket in Your Poem will be a great mentor text for poetry. It reminds me of the way Sharon Creech used models of famous poems along with students then creating poems inspired by those poets. It would be great to use with Love that Dog and even the new collection Out of Wonder though those poems "in the style of..." tend to be a little more serious and aren't really parodies. That just reminded me though that there are several collections surrounding William Carlos Williams' poem "This is Just to Say." Those are This is Just to Say by Sidman and Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems by Levine. It would be fun to use a combination of poems from all of these texts in a poetry unit. 

I also found the poem Tony this week. It's a lovely and quiet poem about the horse Tony. It made me smile. 

Another one that brought smiles was Ossiri and the Bala Mengro. I had to laugh at the humor of this one. It has one of those twisty slightly dark endings. It's a great way to counter some of the beliefs about the Romani people who are also called Travellers. 

Still Life with Tornado is another slightly bizarre book by A.S. King. I enjoy her books, but they are generally a little outside the norm. That's part of what I like about them, but this one wasn't my favorite. It was just okay.

I adore Jacqueline Woodson's writing and found The House You Pass on the Way to be another lovely look into the heart and mind of a young girl coming of age. My only major complaint is that it ended too soon. It is more like a novella than a novel and I wanted to stay with the character a little longer.

The Coming Week:

I'm still reading two ARCs: Miles Morales (really good so far) and #NotYourPrincess (also fantastic). I'm taking my time since my official reviews won't be posted until August. I am also still reading a book about digital photography. I finished school on Friday and so it was a pretty busy week and had a fair amount of stress. I have just about recovered and have a busy week coming up with an outing to a farm tomorrow with my exchange student followed by dinner out with friends. On Tuesday I am finally getting to see Hamilton in Chicago. We got the tickets in November so this has been quite a wait. I'm pretty much beside myself. I'll likely do some reading on the bus on that trip. I just started Jane Steele and can't hardly put it down. Another book I've got is Laughing All the Way to the Mosque. I also started listening to On the Noodle Road. I hope you have a great week filled with wonderful reading.

Reading Challenge Updates:

Goodreads Challenge 2017 - 279/550

Diversity on the Shelf 2017 - 127/225 (goal = 50% of my books by and/or about POC)

LGBTQIA Challenge - 14/30

#OwnVoices Challenge - 73/125

#MustReadin2017 - 16/24

Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge - 50/100