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 on the Blog:

Review of The Hate U Give 

Review of The Day Tajon Got Shot

Last Week in Books:

I'm reading a bunch of picture books right now, so I'll just share the best of the best. My favorites this week were:

John Herrington's Mission to Space is a great look at the world of an astronaut. It's a great nonfiction book and I love that it highlights his Chickasaw heritage. 

Apex Predators is another fantastic nonfiction book. It would be great paired with Jess Keating's What Makes a Monster. The predators of the past were particularly frightening - the stuff of nightmares.

I love a good puzzle so Look! What Do You See? pulled me in immediately. It didn't take long before my eyes started to catch the patterns and it's immensely satisfying to break the "secret code" the author has created. It looks very much like Chinese characters, but it is something else entirely. It was fascinating. I had to run out and find a teacher to show it to right away. We puzzled through them together. It was also fun because we got to sing our way through.

"Fall in Line, Holden!" is a really engaging story of Holden, a young Navajo boy, who sees things in a unique & imaginative way. I like that it has connections to the residential school era so you can talk about that history. It's also great that in the bio of the author, Daniel W. Vandever (Navajo), readers learn that his grandfather was a code talker. That also provided the opportunity to discuss who the code talkers were & book talk Bruchac's novel Code Talker. Here's a great interview with the author of Holden.

I also read Turtles All the Way Down for book club. I read it pretty much in one sitting so it was definitely interesting and compelling. It was hard to witness the struggles of the main character though. It wasn't an easy book to read.

The Coming Week: I just started Love, Hate and Other Filters. I'm also being tempted by some ARCs on Netgalley and Edelweiss so that might be my holiday reading. Here are the ARCs I may dive into: Dread Nation, Voices in the Air, The Poet X, Shadow Girl, Black Panther: The Young Prince, and The Belles.

Reading Challenge Updates:

Goodreads Challenge 2017 - 674/550

Diversity on the Shelf 2017 - 229/225 (goal = 50% of my books by and/or about POC)

LGBTQIA Challenge - 19/30

#OwnVoices Challenge - 137/125

#MustReadin2017 - 21/24

Nonfiction Picture Book Challenge - 103/100