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 see more of my reading, visit my Goodreads shelves here. The lists of the books in the images below may be found at Goodreads. 

The Past Week in Books:  

When I read Year of the Tiger by Alice Wong in December (I highly recommend it - really you should read it), one of the chapters involved Riva Lehrer and they mentioned her book Golem Girl. I looked for it, but our local library didn't have it. Luckily, CA has a program called Zip Books and until the funding is exhausted, they will order one book at a time for you if you want a book that your library doesn't have. So, I requested Golem Girl and it arrived last week. It's also a memoir and was incredibly interesting. Riva Lehrer is an artist and tells the story of her life journey. She was born with spina bifida and the timing of her birth and the advocacy of her mother greatly affected how her medical care proceeded. There is much more to her story than the physical aspects of her life and I appreciate that she has shared so much of herself with readers.

I listened to a fun young adult romance over the weekend while doing my physical therapy and cooking and various other activities. I was excited to see that Talia Hibbert had ventured into YA since I've enjoyed her adult romances. It was charming and I hope she continues with both YA and adult books. 

I've read quite a few picture books this week for our Mock units at school. I especially liked Christina Soontornvat's biography of Tammy Duckworth, A Life of Service and Adra Theodore's A History of Me. 

The Coming Week: 

I will continue to read books for the Mock activities I am having at my school this week and I am in the middle of another adult rom-com. Happy reading!

It's Monday! What are you reading?

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. 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 see more of my reading, visit my Goodreads shelves here. 

The Past Week in Books: 

Our power was knocked out for 12 hours this weekend, so I read a romance called A Taste of Sage by Yaffa S. Santos while I waited for power to return. It was an easy and pretty predictable story, but I do usually like books with recipes so it was okay.

I also finished reading The Ch'i-lin Purse: A Collection of Ancient Chinese Stories retold by Linda Fang. I feel like I must have read some of the stories in the past or even the whole book because at least some of them seemed very familiar. They were quite nice. 

Because I am doing my mock award units at school, so I read several picture books like Daddy Speaks Love, A Perfect Fit, and R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I really enjoyed all of them. 

I did my first Korean storytime this week too. I paired 괜찮아 (It's Okay) by 최숙희 (Choi Sook-hee) and Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin and James Dean. In this Korean book the child meets animals like a snake and basically says hey you don't have legs or to the porcupine that it has so many spines and they all say that it's okay. I had the students help me say 괜찮아 on every page. It was fun since there was at least one student in each of my classes that speaks or at least hears Korean fairly regularly. It made me think of Pete the Cat. Pete basically says it's okay when he steps into things and messes up his shoes. He doesn't get upset and is just calm about it. Sometimes things may seem to be a big deal to someone else, but might be just fine for you. The lesson was a reminder that we have books in languages other than English in our library. 

The Coming Week: 

I will be reading lots of picture books for our Mock Sibert, Mock Coretta Scott King, and Mock Pura Belpré Award units with fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students. I'm not sure what I will be reading at home. I really haven't been reading as much since the school year started. I work at two different schools (20 hours each) and also work a few hours each week at the public library. I am also studying Korean and have various other family activities along with blogging at Rich in Color and am still doing physical therapy. Life is fairly busy.