It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Jen & Kellee over at Teach Mentor Texts host a meme every Monday that invites people to share the children's and young adult books they have been reading over the past week and what they plan on reading the following week.

You may find more complete information about what I am reading at Goodreads.com or by clicking on the Goodreads widget along the side of my blog.

Past Week:

Newbery Challenge

This was another great week of Newbery reading. I especially loved the re-reads. It is funny, but I enjoyed them more than the two that were new to me, Kira-Kira and Criss Cross. It may be that because they were familiar, I rated them more highly. I'm not sure about that, but regardless, all were pretty great. 

I remembered the opening to The Graveyard Book very vividly. That is an excellent chapter to hook a reader. If I read that chapter aloud, there are always many students that want the book immediately. The wonderful thing is that though things slow down for awhile, there is still much to appreciate throughout the book. Both this book and Kira-Kira managed to get tears out of me this week. Kira-Kira was not what I expected, but was a beautiful story of love between two sisters. 

Criss Cross was slow, quiet, quirky and a bit timeless. I found it somewhat disjointed, but liked it nonetheless.

Lucky wins my heart every time I meet her again. She is fun, strong, and creative. Her scientific endeavors are impressive and the snake scene is hilarious. Love that girl. Another strong and lovable character is that adorable Despereaux. Just hearing the title or seeing the cover of the book makes me smile.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! was a bunch of fun too. Medieval times have always been fascinating to me. Using a wide variety of voices and perspectives truly gives an incredible glimpse into the daily life of that time. 

What is exciting for me is that within one week, I will complete the Newbery Challenge. I have only a few more left to read and plan to finish on the day that ALA announces the Youth Media Awards. It should be a fantastic day with the awards announcements and finishing up such a long challenge. I will have to think of something fun to do to celebrate. :)

Picture Books

These were a random mix of books that I grabbed. I love the poetry of Langston Hughes, and Bryan Collier's illustrations of I, Too, Am America were a new way to look at this poem. I had completely different images in my mind before. I appreciated the explanation at the end and it helped me enjoy the book even more on re-reading it. 

The Lonely Pine was interesting to a degree, but not a stand out. It reminded me that I still want to see the Northern Lights someday.

I hadn't known much of Booker T. Washington's story, so Fifty Cents and a Dream was informative and very interesting. I would like to read a more complete biography to learn more about him now. The other biography that I read was Noah Webster and His Words. The definitions scattered throughout the book added a nice touch of humor. It is fun that I read these two books in the same week because Webster's speller was mentioned in Fifty Cents as one of the books Booker T. Washington used as he learned to read.

The Coming Week:

The most important thing for me this week is finishing the Newbery books. I will read When You Reach Me, Moon Over Manifest, Dead End in Norvelt and the yet unnamed winner that will soon be announced. Wahoo! Have a great week of reading. 

Newbery Challenge

I am so excited to be reading for the Newbery Challenge.  There are so many people participating and sharing neat things like this:

which is a lot of fun - Thanks @liblaura5!  

I finished Story of Mankind - the very first Newbery book, but haven't been able to start Dr. Dolittle yet.  I am hoping to get that one tomorrow.  The Story of Mankind was a bit of a challenge.  I enjoy history, but usually in smaller doses.  Of course, because it was a challenging book, I feel pretty great about finishing. 

This challenge should be a lot of fun since so many people from the Nerdy Book Club are participating and discussing the challenge on Twitter at #nerdbery.  It's not too late to join us.  To find out all about the challenge, stop by Mr. Schu's page Watch.Connect.Read. by clicking on the Newbery badge on the right side of my blog.

It's Monday! What are you Reading?

Sheila over at Book Journey started  

This led Jen and Kellee over at Teach Mentor Texts to start 

 

We went back to school so I have not been reading as much this past week, but I am still hard at work on my reading goals for the year. 

This past week I read the very first Newbery Award winner - The Story of Mankind by Henrik Willem Van Loon. Whew that was a long book. It wasn't that there were so many pages, but it was a history book that was almost like a textbook.  I couldn't just zip through like with a novel. 

I have also been reading books from the Caldecott Award list.  Swimmy and Frederick are cute books by Leo Lionni and inspire me to make a collage.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Wanda Gag totally reminded me of my childhood when I had read it.  I have never noticed how much Snow White is like Goldilocks before though.  A Story, A Story by Haley was a fun Anansi story that also reminded me of another story - Tar Baby.  One Morning in Maine was wonderful and had the character Sal from Blueberries for Sal.  I didn't know McCloskey had written more about her.  I read a nursery rhyme book called Four and Twenty Blackbirds and it had some of the grimmest nursery rhymes I have ever seen.  The final Caldecott of my week was Barkis, an adorable dog book.  The story was just okay, but the dog was cute.

I also read one book from the Nerdies nominations - a historical fiction book called Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys.  This book is emotionally challenging as it shows the struggle and journey of several families from Lithuania as the Russians take over their country and send them off to work camps.  It was a part of history that I never knew and Sepetys did a fabulous job.

One of my favorites of the week was Dragon Castle by Joseph Bruchac.  This was a wonderful fantasy and I am not even sure when or where I heard about it, but I am glad I picked it up.  I felt like I could see the surroundings of this Slovakian story.  Bruchac drew me right into the midst of the story.

For the coming week, I will be quite busy at school so I am not sure what I will get done, but on deck I have The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle (for Newbery Challenge), Animals of the Bible, Madeline's Rescue,  and a few others (for Caldecott),  and Stars (for Nerdies). 

I wish you a fantastical week of reading!