Celebrate

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on weekends where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.
 
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”  Melodie Beattie

I had some moments of chaos this week, but had many more moments filled with gratitude. This week was the Wisconsin Book Festival. That meant that on Tuesday, I was able to meet Yuyi Morales and hear her story. Here are some videos that share bits and pieces of her story. I will write more about what she talked about another time, but her presentation was fantastic.

Would you believe these cost less than $150?

The Wisconsin Book Festival being in progress also means that on the weekend, I was able to drive over and take part in the festivities again. First, I went to the CCBC's Friends book sale and bought a lot of books. 

Then, I went to the library to hear Kevin Henkes speak - which was wonderful. He talked about his writing journey and then shared his new book Waiting.

Later, I was also able to meet Crystal Chan, author of Bird, and go to her excellent session. She had me wanting to write again.

It is truly inspiring to hear from authors and illustrators. I get to share about them with my students and I also appreciate their work more once I know a little about them and the process that they went through to create and share their stories.

I spent a little over ten hours on the road to be able to spend time with three authors this week and it was absolutely worth the effort.

Nonfiction Picturebook Challenge

Alyson Beecher over at Kid Lit Frenzy hosts a Non-fiction Picture Book Challenge and has a roundup every Wednesday.

I've started to work on reading all of the Pura Belpré Award winner and honor books. All of the following except the Dolores Huerta biography have received a Pura Belpré award or honor. The cover images are from IndieBound.

Harvesting Hope: The Story of Cesar Chavez by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by Yuyi Morales won the award for illustration in 2004. The text tells a bit about the childhood of Chavez, but mostly focuses on his activism and non-violent fight for the rights of farmworkers. This would be a great book to pair with Dolores Huerta: A Hero to Migrant Workers by Sarah Warren. I had heard of Chavez, but until recently didn't even know that Dolores Huerta existed. That may be partly because as in Harvesting Hope, she was not mentioned, yet she worked closely with Chavez and was also instrumental in improving conditions for migrant workers.

Both books would be great in a biography or civil rights unit. Yuyi Morales provides a fantastic teacher's guide to go along with Harvesting Hope. I would be remiss though if I didn't also include a mention of César: ¡Sí, Se Puede! Yes, We Can! by Carmen T. Bernier Grand.

It is an amazing book of biographical poetry that would also pair well with Harvesting Hope.

George Ancona is an expert at photo essays. The photographs are always full of life and brilliant color and ¡Ole! flamenco was no exception. I was surprised to learn that flamenco is actually not only Spanish. I knew it was from Spain, but didn't know that the Roma people were part of the creation of flamenco. Ancona provides background on the Roma. I haven't really ever seen that history provided in children's lit in the past. He mentions them as Roma initially, but then tends to use the term Gypsies more frequently throughout. That was a bit of a disappointment for me as I would rather stick with Roma, but he wrote respectfully. 

The photographs of dancers, singers, and musicians, had music rolling through my head and my feet itching to dance. I can just see students wanting to try it out with some music. That reminds me that I have a friend who studied flamenco. Perhaps she could visit and teach us a few moves. We will have to at least watch a video like this one:

The author did an interview over at Lee and Low if you want to know more about this beautiful book.

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. Images via Goodreads unless otherwise noted.

The Past Week:

Picture Books

Have Fun, Molly Lou Melon was in our Book Fair and I am glad that I got to read it. I loved how Molly Lou's grandmother encourages her to use her imagination. It was also cool that her new best friend has crutches and it is not really even part of the story. Tiger in My Soup is a fun story. The young  boy has quite the adventure when a tiger looks back at him out of his soup bowl. Flabbersmashed About You is a story of friendship, but not just how we become friends, but how friendship sometimes changes.

Non-fiction

Image via Barnes and Noble

Biographies are fun and this one was especially wonderful since I enjoyed her most recent book, Niño Wrestles the World and Mr. Schu had posted a video of her reading within the past week. I could hear her voice as I read.

The videos below would be great to pair with her biography.

Middle Grade/YA

Cynthia Kadohata shares another great story of family with The Thing About Luck. I enjoy seeing other ways of being a family. In this children are traveling with their grandparents as they help harvest wheat.  Written in Stone is another book that highlights family interactions. I reviewed it on Saturday. Interworld was a bit of a challenge for me. I don't read a whole lot of science fiction to start with, but I also found myself disconnecting from the book every time I put it down so it took me several weeks to read, but finally this week, the action sucked me in and I zipped through the end. I am not sure if I will attempt the sequel, but was glad that it finally clicked with me.

The Coming Week:

I just started listening to Liar by Justine Larbalestier. Wow! What a twisty and unique story. I am definitely enjoying this one. I have a road trip later this week, so I will likely finish that. Monstrous Beauty is also next to my chair. Interesting so far. I have several books I need to review so that will probably determine what I read - The Twistrose Key and maybe From Norvelt to Nowhere. Have a great week of reading!