It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

This has been an unusually busy reading week with twenty-six books read. That's a few too many to review, so I will just hit a few.

Newbery Challenge: I read Amos Fortune, Free Man. I felt like the book made freedom sound important and worth fighting for, but at the same time managed to make the white slave owners somehow look like they were pretty blameless. I didn't enjoy the slant it had to it. The author seemed sympathetic to the slave, but also didn't quite seem to want to hold the white characters accountable. Anyway about it, I wasn't a big fan. It also bothered me that it is billed as a biography, but it is clearly a novel. That is always problematic. I found a great discussion of some issues of Amos Fortune here.

Best YA: Code Name Verity was definitely the most intriguing YA book that I read. It dealt with two young women involved in WWII. One was a pilot and the other was her friend. The book is full of action, suspense and incredibly powerful situations that tugged at my emotions. War is just horrific and there is no way around it.

Best Middle Grade: One for the Murphys was a fantastic book about resilience. Carley is in the foster care system and has many issues. Beware, this book is likely to require tissues, but it is completely worth the emotional disturbance it may cause.

Best Picture Book: Pecan Pie Baby is a great book about a young girl adjusting to the idea of a new baby joining their family.

Best Non-fiction: This is a difficult one because I read several really good ones this week. First Girl Scout: The Life of Juliette Gordon Low was probably the one I enjoyed the most. That may simply be because it was the most complete since it wasn't a picture book. Basketball Belles and the Irena Sendler picture books were excellent as was Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglas, but First Girl Scout was just very thorough and Juliette's life and personality is truly fascinating.

Plan for This Week: I am in the midst of The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan and so will finish that, then I will read its sequel and my final 2011 Nerdy Nominee, The Son of Neptune. I also plan to re-read Divergent in preparation for reading Insurgent. Another one I am looking forward to is The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom. Aside from that, I will read the next Newbery, Ginger Pye. Along the way, I may get sidetracked by random picture books, but that is always fun. Happy reading!

Capture the Flag

Title: Capture the Flag
Author: Kate Messner 
Publisher: Scholastic
Pages: 240
Audience: Ages 8-12
Genre: Mystery/Adventure
Review Copy: ARC from publisher
Release Date: July 1, 2012


Description from Goodreads: 
Three kids get caught up in an adventure of historic proportions!

Anna, José, and Henry are complete strangers with more in common than they realize. Snowed in together at a chaotic Washington D.C. airport, they encounter a mysterious tattooed man, a flamboyant politician, and a rambunctious poodle named for an ancient king. Even stranger, news stations everywhere have announced that the famous flag that inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner" has been stolen! Anna, certain that the culprits must be snowed in too, recruits Henry and José to help catch the thieves and bring them to justice.

But when accusations start flying, they soon realize there's more than justice at stake. As the snow starts clearing, Anna, José, and Henry find themselves in a race against time (and the weather!) to prevent the loss of an American treasure.


Review: Within the first two chapters, a major crime has already been committed.  We know the how, but not the who. Throughout the story, some creative and intelligent children work to find the culprit. Anna, a budding young journalist, Henry, a serious gamer, and José, the Harry Potter expert, team up and provide plenty of humor and adventure for the reader. It is difficult to find engaging and sufficiently complicated mysteries at this reading level so this definitely fills a niche. Mid to upper elementary students will get a kick out of this one with a character named Senator Snickerbottom (made me giggle every time I saw it), art thieves, many great action scenes, and a tricky mystery to solve. Kate Messner has written another winner.

Summer Throwdown

Teachers Brian (@brianwyzlic) and Jillian (@heisereads) along with librarians Kathy (@thebrainlair) and Sherry (@LibraryFanatic) have invited all to participate in a #summerthrowdown. This is a friendly and fun competition between librarians and teachers. According to Jillian's blog the purpose is: 

"To support, encourage, and celebrate reading and librarians and teachers. To network with other teachers and librarians on twitter to grow our PLNs. To enjoy a friendly challenge to keep us motivated to read as much as possible this summer. To hold ourselves accountable because we'll have to tell someone how much we're reading."

This pairs very well with #bookaday and so I figured I would jump on in and give it a try. Let the games begin!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I love that Kellee and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts have this set up for Mondays. It keeps me reading and everyone's reading journey adds to my own.  Between this and Donalyn Millers' Book-a-Day Challenge, I am having an excellent reading summer.  Over the past week I have read 20 books. I'll share a few of them here. 

Newbery Challenge: I made quite a bit of progress this week. I finished The 21 Balloons which was quite the adventure. It reminded me somehow of Mr. Popper's Penguins with the formality of the speech and writing. King of the Wind was a great horse adventure, and my favorite of the week was A Door in the Wall. It is a brief, but wonderful story set in the middle ages.

Caldecott Challenge: Arrow to the Sun and Ashanti to Zulu were up this week. The illustrations were great in both, but Ashanti to Zulu's text was superior by far. Debbie Reese does a fantastic job explaining about how Arrow to the Sun is not truly a Pueblo Tale and how McDermott has presented a very flawed picture of the Pueblo people.

Young Adult: Chopsticks (trailer here) was quite an experience for me this week. It is a novel told without a traditional narrative. The reader must gather information from images of programs, notes, photographs, and all types of objects. There are also videos and audio playlists that you can access online. If you take advantage of all of the media it becomes much more than a novel. In addition, the story is a bit of a mystery. I recommend it not just for the story, but for the overall package. 

Non-Fiction: A fun one this week was Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an All-Brother Baseball Team. I had no idea such teams existed. Another great one was The Beetle Book by Steve Jenkins that I reviewed here.

For this week: I have piles and piles of books just waiting for me. I am excited to have Code Name Verity in my hot little hands and I will finish up The Latte Rebellion. Have a great week of reading!

Beetles!

You may not be able to see them, but just above the grass, there are many, many lovely beetles hovering. When I walked my dog to the park today, I had no idea we would see hundreds of them.

They completely reminded me of The Beetle Book by Steve Jenkins that I read just last week. I enjoyed all of the beetle trivia he provided. I wonder though, why I love to have a butterfly land on my arm and give me true butterfly kisses, but when a beetle lands on me I have a very negative reaction. What is it about them that creeps me out? I didn't mind the one that landed on my capris, but when one zoomed into my face, I shrieked. When one landed on my arm, that appendage started to flail around wildly almost before I even processed the fact that a beetle was there. Jenkins book was awesome and it definitely was why I stopped to check these guys out in spite of the risk of getting too close to them. Once I got over my heebie-jeebies, it was pretty fascinating to watch them so thank you Steve!

Steve Jenkins' book grabbed my interest from the start. The endpapers of the book are gorgeous with splotches of jewel green, red, and many other colors swirling about. The illustrations are just fantastic all of the way through like his previous books. His collage or cut paper style of creating images gives depth and texture to the illustrations. They are just eye-popping. He included scale information along the way so that the reader can keep everything in perspective even if it is enlarged to see the details. 

There are tons of facts packed into the 32 pages. He includes just the type of information that my students will love to learn like, "the hide beetle eats the dried skin and flesh of dead animals. Natural history museums use these beetles to clean bones for display" from p. 18. There is even a great section about beetle chemical warfare. 

I can't wait to share this one with my students in the fall!

Summertime, Summertime

My "To Be Read" Piles for this Summer

While at the public library today, I ran into two students and their mother. I love that they were out getting books over the summer! She asked me how many books I have read so far since school got out, but I really didn't have a good answer. I guessed maybe 20. When I checked Goodreads, it told me that I have read 30 picture books (including some non-fiction) and 7 chapter books. I was just a little off the mark there. This is why summer is wonderful for me though! I get to read so many more books. If you live in the area, I hope to see you out at the library or in the bookstores this summer. Happy reading!

Choose Kind

One of the most thought-provoking books that I have read in the past year is Wonder by R.J. Palacio.

You can see the author's introduction to the trailer here:

And the actual trailer here:

If that doesn't convince you to read the book, stop by Jen Vincent's blog to read about when she went with Michelle, one of her students, to meet the author. You may need to have a tissue with you.

I read this powerful book several months ago, but it has pulled me back and I started to re-read it yesterday. It just continues to speak to me. Palacio has created incredible characters that seem to live and breathe, and in the process, they take your breath away. On a lighter note, she also has an amazing fart scene which is almost always a plus.

Throughout the book, readers are offered glimpses of a variety characters who are kind, indifferent, mean, and/or ignorant. They are encouraged to "choose kind." Fortunately, Palacio writes this in such a way that it doesn't feel preachy, but it still packs a positive punch. Since the publication of the book, an anti-bullying campaign has been started encouraging us all to "choose kind." 

This fall, at least one of our 5th grade teachers will be starting the year by reading the book aloud. I am hoping that even more students and teachers will also read it and we can all begin to choose kind more often. To help encourage this, we will have quotes from the book posted throughout the school. I am pretty excited to be sharing the Wonder of Wonder and I hope you will join us.