It's Monday! What are you reading? 7/16

Jen and Kellee over at Teach Mentor Texts host a weekly meme for people to share what they are reading each week in the world of YA and kid lit.  Head over to their blog for links to many other bloggers who are sharing their reading with us.

Books I read this week:

Please see my posts from this week to hear more about the following books.

La Linea by Ann Jaramillo tells the story of Miguel, a young boy who starts out to make the journey to join his parents in the United States.  It recounts the very real dangers that people face to cross the border and is a book that many of my hispanic students will relate to.

Bird Lake Moon by Kevin Henkes really tells the story of how perception can be very wrong and people need to act with empathy and not in a selfish way.  I like the way Henkes really got in the head of the two young boys and the reader got the whole story and knew more than either boy did the whole time.  This would be a good book to use to talk about perspective and point of view.

Everlost by Neal Shusterman is an imaginative story about where you might end up after dying.  I avoided this book for a while because I was afraid it would be too creepy or sad.  It was neither, I really enjoyed the entertaining story and was impressed by the imagination that created this world.  There are some great themes in here about identity and fear of change also.

Entwined by Heather Dixon is a great story.  This one kept me up late.  I had never heard of the fairy tale about the twelve dancing princesses until I read the Goodreads reviews of this book.  I enjoyed this story and thought the author did a great job of balancing creepy elements with a good story.

This is a book that I have not yet written about on the blog.  Please click on the image to go to the Goodreads page if you want more info.  I read this in one sitting.  It was different from the books I usually read and I really enjoyed the new perspective.  I was crying through a lot of the book because I was so touched by the influence these teenagers had on one another.



Newbery Challenge and Graphic Novels:

UGH!  I am really rather annoyed that these first Newbery books are so hard to read.  I may be rethinking the challenge because it seems like such a waste of time to read them.

I continued to read graphic novels this week in a quest to find some that would be appropriate for my class library.  I really enjoyed all 4 of these books, especially To Dance.  This memoir is so accessible and I can see many students enjoying this short introduction into a dancer's life.

Professional Books:

How to Write your Life Story by Ralph Fletcher is not really a professional book, but I read it for ideas for my writing classroom so I am putting it here.  I need to look into getting all of his books about writing for my class library.

So What Do They Really Know? by Chris Tovani offers some good examples of formative assessment in the reading classroom.  I enjoyed the book and will be using some of the suggestions in my reading block next year.


Books I am reading:

Smoky the Cowhorse is not as bad as the others so far, Do I Have to Teach Reading? by Chris Tovani,
I am also listening to Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Books on the horizon:

I spent too much money with the discount code at Stenhouse so I have some professional books to get through.  The one I am most excited about reading is Real Revision.  Other than that I will just pull from the to read shelf.

Happy Reading!