It's Monday! What are you reading? 1/28/13

This weekly meme is hosted by the lovely ladies at Teach Mentor Texts.  Head over there for more great ideas of kid literature and young adult books to add to your TBR.

Books I Finished This Week:

I cannot begin to tell you how much I enjoyed Strands of Bronze and Gold by Jane Nickerson.  I have an advanced copy from netgalley and will publish a more in-depth review closer to the March publication date.  Let me just say that I LOVE 19th century literature...I gobbled up the Romantic novels of that period when I was younger.  Gothic novels were so popular during this time period in literature and I have read every last one I could get my hands on.  Had I gone on to get a PhD in English, this would have been my focus for research and publication.  Jane Nickerson wrote a book that could fit right in with the classics such as Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights for the Gothic elements included.  This book is a retelling of the Bluebeard fairy tale and is told in such a way that it made me immediately want to dig out my copy of Jane Eyre to reread that classic.  Not everybody is going to love this book as much as I did, nor will everyone appreciate the gothic elements as I did when reading, but I think this author deserves recognition for what had to be a very intentional decision to write using these elements.  I will absolutely be buying this one when it comes out and sharing it with everyone I know.

*This one gave me a bit of a book hangover so my list is a little shorter this week :)

The gruesome pictures on the cover of this one caught my eye.  I am working on a research unit with my students and I have a student who is interested in Forensic Science so I will definitely be bringing this one for her to use.  Forensic Identification:Putting a Name and Face on Death by Elizabeth Murray is a (somewhat gruesome) non-fiction picture book.  The book presents case studies and describes the way that investigators go about positively identifying bodies.  I found some of the writing a bit dry but I was very interested in the information and learned quite a bit about the process.

This one is part of the Printz challenge I am doing.  I was intrigued by the cover of Stolen: A Letter to My Captor and picked it up at the last Scholastic warehouse sale.  Gemma is kidnapped from the Bankok airport and wakes up in the middle of the desert.  Over the next days and weeks she gets to know her captor and realizes that she is in an impossible situation.  The book is written as a letter Gemma writes to her captor.  This novel is an exploration of what it might be like to be a kidnap victim with Stockholm syndrome.  I would highly recommend this book to adolescents and adults alike.

Books I am Currently Reading:
The Runaway King is definitely starting to pick up...I am sure I will be done with this one soon.  I am still reading Energize and Adventures in Graphica as well.

What's Next?
Whatever floats my boat this week.