It's Monday! What are you reading? 2/18

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.

This was a very busy week for me.  I volunteered to be the Student Council advisor this year so my week was filled with way too many hours of helping sort out the flowergram and candygram sale for Valentine's Day.  So, this weekend I did a read-a-thon of sorts because I wanted to take the weekend off.

Books I Finished This Week:

Book Love by Penny Kittle is a must-read for all teachers of reading, especially middle school and high school teachers.  I was able to immediately tweak some of my procedures to incorporate some of the author's amazing ideas.  I really appreciated the way that Kittle gave those of us that believe in reader's workshop some solid reasons to continue to fight for the importance of independent reading and student choice.

This was a really cute picture book.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it for students in grades 1-4.

October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard is an incredibly powerful book.  A novel-in-verse written in the memory of a young college student who was brutally murdered in the nineties, this is a riveting read.  I love how the author experimented with different types of poems and then explained those forms at the end of the book.  Another thing I liked about this book is how the author experimented with perspective and wrote poems from the point of view of the inanimate objects involved in the story.  This is a book that all teens and adults should read.

This is a very interesting book.  I loved how the authors played with the concept of a graphic novel but used photographs and postcards to tell the story.  It is a modern love story and immediately made me want to read it again to catch all the nuances in the story.

This is another great graphic novel.  It gives students a perspective into the early career of Ameila Earhart.  Students in grades 4 and up would enjoy this one.

This one was deserving of all the awards it received this year.  It reads as a spy story and tells the fascinating story of the race to develop a nuclear weapon.  I know there are students in my classroom that will be lining up to get ahold of this one.

I loved Dodger by Terry Pratchett.  It was so much fun getting an imaginary glimpse into the life of a beloved character.  This was part-mystery and part life story a la Charles Dickens.  It made me want to dig out the Dickens stories I haven't read in many years.  I would highly recommend this one especially to English literature nerds like me :)


Books I Am Currently Reading:

I am listening to The Selection by Kiera Cass and really enjoying it.  I am also reading You Gotta BE the Book by Jeffrey Wilhelm.  I enjoyed his presentations at the conference I went to and am really curious about the things he has to say in his books.  This one is really full of research and it is fascinating to read about what he discovered by studying his students who were avid readers.  I hope that there are more practical suggestions later in the book.

What's Next:

I will be reading Period 8 this week for sure.  Other than that, I am not sure what I will grab off the shelf.  I have a couple Walter Dean Myers books that I want to read so I can get them to school and they usually go quickly so those may be the next picks.  I also have Grave Mercy which I am excited to read so I might start that one.  I also have a pile of professional books to get to.  I most likely will read Notice and Note if I get done with the Wilhelm book.   Really, I will just play it by ear as always...we shall see next week.