It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA!
It’s Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme started by Sheila at Book Journeys and now hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It’s also a great chance to see what others are reading right now…you just might discover the next “must-read” book!
Kellee and Jen, of Teach Mentor Texts, decided to give It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? a kidlit focus. If you read and review books in children’s literature – picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, anything in the world of kidlit – join us! We love this meme and think you will, too.
We encourage everyone who participates to support the blogging community by visiting at least three of the other book bloggers that link up and leave comments for them.
Last Week’s Posts
Teaching Tuesday: Teaching Tuesday: Teaching My Son to Read (by Ricki) Part II
Thursday: Guest Review: Miles Away From You by A. B. Rutledge
**Click on any picture/link to view the post**
Last Week’s Journeys
Kellee
Yay Spring Break! And thank you for understanding about last week! My Future Problem Solvers teams did AMAZINGLY! I have one 6th grade team and one 11th/12th grade team that qualified for internationals! I’m so proud of how brilliant they are!
- Sunny by Jason Reynolds: Wow. I hope this isn’t the end of this series because each one is such a special treat. Sunny is quite different than the first although readers will find the format and story just as engaging.
- Bat and the Waiting Game by Elana K. Arnold: See my review from last week 🙂
- Bone’s Gift by Angie Smibert: I’ll be reviewing this next week!
- Breakout by Kate Messner: This is a 500 page book that I couldn’t put down and read so quickly! It is so special. I loved the variety of formats within the narrative and the multiple and diverse points of view. It is so applicable for many ages and it brings up issues for conversation in a respectable yet clear way. And it is such a darn good story!
- Two Naomis by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich: I can see why my students loved this story! It is filled with family, friend, and school drama that so many different kids can connect to. And we were so lucky to Google Hangout with Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich on Friday (check out my Twitter Thread to see some pictures and my favorite quotes)!
With Trent’s books, I’m primarily focusing on either new books to Trent or me, books we haven’t read in a while, or books he’s obsessed with. Listing all of the books we read in the car or sitting in the living room would be crazy, but I feel guilty about it, so I wanted to just say something 🙂
- 8 Class Pets + 1 Squirrel ÷ 1 Dog = Chaos by Vivian Vande Velde: Reading this book with my mom and Trent when we visited Baton Rouge during Spring Break is going to be one of those memories that stay with me forever. My mom and I took turns reading, and we read to Trent every day. It is such a heart-filling experience to be able to enjoy a book as a family!
- With Easter upon us, we also read a bunch of fun Easter books that I pull out each year. Llama Llama was my favorite–I just think she has such an year for rhythms and rhymes.
Ricki
It’s been a crazy week for me. I’ve been planning an event to have the Get Lit players come to our university, and it sucked my time away. I did finish a few books!
I loved the nontraditional format of Thornhill by Pam Smy. It’s very similar in format to a Brian Selznick book, but it falls closer to the horror/mystery genre. It was a very engaging read and kept me intrigued. The integration of art and prose is wonderfully done—the prose is set in the 1980s, and the art is set in present day.
Your My Little Cuddle Bug by Nicola Edwards is a charming board book that reminded me of a Mem Fox text. It’s a warm and fuzzy type of book. 🙂
Who’s Hiding by Satoru Onishi is a fun, interactive book where kids try to determine which character is hiding, angry, etc. It is a fun take on the search-and-find books.
Hoot Hoot Pop-Up Fun is a pop-up book winner. As a mom of two young kids, I read a lot of pop-up books, and the pop-ups are very clever in this book. We spent a solid ten minutes on the wolf page making the wolf howl and howl.
We also read a book called Shake Dogs Shake Puppies by Carli Davidson. The book is about 400 pages of photographs of dogs and puppies shaking off water. My younger son spends a lot of time perusing this book–even though I think it was intended to be an adult coffee table book.
This Week’s Expeditions
Kellee
- The Shadow Throne by Jennifer E. Nielsen: I have 25 minutes left in the audiobook, and I cannot wait to finish it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- Stung by Bethany Wiggins: This is our next faculty book club choice, and so far I am liking it, but I already know that it is going to be a split discussion because a couple of teachers have told me they really didn’t like it. I look forward to having the conversation. If nothing else, I know that kids adore it. It won the Florida Sunshine State Young Reader Award for grade 6-8 in 2016.
- DC Superhero Girls: Date with Disaster: Trent picked this book out at the book store, and he and I are reading it a chapter at a time. This is his first full graphic novel, and as long as I point at the word bubbles, he’s doing a great job following along!
- I Love You, Michael Collins by Lauren Baratz-Logsted: After Stung I look forward to picking this one up to read and review.
- Upside Down Magic: Dragon Overnight by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, and Emily Jenkins: When I finish Shadow Throne, I am going to start the 4th Upside Down Magic book, and I am so excited! I love this series.
Ricki
I’ll be REREADING Graceling by Kristin Cashore for my class. We are doing Sci Fi/Fantasy this week, and the houses are reading Graceling, Feed, and Unwind. I am excited to hear what they think about the three books.
Upcoming Week’s Posts
Tuesday: The Stress of Teaching and Advice for Remaining Positive
Wednesday: Sports Illustrated Kids: The Baseball Fanbook by Gary Gamling
Thursday: You’re My Little Cuddle Bug by Nicola Edwards
Friday: Secondhand Heroes series by Justin LaRocca Hansen
So, what are you reading?
Link up below and go check out what everyone else is reading. Please support other bloggers by viewing and commenting on at least 3 other blogs. If you tweet about your Monday post, tag the tweet with #IMWAYR!
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P.S. Please note that IMWAYR’s publishing time has changed, starting with this post, to 2AM ET!
I’ve heard some people say that Breakout was too long, but I think it read quickly for me, as well. I really liked it. I’ve only read one book in the series, but I think The Upside Down Magic series is a great one for my elementary readers.
I really think if it was any shorter it wouldn’t have had the impact that it does.
I agree about the UDM series–it is so much fun!
I’m really looking forward to reading SUNNY. I will read everything that Jason Reynolds writes. He is brilliant.
So brilliant! And I liked that this one was a bit different.
I need to find the new “Bat”. So many are loving it! And Thornhill sounds good, Ricki. Wishing you both a lovely week!
It was really engaging!
I love the BAT series 🙂
Kellee, you brought back such fond memories! We always did the same with our boys – bringing out a stack of holiday-themed books for each holiday – they loved looking forward to old favorites with each holiday. And I do so miss those days of reading aloud – glad you are njoying it!
Ricki – Thornhill sounds great – I love Brian Selznick’s books. Great choices for your sci fi/fantasy unit – my son LOVED Graceling, and Unwind was a favorite with all of us – so glad you are including that one for your class!
Hope you both had a nice Easter – enjoy your books this week!
Sue
Book By Book
I am so glad to hear that he liked Graceling. I am anxious to see whether my students like it or not!
I hope you’ve both had a wonderful Easter! I’m especially looking forward to reading Sunny and Breakout. So your comments on both make me even more excited. Have a great reading week!
Super jealous you’ve read Sunny already! I’m glad it comes out next week, although I don’t know why I’m jealous – I have such a mountain of books I want to try and get to!
Looking forward to hearing more about the sports book!
I am really liking the look of Moon and Bone’s Gift – so many precious titles and photo here! So nice! 🙂
Kellee
I understand completely about books with Trent. I spend soooo much time reading with the little one who lives wit us and rarely is it a new book. It seems like she likes them more once they have been read numerous times. It’s amazing how much I am learning about becoming a reader by being a grandmother.
Rickie
I’ll be looking for copies of Cuddle Bug and Hoot Hoot!
Happy Reading to both of you this week.
Kellee – what a great experience to share a book with family like that. 😉
Yay for fantasy. One day I want to re-read Graceling. I remember really liking it, but the story is fuzzy for me now.