Monday, March 28, 2016

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? #IMWAYR 3/28/16


It's Monday! What are you reading? was started by Sheila at Book Journey and was adapted for children's books from picture books through YA by Jen of Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee of Unleashing Readers. You can visit either site for a round up of blogs sharing their weekly readings and thoughts or search Twitter for #IMWAYR.



Last Weeks' Posts

  • If You Like Fantastic Mr. Fox ... My students are sharing book recommendations, following the "If you like ... read this next ..." format. Find out what series to check out if you like Roald Dahl classics like this one.

Follow The Logonauts on Facebook! I recently started a Facebook page for The Logonauts. Many parents and teachers are on Facebook, so it seemed like a great way to connect. Please consider "liking" to get updates via your Facebook feed, thanks!

Picture Books



Just a Second (2011) by Steve Jenkins. This book takes time and makes it literal - sharing a variety of natural answers to how many X can happen in Y amounts of time (a second, a day, a week, etc.). I am hoping to use this as a mentor text to help kids wonder more about the world as they start thinking of ideas for their upcoming Passion Projects.


Why? (2005) by Lila Prap. I was hoping for a lot more with this book. Each page asks a question (Why do zebras have stripes? for example) and gives a series of goofy answers, along with the "scientific answer." The wonky formatting really bothered me, because sometimes you'd read the answers before you could find the question, and the silly answers just weren't that clever. I don't plan to use this one.


Daniel Finds a Poem (2016) by Micha Archer. Another miss for me. Daniel wants to write a poem for the upcoming poetry reading, so he asks all the animals in the park about poetry. He then knits all of their answers together into his poem. While I appreciate the idea that "poetry is everywhere," the fact that he simply plagiarizes his poem from others would really bother a lot of my literal, rule-following students.

Middle Grade



Summerlost (March 29, 2016) by Ally Condie. I really loved this new middle grade offering from Ally Condie, which is available this Tuesday. Working on a fuller review soon. (ARC received from an entry in a Publishers' Weekly email. All thoughts are my own.)


P.S. Be Eleven (2013) by Rita Williams-Garcia. [Coretta Scott King Award Winner.] Book two in the Gaither sisters series picks up immediately where the One Crazy Summer left off. I enjoyed this book as well, though perhaps not quite as much as the first. It was interesting to see how the girls adjusted back to their "normal" lives after their time in CA visiting their mother. Looking forward to also reading book three!

Professional Development



The Collapse of Parenting: how we hurt our kids when we treat them like grown-ups (2015) by Dr. Leonard Sax. I had read some of Dr. Sax's writings on gender during my teacher training, so I was very interested in his newest book. So many of his case studies seemed to be pulled right from conversations that I have also had with parents who sometimes seem to expect school and teachers to handle some of what used to be parenting basics. Part 1 of the book lays out what he sees as the problems with current trends in parenting, while part 2 focuses on potential solutions. I have a lot of bookmarks to work through in trying to see how I can apply some of his advice to help my own students' parents!

Stay Tuned ...


I am launching a brand new book link up featuring Diverse Children's Books. It will run the first and third Saturdays of the month and be an opportunity for bloggers to share their links to reviews and posts about diverse books for children. I really hope you'll join us!

Happy Reading!

13 comments:

  1. I loved Daniel Finds a Poem. What a great classroom asset for teaching poetry. I'm looking forward to reading Summerlost, although I have to confess the ARC has been sitting on my TBR pile for a while now. PS Be Eleven - I loved loved all three books about the Gaither sisters.

    Can wait for your Diverse Children's Books link up to start. So needed and so great of you to do that - thank you.

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    1. Thanks, Alex! I hope you'll join us for the Diverse Children's Book hop, and I really appreciate your encouragement.

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  2. Interesting assortment of books. I have never read any of the books about the Gaither sisters but you make them sound intriguing. Come see my week here. Happy reading!

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  3. You are the second blogger writing about Summerlost - It is definitely going on our TBR list. Thank you!

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    1. You will enjoy it. It is a sweet and heartfelt story.

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  4. Someone else wrote about Summerlost this week. I will watch for it.

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  5. Very excited about the Diverse Children's Books meme! I am hoping to read the Rita Williams-Garcia novel soon. :)

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    1. Thanks, Myra. I'm excited too! I think you'll really enjoy the books as well.

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  6. I have read the first and the third in William's Garcia's trilogy, but not this one. I love those girls. I'm looking forward to reading Summerlost.

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    1. Summerlost is great, and you'll really enjoy PS Be Eleven.

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  7. I loved the second Gaither sisters book, and I really want to read the 3rd one.
    I have Daniel Finds a Poem to read--it looks and sounds wonderful!

    Happy reading this week :)

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