It's Tuesday! What Are You Reading?

To learn more about It's Monday! What Are You Reading? visit Mentor Texts

I'm reading a lot actually, but I don't have full reviews ready for Brown Girl Dreaming or Masterminds. So I am going to do a couple of quick thoughts about some picture books that I read to my kiddos this week. It's been fun to have something new every time we sit down to read. 

Both my big boys (11 & 3) loved this book. (The 3-month-old loved it too, he just doesn't know it yet!) It's perfect for little ones because, well, it's about a fire engine! What 3-year-old doesn't love fire engines? But this fire engine's got some attitude and style. He runs through the tools in his toolbox. We love to read the tool names and try to match it to the picture.


I caught my 11-year-old sneaking this one to his room to look at more closely. Never would have guessed!

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My 3-year-old loved this wordless book because he's always frustrated that he can't read the words in books. I kept reinforcing to him that there are no words in this story, you get to make them up yourself. The boy in this book can't read either and he gets frustrated too. But he doesn't treat the book very nice when he can't read it. It's a great book for reinforcing proper treatment of books too. 

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 This was a great book! We loved discussing the vocabulary and it is perfect for predicting what will happen next. The pictures are fun and silly. Perfect read-aloud for young kids, great vocabulary for older kids.

 

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

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A book for book lovers! I can't resist books like this! Emily mentions so many of my favorite books in this story: The Westing Game, Inkheart, The Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library.  

In fact this book reminds me a little bit of The Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library. I will recommend this book to the kids who loved that one. It is also reminiscent of Andrew Clements’s Benjamin Pratt & the Keepers of the School series. We loved those at our school.  

I was so excited to find out that this was a real game. I can't wait to introduce my students to it. http://bookscavenger.com/hide-find-books/ I'm trying to find a way to work this into my theme or curriculum for next year.

Genre:adventure

AR level: none yet

Grade appropriate: 3rd & up

RATING BREAKDOWN:

Overall: 5/5--fantastic! One of my new favorite books!

Creativity: 5/5--The game is a lot  like geocaching. In this game the cache is books.

I have never heard of anyone trying to live in all 50 states. I thought it was brilliant.… and sad. Emily would never have old friends. She would always have to make new ones.

Characters: 5/5-- love, love, love!

Engrossing: 5/5-- You guys, I finished this book on 24 hours! I am a mother of 3 young children & they were all home but I read. That's a truly engrossing book.  

Writing: 5/5

Appeal to kids: 5/5-- They're going to love it!!

Appropriate length to tell the story: 5/5

CONTENT:

Language: none

Sexuality: none

Violence: mild-- The founder of the book scavenger gets shot in the first chapter but (and here's the spoiler) he does not die. The children are threatened & chased by bad guys but are not hurt.

Drugs/Alcohol: none

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

To learn more about It's Monday! What Are You Reading? visit Mentor Texts

One of my favorite authors. I'm always up for a new book by Rebecca Stead! I got an advance release copy of Goodbye Stranger. It will be out in August. 

 I was disappointed in the content of this one. Not because I don’t think these type of things are happening in middle school, but because I’m not going to be able to introduce this one to my elementary students.

We’ve all loved When You Reach Me and Liar and Spy, but this one deals with things that are too mature for my kiddos to handle yet. Once you put those images/thoughts in your head, you can’t get them out! 

However, it was a wonderful story all-in-all. Perfect for upper middle school and high school readers. 

Genre: Realistic

AR level: none yet 

Grade appropriate: 8th and up

RATING BREAKDOWN: 

Overall: 4/5-- I liked the book a lot! 

Creativity: 5/5-- it was interesting the way that the story bounced between 2 points of view. I didn't figure out who the second character was until the author revealed it. Very typical of Rebecca Stead. 

Characters: 5/5-- believable, realistic, endearing. 

Engrossing: 5/5

Writing: 5/5--my hesitation is related to the mature content...

Appeal to kids: 4/5

Appropriate length to tell the story: 5/5

CONTENT: 

Language: mild--"most of the girls in my middle school were such bitches." 

"She'd say you put her and your father through a hell full of worry."

Sexuality: mild-- One of the characters texts pictures back and forth with a boy she likes. First it's a picture of her feet, he sends her one of his feet. It escalates to a picture of them in their underwear. (There are steep consequences.)

The girls discuss that Halloween is not a “sex parade.” Meaning they don't want to dress up in skimpy costumes. One of their classmates dress like a playboy bunny. 

vague references to girls hitting puberty & bodies changing.  

In the end the main character kisses a boy. 

Violence: none

Drugs/Alcohol: none

Neglectful Blogger

So... I've very neglectful of this blog in the last month. We had a slightly eventful December!

This guy

made a surprise appearance 3 weeks early. Because he was early he spent a week in the NICU.

 So obviously I was not thinking about blogging... He made it home in time for Christmas and he and I have been trying to establish a new normal ever since.

All that being said, regular blog entries will resume Monday!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

To learn more about It's Monday! What Are You Reading? visit Mentor Texts

Niether of these books are on our Mock Newbery list but both are 2014 publications. 

This book was so intriguing I couldn't pass it up.

This book was wonderful. I too, am skeptical when I see that a celebrity has written a book, but I was very pleasantly surprised with Nightmares! It’s just scary enough to keep a reader hooked, but not so scary as to cause him/her actual nightmares.

Genre: Scary    

AR level: 4.8

Grade appropriate: 3rd and up

RATING BREAKDOWN:

Overall: 5/5-- I truly loved this book. I can’t wait to tell our fans of Doll Bones and Dead City about this book!

Creativity: 5/5-- Charlie must venture into the nightmare world to save his little brother.

Characters: 5/5-- Charlie is really struggling with his new stepmother and it is very relatable even if you do get impatient with him at times. Jack is absolutely wonderful, as are Charlie’s friends.

Engrossing: 5/5-- I read it in 2 days.

Writing: 5/5

Appeal to kids: 5/5-- It’s going to fly off the shelf!

Appropriate length to tell the story: 5/5

CONTENT:

Language: none

Sexuality: none

Violence: none-- The nightmares threaten violence like battling animals gladiator style or a witch wanting to eat children, but in true nightmare style the child wakes up or is saved before any actual harm comes.

Drugs/Alcohol: none

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This is a beautiful story that does deal with the issue of race post civil war, but it does not dominate the story. It is only part of the story. 

Genre: Historical

AR level: 5.7

Grade appropriate: 5th and up

RATING BREAKDOWN:

Overall: 4/5-- Fantastic and beautifully handled.

Creativity: 5/5-- What an interesting way to bring two boys together who come from different towns and different backgrounds.

Characters: 5/5-- Loved Red a lot. Benji started out quite hateful but grew throughout the story into a brave and noble person.

Engrossing: 4/5-- Historical fiction is not always the most engrossing. There will be plenty of kids who lose interest before finishing.

Writing: 4/5-- There was quite a bit of confusion at the beginning of the book when both boys’ stories were running parallel and they hadn’t met. It was hard to keep straight who was who.

Appeal to kids: 3/5-- See comments on “Engrossing.”

Appropriate length to tell the story: 4/5

CONTENT:

Language: mild-- Grandma prays for a man who wouldn’t serve her family “That the Lamb of God stirs his hoof through the roof of heaven and kicks your father square in his ass straight down to hell.”

Sexuality: none

Violence: medium- The madman gets shot by a drunken towns person and the boys find him in the woods.

Drugs/Alcohol: medium-- one of the secondary character’s father is an alcoholic and is abusive. (He also ends up shooting the madman…)

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

To learn more about It's Monday! What Are You Reading? visit Mentor Texts

This book is on our Mock Newbery list.

I was intimidated after hearing another teacher from our school talk about this book. She said it was a book for thinkers and compared it to A Wrinkle in Time (which I have read twice and still don’t like!) But I did pick this book up eventually and... I really enjoyed it! I will say I enjoyed the first half better than the rest. Once they ended up in the south and the torture began and the really far out there fantasy kicked in, I was less into it. Overall, very enjoyable and I’m glad I read it.

Genre: Fantasy

AR level: 6.0

Grade appropriate: 5th and up

RATING BREAKDOWN:

Overall: 4/5

Creativity: 5/5-- Very unusual! Maps of memories. I cannot even imagine how you would come up with this!

Characters: 5/5-- I loved Sophia and Theo. Shadrack was almost too good to be true but I loved him!

Engrossing: 4/5-- It was totally engrossing in the beginning. Like I mentioned earlier, the end got really into really deep fantasy and it wasn’t quite as engaging for me as the beginning was.

Writing: 5/5-- One of my biggest pet peeves about Fantasy is when the author takes a ton of time to explain the world they’ve built. It drives me crazy. While the world in this book was very different from our own I never felt bogged down in explanation. It was handled very naturally!

Appeal to kids: 3/5-- I’m afraid this will only be engaging for our big readers. If a kid has not read fantasy or if they are not an expert reader already they will lose interest.

Appropriate length to tell the story: 4/5-- It did get long...

CONTENT:

Language: none

Sexuality: none

Violence: medium-- The villain is very evil at points in this book. She tortures people with a mask that cuts their faces when they struggle and steals memories by practically drowning people in sand.

Drugs/Alcohol: none