It's Monday, and time to visit Unleashing Readers with Ricki and Kelle, and Teach Mentor Texts, with Jen. Thanks to them we have this awesome group that shares the latest books read, and their opinions about them.
AND, this Monday, I have the results of my giveaway of The Great Greene Heist by Varian Johnson.
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It's my own bowl of names
of the commenters! |
And the winner drawn is Andrea Payan, of Mrs. Payan Reads. Andrea, you can find my e-mail in my personal profile. Send me your home address and I'll mail your book! Congratulations!
I'm taking a week off next week, starting Saturday, going to the beach with family, but I've read a lot this past week. What a pleasure it was. I hope you find some good books here you'd like to put on your TBR list!
verse novel
The Crossover – Kwame Alexander
The story’s woven into a
basketball world, former European star player is dad, twin sons with the talent
of their dad, and the values too, along with the mom, worried about her husband
whose father died young from hypertension.
Tension comes in brief moments, a look, a grunt, a movement of a hand.
The poetry sings with rhythm, fast then slow, inner rhyming and story-telling.
The feelings behind each poem almost tell more than the poem itself. It’s a
story beautifully shared, of adolescent feelings that arrive as fast as a pass,
and change as quickly as the “game”. Each time I read another novel in verse, I
love them more. You won’t forget this one easily.
middle grade chapter book
Absolutely Almost – Lisa Graff
There is no “absolutely almost”
liking this book. I absolutely loved it. I’ve commented to other reviewers that
their reviews made me think that all teachers should read this book, and then
read it aloud to their students. And now I know I’m right. It is a book
important for teachers and parents as well to read, to learn about kids and how
they hide, how they want things to be different, yet often don’t know how to
communicate that. The main character, this boy, Albie, like his mother says, is
“caring and thoughtful and good”, although for a long while I’m not sure his
mother really knew this in her heart. It was a tough story to read, especially
for the adults’ foibles. Parts made me want to shout into the story and say,
“wait, why aren’t you doing something”, or “why are you doing this?” It’s been
a while when I wanted to shout at a book character! But Lisa Graff tells it true, the adults, even
the sweet “not-a-babysitter” Calista are not perfect. But Albie “almost” is! Read the book!
Time again to add to your growing non-fiction lists. Come visit Alyson Beecher at Kid Lit Frenzy for Non-Fiction Picture Book Wednesday! Thanks for hosting, Alyson!
Time for our Tuesday Slice of Life Sharing at theTwo Writing Teachers blog. Thanks to all who share, and to those who host the community. It's the final slice of July!
Yet since then, I've come to enjoy different texts about poetry, and all kinds of poetry. I had the good luck to go antiquing when I visited my son and family in Texas. I don't buy many things any more, have too much already, but this time I had the extreme pleasure of finding what appears to be a first edition of Doodle Soup, a book of Ciardi's children's poems. It seems untouched, although now it is! I've discovered some of the poems are akin to Shel Silverstein and I will try them out with young students this year to see if I'm right. Yet the humor is sometimes a bit strange, too. More than one of the poems talk about disappearing, somehow making a mistake and "poof", one is gone. They can be wry in humor, yet still others offer a big laugh at the "new" look he imagines.
