Monday Reading - Best Reads

          Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they've been reading, along with everyone else who post their favorites.

        Thanks to Candlewick, I've read this latest book by Lindsay Eagar, out in October. I have previously loved Lindsay's Hour of The Bees, then Race To The Bottom of The Sea, all three realistic family stories of girls struggling to overcome personal (inside family) challenges, brushed with the magic of both believers and non-believers. In The Bigfoot Files, there happens to be a television show that follows and documents those thought-to-be-crazed searchers and believers of beings in our world like the Loch Ness Monster, or Bigfoot! Twelve-year-old Miranda Cho had always believed it all, believed her mother's obsession with monsters, her life filled with talk of sightings, overnight camping trips with others using night vision to capture a first look, and stories from her mother she asked for with the words "Tell Me A Monster." At twelve, a skeptical, want-to-prove-it Miranda has emerged, especially when her quirky mother, Kat, embarrasses her before a friend, now lost, and hides unopened bills and notices of foreclosure in a silverware drawer. Her eyerolls and words of disgust say it all. She wants proof like every scientist. Miranda agrees to go on one last creature hunt and plans to prove once and for all that her mother is wrong, wrong, wrong. It's time to grow up and be a real mother. 

        Detail by detail, I felt the sadness and tension of a young girl who really just wanted a mom who remembered to turn in library books, who didn't drive a crazy-looking "Critter Mobile", one who paid the bills. Sadly, she also wants a mom who hadn't driven away her father. Miranda tries so hard to be perfect. She's an A student, she's recently been elected to be Student Council President. And when she needs inner strength, she pulls out one more hair. In this final trip that goes terribly wrong, Miranda learns her mother's own belief, one that it appears Lindsay Eager loves teaching all of us readers, that "some things are true whether you believe them or not." It's a terrific story with love for all kinds of families.

         

         I also am grateful to have a copy of this wonderful book from Candlewick, just in time for holiday gift-giving, for those you know love poetry, OR a gift for yourself. Publisher at Nosy Crow, Kate Wilson, remembered a book she had as a child filled with poetry, one she still has, from which she loved poetry. She wanted to create a new book filled with poetry too, asked Fiona Waters to select them and Frann Preston-Gannon to illustrate. You can choose to read a poem a day next year, or begin as soon as the book is in your hands. You can find favorite poets, look for new ones, find your birthday poem or your child's. Poets familiar and poets new to me are included. It's a must-see, must-have book for poetry lovers, for a classroom perhaps, for a favorite person. Here's the Thanksgiving page I thought you'd like to see since that holiday is near.

        Well, I adore Chris Raschka's illustrations, swirly action always. And this speaks to me in different ways. I once was a substitute long ago. And it is not easy to follow guidelines, to try to be who the class wants, their regular teacher! They don't like change and do not like what things are "substituted", including the human. This young girl's letter shows that beautifully, but yet, there is a nice surprise at the end. Liz Garton Scanlon has made a change up that made me smile. Perhaps every classroom could have this, especially for younger children, to prepare them that the coming "substitute" might have some good things to share!

            Who gets to save the world's books from evil Dr. Glockenspiel? Only one person can with books in hand, that super-secret operative called Lyric McKerrigan. The action is fast and hilarious: a new super-hero saves books for another day! When I read it, I imagined a class finding other books that would "help" solve a problem, which is what Lyric does so well, just like the librarians we know and love.

          Africville was a real village before the 1960s where people lived in brightly painted houses, boys played football, kids rafted in the town's pond. Bonfires were built during celebrations. In this imaginary story by Shauntay Grant, a young girl seems to whisper a dream for readers, bringing this wonderful village to life as Eva Campbell illustrates her words, like "Catch me a codfish, then come watch the sea bring us all its treasures." She ends with a present-day visit where the town's site is a park, and where great- grandmother’s name is carved in stone. Today, there is an annual Africville Reunion/Festival.

           There is more about this town in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a vibrant Black community for more than 150 years. In the 1960s, city officials decided to demolish the community, moving people out in city dump trucks and relocating them in public housing. It's a beautiful book capturing special memories of this town.

 

            Books not only please, but teach us. I am grateful to Traci Sorell for this beautiful book, telling of the Cherokee tradition of expressing gratitude. The word otsaliheliga (oh-jah-LEE-hay-lee-gah) is used by members of the Cherokee Nation to express gratitude. All through the seasons, including planting strawberries, "an ancestral story's sweet reminder not to argue with each other", the harvest that includes the "Green Corn Ceremony" and saying goodbye to a clan relative "heading off to serve our country", the moments show warm feelings of saying thanks to life itself. With full-color folk art illustrations, it's a pleasure to read and enjoy these traditions. Sorrell is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, includes an author's note, a glossary and the complete Cherokee syllabary, originally created by Sequoyah.

             Now Reading: I have a copy of Speechless by Adam Schmitt from Candlewick and just started The Women In The Castle by Jessica Shattuck.