Monday Reading - Best Books Read

              Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they've been reading, along with others who post their favorites.  Your TBR lists will grow! Happy Reading!
          Share with the hashtag #IMWAYR

Thinking of all of you during this challenging time, hope you are doing well and finding joy in your lives every day. This continuing challenge is so hard for everyone. I'm trying to help where I can by supporting those who are virtually closed, still offering carry-out, etc. 

             This was just a wonderful book to read this week, hunkering down because of the pandemic, as people have said,  we are sometimes 'sheltering in the past', so I had the pleasure of reading about kids in school, beautiful kids, some like I taught, each with a story that Jason Reynolds told with care and creativity and love. It's about a neighborhood, a bunch of streets and those kids and some adults who live on them. I enjoyed it immensely, hope all teachers of young adolescents will read it.

              Thanks to Candlewick Press for the following books, some for spring celebrations!

         If someone at home is studying "creatures" and wants to see those with an exceptionally long, huge, excellent, dreaded, etc. feature, this is the book, first published by Big Picture Press in the UK, also an imprint of Candlewick. With rigid pages, colorful illustrations on bright backgrounds, Natasha Durley creates fascinating groups like "Nice Noses", "Huge Horns", and "Fantastic Fur". Looking and looking will entertain, but finding animals that intrigue and inspire for further research is one wonderful way to use this book! Each page includes a brief introduction with one fun fact or question. For example, the text shares in "Enormous Eyes" that the giant squid has eyes as big as dinner plates! And, in "Tremendous tongues", we learn that okapis have such long tales, they use them to clean out their ears! It's a fun book for enhancing learning.

        
            If you know a child who's easily distracted and does not always follow as asked,  this is a humorous story to read together. Although there are certain things "little duckies must do every day, Flo did not do any of those things." She seemed to have much more fun doing other things, like riding turtle's back or chasing frogs "through mucky puddles". When her Daddy was going to take her for a visit to Auntie Jenna, he was stern and cautious: "You have to FOLLOW ME all the way." More words were spoken, too, and Flo answered, "Yes, Daddy, I promise. "This book illustrated with a beautiful spring background on every page with Flo center stage takes readers, and Flo, for an adventure she didn't know would happen. Even for young readers, it's a page-turner and surprises wait around the corner as pages turn. I would love to read this aloud to see what children think!

            Hazel and Twig, two mouse sisters are out playing when Hazel tells Twig to find her own rock, and the rock she finds is discovered to be not a rock at all, but an egg! The plans they make to help hatch the egg made me smile, but their father (Appa) came to find them and then helped them look for the nest. In the meantime, Hazel decides the egg must be named "Dandelion". They look in all the usual places, but no nest that might fit such a large egg could be found. Realizing that all nests are not up high, and as they realize the nest could be near in the tall grass, two ducks come running. You'll need to read the book for the rest of the story, but I imagine you can guess most! Darling and sweet pastel illustrations with "extra" spring things (blooming trees and flowers, birds and butterflies) also by Brenna Burns Yu make a delightful new spring read.

         

         This is an older book by a friend of mine. I didn't know very much about Passover until I read this wonderful one about celebrating. It includes the special traditions for this holiday showing a family of four preparing all of them. They shop for needed things in the grocery, lovingly take home a kitten in need of a home, make charoset as a family. After every activity they follow with the refrain "Dayenu" ("it would have been enough"), referring to the Passover song which celebrates all the blessings of this important time of the Jewish year. For younger readers, the bright and happy illustrations by Katie Kath make it a joy to read. 

Now Reading: A Wish in The Dark by Christina Soontornvat, just published at the end of March.