It's Monday - Find These Books!

     Visit Kellee and Ricki at UnleashingReaders and 

  

Jen at Teach Mentor Texts to see what they and others have been reading! Your TBR lists will grow! Happy Reading! 

      

I did finish Malinda Lo's Last Night at the Telegraph Club. then put Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr's new novel, and The Bookshop of Dust and Dreams by Mindy Thompson on hold because I realized I still needed to read (fast) Four Streets and A Square by Marc Aronson about New York City. I did it and the review is below!

 

        I'm taking a break until the new year! Wishing you all Happy Holidays however you celebrate. Considering the terrible devastation in Kentucky and needs around the world, I hope you are safe and able to help those in need in your own cities or in the world somewhere! 

Thanks to Candlewick Press for
this copy!

        Wow, if you love New York City, or if you've only or never visited, Marc Aronson has given his all in this history. I wonder if it wouldn't inspire students to do some research on their own cities or towns. Certainly, each one has a history that is fascinating!

        Aronson says he has chosen certain aspects of his history, centering on those streets of the title, in an opening after the Table of Contents titled "How This Book is  Organized". They include Wall Street, Union Square first, adding later 125th Street and West Fourth Street. You who know the city well possibly understand the why. He states they are where "clash and combination fostered ideas, art, political organizations, and music that spread across the country and the world." He means to capture "the essence of what might be called the New York idea, the New York experience. 

       There is much to share. Rita Csizmadia created the maps. In the text, along with numerous images, he had added parts he terms "snapshots" which relate timelines, important names in highlighted periods like "The Golden Door–The New Waves of Immigration". Within the text and then in the vast pages of sources, there are additional links, sometimes links to whole books available online! As noted, there is an extensive source list, an author's note, image notes, and a piece about terminology used. I've only traveled to NYC a few times, once a marvelous trip with students, but loved reading and learning more!

         Finally, I finished and am glad I did. The final 150 pages were well worth keeping going. I see the reasons for all the details but it is a slow read, at least for me. I’m sure that every detail, especially reading about Lily’s feelings emerge and be examined by her, are important for readers! It’s not easy growing up and realizing one is a homosexual even today, but especially in the nineteen fifties. I enjoyed the back matter added by Malinda Lo also.

I have four books I loved this week and will be quick with the reviews. 

Thanks to Candlewick Press 
for this copy.

      I've read one of these stories every evening and they are a delight. Rodaan Al Galidi tells the stories that he has gathered from all over the world. Although the inside is not in color, I can see how beautiful they're going to be illustrated by Geertje Aalders by the cover. Laura Watkinson translated. As Galidi writes in his intro, "stories are the best migrants and the finest travelers". You may read (or hear) a story in Iraq, with specific cultural names, but when it travels to The Netherlands, names, perhaps even the kind of animal changes.  Several are lessons in perceptions. One about light and dark, and tells about a man checking on his bull late one night, but a lion has taken its place. He enters, "found the head, touched the hairy neck, the strong legs, and the tail, and felt completely reassured: his bull was fine." Another speaks of other perceptions when a man, his son, and a donkey traveled. The man walked, the son rode, and people thought it was disgraceful that the son was not more caring for his father. I think you can imagine where that is going. People see things differently all.the.time. Wouldn't this be fun to read a story or two a day with a class? It's terrific!

         This was first published by Gottmer Publishing Group (Netherlands) 2017. The first US edition is 2021.

          How to describe this one? I think many of you have read it but if you have not, you must. It's about the early lockdown months of the virus. LeUyen Pham says when we all had to stay 'inside', she began sketching what she saw "outside". In her afterword, she writes that every single person/scene is something based on who she knows, what she saw. Remember when we all came out to cheer at 7 pm? Remember the playgrounds that were so lonely? The double-page spread of who was still going to work, those working so hard, at risk in hospitals will bring tears. It's a book for remembering, for being grateful, perhaps today for wishing that it was over. Although we are "out" now, challenges continue. Don't miss this special book!

          This is the cutest story by Julie Falatko with charming illustrations by Gabriel Alboroza is about an Owl T. Fencepost who I think protests too much. All told in letters, Owl keeps sending letters to Bessie Squirrel, a bookstore owner with requests for titles like How to Soundproof Your Forest Dwelling. Bessie replies that it's out of stock, so how about Yes You Do Want to Live in the Woods: Why Life in the Trees Is the Bee's Knees? Change slowly happens as we see Owl continue to be welcoming to young forest animals and they later, in turn, plan a nice surprise. Don't miss the endpapers by Alboroza! 

       One can count on Julie Paschkis to create something unique and beautiful and she has again! There are cues when to bark or meow (or other dog or cat sounds). Julie bases this poetic story of a cat (stray) and then a dog, well, it's a romp as the story of those two characters evolve. The poetic text is a song, actually, though Julie took a step into her poem because she used the fourth stanza of an Oliver Goldsmith poem, "Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog" to inspire. Here's one verse so you can understand the rhythm: The dog lay still with mournful eyes/while kitty worked her ways. At last, he opened up his eyes/And she returned his gaze." It's going to be a terrific read-aloud!