What Are You Reading? & Superheroes Monday Made It

Excuse the long post. Reading is at the top. Monday Made It is at the bottom. ;]

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now… who knows, you might discover that next “must read” book!

Our Kid Lit to YA version is hosted by Teach Mentor Texts.
GREAT IDEA! Check out all of the What Are You Reading? participants for title ideas.


Lots o' Reading This Week ... pretty fast reading, too. Must remember that balance ... stop and enjoy the writing once in a while instead of just plowing through to get to the plot.

several Babymouse books--will post reviews when I finish ALL of them ;]
a couple Lunch Lady books--see same reasoning above
some poetry picture books--reviews posted yesterday
Madam President (Lane Smith) (SO FUNNY! I'd heard of this one and I'm pretty sure we have it at school but I'd never actually picked it up before. My favorite part is the "Cabinet." May have to think up something fun to do with this one in November! Plus, hello. MADAM President. Without it being all strange about it.)
Don't Read this Book
When a Dragon Moves In
I'm Fast!
Beverly Billingsly Borrows a Book


Justin Case: Shells, Smells, and the Horrible Flip-Flops of Doom by Rachel Vail
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(Go to the Goodreads link if you are interested in the review ... and make sure to read the last page before school starts!)





Theodore Boone: The Accused by John Grisham
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

(In a nutshell WAAAAY better than the first one but that's still not saying much.)





Enchanted by Alethea Kontis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A fairy tale retelling. I did enjoy it.
Only a couple times I had to make myself keep reading. There are so many bits of fairy tales in here it can be hard to keep them all straight.



books two and three in the Quantum Leap series by Michael Carroll (they seriously remind me of X-Men Origins but he started writing them before that movie ever came out!)
The Gathering by Michael Carroll
My rating: 4 of 5 stars







The Reckoning by Michael Carroll
My rating: 3 of 5 stars








Super Human by Michael Carroll

As a stand alone story it was lots of fun.

As part of the series? It sort of seems ... like a weird tangent. Couldn't figure out how many stars to give it.




Lockdown by Alexander Gordon Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Creepy. And a couple scenes (one in the "trough room" in particular) made me gag. Definitely YA.
But still. I just may have to come back for more in the series. I want to know what happens!



The Wolf Tree by John Claude Bemis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Ray is in the story ... but he is not nearly as central a character. Sally takes on a much larger role, as does Marisol (and her snakes ... which still give me the creeps). Jolie, too. And (without giving too much away) another character we did not expect to see again.

I don't quite "get" the whole machine thing, but I think book three should tie that up. This book was definitely a middle "we're not ready to finish but we want to tell you some more" kind of volume. Things happen to Buck and Si that really don't seem to serve much more of a purpose than to explain why they are not in this book very often. Could be foreshadowing or not.

Still. I'm hooked and we'll finish the series!

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Still in the Middle of
the professional reading--both books are really good but I can't zip through them like I do with fiction


Hoping to Read in the Next Two Weeks because #bookaday Is Going to End WAY TOO SOON
the last book in the Quantum Leap series
One Year in Coal Harbor (having trouble moving E-ARCs over to my Nook :X ... I don't always get it out when I should but now when I move files over they say they are not authorized ... must check on this further as it has never happened before :X :X :X ... I CAN read them on my Mac but that is sort of a pain)
In a Glass Grimmly
Unspoken
The Classroom
Ashen Winter
more of the Escape from Furnace series (if I don't get too creeped out)
Beyonders
Candy Shop War
more Babymouse and Lunch Lady (OH! And Squish!)

So for Monday Made It I went to Pinterest. I am the teacher librarian in an elementary school. I came from a high school Spanish/English teaching background (yes! Culture shock!). Never had to manage much more than papers.

The amount of time myself and (when she wasn't sent somewhere else on campus) my assistant spent handing out and picking up scissors, crayons, glues sticks, etc. to or from each table was just crazy. We couldn't leave it out, though, because with no walls and being in such a high traffic area? Without people even meaning to things walk away. "Oh, I'll just borrow this and return it." Enter all sorts of interruptions and they would forget.

Our school has a new principal (well, she started in late February so this is her first full year) who is instituting a schoolwide Super Heroes theme along with the "Seven Habits."

I made these to put on top of containers. We will fill up the containers (once with the basic supplies, then day by day depending on the specific activity with those needed supplies), set them out, and ... shouldn't that work? Of course lots of stuff will still disappear--it's really hard to remember to give every class and every table monitors every time they come. Or remember to ask teachers whose job it might be back in the class. (We won't get in to the teachers that disappear as soon as the class comes ... when this is NOT their planning time. But I digress cause it's not all of them!) Will these work, do you think? Plus ARE THEY NOT SO CUTE? Melonheadz clip art along with some designs on my Silhouette Cameo.

Can you see the bazillion glue sticks in the one container I put in the pic? They were on sale at ... gasp. Walmart. I dislike Walmart. But they were only $.10. The number of glue sticks we go through confounds me. And we don't get any of the classroom school supplies from the students at the beginning of the year. Oh well.

The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman by Meg Wolitzer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I really enjoyed this one. You totally can't judge it on what the "fingertips" of Duncan might or might not be able to do because that part is a little weird.



And it's not just about Duncan. Several other characters add to the story.



Really ... it's all about middle school kids (but could be read by like 4th and up) finding their way. Being able to make their own choices, accepting their own choices, and discovering that others sometimes don't make the best choices. And sometimes you still accept them.



The Scrabble tips were sort of a fun plus. Says this Words With Friends player who loses. A lot. :/





Almost forgot ... a couple of quotes I liked:



"Another time, when they were walking home from school in the fall and kept stopping to step on particularly crunchy-looking leaves, Lucy asked, 'How come humans love the sound of leaves crunching? We go out of our way to hear it, to feel it. Why is it so insanely satisfying?'" (p 33 ... and really does not have much to do with the storyline but that's one reason I liked it!)



"Why couldn't her family understand the thrill of Scrabble, the excitement when you won a game, or even when you made an amazingly interesting word?" (p 83)



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Junonia by Kevin Henkes

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


As I was reading this I would go back and forth between loving the story and then thinking "This is a little strange/boring and what student would I ever recommend this to?"



The descriptive language is absolutely beautiful. I could see the waves and feel the sand and smell the air and taste the chocolate icing on her birthday cake. Teachers will love to use passages from this book just for the descriptions.



Alice is a believable and relatable character. She gets excited and disappointed and as readers we feel both of these emotions. I could see the secondary characters in my mind they, too, were described very well.



Don't pick up this book expecting action and adventure, however. Most of it is Alice learning to accept the world around her. As she reaches her tenth birthday she begins to see that not everyone is perfect and they will sometimes disappoint her.



Because I read this on my Nook I was not as careful to take notes as I should have been ... marking passages that were especially evocative of a particular sense. Or marking the strange passage where Alice decides that she believes in a female God. That one was just weird.







I will probably get a copy of this for my school library. But only one.



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The Last Summer Of The Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork


I liked this story. It was sad ... but it was hopeful. I'll go with hopeful any time.



The audiobook was very well done. Will have to check on the performer and see what else he has done.







The ending. Was a bit ... more open-ended than I usually prefer.



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It's Raining Cupcakes by Lisa Schroeder

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This was a nice enough story about a girl dealing with an ... I guess she would be emotionally disturbed mother? Either bipolar or at least depressed. Anyway. It really was a nice story about how the family is able to come together and help the mom, while not making the girl give up on all the things she wants to do, either.


Plus there was a recipe for s'mores cupcakes in the back. Wish I hadn't joined Weight Watchers two weeks before I read this book.

I so would have tried it. And I'm not even cupcake crazy.



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Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Very well written. Amazing, even. Melody is a beautiful character.



Only, seriously. At one point the teacher posts a video to MySpace. I know it's silly that that bugged me when the rest of the book is so good. But come on. NO ONE DOES THAT ANYMORE. Especially a teacher posting a video of his students.


Opening lines ...

"Words. I'm surrounded by thousands of words.... Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts.... But only in my head. I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old." (p 1-2)



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10 Miles Past Normal by Frances O'Roark Dowell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I liked this one for it's quiet ... quirkiness. There's a girl having sort of a hard time fitting in to high school. That happens. (The goat poop part is a little different but hey ... I actually taught at an agriciscience magnet school and if it happened there I am SURE it happens in more rural schools. And it does smell.) Her usual friends suddenly seem a little different. That happens. Family maybe a little embarrassing. Yeah. That happens. (She still loves them!) She starts to make new friends. With a little luck, that happens, too.



I need to learn to start reading these e-arcs from my Nook with paper and pencil in hand because I haven't figured out how to take notes on it. Or maybe I can't? Anyway. Suffice it to say the unexpected lovely turns of phrase one expects from Ms. O'Roark Dowell are in full force.





Don't really like the cover, though.



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Third Grade Part 2

Realistic Fiction