Summer Stacks and New Blog Button

If you haven't read The Book Whisperer, quit reading this post, go get a copy, and then come back to this blog.  Then figure out a way to make the passion Donalyn Miller has for reading evident in your classroom, even if the only thing you can do is talk about your own reading...or someone you know who is an avid reader (I know there are some people who just aren't lovers of reading...my brother....i have given up trying to turn him.) 


Anyway for those who have read The Book Whisperer, did you know Donalyn Miller has a blog and a challenge.  I always look forward to what she has to share.  Last summer I completed the book a day challenge and thought I would share some of the great reads I came across, in case you need to add to your summer stack.


First of all, I love to keep track of what I read.  I do it in a journal and on goodreads.com.  Why both, I am not sure, but I still have a handwritten version going on.  Goodreads has lots of ways for finding what to read next.

Reading so many books, often means I can't remember details from a lot of them, so I am sharing the ones, whose titles bring back stories I remember.  Numbered, but in no particular order....


1.  Queen of Babble series by Meg Cabot.  Chick Lit....fun and light reading:)

2.  Alice, I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin:  Alice Liddell tells the story of how she become the inspiration for the Alice of Wonderland.

3.  Keeper and The Underneath by Kathi Appelt--I love Kathi Appelt's books.  She tells numerous stories within in one book and magically weaves them all together by the end!

"On the night of the blue moon when mermaids are said to gather on a sandbar in the Gulf of Mexico, ten-year-old Keeper sets out in a small boat, with her dog BD and a seagull named Captain, determined to find her mother, a mermaid, as Keeper has always believed, who left long ago to return to the sea."
"An old hound that has been chained up at his hateful owner's run-down shack, and two kittens born underneath the house, endure separation, danger, and many other tribulations in their quest to be reunited and free."

4.   Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea--Seven fifth-graders at Snow Hill School in Connecticut relate how their lives are changed for the better by "rookie teacher" Mr. Terupt.   WARNING:  Do not read this book without tissue!

5.   The Queen's Thief by Megan Whalen Turner-I loved this series, but you gotta read them all.  Brilliant!  It starts with a boy who declares that he can steal anything and the epic story goes from there.

6.  Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer--The book is written via letters.  Once I got used to that, I loved this book.  " As London is emerging from the shadow of World War II, writer Juliet Ashton discovers her next subject in a book club on Guensey-a club born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi after its members are discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island."

7.  Barkbelly by Cat Weatherill--"One silver-starry night, a shiny, wooden egg falls from a flying machine high in the air . . . down, down, down through the midnight sky . . . down to the small village of Pumbleditch, where Barkbelly is born. Where he’s the only wooden boy. And where he’s the cause of a tragic accident."

Some other books I loved, but I have either already blogged about or I have already seen a lot of:  Divergent, Insurgent, Matched, Delirium, The Night Circus
and everything by Sarah Addison Allen

And if you need a place to read more book reviews check out The Best Endings.  With so many different contributing authors, there is a book for everyone!

Happy Tuesday,
  
I am playing with a new blog button....please try out the code and let me know if it works.