The Book Search

Our kids started back to school this week.  The teachers started back the week before so it's been a pretty busy couple of weeks.  A lot of people don't really understand why teachers are so exhausted the first few weeks (months) of school so let me try to illuminate you. Imagine that you've just spent the last two months do whatever you like.  For many teachers, this involves another job (like working summer camp, tutoring, or painting houses).  Then you come back to your real job and for the last two months, people have been thinking about ways to make your job more efficient.  In the first week of school, they spend time explaining to you how to do that.  Then you have to completely unpack and re-arrange all of your work materials because in the two months you've been gone, they've come in and cleaned the floors (you may also have had to move your things from one room to another room, possibly on the other side of the campus).  There may also be new materials t

Today was my first day back to school.  I always forget how much stamina it takes to get through a day at school, so this afternoon, I was totally ready for a nap.  Thank goodness my friend, Pam called and teased me into going to the beach.  It was far more refreshing than a nap and I'll probably sleep a lot better! I've been reading a LOT this summer (and when I count how many books I've read, I'm really surprised!  72!  Holy cow!  Did I do anything else?).  I found a couple that I think will be awesome for the start of the year. For the littlest kids, I just read one called "F is for Feelings" by Goldie Millar.  It's an ABC book about a variety of feelings, both positive and negative.  What's really great about this one, is that the sentences are short and both name the feeling and give a situation or describe the feeling.  On top of that, there is beautiful artwork that shows not only the facial expression, but the body language and for most of

I've been trying to figure out how to get to advanced readers copies so I can read the latest and greatest books so I can then recommend them to my students.  Through a group I follow on Goodreads, an completely awesome book recommending site, I found Netgalley.  Netgalley provides advanced readers copies online (like through a Kindle) so you can read books ahead of time.  Some of them are REALLY badly formatted, but in the case of this last book I read, the formatting didn't distract from the complete awesomeness of the book! This one was called "Ava and Pip" by Carol Weston.  Ava and Pip are sisters and they are word nerds.  Their names and their parents names are palindromes, they like to play a homonym game, and Ava would like to be a writer.  Pip has some un-named issue that makes her smaller and shyer than Ava so Ava tries to help.  When a new girl decides to have a party the same time as Pip's thirteenth birthday party, Pip is very hurt.  So Ava decides t