-

So summer vacation has officially started, YAY!  And I finished my first book today!  It's called An Abundance of Katherines by John Green.  John Green also wrote the much more famous The Fault in our Stars which is coming out as a movie soon.  He has such a great voice as an author.  His characters are so interesting.  In An Abundance of Katherines, the main character, Colin, is a child prodigy, who is worried that his giftedness is fading.  When his girlfriend, Katherine, breaks up with him, he falls into such a funk that his best (and only) friend, Hassan, demands that they take a road trip.  It turns out that Colin has only ever dated Katherines and as he struggles to make sense of this latest break up, he turns to math to help him predict how all relationships will progress.  Along the way, he and Hassan end up in Gutshot, TN and make some new friends.  It's a really fun book to read, but it has quite a bit of (what might be termed) mature language and some sexual situations that make it inappropriate for elementary school.  

Now I'm on to the big stack.... today when I went back to school, I looked at the shelves in the media center and thought "Why aren't the kids reading these books?"  So I brought a few (ok, like 15 or 20) home and they are either going in the box for Goodwill or on to some recommendation list... no middle ground here...  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coming attractions in middle grade fiction!

-
Image
I've been enjoying my spring break and since we were traveling, I had some long uninterrupted time to read (because when I'm at home, there's a lot of "Oh look!  Something shiny!" going on).    There are some terrific new middle grade fiction books in the pipeline.  Here are two of my favorites. The first one is called "The Orphan Band of Springdale" by Anne Nesbet.  It's historical fiction but it's based on the author's family stories.  It's set in World War 2 and I really loved that it tells the story of what it was like growing up in America at that time, with some of the ugly prejudices that people held as well as some of the social issues that have since been resolved.  Gusta's dad leaves her on a train as they were heading to Maine because Gusta's dad is a socialist and believes that workers should have rights and he is being pursued by the police.  Gusta ends up at her grandmother's house, which is a kind of an orphan
Read more

A new adventure!

-
Image
 I'm pretty excited about some big changes here at my house.  My husband and I both decided to retire at the end of the school year and we've spent most of the summer traveling (not quite finished with THAT but since we're retired, it gets to be an ongoing thing, YAY!).  Also, being 'she of the short attention span', I had some ideas about things I wanted to be able to do once I retired, so here's the latest new thing-in addition to doing book reviews, I'm also writing lesson plans!  I started with the Sunshine State Young Reader Award Jr. books (because I'm pretty familiar with them and they are some amazing new books!) and they are now available on Teachers Pay Teachers !  I've created packets with librarians and classroom teachers in Florida in mind, so they're vetted by a certified school librarian (that's me!), they are tied to the Florida state curriculum (BEST standards, but handily, this also links them to other curricula), there are
Read more

Sparkly brand new speculative fiction for middle graders!

-
Image
 I've been waiting and waiting to get to this part of my TBR pile-I have this HUGE stack of books that are being published in the next few weeks and I'm so excited to get to read them!  These were DEFINITELY worth the wait! The first one is called Nimbus by Jan Eldredge.  The main character is Nimbus, Nim for short, an 11 month old black cat, who lives with a boy named Fletcher.  They live with Fletcher's aunt because Fletcher's dad is working so much.  Fletcher doesn't mind living with his aunt, but Aunt Connie is not a big fan of Nim but Fletcher rescued Nim when she was a really small kitten and had been hit by a car.  He took very good care of her and they are tightly bonded.  One night, Fletcher finds an old jar and tries to open it.  It turns out what's in the jar is REALLY bad-it's a nightmare demon and it's trying to suck out Fletcher's life essence.  Nim attacks the demon and thinks she's destroyed it, but she's also been badly injur
Read more