The Book Search

I've been doing some reading on things that I've been seeing on some lists but haven't had a chance to read and wow, now that I've read them, I'm a little sorry I waited so long, but oh well, better late than never. The first one I actually read this summer and somehow forgot to blog about it.  It's called Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan.  It's kind of a genre defying book because it starts off as a fairy tale and then has three parts of what appear to be unrelated historical fiction and then finishes as both a fairy tale and modern fiction.  It sounds a bit confusing but I assure, the story is anything but.  It starts with a boy named Otto who is wandering around in a forest and gets lost.  He is approached by three sisters who have quite a fantastic story.  They leave him back at home, a bit confused, but with a harmonica to remind him of his quest.  Then we go to Freidrich in Germany in the late 1930s.  Then to Ivy in California in 1941 and finally to...

Oh it's that time of year again and we are hosting the Scholastic Book Fair this week.  I found a couple of books there that I really liked and I can't wait to share them with the kids. The first one is a picture book.  It's called "I Wish You More" by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and illustrated by Tom Litchenheld.  It's a very pretty picture book about wishing positive intent for someone else.  It's full of little truisms like "I wish you more will than hill." or "I wish you more Woo Hoo! than Whoa!".  What's really great about this one is that you can read this one a million times for lots of different reasons.  One teacher I showed it to wanted to give it as a gift to her pregnant daughter.  One wanted to give it to her partner on their five year anniversary.  One kindergarten teacher looked at it and said it would be great for teaching beginning sounds and another teacher thought it would make a great mentor text for writing.  See wh...

Starting back to work after a two week vacation can be a challenge, but a challenge that was met and conquered (albeit with going to bed at 8:30 a couple of nights this week... and struggling to stay awake until 9 pm on Friday  night, pathetic).  I even got to read some really great books! The first one is a graphic novel called Dogs of War.  It has three chapters, each focusing on a different dog in a different war.  The first one is in World War 1, the second in World War 2, and the third actually deals with a Viet Nam war veteran in flashbacks to the war (also touching on post traumatic stress syndrome).  The art work, by Nathan Fox, is amazing and really evocative.  The stories are emotional and I think this would be a great book to spark the interest of some of the boys to get them interested in reading more about history.  Here's a book trailer about it. I read two other books this week and could barely put them down.  They are the ...