The Book Search

Hoo boy, did it feel like a long slog to get to winter break.  In their wisdom, our district decided our kids should go to school until December 22 and we should have December 23 as a teacher workday.  It's so much fun to have special holiday events, concerts, tree lightings, parties, but wow, the level of excitement and anticipation (which has been building since OCTOBER) was pretty intense.  I was relieved to see at a local retail outlet that we have Valentine's day to look forward to, so thank goodness we have something to keep the crazy level high. But so now, we are back home after a wonderful visit with family and we have some time to relax and finish up projects and READ.  YAY!!!  I told the kids that my goal was to read a book a day all winter break, and frankly, I'm failing at that so far, but I'm hoping to catch up a bit now.  I did get to read a couple of brand new picture books on the plane and they are just terrific.  The first one is ca...

I've been reading an eclectic mix this week of new things from Netgalley.  I must be craving a bit of variety or was really open minded when I was browsing the list of new books!  Anyway, here's some books to look for. The first one is a picture book by Susan Eaddy called "Poppy's Best Paper".  Poppy is a little bunny who wants to be a famous writer (or maybe a brain surgeon).  When her teacher gives her a writing assignment, she finds many things to do while she's writing her story.  Her friend Lavender gets her paper read out loud and Poppy is very unhappy.  It's a great story to show how hard work and perseverance pay off.  The pictures are adorable and lots of kids are going to identify with Poppy's initial strategies for writing.  It reminded me a lot of "Lily's Purple Plastic Purse" by Kevin Henkes. Here's a book trailer for it. I also read one called "After Dark" by James Leck and this one is completely diff...